Well ...this week was a rough week. To give you a bit of a background (though - if you read my posts last week, I guess you are up to date) Wayne & I were off for the last week because our school was closed due to the Swine Flu breakout. It's unclear at this point how many of our kids actually had the flu, but there were over 4 public schools closed in our area, so safety first I suppose:) Or maybe it was a good financial decision as they decided not to pay any of the teachers during this forced break.
Either way - I won't get into my frustrations on that matter, except to say that we needed to get away. It didn't matter where we went, just that it was away.
So we showed up at the bus terminal in Incheon (after going to Shinsegae - a HUGE department store to get winter jackets ...because apparently it became winter in the last week.) This is a picture of us in our new jackets at the bus terminal waiting for our bus. And since we have very limited funds (please see above frustrations) we decided to take the cheapest bus pass and that just happened to be to Daejeon, South Korea. It was a 2 hour bus ride and I could feel the tension leaving my body the second the wheels started turning.
Daejeon - here we come!
Now, I need to break in this reverie of our 3 day get away to focus on one of the major highlights of my trip ...discovering the 'Love Motel.' I will keep this PG-13 (though I believe I explained explicity to my grandma last week exactly the purpose of a love motel) but let me just say that they are designed to be both affordable and discreet. And they are everywhere!
The place that we decided on was called Sharp Motel and it cost $40 a night. This isn't the type of place where you give your name to the front desk person or leave a credit card, nope - straight cash. But it's also not a seedy, dirty, gross place - it was beautiful and I was all set to move in the second that I made eyes with the 50 inch screen tv and the full shower. Never would I have imagined that a shower with a door would be a luxury, but it was wonderful. Let me share with you our room.
And check out the below array of goodies. Everything from different lotions, to hairspray, to matches to condoms. This hotel had everything covered. Oh - and bug spray, I just pretended that, that wasn't there.
Oh yes - and I forgot to mention the set up outside of the motel. They have all of the pictures of the rooms for you to view what is inside. And everything is hidden. You walk in the side of the building and the parking has barriers so that you are unable to make out any of the cars that are inside. Perfect for discreetness ...no idea why people would want this, but I am sure that you can use your imagination. And they wonder why the divorce rate is so high in this country.
So after some wonderful hours in front of the tv - they had a couple movie channels in English and I was in absolute heaven. Never wanted to leave. We also watched approximately 16 hours of America's Funniest Home Videos (Andrew would be proud) because there was a station that constantly seemed to be playing it ....and here's the best part - commercialless! we set out on the 'town.'
Daejeon isn't a large place (from what I can tell and from what I saw) but our first attempt at finding somewhere to eat lead us into what must have been 'Hookers Alley' and was much larger than the hill in Seoul. Everywhere we looked there were pictures displayed of half naked girls on their billboards and the windows of the shops were oddly dark and covered. We didn't stay long, and sadly I didn't get any pictures. Sometimes it's just not appropriate.
Our second attempt wasn't much more successful - while we may have ended up with food and alcohol in our bodies ...it was food that we would definitely pay for later. It hurt. It was so hot that it instantly brought sweat to your forehead ...we went through 2 litres of water trying to eat about 10 ribs. I made it through 3 and gave up. We ended up making it through all 10 (Wayne taking the brunt of most of it) - along with a bottle of soju and 2 bottles of beer ...in about 2 hours. There are seriously no words for how hot this food was, it made my eyes water just getting close to it. We chalked it up to an 'experience' (which is the word that we travellers like to use for mistake so that we don't feel so dumb) and set out to find our next meal.
Thankfully our third attempt was much more successful - the only problem was ... we may have under-analyzed how much alcohol we had consumed because we went through the dinner process twice. I will attribute this to where the rest of our night ended up.
Oh yes - we went to the Norae bang (which is Korean for singing room - otherwise known as kareoke) all by ourselves! And we performed our little hearts out ...okay, so we may have different ideas of what constitutes a performance, but we sure did sing - for 1 hour and 20 minutes straight.
There are videos, but I choose to believe the picture in my head of what I look like when I am dancing and singing (much more like Britney) and the videos slightly contradict this image.
That concludes night one. Day two had a rather rough start and we sought solace at McDonalds to start our day. Our plan was to head to O World. I had found a pamphlet at the front desk and it promised 3 different worlds: Flower World, Animal World & a Carnival like World. So we hopped into a cab and showed him the pamplet and 10 minutes later he dropped us off into absolutely nowhere.
Now - you would assume 2 things. 1. That if he didn't know where he was going, or where this place was located that he would have been upfront and honest and had us take another cab ~ and ~ 2. That we wouldn't have gotten out of the cab if we weren't in the right place. All assumptions go out the window when you are in a foreign country where nothing looks the same and no one speaks your language.
We never made it to O World that day, but I do have high hopes of one day going back.
We ended making it to The Expo - but not before we mistakingly walked into an entire exhibit on farming that was swarming with old Korean men that glared unwelcomingly at us the entire time. Hey - we were just trying to find the entrance! It was called Tamas and I have yet to look it up in a Korean dictionary, but it must mean something about growing plants or operating heavy machinery.
We eventually made it into the Expo - which was maybe the most bizarre scenario we have yet to encounter. It was an absolute ghost land. (This is a picture of it from across the bridge - it looked promising - huge buildings, rides and even a ferris wheel!) But when we got there ...the only person that greeted us was our friend ....Yep - Alexander Graham Bell. Some of his close friends were there too, but none that were breathing.
Another pic of the ghost land:
We never really did figure it out - we walked in without being charged, the park looked open, music was playing, sounds were coming from some of the different exhibits, we saw random workers ...but nothing and no one else. So we left ...and that pretty much concluded our sightseeing because while that may not seem like quite a full day - all that included over 2-3 hours of walking and I was missing America's Funniest Videos.
Overall our little trip was successful, we came back feeling much more relaxed and it was a ton of fun. I am definitely hoping we will go back and visit O World some day ...but who knows - there is a ton more to see in this country and lots more Love Motels to stay in!
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