The Doctor Fish Experience (Featuring Joann Lee)

Before I get into this next post, I just wanted to let everybody know that I passed my training yesterday, and I start teaching in Ilsan on Monday. It was a crazy week and I'm pretty exhausted, but I'm excited to finally start teaching and get the full experience out here. Now with that out of the way, on with the story.

The other day I was hanging out with some people in Gangnam, just walking around. Out of nowhere my friend Joann asks if we know about doctor fish and if we've ever been to a place that had them. I'd only been in Seoul for a few days so I barely even knew what doctor fish were, and it was a little too late at night for an adventure of that nature. But the next time I met up with Joann, I asked her about the doctor fish place, and she said that there was a spot nearby.



So we go to this building, and on the second floor there's a cafe. In the front, they had different kinds of bread with a mini-oven and you could order frozen drinks, coffee, etc. And in the back were doctor fish tanks. Oh wait, you guys probably don't even know what doctor fish are.

So they're these little fish, some people call them nibble fish or little dermatologists. Originally, they were used in Turkey in outdoor spas to treat people with psoriasis or skin disease. The fish eat at dead skin and leave healthy skin to grow. Nowadays, you can find them in spas and resorts in a lot of different places, even in the U.S. It's supposed to be quite the experience, so I had to see for myself.



So after we had toast and strawberry smoothies, we went over to the "Dr. Fish Zone" (I thought that sign was funny). The guy tells us to wash our feet in these little basins by the tanks and sets a timer for 15 minutes. Joann keeps telling me how weird it's gonna feel and that I'm gonna freak out. Now we all know that I'm too cool for that, but I definitely dipped my feet into the water slowly.

The second my feet got into that water, those little fish started swarming.



It's such a weird feeling. It's like a bunch of little hands grabbing at your feet. And it tickles. A LOT. We were sitting there laughing uncontrollably for like 5 minutes. Actually, I think I was laughing uncontrollably and Joann was just laughing at me. Either way, there was a lot of laughing involved.

After you get used to the fish, it's actually a pretty relaxing experience. There's cool music playing in the cafe and you sit on these cushions looking out the windows at Seoul. And Seoul is beautiful at night time when it's all lit up.



So that was a pretty cool experience, and I'm thinking I'll have a lot more. Maybe not with swarms of therapeutic fish, but cool nonetheless. Big shout out to Joann for the blog appearance, and the trip. I think the next post is gonna be about our last trip to Rainbow. It was AMAZING.

Stay tuned...