Sunday, November 17, 2024

Korea 2024 - Yeong-Ju Forrest Therapy Center and Dinner

 

Our next destination was in the hill area of Yeong-Ju! It was called Forrest Therapy Center, and it was easily my favourite place of the whole trip. The place was founded so that work stressed Korean people has a place to go and relax and find their balance.

The area of the center was pretty huge! With a river (man-made I think) running through it. There are different facilities dotted all over the hills and forest, and it was meant for Koreans who drove here for a getaway. That meant that they could drive from one center to another to get their therapy. Not so for us! Our bus dropped us at the reception, and after checking in and doing our first therapy session, we actually had to hike uphill (with our luggage) to reach our accommodations! The housing area was all the way to the top cause our teacher got us individual chalet to stay in.


It was heart warming that when we first arrived, we were all given a program of our 3 days stay here. It was a nice small touch. It may look pretty packed, but there was a lot of time for us to actually explore the group on our own. We spend a lot of the time eating and waiting around for sessions actually. 3 meals were provided a day, and a lot of us was happy to hear that it wasn't vegetarian! 


Our first therapy consist of 3 types of massages. All the massages were done by machines, and you could book for more session if you want. It wasn't expensive since it's done by machine. I found it interesting, but personally felt that human touch is still the best. I think I need a human that can react to my body during a massage and know where all my sore points are so that they can zoom in on them. Machine, however, are just too routine for my liking. And you can't really tell the machine to please zoom in on a certain zone or to press harder. 


The wide road which was mostly empty near our lodging area. We could walk up and down to the center using the tar road, or through the hill slopes. As the slopes was quite steep and slippery, most of us prefer to walk on the road. 


Some of the chalet. There are small and big chalet. We were mostly group into 4 to 5 person per group. 


Here's a look at the chalet inside. Pretty minimalistic. Love it! There are two bedrooms upstairs and toilet. I volunteered to sleep on the group floor so that I can have my own room. The table above was where we would sit nightly to chit chat, sing songs and get to know each other. It is times like these that I often find out how different my lifestyle is like compared to the other more 'normal' ladies....


Bird eye view of the place. 


My tiny room with my futon. I open the window when I sleep cause I love the fresh mountain air, even though it was pretty cold. But get this, the floor is heated! So the bed is actually very cosy to sleep in! I kept my bedroom door open as there is a huge fan in the living room that helps ventilate the air. And for some reason, everyone prefer to use the toilet on the ground floor. So I get up super early so that I can use it first before the other wakes up. I hate waiting around to use the bathroom, especially when some people can spend hours inside!


My lovely comfortable bed. For some reason, I love sleeping on futon. 


Above is our first meal here, dinner. We had to walk all the way downhill to eat it, and then hike up again! What an exercise! I love all the meal served at the center cause they always have super nice korean rice, soup, kimchi, and lot's of other type of side dishes! I ate so much rice here. It was practically rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

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