Guide to budget accommodation in Seoul

Now I haven’t had much experience actually staying in a lot of types of accommodation in Seoul so perhaps my personal experience isn’t going to be rich. I did however spend a lot of time in general looking for accommodation, so I’m writing this to give my two cents worth of what i’ve gathered from my research.

First of all, if you’re an exchange student, I will highly highly highly recommend you to stay in your school dormitory. Finding accommodation in Korea is not hard, but most of the time school dormitories are extremely cheap and they have all the facilities that you need. Seriously, stay in the school dorm. The curfews and rules and whatnot don’t even matter anymore, it’s just so much easier to stay in the school and you’ll save a great deal of money for a lot more comfort. It’s not hard to find acommodation in Seoul, but it’s tricky to find accommodation you can be super comfortable with if you’re staying long term.

That aside, without further ado, here’s some ways you can find accommodation in Seoul especially if you’re on a budget.

Guesthouses & Hostels

Typical price range for dorm room per night: 13,000 won – 25,000 won
Typical price range for twin room per person per night: 30,000 won – 40,000 won 

Dorm room can be 4 beds, 6 beds, 8 beds, 10 beds. Capsule-style dorms can more than 10 beds per room. Capsule style dorms can go up to $30 per night per person despite the room being shared with so many person haha, i think it’s the Japanese concept they’re taking that’s kinda expensive? Family rooms, twin rooms, triple rooms, single rooms will be much more expensive. Depending on location, you could get a twin or private for $20-ish but don’t count on it haha~

This is the most typical option especially for the short-term travelers. Guesthouses are great options because they usually provide free breakfast, laundry services, shared toiletries (usually just shampoo/conditioner, soap, toothpaste… occasionally towels), and is a generally good safe place to meet other travelers. The downside is that you usually share your room with lots of others (if you’re on budget and choose the dorm rooms), so it may get inconvenient in terms of bathroom usage and space constraint. Often I’ve seen my fellow dorm mates return home at ungodly hours and disturb the whole room from their sleep and things like that.

I have several tips when it comes to narrowing down guesthouses, here’s some of the things i think we should all look out for. They are small things but they become rather important once you actually stay there:

Mixed dorms/gender-separated dorms | A lot of us don’t like mixed dorms so look out for the word ‘female dorm’ or ‘male dorm’. Many times mixed dorms don’t state explicitly ‘mixed dorm’, so it’s easy to misunderstand.

Bathrooms | do they have ensuite bathrooms or shared ones? If shared, how many bathrooms are there throughout the hostels? You can check the reviews to find out more about such details. Typically an ensuite bathroom for a 4/6-bed dorm room is ideal, but most of the time the hostels only have like one or two bathrooms throughout the whole hostel, which may become a little inconvenient.

Laundry service | find out if they provide. Some charge at extra cost. You’ll need this if you’re staying a little long-term.

Free breakfast | probably almost all guesthouses provide this, but check just in case.

Most of them provide eggs, bread and coffee. The better ones I’ve come across, like this one in Busan, provided cereal, milk and cheese too!

Location | guesthouses tend to make their place seem closer to the station than it really is. An 8-minute walk from the station is actually decently far, and it could actually be 15 minutes. It seems nothing but when you have lots of luggages, it becomes rather important how far the guesthouse really is from the station. Also i noticed that plenty of them would advertise their place as being in the main areas, for example Hongdae, but when you look at the map it’s actually far from Hongdae and is nearer to other stations like Hapjeong for example. They’re not lying because the dormitory IS close to Hongdae area, but it’s not actually IN Hongdae area… but they have to state Hongdae because that’s what draws us in to clicking on their page. So make sure to always check the map listed.

Size of room | DO NOT BELIEVE WHAT YOU SEEEEEEE. A lot of hostels and guesthouses and in fact goshiwons as well, they take picture of the room and they stretch the width of the picture so the room looks really really huuuuuuuuuge. It’s not true. Lol. Manage your expectations when you book the room… and it’s not that hard to tell if a picture has been stretched. Some of them are stretched ridiculously and we all know we’re not going to get a bed that looks queen size, so scale it down till the bed is about single size, and that’s probably how your room is actually going to look. Most of them do it subtly though, so again, manage expectations…. most dorm rooms are tiny and it’s not possible to get a roomy one without paying the price.

Luggage storage and lockers | Luggage storage becomes necesssary if you’re checking in early or want to leave your bags after checkout. Some guesthouses that state luggage storage, actually just put your luggage in the dorm rooms instead of an actual place, or just leave it in the main area in the open. Lockers are of course important for when you travel out and leave your bags in the dorm room.

