Taiwaneers

One thing I really enjoy, and I think I inherited it from my dad, is figuring out ways to “get a deal.” On our recent vacation to Korea we stayed in several hostels as well as one local hotel. For anyone contemplating a visit to the Manchurian penninsula and who wants to know where we stayed, how we made our reservations, and what we thought of the lodgings read on.

First of all let me to explain my method. On the internet there are several hostel listing websites like Hostels.com, Hostelbookers.com, Hostelworld.com, etc. Most of them work pretty much the same. You type in your stay dates and what location you want to find a hostel in and then they pull up a list of hostels to choose from with pictures, reviews, and stuff like that. Well when you use these sites to make a reservation at a hostel they make you punch in your credit card to pay a few bucks of the cost of the room up-front. Its pretty much a fee that the internet site takes away from the hostel for listing them. So what I took to doing was looking at the same hostels on several of these sites for reviews as well as pricing. Then I’d search for the website of the actual hostel I wanted to reserve a bed at and they almost all had their own website as well. I’d then contact the hostel I wanted a reservation at directly and they’d let me make a reservation without any fuss about credit cards and such. It worked great!

Night 1: Airport Backpacker Guesthouse
 This place is great for its proximity to the airport. Its like 3 minutes from Incheon International Airport in a car to this hostel and they offer a free shuttle. It doesn’t really have a lot of character but the facilities are excellent. Very new and very clean we even had a refrigerator in our room which is more then you get at a Holiday Inn. At $19.29 USD per person its a way better deal too. We stayed here because our flight arrived at like 10:15pm or something and the buses that run from the airport to various destinations in Seoul stop around 11pm or something so I didn’t want to risk getting stuck. This place is also blessed with a good staff that speak English and we were pleased to discover they would let us pay for the room in the morning with our credit card…yay! Our verdict: perfect for traveller’s needing lodging near Incheon International Airport and not just the young and adventurous. The rooms are even stocked with toiletries for the forgetful guests. I can’t stress enough how nice our private double-bed room with private bathroom was. Just as good as any mainstream hotel.

Nights 2 & 3: The Hongdae Guesthouse
 Awesome location! This is a great hostel. Its on the 3rd floor of the building right outside of the Hongik University subway station. This area of Seoul is known as Hongdae and is an extremely vibrant student area. With tons of shops, cafes, and such during the day Hongdae is just as cool at night with a ton of clubs, bars, and the like. We were told that this was a cool area of Seoul by a friend who had lived in Seoul previously (shout out to Sam!) and are very grateful for the advice. Its also a very central area of Seoul and easy to use the subway to get anywhere else one would want to go. We went out to a few of the bars and caught some live music while staying at the Hongdae Guesthouse and having our hostel right there within walking distance was great. The hostel is basically two of the numerous rooms in the building with various businesses and such in the other rooms. One room has 6 bunk beds, the other has 8 bunk beds. Each has a bathroom, a laundry machine, and a computer with internet access. The hostel is run by a travel agency who’s office is in one of the other 3rd floor rooms. Mary Wang, the manager, was awesome. Her English is excellent! She helped us get tickets to a traditional Korean theatre drum show, Miso, at Chongdong Theatre, and for over an hour and a half tried to help us find an inexpensive place to stay near Odaesan National Park not too mention just giving good advice and suggestions. The hostel was clean and while we didn’t have a private room it was very pleasant. We shared our room with several other traveller’s including a German, a Swiss, a Japanese, a Canadian, and a dude from somewhere in Latin America over the course of the two nights we were there. We couldn’t use our credit card to pay for the room but at $16.26 USD per person per night who cares. A fantastic hostel that I would be happy to recommend over and over again!

Night 4: Some local hotel in the town of Jinbu right near Odaesan National Park
Unfortunately I have no idea what the name of this place was. Our room was great. It was clean, and stocked with plenty of toiletries! Our refrigerator even had two energy drinks in it. The coolest part of this room was that it was an ondol room. By that I mean that the room’s floor was heated. It was a faux wood, floor and in the corner of the room was a pile containing two sleeping pads, two pillows, and two blankets. After watching tv for a while and taking showers we spread out the pads, curled up in our blankets, and slept soundly. This was a wonderful way to sleep and extremely warm. I also have no complaints about the fact that we were on the floor. I woke up in the morning with zero aches or pains. Another cool feature of the hotel was that our room fee came to a whopping $21 USD for the night. While the hostels charged by the person this place charged by the room!!! They only took cash though.

Nights 5-7: Yongpyong Youth Hostel
For about $7.75 per person, per night you can get a bunk bed at this fairly large hostel. The downside to it being a big hostel is that the rooms are filled with bunkbeds and they seperate the rooms by gender which meant that Emily and I were in different rooms. Also the bathrooms are not the small, per room type but instead are the large, communal type. Each bunkbed is enclosed though and has a curtain and a light inside it so one can get a bit of privacy if one desires. A fantastic feature of staying here is a little coupon book for various places at the resort including two that get you 30% off lifts and rentals. Its also right by the lifts which at $7.75 a night is friggidy fresh! They also have ondol rooms which would be perfect for families or groups since they are priced by the room instead of by the person but they were like like $49 USD which I couldn’t justify next to $15.50 USD for two bunkbeds being the cheapskate that I am. No complaints! Great location, great price, decent digs not too mention we could pay with our credit card.

Night 8: The Bong House
I know what you’re thinking but no, they did not offer us a “peace pipe.” The dude who runs it is named Mr. Bong. We wanted to stay in the Hongdae Guesthouse for our last night in Korea but they were booked so we found this place online at www.hostelworld.com lickty-split and made our reservation via internet before getting on the bus earlier that day at Yongpyong Ski Resort. It was pretty much a house in Seoul that the owner had turned into a hostel. We got a private room but all the rooms shared 3 bathrooms and it was kind of funny because the “check-in” desk was a card table set up in front of a bed in one of the two common rooms where the “staff” hung out. Its located a short walk from Hyehwa subway station in the northern portion of Seoul. Its a pretty cool area, near a university and a shopping district. The hostel wasn’t as clean as the other places but it wasn’t what I would have called dirty either. Just a little bit more well-worn and less new. It seemed like the kind of place that would be cool to stay at for a longer period of time. The staff was cool and there was good comraderie between everyone. Some of the other guests were students at an international college in Japan and we talked about our similiar experiences. To give you an idea about the Bong House they had pictures of former guests up on the walls, and on a bulletin board they had little postings such as: “The Bong House needs someone who would volunteer to watch over it from 3-11pm Tuesdays and Thursdays. In exchange you can stay for free.” It was the sort of place that made me think it’d be fun to turn one of the rooms in our apartment here in Taiwan into a hostel room. Simple, cheap ($14.73 USD per person, per night), the convenience of a computer with free internet, and close to public transportation. It was the hardest to find out of every place we stayed at being down a side alley. It just required written directions though and we didn’t have any trouble. They only took cash though.

Well thats it. We didn’t have any bad experiences with lodging in Korea. I would recommend all the places we stayed at. I really liked the local place in Jinbu and that night was the one I was most nervous about because every other night we had a reservation somewhere which meant we had a specific destination. That night we had just gotten off the bus from Seoul in Jinbu, walked to a restaurant, and after finishing our meal pointed to the phrase in our lonelyplanet guidebook that said “I’m looking for a cheap hotel.” The lady walked us down the street a little ways, pointed down a street to the right at a building and motioned that that was where we should go.

Everybody worries when travelling on the cheap about ending up somewhere nasty where spiders, roaches, and rats crawl over you while you sleep but honestly all the places we stayed at were well-cared for, clean, and hospitable!