The Great and the Good - Love Motels of South Korea

As I have thought since I arrived here, Love Motels are definitely the BEST thing about Korea! Even the really, really bad ones are fab, as they are so cheap and nasty, plus tacky is definitely the way to go if you want to win my heart! So, Love Motels tick all the boxes!

Greg had heard about the Love Motels before we arrived (I had done very little research), and he delightfully informed me that they are basically very cheap, sleazy hotels that rent out rooms by the hour or by the night for premarital/adulterous/whoring sex/western cheapo tourists. I was very enthused to try them! As even sleazy places in Korea are not really sleazy, they are still safe and very elaborately decorated!!  Basically, people in Korea are not allowed to sleep with each other or stay over at each other’s houses before they get married (they just live with their own parents), so they have to sneak to the Love Motels to get ‘quality time’ together... which I think is really cute!! They are also used by people having affairs (as people don’t really get divorced in Korea), and we’ve seen lots of sheepish looking middle aged couples coming out of lifts – very amusing!! Also, the hookers use these rooms (although we never see them!!), there are always lots of calling cards on the floor – kinda like Vegas! As the motels are usually just meant to be for ‘short stays’, they always provide you with all shampoos, creams etc – which makes packing v light! Plus most motels give you toothbrushes, toothpaste, and condoms (tiny Korean ones), which I find really amusing! Some have condom vending machines in the corridors, and one – the Ritz Motel (classy) in Seoul had a vibrator vending machine in the corridor! So, be warned, it’s not for the faint hearted!

 Most Love Motels are towering neon monstrosities, that wouldn’t look out of place on the Vegas strip, god knows how much electricity they use up! They all have crazy names like, Bobos Motel, Motel Kiss, XO Motel, St Tropez Motel,  Jelly Motel, Heart Motel to name a few – often the name is the best part, so it bums when they are only written in Korean! One thing to be aware of is that people NEVER stay for more than one night in these love motels, so it causes a great deal of confusion when you want to stay 2 nights, like we always do on our ‘minibreaks’ (especially when I forget how to say ‘night’ in Korean, which is all the time)...so they often try and give us two rooms, or kick us out after the first night – it’s all part of the fun of the Korean experience though!

The motels are great and cost on average about 15 – 20 pounds a night for the room, which is a total bargain, and a lot cheaper than the normal hotels and so we can go away most weekends without spending too much money! Motels do vary widely in Korea, from the super super basic to the super super fancy! Here are some of my high/lowlights so far.....

First Motel

The first time we tried out a Love Motel was the second weekend we spent it Korea. I spent the first weekend crying, so demanded that we escape Jeonju for the second weekend! We went to Gwangju, and stayed in the Castle Love Motel.. It was  35,000 won per night which is a total bargain, and had a cool gold bed! It also had a pc and a big plasma screen TV...all Love Motels have this huge TVs that have Korean porn on them... the porn is really rubbish though (for porn), as it doesn’t show any bits and is therefore pointless! Amusing though! The Castle Motel definitely set us up well and gave us a good impression of the Love Motel genre...There are lots of motels in the same area, and Gwangju definitely makes an effort when it comes to theming its motels!

Best Motel

The best motel that we have been to so far was in our home city of Jeonju. For such a small city, Jeonju definitely has amazing Love Motels.. I assume it’s because it’s super conservative, so people have to hide! Most of the Love Motels in Jeonju are around the bus station, so we had seen them from the bus several times, and one stood out amongst all the rest – The Beast Motel!!! Located next to its sister motel – the Beauty Motel! It was a beautiful neon structure with multicoloured, colour changing signage, and sparkled in the evening sky! (That’s me being sarcastically over romantic about Love Motels)..We decided to stay in the Beast the night before our Mega trip (see earlier blog entries) and it was amazing – it was all we’d dreamed of and more! There was a chandelier in the lobby, and a popcorn machine and all the corridors were lit up with sparkly neon lights! Our room was 50,000 won – which was a luxury room, and is a total bargain – and was themed with a really random travel theme. There were pictures of the Eiffel tower, a London underground and various people on buses etc on a mural on one of the walls. The beds had flashing neon lights around it, and there was a double Jacuzzi that had neon lights above it too – the Jacuzzi wasn’t as powerful as I would like, but that’s my only complaint! This is definitely the best Love Motel in Korea that I know of! Unfortunately, Greg was sick L so that took the shine of it a little, but we will definitely return (and go to the Beauty, which seems exactly the same but less grrr!) and I would recommend it to anyone popping to Jeonju for the weekend!