Make-up rooms | If this is crucial to you, it’s worth considering when you book. Most guesthouses I’ve been to typically provide hair dryers in the rooms for you which can get rather noisy at night. But if you’re looking for a higher level of comfort, it’s very much possible because I’ve stayed in guesthouses with full-fledged makeup rooms for the girls. Guess you can’t forget make up when you’re talking about Korea!

From one of my favorite guesthouses in Korea!

Privacy curtains and personal lights | Very small detail and most hostels don’t provide them, but the ones that do are better options in my opinion. It’s so that when the whole room sleeps and you want to do your work, you can do so just by shutting the curtains and using your own personal light. Also if the whole room is awake and you want to sleep, drawing the curtains will block the light out and you can sleep in peace. Picture below is an example of that privacy concept:

Booking a guesthouse/hostel | I’d suggest cross-referencing to get a good gauge of the guesthouse/hostel you’ve narrowed down. Some sites may have cheaper rates, so don’t just book immediately from that client. Some websites I’d recommend to book from:

• hostelworld.com (12% deposit payable, but if you pay $1 extra your deposit is secured and returned to your account should you cancel the booking. You can use that amount to book other places)
• booking.com (no deposit, no credit card details, free cancellation and booking changes possible until a certain date)
• hostelbookers.com  (12% deposit payable)
• agoda.com (for cross-referencing of reviews, pictures, hostel details etc)
• tripadvisor.com (for cross-referencing of reviews, pictures, hostel details etc)

It is possible for you to book straight from the hostel / guesthouse. It is possibly cheaper. Not guaranteed, but possibly. For me, I had booked 11 nights with MORI Guesthouse in a 8-bed dorm room for because the 6-bed dorm room was only available on certain days of the 11 nights. I wanted to arrange some days in the 6-bed dorm room and some days in the 8-bed dorm room but it’s really hard to do so through booking.com, unless i make two separate bookings.

So I searched around a bit and managed to track down their actual website (the website was linked on tripadvisor.com… it doesn’t really show up on search engine). I saw that they offered 10% discount for long stays. So I contacted them personally and they got back to me pretty quick. They allowed me to stay my first 7 days in a 6-bed dorm room, and the next 4 days in the 8-bed dorm room. Overall I was charged much cheaper than the price stated on booking.com, despite having 7 days in a better room.

via booking.com | 11 nights at 8-bed dorm room: 198,000 won
via MORI Guesthouse | 7 nights at 6-bed dorm room, 4 nights at 8-bed dorm room: 180,900 won

It was a fantastic deal secured just by doing a little bit more research!

Thus I’d recommend looking around for their original website a bit, and actually contacting them personally to see what they say. It also makes it easier for you to make requests. It does mean that you have to pay them some deposit immediately to secure your room if you book directly through them (while on booking.com you don’t have to pay till a certain date), but if you’re certain you’re going to stay there, that shouldn’t be a problem. They didn’t ask me for a 50% deposit anwyay, it was only about 25% of the total price. Although it’s unlikely they have their own website, there’s no harm checking!!

If you’re staying long term it’s not really a good idea to stay at a guesthouse unless you are comfortable with sharing the room with so many people for long term and having so little space. If you still want to however, I’ve heard from others that it’s possible to stay for free at the hostel if you work for them. A student exchanging at Sogang worked at Sinchon Kimchee Guesthouse and he got a lot of days of lodging free. This is really dependent on the guesthouse though, if you ask they may allow that arrangement.

One of the nicer ones

Goshiwon
Small, single rooms – usually for long term

Typical price range for goshiwons per night: 11,000 won – 25,000 won
Typical price range for goshiwons per month: 200,000 won – 500,000 won

I have a love-hate relationships for Goshiwons. I like how you can get a single room and sometimes with an ensuite bathroom for so cheap plus you get the benefits of a guesthouse such as free food, laundry etc, but at the same time it’s so tiny like a hamster hole. Many times you need your own bedsheet, pillows and blankets too.

Bathroom | Do they have ensuite bathrooms or shared ones? Ensuite bathrooms usually are much more expensive than normal standard rooms.

Food | Most provide kimchee, rice and ramyun.

Location | Goshiwons tend to be clustered together in a common area e.g. Sinchon. It might be helpful to visit such areas to actually look at the rooms, plus you can explore other Goshiwons in the vicinity.

