Goodbye Suwon

Our last day in Suwon today. It will be sad to leave Cam and Penny, they have been really great and have entertained us very well, as well as rushing off to school every day. They deserve their weekend skiing this long weekend!

I will add a bit about about our day out in Seoul on Tuesday, as I was too tired to do all that last night.

We took the train in and visted the War Museum, which was very good. Probably spent too long there though as we had a bit of "museum legs" when we got out. We foolishly tackled the big rambling namdaemun market next - Bill and I together are not the best of marketers, and we had to beat a bit of a retreat for food, and then try again. Eventually I bought a woolly hat, and we headed off to the N'Seoul tower, up the cable car on the top of the hill in central Seoul. That was great, and gave us a good idea of the layout and expanse of the city. A cute Asian touch was all the love letters and litte plastic hearts padlocked to the fence. It sounds as though we didn't do much, but we enjoyed our day.

Cam and Penny met us at Suwon station and took us for chicken galbi, which was delicious. A quick side trp for Cam to show his skill and me to make a fool of myself at baseball batting, and then back to the apartment for some serious (and very slow!) golfing at Pebble Beach. Nathan joined us, and we reckoned that on one par 5 hole between us all we hit 48 balls! It was a pretty late night, as the boys then went back to Nathan's apartment for a FIFA 09 playstation tournament.

I took the plunge this morning and braved the naked sauna. I went on my own, but Penny had taken me over (fully clothed) earlier and shown me what to do, which was handy as I would have been completely confused. When I arrived I was given a gorgeous set of orange shorts and Tshirt, which I put on in the locker area, before heading round to the male/female area of saunas. his was a big room with heated wooden floor, with little cubicles like body-length tunnels at one side that had mats in for sleeping on. When Penny and I went over earlier this room had several people sleeping on the main floor and in the cubicles, but by the time I went, there were only one or two. Off this room was a cafe, a little reading room, a computer room, and probably other things I didn't see.

At the far end were the mixed saunas, where we all wore our orange gear. I chose the coolest one to start off (the temperatures were above the door), and joined half a dozen women who were lying flat on their backs on the floor chatting animatedly. As it was obviously the thing to do, I lay down on my back too, putting my 2 little orange handtowels under my bare legs, which turned out to be a good precaution. After about 60 seconds my head was on fire, so I found a little wooden pillow. Another 60 seconds and my back and shoulders were going to burn through, so I had to sit up. I lasted maybe another 3 minutes then had to leave - I could hear quite a bit of giggling behind me!

Next I tried one of the traditional looking ones, shaped like big beehives. As Penny said, you felt as though you were getting inside a pot-bellied stove, and the floor had some sort of matting that gave off a bit af a funny hot smell. This was a bit better though, and I stayed in there maybe a whole 10 minutes.

The next step was to strip off completely and walk through to the pool room, shower at the open showers along the side, and then hop in. Once again it was obviously a social occasion, with groups of women all sitting round the edges of the pools chatting and laughing, and there were quite a few kids there too (I guess as it's school holidays). I was actually fine with the naked thing, and once I had my glasses off I couldn't even see them all staring at me. The worst thing really was that I dropped my glasses out of my plastic bag of shampoo etc, somewhere alongside the pool, and had to grope around blind in all my glory til I found them!

It was great though, and I'm only sorry I discovered it at the end of our holiday. I'm thinking about going over early tomorrow morning before we go, however.

Cam had a long lunch today, so he took us for a walk in their park, and we had a we go on some of the exercise machines. The lake was frozen, and the boys had a wee play on the ice.

Then we went and met Penny and Nathan at their favourite dumpling restaurant for lunch, which was really good and we were all stuffed full (again!)

When the others headed back to school Bil and I went and had a poke around the market, and then came home, messed about in Suwon a bit, and packed. Bill finally won a packet of rather disgusting pure cocoa lollies in the game machine outside the "family mart" that he had een feeding all week! I think we're going back to our favourite galbi over the road tonight, and then maybe to get some really spicy chicken that Cam likes a bit later.