Worst Motel

The worst motel was in Daegu, at the end of our mega trip! Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of nice Love Motels in Daegu, but we did not stay in any of them! This motel (we don’t know its name as it was only in Korean), was by one of Daegu’s bus terminals at Dongdaegu, and was near a toast and fruit shop –random! It was an insanely cheap 25,000 won a night, but I’m so glad I didn’t pay any more! Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the room so you can’t share my horror, but it was pretty bad! It was tiny and sparse, with no proper cover on the bed, which was tiny itself..plus there was a rank, smelly bathroom and a skanky green carpet outside...it also had a broken condom vending machine in the room –which they hadn’t bothered to move (though I think that was the funniest thing about the motel). The worst thing about the motel, which I discovered at 3am on our first night there (we stayed 2 nights), was that it was in the same building as a 24 hour karaoke bar! Big bad! So, I seemed to spend my whole night lying awake and listening to boom boom boom boom! It was pretty bad, and I was VERY cranky! So, I think the moral of the story is that you should ALWAYS check and see if there is a karaoke bar in your motel, and if there is you should run! (It’s a pretty easy lesson, I think!

Daejeon Weekend - I love Daejeon!

The week after the craziness of the conference and Everland was also a pretty traumatic week! Firstly, Greg and I had been ‘told’ by his mental co-teacher that we were organising an English Day at his school – we were supposed to think of activities to entertain 350 boys in one hall for 1.5 hours!! So, we got all stressed trying to think of ideas, we were even asking the lecturers at the conference if they had any ideas – they all thought it was a crazy idea and couldn’t think of any suitable activities, which made us even more worried!! Luckily, we were saved! The co-teacher decided to ‘postpone’ the English Day, and then said that we didn’t have to organise it anyway! That made me pretty happy, as I think it was a disaster waiting to happen! Apparently, we just have to read a quiz out now, which seems pretty ok...although it does mean I have to work on a Saturday for no money, but this is Korea, so there you go!

The week was also stressful as we were both preparing for the Jeollabuk-do Office of Education co-teaching  ‘competition’, which is basically a fancy word for an inspection! We each had to record a lesson with our co-teachers and send it to the Education Office to be judged, alongside a written lesson plan! It was not good, Greg had to do 5 lessons to be filmed (two at one school and one at his other 3 schools) and I had to rewrite my lesson plan about 30 times as my co teacher got really anal about it, and kept changing her mind about what she wanted to do! I have presented the lesson yet, we are doing that next week, but it’s going to be BAD! Especially as our lesson plan should take about 2 hours to do, and we only have 45 minutes!!

In order to relax, and escape the craziness of the lesson planning, we decided to have a weekend in Daejeon (about 1.5 hours from Jeonju) and visit a spa, in the town of Youseong, on the outskirts of Daejeon.   We stayed in the cool area of Daejeon, called Dunsan-dong, in a Love Motel called, ‘Kiss Motel’, it was fab! It had glittery pink rose wallpaper and was massive! I was very impressed, the area was lively and had lots of shops and restaurants as well!

Back to Youseong - the hotel the spa was in looked fancy, so we assumed it was a Western Spa – the photos on the website made it look like a western spa too (the difference between Korean and Western Spas are; Korean spas are segregated, and you have to wander around completely naked while an old Korean scrubs you down! It’s not something I have any desire to do, although I’m sure some people love it, so I was looking forward to having a lovely Jacuzzi and steam and hanging out with Greg).....obviously loveliness did not happen! I don’t know what I expected, since I left for Korea, my luck has just been completely BAD! I swear if something good doesn’t happen soon I don’t know what I’ll do!! Anyway, we traipsed over to Youseoung and it was a Korean spa, so we went back to our motel and hung out for the afternoon! I got to relax and have a bath and it was actually really enjoyable!

