Category: Travel

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!

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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)

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*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.

I had trouble sleeping most of the night, the insomnia is slowly driving me insane. I decided to go for breakfast and walked through the falling snow to Travel Maker. Perhaps it was my mood or to law of diminishing marginal returns, but the breakfast wasn’t as good as the previous week’s. The coffee was especially weak. Getting there right as it opened on a weekday morning, I had the place to myself and did my best to ignore the CNN chyrons as I worked on Korean. After a few hours, I ventured back to the hostel and continued studying.

A brief nap didn’t help, and I went to the living room to watch a movie, but someone had just grabbed the remote to put on Kung Fu Hustle. A great movie, sure, but not what I was in the mood for. I didn’t feel like imposing or hanging out in the dorm, so I grabbed my computer and headed to a cafe. I added a pastry as my lunch and worked for a few hours. It was my third time in this particular bakery/cafe and it was the first time that anyone other customers did not just get some pastries to go. Its crazy how sucked into the little world of the hostel I am that its a pleasure to actually do a little people watching (eavesdropping as they were speaking English) on the outside.

Back at the hostel, I stumbled onto a little party in the living room. Besides the usual suspects, there was a tall Croatian guy and a middle aged Korean guy introduced to me as a “farmer.” People were going around making their introductions with a fair amount of translation going on as the Korean was very sociable but didn’t speak English. I managed to say two sentences about myself in Korean, but was content to mostly listen. The Croatian guy chattered away in fluent (sounding) Korean and at one point picked up the guitar to really show off. He reminds me of some guys I knew in college who were real over achievers. I hate this kind of people, but the worst part is they are always so damned nice to everyone.

At some point, they went off to have dinner, and I declined the invitation to join. Finally, having the TV and living room to myself, I tried to put on Lost in Translation but the audio coding didn’t work, so I settled with The Fountain. The new volunteer from Chile was working in the kitchen on some pancakes for most of the movie and the party sans Korean farmer returned just before the ending. We ate pancakes while the Croatian guy packed up his suitcases (he had stayed here for some time before jumping around between Korea, China, and Taiwan, but was now going home for real). His social credit, or whatever it is, was good enough that two people agreed to ride on the train with him all the way to the airport.

The few people around were thinking about studying Korean, and I had barely pulled out my books for some adjacent self studying, when the farmer returned. He volunteered to teach, but I wasn’t really feeling it, so when they headed to the upstairs living room, I just readied myself for bed.

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French Toast Breakfast	13000
Coffee and Pastry	4800
Total:	17800 W (108 RMB) (USD 16)

Running Total: 5770 RMB
(USD 861)
Daily Average: 251 RMB
(USD 37.4)

I’m under no illusions that keeping my daily travel journal online is an exercise in vanity, but its a habit I’ve practiced for almost all of my travels in the past twelve years. It’s hard to keep up and the last few days of any given trip are usually blank pages just listing expenses. Given that no one (myself included) would ever read those journals, I was free to write honestly about my experiences both good and bad. Although this site will likely have as many readers as my doctoral dissertation, it is nevertheless public and I find myself worried about giving the impression of a dissolute lifestyle. Between studying, exercising, and writing, I don’t have much time to get into any trouble, but there is eventually going to be moments that I have to choose whether I want to tactfully elide them or elevate them into a thesis on the human condition.

I was like a zombie for most of the day, and repeated attempts to take cat naps were all unsuccessful. Caffeine didn’t help much either. Nonetheless I was onboard to go a dance club that night with a few people from the hostel. Hongdae apparently has a reputation for a good and cheap nightlife (per a US service member whose eyes drifted off into the horizon as he reverentially repeated “I love Hongdae” when it came up in conversation), and I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to see how clubs work in Korea.

This particular club (at least) lets Koreans in for free and charges a 10,000 W cover for foreigners (passports required). However, we do get two coupons worth 6,000 W each — the price of a standard drink at the bar. It was smoky and dark, but I didn’t go deaf. The music was a nice mix of American and Korean hip-hop, and being a Monday night and relatively early, there was plenty of space on the dance floor. However, it was quite crowded by the time I left.

