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Dave Says:

Love Shack baby! Every country provides challenges when it comes to finding suitable accommodation. In Korea the challenge is which motel will have the best porn.

Normally, the humble backpacker’s hostel provides warmth and shelter for our weary bones but for some reason Korea has this strange glut of affordable accommodation in the form of the ubiquitous Love Motel. I’m not entirely sure where these originated and why, but I’ve never seen so much red flashing neon in my entire life and please bear in mind I spent seven months of that life living a quick walk from Amsterdam’s Red Light District.

Now, before the more prudish of you start worrying, these are not (on the most part) seedy, nasty dives of places. They are generally the best of what was built for doing the worst and have found themselves a nice side-trade catering for the needs of the budget minded traveller.

As I type this I’m sitting in our room in the Sky Motel in Gyeongju. For $35 ($5 more than we usually spend but we were tired and it was close by) we get the following:

• A lampost decorated as a palm tree that lights up neon yellow - complete with coconuts
• An exterior that looks like a castle including battlements
• Free DVD and video rental in the lobby with real titles as well as titles your mother wouldn’t like you to have (depending on your mother of course)
• A little check-in package containing his and hers bubble bath, shampoo, soap, face cream, and toothbrushes.
• An en-suite room with a huge, comfortable bed and lots of red mood lighting. The sheets are crisp, white, and spotless.
• The room has a free partially stocked fridge, DVD player & VCR (both fully stocked, if you get my drift), a water cooler/heater, a UV sterilizer for the mugs, free tea and coffee, a 48″ flat screen TV, a computer with free internet access, heated floors and lots of mirrors.
• Free condoms. I was late spotting these because they were next to the free tea and coffee and the small silver wrappers looked like sweetener. Who keeps their condoms next to their condiments anyway?
• Free: hair gel, after shave, hair spray, hair combs, shampoo, conditioner, body lotion and toothpaste. All in big bottles, already opened, used and perhaps abused.

The standard of furnishing is cheap but serviceable and the bathrooms are usually a little dated. But the main bedroom is always squeaky clean and well appointed. There are about fifty of these motels in every town we’ve visited and because we’re out of season we can have our pick. We can, of course, rent the room by the hour but usually we’re asleep within the hour. Haven’t heard any noises from the neighbouring rooms yet although I have seen some couples checking in who are obviously intent on making something that’s not holiday making.

If you ever find yourself in Korea you could do a lot worse than the love motel. A little common sense would steer you away from the more reckless establishments towards amazing value for money. For our remaining days here we’re going back to the hostels where the conversation may be better but we’ll miss our room bathed in the glow of red light and a 48″ porn machine.

As she said: “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Global Travels, Korea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.