I tried to buy a coat as well, in Dunsan-dong; I bought one – a Korean puffa jacket! They look bad but are insanely warm, and as the temperature in Ancheon had plummeted rapidly over the last 2 weeks, it was definitely essential to get a warm winter coat! Apparently it’s going to hit -10 in the real winter, so I need to be prepared!! Anyway, the coat I bought was really snug but when I got it home it had a broken zip! We took it back to the shop, but they were all dodgy, so I got my money back. Luckily, Koreans are very honest, as I didn’t have a receipt or anything, they just remembered me and refunded my money, so at least that aspect of it was good! Greg bought me a cool ladybird pillow from the same shop as well (for our journeys on planes) and it’s really cute! I will treasure it I’m sure! After coat shopping (unsuccessfully), we treated ourselves to a really nice Outback Steak; I also had 2 glasses of wine and a beer, so was of course massively drunk! It was fun though, and nice to let my hair down, I don’t drink a lot in Korea, so it’s nice to do it for a change – I didn’t like the hangover though! After tea we went to the cinema and watched RED. I really enjoyed it but Greg thought the plot was, ‘full of holes’...I think that wasn’t an essential thought when they were making it!.... Bruce Willis was fun, but we both thought he was getting OLD!! I had a fab evening though, so really do like Daejeon now, and it was good to have a more relaxing weekend for once!!

On Sunday, we went to Tesco Homeplus (still one of the best things about Korea!), where we found a stack of coats identical to the one I had bought the night before, but that were 10,000 won more expensive! Clearly, the ones in the other shop had been a faulty batch that they were trying to flog on the cheap! L Anyway, I found a much better coat and decided to buy that instead – even though I loved massively puffy in it!! In this Homeplus, the coats were outside, so I took the coat inside, where I would buy it with the rest of my shopping. When we got downstairs in the homeplus, one of the greeter people (they have greeters in Korean supermarkets who bow to you, it’s great) started talking to us in Korean about the coat! We worked out he wanted us to pay for it straight away, so we took it to a till. Unfortunately, the till woman couldn’t work out the price of the coat (so we thought) and got this other woman to search the whole store looking for the price! Obviously, the coats were outside, so when I told the woman this she rushed us upstairs! Apparently I had stolen the coat! Oops!! You were meant to pay for it in a separate till next to the outside of the store! In my defence, I didn’t know, plus it’s a silly system – British Tesco is much more sensible!! Luckily, they knew I wasn’t really stealing so didn’t throw me in jail or anything, it was pretty embarrassing though!

After the Tesco incident, I came home to my non interneted shack and decided that it was a pretty nice weekend, plus I had only had one ‘I hate Korea’ trauma, which is a pretty low amount for me! Go Daejeon!