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Americano	3500
Soju + Energy drink	2350
Cover	10000
Coat check	3000
Drinks	19000
Total:	37850 (229 RMB) (USD 33.8)

Running Total: 5662 RMB
(USD 836.27)
Daily Average: 257 RMB
(USD 38.01)

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By the way, I did have breakfast, lunch, and dinner; just at the hostel with stuff I had purchased the other day.

I was thinking of going to Travel Maker again for a lazy brunch, but I was feeling a bit poor and fat, so I decided to settle for toast while engaging in my regular morning routine. I finished a salad for lunch, and after a brief power nap, was thinking about heading to Spoland at the World Cup Stadium for swimming and sauna.

However, it was a gorgeous day outside, and some at the hostel was pumped to go out for a run, and I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity. I really feel like I’m having a subtle influence on the people around me in terms of eating healthier and exercising. Now, if I could just get everyone to bed at a decent hour, my work here will be done. Anyways, three of us laced up our running shoes and headed out.

When we got to the stream with the running trail, I suggested going right instead of the usual (6 runs so far) left. So, instead of reaching the Han River, we found ourselves at a mountain — Ansan to be precise. There was a trail heading up into the park, so it might be worth further exploration for some light hiking.

It was a fairly short run overall, especially as we lost one person to a sudden attack of an earache, so I hadn’t quite gotten my exercise fix and was still fixated on going swimming. I took a bus to the World Cup Stadium and utilized enough Korean to make sure I actually got entrance tickets to both the sauna and the swimming pool.

The system of how the spa works is quite funny. You pay and get a ticket and a set of clothes. Then, you put your shoes in a locker. You trade the shoe locker key and a ticket at another desk for a locker room locker key. I dropped my stuff and changed into the spa clothes, then headed over to the swimming pool. You then trade the second ticket and sauna locker room key for a swimming pool locker room key. I suppose it would be inconvenient to have to keep all those keys, but I was amused by the sheer number of times one is trading one key for another, like a real life game of Doom.

The pool was not crowded, though I still had to share a lane. It was well organized with each lane dedicated to a different level of swimmer. Having not swam since August, I started in the beginner lane to warm up and moved up a lane later on. I’m impressed with myself for going a whole 1,000 meters, and I definitely could have gone longer, but the sirens were calling to me and I wanted to be able to soak in a hot tub with becoming a human shaped prune.

After about 30 minutes going between cold pool, sauna, and hot tub, I dried off and hung out in the common area for about hour, listening to podcasts and dozing off. I was feeling the onset of hunger and boredom, so I left around 5ish and enjoyed the fresh air and late afternoon sunlight with a scenic half hour walk home, where I heated up and ate the rest of the tofu-kimchi soup I had made so many days ago.

Most of the evening was spent watching music videos on the television’s YouTube app (both pop and classical), and at some point I decided I wanted a bit of soju. It ended up being quite a late night.

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Spoland	10,000
Soju & snacks	5,100
Total:	15,100 (91.3 RMB) (USD 13.5)

Running Total: 5433 RMB (USD 802)
Daily Average: 258.5 RMB (USD 38.14)

Saturday was a busy, busy day. I had made plans with a doctoral classmate of mine to attend a lecture at Yonsei University in the afternoon, though I had lost track of the days of the week. So, when I reached out to my cousin and was invited to attend a baptism the next day, I immediately said yes. It turned out that there was no scheduling conflict, I just had to wake up bright and early to take the train two hours south to Pyeongtaek. I really didn’t mind the chance to catch up on four hours worth of podcasts on the round trip, but I was exhausted from lack of sleep.

A group of Japanese tourists spent 5 or 6 hours packing their bags, only going to sleep at 3am and immediately launching into rather loud snoring. Meanwhile, just outside my dorm a couple of people were chatting until 5 in the morning. I gave up trying to sleep around 6 and choked down a couple cups of coffee while reading the news until it was time to head to the subway station.

