When Life Hands You Lemons...

... they say "make lemonade."

But, if you've just spent two weeks in the Philippines, you might instead say "When life hands you calamansi, make calamansi juice!"

Coming back to Korea late last night from an epic 12 day adventure in the warm and beautiful country known as Philippines, two friends and I were greeted by Seoul in the most appropriate way I could imagine--cold crisp air, the sweet smell of soju wafting off the suits of wobbly drunken men in the subway station, and K-pop blaring from unknown corners of the city. Welcome home, said Korea.

To truly solidify the fact that we were indeed back in Korea, we were faced with a calamansi juice moment. All three of us very eager to return to Jinju immediately on the ever-so convenient 'midnight bus' back to Jinju, we raced across multiple subway lines in Seoul to the bus station only to find out that all the seats were taken and no more tickets were available. We were thoroughly disappointed, but even our short 12 days in relaxed and seemingly eternally happy Philippines was enough to give us no option but to roll with it. In fact, it took all of about two minutes before we were really quite happy with our situation. Just down the road was a chicken restaurant--very common here--where we indulged in a plate of finger-lickin' good fried chicken and a pitcher of good old Korean beer. Then we made our way down the road to a jjim jil bang (Korean-style sauna) for a solid night's rest before our 6am bus back to Jinju.

*Sparing you from as many unnecessary details as possible (though I tend to have an unusually difficult time doing so), the basic approach to a jjim jil bang is as follows: pay the entrance fee of less than US$10; take the key, towels, t-shirt and shorts that are handed to you and enter into the appropriately gender-segregated room; remove your shoes and place them in a small locker; enter a larger room, find your locker, strip your clothes off, grab your shampoo and soap; enter the bathing room through a sliding glass door, scrub yourself clean with a hand-held shower head while sitting on a small plastic stool in front of a mirror; relax and soak in any number of hot pools of varying temperatures; scrub and shower again; dry off; brush your teeth, put on lotion, dry your hair (and do whatever else you feel the need to do); put on the pink (in this case) cotton t-shirt and shorts and head to the sleeping room with (again, in this case) a four-foot ceiling and where there are rows of mats lined up and ready to be slept on; sleep for as long as you'd like among dozens of Korean women also wearing the pink cotton t-shirts and shorts.

This was my first experience sleeping in a jjim jil bang, though I've used the sauna/baths at my local fitness gym a number of times. I can't wait to give it another go--what a brilliant concept!

Admittedly, I'm still on an extreme high from my vacation--and don't expect to come down for at least a week. But, I can say with full confidence that we concocted the best damn calamansi juice ever made. Philippines 2010 rocked my world.

More to come soon.