beyondasiaphilia

I Fall To Pieces: Bay Spa Korean Spa review

January 24, 2024 at 6:12 am Leave a comment

I just finished a two-week residency at the lovely Lucas Artists Program at Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, CA, where I worked on art, ate delicious food, and got to know a lot of deer. One of the little side perks of being in the South Bay was visiting Bay Spa, the newest Korean spa to open in the area. Located in Santa Clara, Bay Spa is just a bit too far for me to drive to from my house in San Francisco but it’s a quick 20-minute drive from Saratoga, so when January’s chilly damp had me craving a scrub and a soak, I booked a session there. 

My scrub appointment was at the very start of the business day so when I arrived there were relatively few patrons on site. After a quick orientation tour of the facilities I left my clothes in the locker, took a shower, and happily immersed myself in the hot tub to soften up my epidermis. Unfortunately, some of the clientele didn’t shower before getting into the tub (which I’ve also witnessed at other Kspas in the US) so once I saw that I climbed out and dried off. Wash yourselves off before getting into a communal tub, people! It’s not a bathtub, ffs.

My scrub ajumma was about 10 minutes late so I was sad and lonely as the last person waiting in the hot tub area, but once she arrived and started the exfoliation my mood was much improved. After a vigorous thirty minutes my skin was rejuvenated and I happily moved on to the various dry sauna rooms in the jjimjilbang. There were a couple people having what they probably thought was an unobtrusive whispered conversation in the Himalayan salt room but in the small, quiet space it was really annoying, so I vacated and took up a brief occupancy in the jade room. But it was a very modestly sized sauna with only a couple small jade statues in the corners so I moved on to the last hot sauna, the clay room. The clay room was nice and quiet and had only one other person in it so I was able to fully enjoy the heat and silence. I finished up in the ice room, which woke me up and made me realize that it was time for a snack.

Bay Spa’s restaurant was open for business and the menu had everything from kalguksu to bingsu, but I opted for what I always get at the Kspa, which is spicy ramyeon. The broth was rich and flavorful, the noodles nice and chewy, and the three little dishes of banchan were tasty (though I didn’t finish the buckwheat jelly cubes, sorry). I did enjoy the kimchi and the spicy fish cake, which were a nice complement to the noodle soup. The noodle soup may or may not have been a very expensive bowl of Shin Ramyun Black but in my highly relaxed state I didn’t care.

Following my tasty noodle snack I found my way to the massage chair room, which is a luxe bonus element of Bay Spa. There are probably about twenty or thirty of these fancy automatic massage chairs in the room, each of which has several preset options as well as customized settings. I did two 20-minute sets in a row, using the “relaxation” preset first, followed by the “yoga stretch” preset. Both were slightly different and a bit terrifying, since at several points in each session the chair clamps down firmly on your arms or legs. I suppressed my imagination and tried not to think about the possibility of the machine chair crushing my extremities and managed to relax and enjoy the sensation of the chair gently kneading and pummeling up and down my spinal column. 

By this point I was pretty darn torpid so I wandered back to the main jjimjilbang and set up a sleeping pad and a pillow in the corner of the room to take a nice little nap. The heated floor greatly facilitated my snooze and when I woke up I felt refreshed and rejuvenated. By then it was around 1pm and the place had filled up quite a bit, since it was MLK day. There were a few school-aged kids in the jjimjilbang quietly playing video games on their devices, groups of friends eating in the restaurant, and other folks chilling on the sleeping mats. 

I had a craving for soft-serve ice cream so I peeled myself off of the heated floor, got dressed, left a nice tip for my awesome scrub ajumma, and headed out to Mochiya-Ren in San Jose’s Mitsuwa Marketplace, which is about a 10-minute drive from Bay Spa. And to cap it all off I stopped by the Hmart to pick up a bottle of soju and some wasabi peas for appetizers back up at Montalvo. All in all a very nice pan-Asian way to spend the day.

Entry filed under: bay spa, korean spa. Tags: lifestyle, spa, travel.