Size of room | DO NOT BELIEVE WHAT YOU SEEEEEEE. Like hostels and guesthouses, goshiwons lie through their pictures. I actually went down to visit a couple of goshiwons and I saw that they were a lot smaller than the pictures, and some deviate so much from the pictures it made me question if it’s the same goshiwon in question. I often end up looking at the goshiwon signage and then the website just to make sure it’s the same place lolololol. Literally you only have place to turn a circle maybe?

Ventilation | Very important for goshiwons. A lot of them differentiate prices based on whether or not there’s a window in your room. Sometimes the ‘window’ in question is just a little corner window that opens to the corridor, not necessarily a window that opens to the open air. And it’s usually a tiny tiny square 😦 If you pick the cheapest smallest room with no window, it’s going to feel REALLY claustrophobic… I’ve seen some of those and the moment i enter i wanted to get out……. lol. Air con seems to be a real luxury and can set you back quite a bit, in which case you may be better off in a budget motel/hotel somewhere.

Booking a goshiwon | This is very tricky. Goshiwons aren’t the easiest to find because although there are TONS of goshiwons out there on the streets, they often speak only Korean. I can’t help out with that  Online, there are some goshiwons listed on goshipages.com that’s really helpful. But the database is really really small, in fact if you visit gos1.net you’ll see that there are lots of goshiwons that are listed online. Of course the website is in Korean, but I think that if you can read Korean at least, it’s good to go online first to check out the goshiwons and rate ranges, before narrowing and visiting those goshiwons personally. Don’t book a goshiwon without checking it out, if you can help it. They tend to deviate A LOT from their pictures lol. The moment you enter usually even without speaking a single word, the goshiwon staff immediately brings you to a room and quotes you the price haha. From there you can try asking for smaller rooms, rooms with bathrooms, etc etc.

• goshipages.com (english goshiwon database)
• gos1.net (korean page)

Even if you don’t know Korean, it can be a useful page to obtain email addresses of goshiwons and send them an email, or call them up directly. They tend to not reply emails haha.

The goshiwon might cancel on you. I say this from personal experience because I booked a goshiwon and secured deposit everything, but got kicked out because the tenant before me wanted to extend her rent. I think it’s a matter of ethics as well, I suppose the goshiwon I dealt with didn’t manage their guests well enough to anticipate such things. I was really quite angry at how they just cancelled my booking, since I booked way before that girl decided to extend. Priorities, man.

Anyway, it’s hard to predict if a goshiwon is being managed well since it’s such a local thing, but be prepared just in case. It’s honestly tricky to have a guaranteed backup plan cuz I mean, we can’t just book two accomms just to ‘be prepared’. I guess my best advice would be to try to find a room that has no booking back-to-back with yours, then they will prioritize your booking and you won’t run into the situation that I did.

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That’s all for this post! There are definitely other options that are worth considering, just that I havent’ had the chance to research and explore on them. Nevertheless, do consider if both guesthouses and goshiwons don’t satisfy you:

Hasukjib | Traditional Korean boarding house, usually managed by middle-aged or elderly Koreans. This is one of the things I want to try if I ever return to Korea for long-term period. It’s beyond me why I didn’t choose to search on Hasukjib vs Goshiwons because price range is similar and you sometimes get home-cooked food in Hasukjibs. It seems more homely and cosy. Anyway, do check this out, there are plenty of blogs talking about it! it’s a popular choice for students as well.

Motels/Budget hotels | Not on my list of accommodations but worth checking out. Kinda like an upgraded guesthouse in terms of comfort, privacy and service, but minus the free brekkie and meeting other travelers part. Industrial areas like Ulsan seem to have more of these than others, though they’re not listed online either so you’d have to just find one. When I went to Ulsan, these motels were all clustered opposite the train station and are so densely populated it seems impossible to not find one haha. Worth a shot for short term, not so much for long term.

Seoul Accommodation: MORI Guesthouse

My favorite guesthouse! ❤

Because of this guesthouse honestly, i have no regrets or anger or sadness that my goshiwon cancelled on me. I’m thrilled now because i get to find this really affordable and amazing guesthouse! 😀 I didn’t book this one through booking.com or hostelworld as I usually do, so I felt it was so wasted if I didn’t write something on it somewhere on the net…

So without further ado!

I had lots of luggage so I was super relieved to find out that the nearest station Gwangheungchang had elevators all the way, and the guesthouse had no staircase! Phew. I’ve learned from previous experiences that guesthouses are usually not located on the first floor so yeah. But MORi was something more of an entire apartment building if I have to put it that way, so it was nice 🙂

The moment of entrance was a large carpark but it’s used as a space for bicycles and laundry.

