Max's Visit: Season Finale, Pt.1

My homies decided that Max needed so see a traditional Korean market so we got a group together and headed out to the Eun Hang Dong area. First, we stopped at a store called Tomato, which sells a lot of the poorly translated English t-shirts that Koreans so love. Highlights included a fedora that said "DRUNKEN" in large letters, counterfeit Nirvana shirts, and a shirt with bright Fresh Prince-era neon letters positing this "question:"

"YELLOW MEN CAN'T RAP?"

Following a traditional Korean lunch (McDonald's again) we headed out to the market, which is quite the experience. If you've ever thought to yourself, "I don't have enough raw meat, fried squid, fermenting cabbage, and cheap clothing in my life," then I suggest you visit immediately. I can't say any of these things appealed to me.

I did, however, find something at the market that appealed to me very much. As regular readers of this blog will know, one of our favorite pastimes is drinking beer outside of convenience stores. While very affordable, this is fraught with peril due to the presence of mosquitoes. Enter the best invention I've ever seen: an electrified tennis racket. This thing cost me 5,000 won and that included batteries. Remarkably, the instructions on the package were in Danish. I was surprised at how much I could still translate, such as the phrases "THIS IS NOT A TOY FOR CHILDREN" and "Warning: insects may explode."

Having purchased this thing of beauty, our market trip could only go downhill so we headed out for another traditional Korean experience: the Jjimjilbang. A Jjimjilbang is a 24-hour Korean-style sauna, and I had never been before. Luckily James N. knew the routine. It's essentially divided into two parts: a unisex area, largely for families, and gender-segregated areas. The males and females headed to the Unisex area in little shorts and t-shirts they issued us. Here, you can watch TV, exercise, sit in saunas and cold rooms, drink a beer, use a PC, or even sleep if you want really cheap lodging for the night. We decided to experience "Dr. Fish," which is a little pond with fish who nibble at your feet and remove dead skin (I assume). It tickled like hell but was not entirely unpleasant. Jacob and Max proved to be the most popular with the fish, possibly because they were wearing leather shoes during the market trip. My feet did feel smoother afterwards.

After this we divided up by gender and went to the sauna area, which requires full nudity. Once you get over the shock of so many naked individuals, it's a pretty pleasant experience. You need to take a cleansing shower which involves scrubbing your skin raw with an abrasive cloth. Then we sampled a variety of hot tubs and saunas, and we executed the classic "sit in the 70°C sauna and then jump immediately into a cold pool" maneuver. We got used to the nudity but Koreans do have a different concept of personal space. While we were sitting in one of the hot tubs with special water, a Korean man hopped in between me and James N., stretched out stomach-down across the entire tub, then looked at us and asked, "where are you prom?"

Pictures from the Jjimjilbang below:

[FOOTAGE NOT FOUND]

We got dressed and then headed downstairs to the convenience store to have a beer and test our new purchase. Despite the great reverence we showed for it, we were unable to kill a single mosquito. In fact, there weren't any mosquitoes to be found. Probably because we were prepared for them, like when you know it won't rain because you remembered your umbrella.

To be continued . . .