An Epik Conference

Ah, well another delightful week in Korea brings the dreaded EPIK conference in Seoul – to induct us to a country that we have already been living in for 2 months – useful!! We had managed to escape the conference at the end of September as we were in Busan for Chuseok, but now the time had come to pay our penance! And believe me some penance it was... Firstly, we had to give up one of our weekends and then 4 more days to do this conference, however I was looking forward to getting out of An Cheon and into civilisation for a few days... however, it was not that amazing.. Firstly, we got  up REALLY early on the Saturday morning – the day of registration for the conference, as we were told that if we got there early we would be able to share a room (shock horror for the non marrieds!)... this was not the case as we were met with severe resistance from some nowty dog who demanded that we show her a marriage certificate if we wanted to share – so our wishes were not fulfilled – shockingly!! I think it would be worth getting married just for the benefits in Korea – 7 days paid leave and not being treated like an actual 5 year old for once would be excellent! It got worse as I looked for my room 322, which had ‘restroom’ on a sign next to the door, as you do.... it was basically an old toilet that someone had dumped 2 beds and a wardrobe in – excellent! It still smelled like a really bad Korean toilet and still had a really loud whirring extractor fan in it – and no curtains!!! I was not happy with the whole situation and obviously got my negative Katherine face on for the rest of the week – always good! We did get to have fun after the whole registration saga though, as there was no activities on Saturday – we went to Itaewon and Insadong, both for the first time, Itaewon is the seedy hooker/tourist/tacky shops district – there is a US military base there – so lots of Yanks too! It was a really fun place, and apparently there was a place that sold salt and vinegar crisps, we couldn’t find it though – sooo gutted!! I know I keep going on about it, but I really need those crisps!!! (Edit – we found the crisps a week later, I’ve never been so happy – woo hoo!)  Greg ordered a lovely handmade suit anyway, from the tailors, ‘Savile Row’! It  had been recommended on internet forums and I would definitely recommend it so far – he’s only had a first fitting though at the moment, so we need to go back and collect the suit at weekend! I didn’t buy anything, but got lots of ideas for Christmas presents thank god! There is NOTHING to buy in Jeonju other than paper, so Seoul is a lovely welcome shopping paradise!! Insadong is  a nice version of Itaewon, the souvenirs are similar but a lot more classy and nicer, and there is some nice art there as well – not that I appreciate art, but it’s still very nice!!! So, Saturday was nice, except I had to go back and sleep in my toilet, which was REALLY depressing, I bet I smell like a toilet by the end of the conference!!!

It’s now 2 weeks after the end of the conference so my memory is very shady – I really need to be more proactive with the blog! The only reason I am writing it now is because my internet is so broken – which is a very traumatic experience in itself – so I have nothing else to do ! L

Anyway, the rest of the conference basically went like this;

We would get up, eat breakfast (toast, jam, cereal, lettuce, potato wedges, kimchi – you know the usual kind of breakfast!!), go to boring classes/lectures for 3 hours then would escape to McDonalds/ Subway for lunch, then 3 more hours of lectures, then we would sit outside the gs25 (Korean convenience store) and have a beer and then have Korean class (which I actually liked, and Greg fancied the teacher!).. After Korean Class ended at 8, we were free to do what we wanted, and so this was the best part of the day! As we were in Seoul, we could eat Western food to our hearts content, which was ace! We got through an assortment of places, Bennigans, TGIs, Richard Copycats American Diner, but the best place was an Indian restaurant called Namaste! It was completely fit food, and really cheap too! Plus it was great to have a change from burgers etc – I would definitely recommend it to anyone!! I can’t remember where it was, or I would put it in the blog, and as I am writing without internet, I can’t check! Hopefully, I will remember to check before I post this and then I can add the location!! Anyway, I think food was the best part of the week,  as the classes were boring and most of the people were really weird!! Our favourite was a lady we named ‘Joan Jett’ as she sounded like the Joan Jett dealertainer from the Imperial Palace Hotel  Casino in Las Vegas (don’t ask!), who seemed drunk all the time, slurring her words and yelling randomly at things! She was a complete legend and definitely made the whole conference more entertaining!! Greg will describe the experience in more detail I’m sure! We did make a friend at the conference though, called Dave from New Zealand (this is a rare experience for us!) Unfortunately, Greg decided to shave Dave’s hair off in a really shit way with some bread trimmers, as you do! It was very messy and did not look good! But luckily Dave was very forgiving, I yelled at Greg a lot though, as he is crazy! (The night before we went to the conference he wrapped a volumising brush up in my hair, it got insanely knotted and we spent half an hour trying to get it out of my hair, taking most of my hair with it! I was not happy!) Anyway,  Dave seemed more forgiving for some reason! However, to the rest of you – word of warning – Don’t let Greg near your hair/hair products!!

All in all, it was a pretty lameass week, but it was nice to be in Seoul, I love Seoul and wish to God I lived there!! The toilet saga continued, with me complaining several times, and them spraying air freshener in the room (did not work!), and I wrote a nasty evaluation of them in my end of conference questionnaire!! It’s an experience I hope we never have to relive again!!!

After the conference, we spent the weekend at Everland, Korea’s biggest theme park! Again, I will let Greg write about that, as theme parks are his thing!