There are churches everywhere in Korea and even with several neighboring churches, the LDS building stood out in its simplicity. It’s kind of how embassies are supposedly sovereign territory, stepping into a Mormon church transports you to another time and place. Anyways, it was nice to briefly say hello to my cousin, her husband, and their kids. Though religion isn’t important to me, I was happy to attend as a representative of one side of the family. I’m surprised that people on the other side flew all the way Korea just for a baptism.

It was also an unexpected reality check to make small talk with traditional Americans. I’ve been in a bit of a bubble among the international drifters that I forget that having a family and a career are assumed to be the default status of most people. I haven’t really had explain my situation to anyone, or myself for that matter. Is it really so weird that I lived in China for ten years, am fluent in the language, don’t have a job, and am just hanging out in Korea studying Korean for the fun of it?

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With the church stuff wrapped up around 11 am and an appointment at 1 pm, I hoofed it back to the train station for the commute back into town. I met up with my classmate in the Sinchon station and we had a nice lunch before going to the university. We had just enough time to grab a coffee before the scheduled 3pm start of the lecture. We should have gone straight in, however, as a last minute schedule change had the talk start at 2:30 instead of 3. It also wasn’t a lecture, so much as the afternoon session of a two day conference on “Chinese Language Education and the Fourth Industrial Revolution” (meaning: computers). The first presentation was a Taiwanese scholar (working at Hong Kong Polytech) discussing corpus linguistics and issues involved in computing frequencies. Quite interesting. The second presentation was a scholar from Shandong providing an overview of interlanguage corpora. It’s been just over a month since I graduated, but it feels like a lifetime. If I had taken that post-doc in Beijing, that’s how my life would have been. I like research, but the endless treadmill of publications and presentations all feels so meaningless.

My friend had to run off to catch a 6pm train back to Daegu before the session wrapped up around 5:30. I declined the offer to join the conference for dinner, but still got dragged into the mandatory group photos.

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I headed back to Sinchon station to meet someone for dinner. A few weeks of swiping had finally paid off and I got to escape the gravity well of the hostel. We didn’t really click, but had an awesome barbecue dinner that somehow I ended up paying for. Considering I had been treated for lunch, I shouldn’t complain, but I’m annoyed she didn’t offer to split, especially as I wasn’t thinking of it as a “date.”

Not long after 8 pm, I was back in the hostel doing my best imitation of a corpse on the living room rug.

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Orange drink @ 7-11	1000
BBQ	30200
Total:	31200 (189 RMB) (USD 27.9)

Running Total: 5342 RMB
(USD 789)
Daily Average: 267 RMB
(USD 39.5)

Though the last few days had been warming up as if winter was behind us, the Korean groundhog (if there even is such a thing) must have found its shadow because Seoul awoke to a blanket of white and a flurry of fluffy frozen feathers falling from the sky.

My morning study session was interrupting by a workout session, both heading out into the slippery streets to do pull-ups and working biceps and back with a pair of dumbbells back at the hostel.

A second person at the hostel was gripped with a motivation to learn Korean, and I provided some coaching to help out. (Mostly just pointing to a list of words in a text book and suggesting that they be both read aloud and copied into a notebook with their translations. I wish I could apply for a patent.)

I had some leftover tofu soup for lunch and after a short power nap headed to a cafe to get some work done. After a productive two hours, I came back to the hostel to use the restroom and head right back out. Since I wasn’t going to risk breaking my neck on a jog in the snow, I needed some sort of activity, so I took an empty backpack the 3km to the Home Plus supermarket and stocked up on food — two salads and some microwavable meals. I’m tempted to invest in a big pack of chicken breasts, but I wouldn’t have enough space in the fridge/kitchen to make it work.

I walked all the way back (earning full credit for my daily exercise) to find Gladiator on the TV. I was getting pretty hungry, so I had a bowl of curry and rice followed by about half a salad and a box of chocolate covered almonds from the sale rack (about 18 for 1,000 W, not a bad deal).

At some point in the evening, there was a full language studying session in swing, and I realized I’ve turned myself into a Korean teacher even though I can barely string two sentences together. I’m actually quite proud of myself for getting two newbie learners to feed off of each other with a simple vocabulary review game. They were still playing and laughing when I went to bed.

