The last week has been super busy. I am about to finish my job and move. So I am selling stuff and packing. We also shot a new video that is awesome but will take a bit more time to edit. So I did another Life in South Korea vlog this week. It has been awhile since I made one of these videos. I will make some more of them over the next few weeks.

Enjoy my latest video: 

Next is the jade (옥, or ok) fomentation room - and yes, that's the same sort of rough-cut jade stones you might find about ten steps before reaching a jeweler's shop. It's a bit hot on the feet, but otherwise it'll be warm at about 55 degrees Celsius (131 degrees Fahrenheit).

Not pictured is a natural balance to all these hot rooms - a charcoal cold room (참숯 냉 방, or cham-sut naeng bang) which supposedly purifies the air. There's also a cold room not unlike walking into a walk-in freezer - at -17 degrees Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit), it's particularly great to go from that into one of the warmer rooms. It's good for your circulation, or so the locals say.

It was at this point when the camera got put away and I decided to enjoy myself. The third floor contains a fitness center freely open to paying guests, a couple different noraebang rooms depending on the size of your party, and some snacks able to stave off those hunger pangs. Go back to the second floor for a full-fledged Korean restaurant, or up to the fifth floor if it's time to sleep. There's plenty of bunkbeds in gender-segregated rooms, along with a 'snore' room (코골이방, or ko-gol-ee-bang) if you're one of those sleepers.

As far as jimjilbang, I'm sorry I didn't discover this one sooner. There's plenty to see, plenty to do, and is quite relaxing for those needing a break from reality. The location is great, and if you want to curl up with your significant other, there's a yeogwan (mom-and-pop hotel) just across the street.

Ratings (out of 5 taeguks):
Ease to arrive:

Foreigner-friendly:

Convenience facilities:

Worth the visit:

Directions to Siloam sauna: Get to Seoul Station in central Seoul (serviced by line 1, line 4, and the Gyeongui line on the Seoul subway system). If coming by bus, take any of dozens of buses to Seoul Station and head into the subway station. Take exit 1 to street level and walk as though you're transferring to the Gyeongui line. After walking down the stairs, turn right and walk along the sidewalk. After about 100 meters, cross the road to your left and begin looking for the classic sauna logo: three rays of steam above a bowl. Bear left, then look right. Admission to both bath & sauna: 9,000 won during the day (until 8pm) and 12,000 won during the evening (after 8pm). For more information, check out the official website.

© Chris Backe - 2010

This post was originally published on my blog,Chris in South Korea. If you are reading this on another website and there is no linkback or credit given, you are reading an UNAUTHORIZED FEED.

[View slideshow here.]

The moment I walked into Bey Kebap House I felt like I was in another country. Blue Mediterranean-style tiles line the wall. Turkish pop, rock and folk songs play on the radio. A huge picture of the Istanbul skyline and the Bosphorus River cover the wall. You can even see the massive dome and minarets of the Hagia Sophia mosque in the picture.

Best of all is the smell of cooked lamb, beef, and chicken on the open grill. The owner, Sang-sok Lee from Busan, opened the restaurant 6 years ago. He made many trips to Turkey, fell in love with the food, and decided to start his own restaurant in Korea.

The Turkish chef, Memet, has lived in Korea for four years now. Apart from being a fantastic chef, he is super friendly and easy to strike up a conversation with. He will even sit down and chat with you over a glass of Turkish tea if he has time. At Bey Kebap House, you can travel to Turkey without even leaving Busan.

Menu Highlights:

Humus 4,000 Won

Adana Kebap (beef, chicken, lamb) 8,500 – 9,500 Won

Kiymali Pita (Turkish “Pizza”) 12,000 Won

Efes Turkish Beer 5,000 Won

Getting There:

Take subway line 2 to Kyungsung station, go to the street with Eva’s and HQ Bar. The restaurant is on the corner above bar Snoop and opposite Family Mart, 3^rd floor.

Hours: 12pm – 10:30pm seven days a week.

Phone: 051 625.0042

This article was published in the November 16th, 2010 issue of the Dynamic Busan Newspaper as seen here:

Views from the whiteboard has reminded me that the Edublog awards are being decided now.

An ESL teacher inKorea seems to be nominated for Best New Blog.  Kringlish Kids.

I can’t tell if English Teacher Melanie works in Korea and there is no reason that she should feel the need to, but she is nominated for Best Resource Sharing Blog and her material seems quite useful.

Check the awards link for more details.

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In other news, here is an interesting claim that might convince your students to study after the test!

Via Kottke and Why Evolution is True comes news of research that seems to defend some claims of psychic powers.

In a review of the article from new scientist, The journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “Bem took well-studied psychological phenomena and simply reversed the sequence, so that the event generally interpreted as the cause happened after the tested behaviour rather than before it.”

From New Scientist:

In one experiment, students were shown a list of words and then asked to recall words from it, after which they were told to type words that were randomly selected from the same list. Spookily, the students were better at recalling words that they would later type.

In another study, Bem adapted research on “priming” — the effect of a subliminally presented word on a person’s response to an image. For instance, if someone is momentarily flashed the word “ugly”, it will take them longer to decide that a picture of a kitten is pleasant than if “beautiful” had been flashed. Running the experiment back-to-front, Bem found that the priming effect seemed to work backwards in time as well as forwards.

Coyne, at Why Evolution is true doesn’t immediately dismiss the research:

1.  They’re real: we have previously unsuspected abilities to detect the future.

2.  They’re fraudulent: Bem rigged the experiment or made up the data.  I’m assuming this isn’t the case.

3.  They’re wrong because of some flaw in the experiment (or in the computer programs) that made these results artifactual.

4.  The results are statistical outliers that got published simply because they represent one of those cases in which we reject the null hypothesis (i.e., the hypothesis that we have no ability to predict the future), even though it’s true. This is called a “type one error” in statistics.  When experimental results give such an error of 5% or less (i.e., exceed the “significance threshold”), scientists do reject the null hypothesis and claim that something else is going on (in this case, that there’s precognition).  But with a threshhold of 5%, you’ll make a mistake one time in twenty.  (That’s the basis of the old science joke, “95% of your experiments fail;the other 5% you publish in Nature.”)