Our four-star on-post hotel, the Dragon Hill Lodge, ran out of room on what was to be our second-to-last day in Seoul, and we had to find a new place off-post. They gave me a list of nearby hotels with contact information, and I called around until I found a place with vacancies. At $120 per night, it was the fourth-cheapest place on the list.
Joe was at work, so I packed our two suitcases, two Army duffel bags, two backpacks, and two laptop cases and then packed a taxi with all of it. I couldn't communicate with the Korean taxi driver very well, but I told him I needed to go to the Crown Hotel. He pulled away from the Dragon Hill Lodge (in the rain, because it's rained every day since my arrival) and off we went. And then we drove out of the gates of the Army post.
I was alone in a country where I didn't know the language or customs or anything. I was nervous. As we passed Korean road signs, I was wondering if we were going the right direction, and wondering how long we should drive before I should just jump out of the moving vehicle and escape from this guy who was probably kidnapping me so he could sell me on the black market.
But we pulled up to the Crown Hotel and I got out and dragged all my stuff out and paid the guy and was not kidnapped.
A Korean bellhop whose cheeks were puffed out like he was holding his breath helped me get my stuff to the room after I paid for the night. He had to unlock the room's door after I struggled with the antiquated plastic punched-hole keycard for a few seconds.
It wasn't a name-brand place - not a Sheraton, a Marriott, not even a Best Western or Ramada - but the Crown Hotel looked nice from the outside. The lobby looked nice, too. But the rest of it...
Oh, sure, the picture makes it look cute and quaint. But it wasn't. The hallways, carpeted in dirty uneven holey carpet, were dark enough to make you look at the ceiling to figure out why all the light bulbs were burnt out. It was hot in the room, hot enough to wake me up twice, because there wasn't an AC/heating unit in there, just a vent on the wall. The ceiling had been wallpapered and was lumpy. The room smelled like it had been smoked in every day for the past 400 years. The hallways smelled like acetone fingernail polish remover.
The pictures don't show the weird inch-high change in elevation between the room and the bathroom, or the weird six-inch-high change in elevation between the room and the closet, or the crack in the thigh-high bathtub with the showerhead that had been added long after the hotel had been built with just a bathtub, or the disturbing garish shades of pastel green and peach paint detailing the furniture.
Also not pictured: on the wall over the bed was a dial which read SPEED: HI MED LO OFF. I turned the dial and nothing happened. I'm pretty sure the bed used to vibrate.
The bed felt like it was made out of cardboard, but I didn't really care because the sheets, at least, were clean. There was that. The sheets were clean.
The elevator was probably the smallest I'd ever been in. It advertised massage services.
Apparently, leaning on the elevator's door could result in you falling down the elevator shaft. (Probably not, but that's what the picture looks like, isn't it? And that's creepy.)
The hotel had Korean power outlets and zero American power outlets. Oh, and there were only two power outlets in the tiny room, probably because there weren't as many electrical appliances 400 years ago when the hotel was built.
Maybe I'm being horrible. There were no bugs, and I guess except for the carpets and the smell, the place was clean. It was just another case (as with the day I first walked into my apartment) of not-what-I-was-expecting.
But if there's one thing I'm picky about (and there are actually a lot more things that I'm picky about,) it's hotel rooms.
Anyway, the next night, we had to stay in a hotel again. I was more careful when making the reservation. This one was a Best Western.
I learned that the thigh-high bathtub thing is normal. Also, tiny elevators are normal. And it's normal for there to be an elevation between the bathroom and the room.
But there's really nothing normal about having a speed dial installed on the wall over the bed.
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