lao-ocean-girl

The start of the new semester has been busier than I expected, and has kept me from blogging.  My last post was about St. Patrick’s Day, which I celebrated in Seoul, but still haven’t posted the pictures.  I’ve also moved into a new apartment and have been slowly settling in.  This post is the start of me updating regularly again.

Over the weekend, I took a trip with Ras, Jenay, Gisela, Eddie, and Ben to Spavis in Asan.  To tell you the truth, I’m still not really sure where Asan is.  While Jenay was driving, I remember seeing a sign that said we were 22 km from Cheonan… if that give you an idea.  Spavis is a spa with pools and water activities for the family.  There was an indoor and outdoor area, with different temperatured pools.  Unfortunately, a bigger outdoor pool for adults was closed because it wasn’t warm enough yet.  I had to be really careful with bringing my camera outside to the pool, but I couldn’t NOT take pictures.

I think the guys enjoyed having barbecue pork and beers at the food court more than the spa itself.

We all tried a little “fish therapy” where small fish will eat the dead skin off your body in a shallow pool.  Ras and Gisela freaked out when the fish started nibbling on them.   Ras: “I don’t like this at all!”  I don’t blame them because it was pretty strange.  To me, it felt like being electrically shocked or having your feet fall asleep and trying to wake them up.

I got used to it after awhile, but some of the bigger fish DID break skin and drew blood!  The cost was 5,000 won for 25 minutes, even though we stayed about an hour and none of the staff made us leave.

After Spavis, Jenay made us some phone calls to get us a room at a pension.  It seemed like everything was “full” after the pension owners figured out she was a foreigner.  Therefore she got her Korean friend to call and mentioned that we were all university professors.  Viola!  We got a room.   Later that night, someone told the pension owner we were on M.T. (membership training)!  She as really happy about that.

Our room was 70,000 won, with an additional 10,000 for the wood and grill.  Supposedly, the room is for four people, but the six of us slept there with no problem.  The only complaint were the noisy neighbors.  Just from the toilet flushes I heard in the morning, I’d guess they had at least ten kids.  The actual number was probably two or three.

We ate and drank and fell asleep way too early.  Honestly, the heat from the spa made me really tired.

We’re going to plan another outing in a month or two, when there will be more green in the country-side.  Next time, I want to stay two nights, and have time to enjoy our surroundings more.  In the meantime, Raswan, Jenay and I are planning on going to Everland in a week and a half because we all have Wednesdays off.