Entering MORI~

 

Upon entering they would ask you to take off your shoes and provide really cute little bathroom slippers.

 

Waking up to smiley slippers everyday does help haha

My first reaction when I walked in was woah they’re spacey!! 😀

Very pretty design!

It’s a little bit complicated for me because i actually went through booking.com first and booked 8-bed room for 11 nights, then found their website and decided to email in to see if there is possible ways to make special arrangements because i wanted to stay in 6-bed room. The initial plan was 6-bed room for 7 nights, then 8-bed room for 4 because for two days in between there isn’t room in the 6-bed room. But they made a mistake in reserving so for my last 2 nights they had to move me to another 6-bed room. So I had to move twice and i stayed in 3 different rooms altogether in my 11 nights.

I was honestly just glad they didn’t suddenly tell me i needed to evacuate so it didn’t bother me, and they were very apologetic about it. It also allowed me to see the different rooms and compare. Actually there was a pretty big diference which i’ll point out later on~

Upon arrival James led me to the 6-bed room on the first floor. It was very pretty and i loved the colors! 😀 He told me about the guesthouse rules which were basic, and they had no curfew. They also provided locker keys and small towels.

Now this room’s bed was very comfortable, because they added a comforter on top of it. It was soft and i was so happy when i first sat down on the bed. 😀

I’m a sucker for curtains and now not only do I have my on personal curtain, i also have my personal bed light!! 😀 this was plus points for the guesthouse and it was one of the reasons i chose to book it over the others. The whole privacy thing makes it so convenient for you to change or stay up late without disturbing other guests.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find that it was bigger than expected. Most guesthouses have pictures that are extended so they are pretty much smaller than what we see on the internet, but MORI was pretty accurate with their pictures and i was comfortable with the space.

Personal lighting and curtains~ and pretty bed colors!

My fortress at night. All nice and cosy!

There was no window in this room so i wake up every day in some kind of inception thing like is it day or night?? And because it’s so nice and dark and cosy in my little fortress that i often end up like where’s the curtain?? and end up groping the wall on the wrong side trying to open the curtain lol.

He showed me around the guesthouse. There were three bathrooms on the first floor but if you wanna bathe after 12 you have to go the one upstairs. Probably because the three bathrooms on the first floor are really close to the rooms so it’s kinda noisy.

There was also a mini makeup area outside the rooms on the first floor.

 

He then showed me the second floor.

The second floor had more rooms and even more bathrooms!!

bathroooooooooms galore! no waiting for shower stalls! Yay!

Each bathroom looks similar to this:

 

Nice clean bathrooms! Bathrooms are very important to me in guesthouses and often determine whether a guesthouse is yay or nay for me. Haha. This one was one of the cleanest I’ve seen, despite there being so many of them. Everyday at about 11am ish a cleaning lady comes around to scrub every bathroom clean haha. I leave the guesthouse really late everyday which is why i kinda know that they come in around afternoon time LOL.

Cleaning ladies or the owners of the guesthouse also enter the room at around noon time-ish to quickly sweep and mop the floor, as well as change the sheets/blankets for the vacant beds. This is when the curtains are extra useful. Although technically you shouldn’t be expecting people still sleeping at noon but well they were prepared for guests like me.

They’re really diligent and efficient with their cleanliness which was really nice 🙂 They’re not by any means a tiny guesthouse so it was nice to see they had a system they stick diligently to.

Anyway, the second floor had this mega huge-ass makeup room, probably to accommodate the numebr of rooms on that floor.

 

Huge right?! Part of why i really appreciate the sincerity of this guesthouse is that they could have turned this area into like two more rooms and earn more monehhhh (makeup rooms aren’t that common in guesthouses), or they could also reduce the bathrooms if they wanted to. But they’re not stingy with the space and make sure the guesthouse is very comfortable for guests. Bordering on luxurious I’d have to say considering the price they charge their guests. Many guesthouses out there charge much higher and i doubt their service comes close to what MORi offers.

One area of the second floor of the guesthouse, also where i stayed at for the last 4 nights

Bins and water dispenser available on the second floor too!

We didn’t stay around at the second floor much. I got to know the second floor much better later on though when i shifted there after my first week on the first floor haha.

He showed me around the lounge area afterwards!

This is what I see when I first open the door to the lounge:

like woah! I’ve never seen such a huge lounge in a guesthouse seriously ❤

The tables and hangout areasssss

The kitchen area!

I watched the World Cup finals here!!

