Love Hotels

One of the benefits of living in a small country is that we can easily travel anywhere we want for the weekend. Using the KTX, Korea's version of a bullet train, I am 60 minutes from Seoul and 90 minutes from Busan, my new favorite place in Korea. Having the freedom to travel means I've seen a fair number of hotel rooms in the last few months.

A typical cheap hotel in Korea is called a love motel. Most young people in Korea live with their parents until they marry, so if they want to have a night away, you know for board games and pizza with friends, they go to love motels. They're called love motels because everyone loves how cheap they are. Right? Right.

There are two types of rooms available: with beds and without. With beds, there is obviously a bed in the room. Without means that you sleep Korea-style, on thick blankets on the floor. This is not as uncomfortable as you may think, as you can pile many blankets on top of each other. The room usually comes with several thicker blankets, regular blankets, and pillows piled in a corner or neatly stacked in cabinet. When ready for bed, you unfold the blankets and lay them on the floor. In the morning, fold them up again nicely, or if you're a jerk, leave them as is.




Love motels can be incredibly cheap. The one pictured above ran us 25,000 (~$23) a night. With two rooms and five people, it was 10,000 (~$9) per person per night. Not bad. This one wasn't very nice, so it was cheaper. In Seoul I stayed at a very nice love motel which included bathrobes, a ceiling shower, and five different Korean porn channels on the tv. However, since it was nicer, it was 90,000 (~$80) a night.

Ooooh, fancy!

Hey, look! It came with a roommate, too!

The downside to these cheap motels is that they can be a little sketchy. Don't explore the room too much, you may regret it. Some have fun themes. The one I stayed in my first week had glow in the dark halls, which you may remember from my first blog post... Below are pictures of what a typical love motel looks like.

 

So if you ever come to Korea and need a cheap place to stay, because god knows I'm not going to host you, find yourself a love motel and save a little money.