I had to get out of the hostel. I had stayed there for some 16 days, and while it was feeling like a family, that last day had been pretty painful with an unspoken rift. It was a good thing I had already made some plans to get a change of scenery. Of course, I still hung around until almost 2 pm since check-in wouldn’t be until 3.
Again, I had insomnia. It’s one thing to ignore a bit of snoring, shuffling around, or light talking, but when you know the voices, like a siren’s song, you get sucked in. Why so many people here are nocturnal escapes me. So with some two hours of sleep, I got out of bed around 6 or 7 and started pouring myself coffee. I didn’t even get the solace of sitting alone in the semi-darkened living room as another nocturnal person was binge watching Chinese dramas –with headphones, he isn’t the offender(s) I am obliquely referring to, although he eats instant ramen like a baboon.
At nine, the French guy was awake and we went out for one more run together. We did 11km and I felt like I could have kept going. I showered*, packed up, and hung out until I needed lunch. Went out and came back, just ticking down the moments until leaving. At the appointed hour, I said my goodbyes and set off to a bus stop, cutting through some interesting neighborhoods which would have been worth exploring.
I moved to Itaewon, which is sort of the foreign ghetto of Seoul. It’s famous for its markets and international cuisine, but the area has housed many a refugee and immigrant. Itaewon is also just next to a major US military base. The new hostel purports to be a boutique guesthouse and from the wall art I can see how in the distant past in the summer time, it could have been a vibrant place. But its super grungy like a post-apocalyptic Chungking Mansion. As I was paying for my week, I had some momentary doubts about really staying there for so long. Well, if anything, it will encourage me to spend more time outside.
Needing some sort of human contact, I added another “social networking” app to the phone and put in some time on that until I was starving. I wondered out into the neighborhood to scrounge up some food, doing a whole loop before picking an authentic Mexican restaurant. It was so good. I might be eating a lot of non-Korean food the next few nights.
Back at the hostel, despite sharing a room with five guys, we all implicitly accepted the rule of silence, each person keeping to himself. I chatted with a few people on my phone, started season 2 of Iron Fist and almost caught myself falling asleep in the last few minutes. Grungy… seedy… dirty, whatever. I got nine hours of uninterrupted sleep. Très magnifique!
| Noodle soup | 5500 |
| Guesthouse (7 nights) | 86000 |
| Coffee | 3000 |
| Tostadas | 12900 |
| Total: | 107400 W (650 RMB) (USD 96.75) |
Running Total: 6419.5 RMB
(USD 956)
Daily Average: 267 RMB
(USD 39.8)
*a funny side note on the shower: I went upstairs to shower in the bathroom with two sinks and two shower stalls, so its not exactly a private bathroom. During the middle of my shower, two people come in and decide to share the other shower well aware that I (or at least someone) is literally inches away. They were just chatting as far as I could tell.