Soeul, Korea Rep.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Well when you are 26 and semi-retired you have find new and creative ways to entertain yourself /pass the time! Someone much wiser then me once told me "when in Rome do what the Romans do." Well I guess the same rule of thumb applies to when in Korea? One thing Koreans and Japanese alike enjoy doing with their spare time is to visit communal bath houses. If you are having trouble trying to image a communal a bath house I will try and paint you a picture. It is usually a large room or 2 consisting of large hot tubes, swimming pools, and saunas where members of the same sex strip down naked and lounge around and bathe together (yes they separate the Adams and Eves!) The one I visited can hold as many as 3000 people at once. Well anyway, I thought "Hey Nomad you will probably be in Korea once why not drop my dirty panties give it a spin!" First I need to let it be known that when I walk down the street here in Korea I get a lot of attention. So you can only imagine what I got when I walked into the bath house as the lone "white bread." I just jumped straight into the fire buck-naked in all my hairless wonder! I immediately had about 300 Korean men and boys of all ages focus their attention on me and lock their eyes in on my "Frankie Muniz." I am just going to just assume that most of you reading this have never had to opportunity to a have a room full of Korean men stop what they were doing and gaze at your "snausage?" Well I am going to spell it out for you = AWKWARD. I got through the initial uncomfortableness by pretending in my mind that everyone was locked in on me because I was a Greek God -AKA Johnny Nomatacus. The only way the situation could have been more awkward was if it was a room full of African men! Everyone needs to understand that I am not bashful in any way. Many of you already know that I sometimes moon light during the summer months as a recreational nudist. I am a confident man I tell you! By no stretch of the imagination am I "Don Johnson" but the good lord above has been nice to me and has made me all proportional. But never before have I ever had to feel the pressure like this of coming of the bench cold like that. I knew I had to represent BIG for my family (mad props to you daddy!!,) my country, and ultimately the Caucasian race. Asians are not known for packing "concealed weapons." So the pressure was on!!!!
While I was boiling my ovaries in one of the hot tubes I was approached and befriended by a 73 yr old English speaking Korean man. With my twisted sense of what is "reality" it takes a lot for me to have a, "hey Johnny this is a strange" moment! Well I had one right there. Never before in my life have I had this type of experience? Me and the old bird were chatting it up about life and love in nothing but our b-days suits. I really got me weirded out when he told me he had grand kids my age! Another thing this experience made me question my maturity. I have the hardest time not laughing out loud at all the old fellows "furriers." They are funny looking!
There are many things I intend to bring home from my travels (ex. world music, being able to order food in ethnic restaurants, etc...) but I am not sure if communal bath time is one of them? Ex. "Hey Ronnie, I just poured myself a nice hot bath you wanna come over and join me." For some reason it just does not work like that in America?
I will leave everyone with a few words from our friends from "Wang Chung."
"Across the nation, around the world
Everybody have fun tonight
A celebration so spread the word!"
The Greek bath-house GOD -Johnny Nomatacus
Comments
visions of grandeur
I am so glad that you did not include party pics with this entry....
Andrea 'Aphrodite' Schaff