Jjimjilbangs are Korean bathhouse with a unique twist. One can come here to relax alone or with friends, most people visit for the hot springs but others like stranded passengers or salaried man who missed their train home and needed a night to layover. This is an inexpensive way to spend the night. Jjimjilbangs can be confusing to first timers like me because the place is huge.
After you made payment, enter based on your gender, take off your shoes and select a locker to lock your shoes. Exchange your shoe locker key and show your paid receipt for a wardrobe locker key. You’ll receive a wardrobe locker key, towels, a pair of shorts, and a t-shirt. Keep all your belongings, the given Siloam clothing, and everything that you’re wearing in the locker. Yes, you will enter the hot bath barenaked. You are required to wash up completely head to toe before entering any of the bath or sauna. You may choose to do sauna first, hotspring bath with mugwort, jade, loess, and salt or vice versa. Other option to get a body scrub and massage (additional charges). Each hotspring bath offers different health benefits. For example, the jade bath is meant to calm you and the mugwort bath is meant to heal etc etc. The jade sauna and salt sauna are really unique to me.
Once you’ve finished go back to the locker room and put on the given Siloam clothing. Head on up to the fomentation rooms. There are hot, ice, salt, loess, hardwood charcoal, and jade fomentations room. Each room supposedly has different health benefits like increasing your metabolism. It’s fun to explore all of the different rooms to try. There is also gym, restaurant and snack bar. Entertainment like Karaoke, Table Tennis, Games Room, Nail Parlour are also within the building.
For those who need to nap or sleepover, there are sleeping capsules at the top floor with UV rooms full of towels at your disposal. I personally did not stay over. I did get super exhausted after all the sauna and hot bath, so I took an afternoon nap in one of the sleeping capsules.
Siloam Jjimjilbang is very busy daily. It was so busy that I didn't have any chance to take picture of the hot bath area. My personal favorite is the Jade Thermal bath and Hot Salt Sauna where one can marinate oneself with salt within the sauna. Siloam Jjimjilbang uses natural Germanium water from 300m unground that has an excellent water quality.
Pictures by MSW
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