“Ain’t nobody as dope as you, you’re just so fresh and so clean.” –Outkast
This is how you may feel after your first exfoliating scrub at a Korean spa, in which a woman will attack you (I say this fondly) with scrubbing mitts. The upside is that you’ll leave the premises with baby soft skin.
Outside of Korea itself, I’m told that Los Angeles’ Koreatown and parts of New York are Korean spa meccas. Conan O’Brien even went to L.A.’s Wi Spa, with inappropriately hilarious results.
Image via Brit + Co.
Recently people started raving to me about the reasonably priced and multirecreational Korean spas in Los Angeles. I’d never heard of them when I lived down there, and promptly started to kick myself for not checking one out!
Thankfully, I’ve been handed a reprieve for my earlier naitivity. Pearl Spa in San Francisco is a two-story establishment in Japantown that I’m sure I would have walked right past if its glowing Yelp reviews didn’t draw me in. After months of secretly hoping someone I knew would opt in to check the place out with me, I decided to go it alone and am so glad I did.
A pass to use the amenities is $35, but you’re in free with a treatment, so you might consider that whole “go big or go home” thing. Treatments range from seaweed wraps to massages to scrubs, the latter of which is often deemed the “holy grail of Korean spa services.”
Tough love is effective
Here’s the kicker: Korean spas are probably not the same as the spa experience you’re used to. The average American spa experience involves a lot of scented candles, plush robes, waiting room fountains and sliced fruit floating around in spa water. People go to tune out and be pampered.
At a Korean spa, you will not hear an Enya song. You’ll be splashed with warm water, and probably have your outermost layer of skin scrubbed right off your body. It’s really just a more blunt way of pampering yourself.
If you’ve had a massage in Thailand before, you know that the nature of it is a bit different than what you find stateside. There may be bruising. You may be tossed around a bit by a woman half your size.
Jumping into a 40-degree (Fahrenheit) cold plunge pool may not seem like a great time, but then again, we live in a culture where we pay people to rip the pubic hair out of our genitals without batting an eyelash. Il faut souffrir pour être belle, right?
The best phrase I’ve seen is to describe the Korean spa scrub experience is, “dead skin was pilling off my body like eraser dust.”
The price tag on your swimsuit won’t matter
That was one of the most interesting things about it, to be honest. Some people made a big deal out of the nudity in their Yelp reviews. Others came with a huge party of friends to the spa the day I was there.
It really drives home the point that people have varying levels of comfort in baring it all, which is totally fine. Just know that you’ll be naked here.
Just laying there has never been so beneficial
Alternating between a steam room, sauna, hot tub and cold plunge pool is all about shocking your body with extremes. Cultures with a prominent bathhouse ritual include the Russians, Turkish and Finnish. Bathhouses were way trendy in ancient Rome, but then, that was a time before indoor plumbing and Olay body wash allowed people the opportunity to shower at home.
The New York Times reported in recent years that the hipsters have been taking full advantage of New York’s various amenities, from Brooklyn to Queens.
The objective is to detox, de-stress, and (back in old country) chat with your friends. The alternation between hot and cold helps increase blood circulation. For reasons I literally have no idea about, there hasn’t been sufficient research on the health benefits that saunas have for women. However, in men there are indications that regular sauna visits improve heart health. Sauna access is not seen as a luxury in Finland, but rather a necessity.
I was fearing the cold plunge more than anything else, but I’ve always had a compulsion to “get my money’s worth.” I promised myself I’d spend 10 seconds in the cold pool, which was frankly more than I saw most people doing.
After the cold plunge, I warmed up in the hot tub. Then I headed to the sauna. It wasn’t long before I started to feel like I might pass out. I began to wonder if I was really going to get much out of the amenities at Pearl Spa.
After a 45-minute break for my treatment, I headed upstairs to check out what I’d missed – the Himalayan salt sauna and the clay room. The former was similar to the traditional sauna downstairs. The clay room was different from what I expected – the clay was hard and would hurt your feet if you walked on it, so the staff recommended rolling and crawling. There were giggles.
I spent the rest of my time cold plunging and steam room-ing, and surprisingly, the more I did it, the more comfortable the steam room got. I kind of didn’t want to leave, but now that I’m well out of college, I’m not really proud of passing out in public places anymore.
You’ll leave with a new addiction – the good kind
I left knowing I’d be back. I’m so happy that this place exists in San Francisco, and that I found it and actually went. I’m torn between wanting to spread the word and continuing to go solo.
A final note on what to bring: towels, slippers, hair dryers, moisturizers and shampoos are provided for you, but you might want to bring your own comb. There’s also a good chance someone might mistake their slippers for yours. If that bugs you, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to bring your own flip flops. They even have toothpaste, so if you want to really go the extra mile and be squeaky clean you can bring a toothbrush from home.
Have you been to a Korean spa? What was that experience like?
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