21 August, Best Western Plus Hotel, Jeonju

Long Express Bus ride today from Busan to Jeonju gives us another opportunity for a “bonus blog.” This time it is on Korean hotels.

There is a fairly universally held belief that hotels are much the same the world over. To some extent this is true but, in some countries, particularly in Asia, there are some clear differences. In Japan, for example, rooms are universally smaller than in the west and in Vietnam, grand lobbies are a feature. In Korea, there are a few features that we have found to be a little different. To begin with, hotel room doors generally open outwards. This threw us at first as we thought the door to our room was not unlocking. Opening outwards makes some sense from the point of view of increasing usable room space, but it takes a bit of time to get used to.

Korean hotel rooms are fairly high tech. Light switches are concentrated in a main panel that controls all lighting in the room. Charging points with a range of attached cables are very common. In our experience, these are very slow. Korea uses the two round pin European plugs and we have found our chargers, with an appropriate adaptor, charge rapidly. In some hotels, standard universal power sockets are also available. An interesting quirk is the use of the TV remote to control lights and the air conditioner.

In the bathroom, the high-tech Japanese style toilets are often found. Spa baths are sometimes provided, but showers are open -  very fashionable, but extremely annoying as flooding can be a problem. Towel size is another Korean eccentricity. In three of the five hotels we stayed in, we were only provided with four tiny towels, each about half as big again as a standard hand towel. Sometimes a bath mat was provided as well, but not always. One hotel we stayed in had a different approach. They provided just one enormous towel and two of the hand towels for two people. No bath mat. We asked for a second big towel, which was happily provided.

Coffee and tea makings are provided, but coffee is always that horrible three-in-one mix that is far too sugary for those of us who don’t take sugar. Strangely, coffee or tea cups are not always provided, though they will be handed over on request. In Busan, we were only provided with small paper cups.

Channel options on the large-screen, generally smart, TVs are just amazing. Our hotel tonight has over 700 channels. We have always been able to find a couple of English language stations and tonight we even have Australian ABC.

One hotel we stayed in had a washer/dryer in the room, but that isn’t common, despite being advertised in the room description at booking. However, free washing machines and dryers have been available if you ask.

One very scary feature of Korean hotels is the “Descending Life Line.” This is simply a rope ladder that allows guests to escape fires by letting the ladder down from your room and climbing down!

Free, fairly fast Wifi is also universally provided in rooms.

In our experience, hotel check-in times are fairly universally enforced. Mostly our rooms haven’t been available until 3:00pm.