public nudity

yes I said "public nudity."  Feel free to squirm a little, I'll wait.  

First, here are more pics of Thailand ... I though you would enjoy the perspectives of different views in the world and these are among the most interesting and beautiful.  Now to my thoughts ... 

For the last few weeks I've been able to frequent a public sauna and bath house near my school.  This is a new and interesting thing to me.  They have these huge rooms, saunas really, where Koreans, and a few Westerners, cram into and sweat out the sweat.  It's all quite nice and relaxing and the end of the outing is finished by washing off in the public bath house.  Personally I have no problems with showering in public places ... I have been used to this from my summer camp of my youth at Camp Sea Gull in North Carolina.  But this is not just some row of shower heads ... they have everything, and I mean everything.  In my mind I will simply enter in and shower and head out ... but this is not the complete way of doing things.  There are several hot spas, there is a sleeping area and little "caves" for one person to take a nap, they have steam rooms, cold baths, and really, really hot baths all coming from some underground upward welling spring source.  There is a level of, "man this is weird" but I realized hell everyone else here is naked why do I care.  I think perhaps I stand out a bit with my different physical features that are not normal to Korean men such as hair on my chest, the color of my hair, and being the only naked Westerner in there.  As I'm writing this I'm wondering why exactly I'm sharing this with you ... I don't fully know so forgive me if this is odd for you.  There is one thing though ... aside from the strange display of public nudity that my western mind is simply not used to I rather enjoy it and always leave feeling refreshed and renewed a bit.  So who knows, perhaps soon there will be public bath houses in the US ... I would say to try it ... it's weird and different but it's a unique thing to experience a way, however strange and odd to us, how a different culture relaxes on the weekends.  

Also this weekend I picked up the Planet Earth DVD series fro BBC.  It's quite amazing and I highly recommend it ... the visual aspect and the landscapes are quite breathtaking and there is so, so very much about this world that I had no idea about.  Especially if you have the HD thing on your TV, apparently that's what it is made for.  

Ok, all is well!  Enjoy yourself!

John