Sleepless Travels Reloaded

Anguk Guesthouse

Anguk Guesthouse - detail

Insadon - traditional house

Insadon - courtyard interior

Insadon street

On 17 July, which was a Sunday, we moved our lodging from some hostel to a nice guesthouse in a traditional Korean house near Insadon. Insadon is the traditional, cultural part of Seoul, there are alot of shops selling Korean souvenirs, like paintings, tea ware, etc etc. The main shopping street is surrounded with traditional-style Korean buildings. Alot seem to be restaurants and some are private dwellings. I passed by a tea school as well.

It’s a lovely area, I really wish I had more time to walk around it slowly. Really wish I had the time to take more photographs of the place. In fact, I always think that. This year whenever I travelled, I always had this feeling that we were rushing around to see everything we could. But I guess that is unavoidable, it would be a waste not to see everything we could have. It just means I’LL BE BACK to take a more leisurely stroll this time :>

The place we stayed at is called “Anguk Guesthouse”. This place was one of the sets for a very popular Korean drama on TV. One of the characters supposedly “lived” here. It is a very nice house, it feels very warm. I like how there’s so much wood. I also like how these traditional houses always have a courtyard in the middle. Gives everyone some breathing space, I suppose. But boy does it echo alot. All that hollow wood really should be filled up with padding so you don’t hear everyone’s footsteps. And paper doors aren’t very good at stopping sound transmission >.>

I remember the drunk American British girls coming back at 5am and talking (no screaming excitedly) on the phone.

The rates were pretty reasonable too, I thought. It came down to about 25,000 won per person per night. But there was a private bathroom and a computer with internet broadband connection in each room. There is also breakfast (cook your own) and the fridge is well-stocked. It’s basically like a normal house, with a kitchen that you can use whenever. The fridge was packed with milk, juices, sausages, bacon and so on. And there was bread and fresh fruit too. The owner said that instead of paying exorbitant credit card fees, he preferred to spend the money ono providing more fruit and food. Yes, only cash is accepted.

We had to hoard our money, just in case we ran out of cash XD. I just left what I had to pay locked up and stashed in my luggage in the inn, in case I accidentally spent the money…

I had the same feeling I had in Beijing, I wish I had more cash with me…

Thank goodness I had my “credit card” though.

At the end of the trip, I did get hit with alot of credit card international exchange fees though >_<