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Coffee + Chocolate Croissant	5600
Groceries	12960
Total:	18560 (112 RMB) (USD 16.5)

Running Total: 5154 RMB (USD 761)
Daily Average: 271 RMB (USD 40)

After two days of late nights and alcohol, I was pretty exhausted, but I take comfort in my routines. The French guy at the hostel is pretty amped to get in shape, and I’ve somehow found myself serving as his personal trainer. So, while I was trying quietly study in the morning, I ended up doing several sets of pushups and teaching him how to do shoulder presses.

I extended my stay at the hostel for a second time, but I needed to move rooms. I’m not quite sure if it is an upgrade or not. I’m downstairs now, so its more convenient to make coffee in the morning. I have a lower bunk, and there is enough room under the bed to slide my suitcase under (as opposed to be amidst a pile of suitcases. The bed also doesn’t creak and groan with every movement, but if anyone is staying up late watching a movie or talking, I can hear every word.

I decided to actually cook some proper food, sourcing a few ingredients at a neighborhood mart and making a simple kimchi-dofu soup. It isn’t exactly cost effective, but I feel at least it is healthier.

I did another run in the afternoon and spent some time in a brand new “Mega Coffee” (a budget chain here that advertises extra espresso, though I certainly couldn’t tell). After eating some tonkatsu for dinner, I came back to find When Harry Met Sally playing and ended up watching that.

So most of the people hanging around the hostel are at least nominally interested in learning a language. Obviously, Korean is the main topic, though one girl who already speaks Korean has decided on Arabic. Watching people study, or more accurately watching people trying to teach each other languages is driving me crazy. It literally takes only an hour to learn the Korean alphabet, yet people are approaching it like it is pre-Rosetta stone hieroglyphics. I actually had to force one guy to “graduate” from mindlessly studying Korean letters over a period of several weeks to looking at them in the context of real words. (“You still get to practice the letters, but you also get to learn a few practical words at the same time.”). He was teaching the Arabic alphabet last night when I was going to bed and — bismillah — I had some opinions, which I kept to myself. Is it mansplaining if you are actually an expert? Being a native speaker doesn’t make you an expert.

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Groceries	12150 W
Mega Coffee	2500 W
Tonkatsu	9500 W
6 more nights	351 RMB
Power charger & chocolate	10000 W
Total:	557.6 RMB (USD 82.3)

Running Total: 5042 RMB (USD 744)
Daily Average: 280 RMB
(USD 41.3)

I wish I was better at sleeping in, but I find myself constitutionally unable to catch up on sleep when I am up way too late at night. Which was the case on my birthday. I had a bit of a hangover, but nothing too fierce, just a creeping lethargy from too much sitting around and too little sleep.

There isn’t much to say about the day, as it passed like every other day. Though the weather was good, I didn’t have the energy to exercise. The highlight of the day was a couple of hours in a bakery/cafe which smelled amazing. With no shortage of choice of cafes to while away the days, I’m settling on olfactory satisfaction as the discriminating factor.

Around sunset as I was getting worried about a lack of activity, I took a walk to the area around the subway station and strolled through a couple of shops. I’ve been thinking about getting a plug adapter for Korea. Though the universal adapter I have works, it doesn’t work well, often falling out of the socket. I did see one in a convenience store, but I wanted to try some other shops to get a better price. I didn’t find any.

I went to Seoul Plaza in the evening to go ice skating only to find that they had already shut it down despite still being the middle of winter. Life is full of disappointments.

Back in the hostel, I ate my salad and kimchi dinner, drank some soju, and wrote a little in my poetry notebook. I haven’t kept one of those since my road trip through the States.

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Coffee and apple danish	4800
Choco bread	2900
Cajun Chicken Salad	2700
Kimchi & Soju	4800
More Soju	4550
Total:	19750 W (119.5 RMB) (USD 17.6)

Running Total: 4484.5 RMB (USD 663)
Daily Average: 263.8 RMB (USD 39)

Since my first visit to China in 2008 when I spent my birthday wandering the streets of Xi’an alone with a bottle of baijiu to 2018 when I was spending a night at Gorak Shep, my birthdays have long been very cold affairs. Even settled in China, the proximity to CNY usually meant that even if I wasn’t traveling, most of my friends were.

Hoping to make the most of it this year, my 本命年 (ben3 ming4 nian2, Chinese zodiac birth cycle), I had done a bit of groundwork talking up a hot pot dinner to the hostel regulars. Of course, when it was discovered that one of the other regulars shared the birthday, it was certain that there would be a decent amount of celebration.

In the morning, I was quite hungry and craving some sweat bread, but I couldn’t find an open bakery, eventually settling on a mediocre croissant and scone from 7-11. Midday, Yumin and I went to the Home Plus supermarket to do some shopping. Yumin, one of the long-term residents, had volunteered to bake a cake, and I wanted to pick up some alcohol. I also treated myself to a jar of Lotus Biscoff biscuit spread (which, if you’ve never had, is like peanut butter but made out of those cinnamon brown sugar cookies).

Back at the hostel, I had had two bites of my salad before I had to Skype my parents. I had barely finished my salad when I was handed a cell phone with a Chinese man on the other hand. He had called the hostel asking for more information and I was the only one around who spoke Chinese. I’m really curious to see how the hostel fares when there are no Korean or Chinese speaking volunteers working the customer service.

I cracked open my box of Chilean wine during a viewing of Before Sunset and after eating birthday cake (technically a brownie mix frosted with Nutella) first, six of us were reading to get some hot pot. I had scouted out a nearby branch of Haidilao (海底捞), but I was talked into another location that was supposed to be better value. It was good with a tripartite pot and decent condiment bar.

After dinner, the two hostel workers went back, while the Koreans and I went to the karaoke in the basement of the same building. We bought an hour, but the boss added extra minutes three times (totally close to a whole second hour). I really do prefer karaoke in China, where most songs (in most languages) are in their original version. It’s hard to sing over a tune that sounds like it is coming out of an Apple IIGS and the tempo is either too fast or too slow. I did attempt 1.5 Korean songs, spending about 10 minutes in the afternoon prepping. I hope I’ll have a roster of 3-5 songs I can keep in my back pocket by the time I move on.

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Pastries	2800 W
Supermarket	30870 W
Hot Pot	21000 W
Karaoke	5000 W
Beer	4000 W
Photo Booth	1000 W
Total:	64670 W (391 RMB) (USD 57.9)

Running Total: 4365 RMB (USD 646)
Daily Average: 272.8 RMB (USD 40.4)

I didn’t specifically address it in the last post, but the sharp-eyed reader may have noticed that I slipped in another four nights at the hostel in my itemized travel costs. I had only originally only wanted to make sure I had a place to sleep for the extent of the CNY holiday (in case half of China decided to visit Seoul) while being optimistic about figuring out better accommodations from an on-the-ground position. However, I’m quite enjoying my stay and, quite frankly, am a little too lazy to move out.

A large part of my “lethargy” (e.g. not running around the streets of Seoul, exploring various neighborhoods and hiking mountains) is that living in the hostel is better than the most state-of-the-art virtual reality presentation of a Korean soap opera. There is so much drama, and I’m dying to see how it all plays out.

In broad strokes, there is a bit of upheaval in the staffing at the hostel. A new partner joined the ownership team in December and has proceeded to attempt to maximize returns on the capital by egregiously exploiting the foreign “volunteer” team. We are already on the third manager since I moved in and with all three still living in the house, there is the potential for a showdown over back wages or eviction at any moment.

Of course, there are also a number of guests who pay by month, effectively making them long-term residents of the hostel. All of whom are characters in their own right, engaging in what can best be described as quirky behavior such as keeping nocturnal hours.

Anyways, the day was spent much the same as every other. I had a decent lunch, a 9 km run, and a healthy dinner.

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Bibimbap	6000 W
Coffee (Americano)	3500 W
Cajun Chicken Salad (GS25)	2700 W
Kimchi	1950 W
Total:	14150 W (85.6 RMB) (USD 12.67)

Running Total: 3974 RMB (USD 588)
Daily Average: 265 RMB (USD 39)