 

As per other guesthouses, they provide bread, eggs, coffee and juice. But just like Guesthouse 710, they also provide cereal!! Any guesthouse that provides cereal is like a bonus!!! woohoo

 

I end up ditching eggs because there’s always cereal. Glory. When they stock up on the chocolate ones it’s the most glorious thing ever.

After a week on the first floor, i had to move to the 8-bed room for two days. At first she was gonna move me to the one opposite the reception area since i had lots of luggage, but after finding out that eventually i have to go up to the second floor for the last 2 nights at another 6-bed room, i figured meh just move now. And she said the 8-bed room upstairs is bigger than the one downstairs.

So I agreed.

She was right, it was bigger! The pictures online looked quite cramped so i was worried.  But you can see in the picture below that you could fit large luggages comfortably in between the beds!

Luckily for me i had a nifty little corner to tuck my luggages in.

Nifty corner!

This room had sunlight streaming in haha, unlike the first one. No more waking up to a dark nice cosy cave 😦

The beds on this floor weren’t as comfortable as the one i slept in on the first floor. They didn’t add the comforter for these rooms but i wasn’t complaining because i really liked this place~~ i felt that they were already giving me much more than I paid for. Talk about utility man.

On the last 2 days, I moved next door to the 6-bed room one. Actually this was just an 8-bed room converted to a 6-bed room LOL, so the space where the last bed is becomes luggage space. Again I felt like they could have utilized the space to convert it to an 8-bed room but they didn’t and maybe that’s for a functional reason but nevertheless it was nice to have so much space in a guesthouse i didn’t pay much for. The others were always so cramped 😦

So much luggage space over there!!! woohooo! Perfect for when i packed on my last day~

Look at how our huge luggages looked dwarfed in that immense amount of space. glorious

Plenty of space for everyone! If you’re looking to move into this guesthouse you can always let the hosts know that you have lots of luggage, they’re more than happy to give you the room that has more spaces. Because some rooms are smaller than others despite them being the same type of rooms.

Fortress style~

I now understand why they have an almost perfect rating on all the booking sites. Seriously they deserve it for their dedication and attention to detail! So pretty, clean, spacey… and the hosts are so super nice! 😀

I think because of all the makeup rooms the hostel end up being mostly girls-dominated. LOL. They do have male dorms i think but i’ve seen only like 3 males out of all my 11 nights and they only appear during breakfast or at night at the lounge area.

The catch is that this guesthouse is extremely affordable! It’s actually cheaper if you contact them directly, plus they gave me a 10% discount for long term stay. You wouldn’t get the same price if you booked through an agent. But then again the benefit of an agent is that you can cancel without losing any deposit, whereas my direct booking at MORI required me to pay 50,000 won in advance to secure my booking. It didn’t matter to me though because i was pretty sure i wanted to stay there~

With one of the hosts, Jiae! They both speak fluent English 🙂

Name: Mori Guesthouse
Location: 12-8, Seogang-ro 1-gil, Mapo-gu, Seoul 121-881, South Korea
Nearest station: Gwangheungchang Line 6, 2 min walk
Nearby: Sinchon (10-15 min walk), Hongdae (15 min walk), Sangsu  (7 min walk)
Price: (via website) 19,000 won / night for 6-bed room, 17,000 won / night for 8-bed room. Discount for long stays. My booking for 7 nights in 6-bed room and 4 nights in 8-bed room came up to 180,900 won which is a little below 17,000 won per night, because of the discount. I ended up with 9 nights in 6-bed room and 2 nights in 8-bed room for the same pice because of their little slip up though hehe. Free upgrade!
Website: http://www.housemori.com/main/index

Its location is probably its worst drawback which also probably explains the price. But i wouldn’t sweat it. I mean unless you’re staying for like exchange or smth tht requires you to keep coming back to the same area everyday (like for exapmle you wanna hang out in Hongdae 3 times a week), then it’ll benefit you to find a guesthouse closer to Hongdae. But if you’re a traveler honestly the subway is all you need and this guesthouse has a subway really close by. There’s a lack of food nearby though but i always walk to Sinchon cuz it’s a straightforward route down and isnt far. All the good food places are there.

Busan Accommodation: Guesthouse 710 in Haeundae

I’m actually excited to write about this guesthouse because of how amazing it is ^_^ I really liked the place and the owners and because it was fairly quiet around the guesthouse, I could go around snapping pictures and not get judged lulz.

I booked this guesthouse on booking.com. It wasn’t the cheapest rate, at 23,000 per night, but we booked a little late (less than a week to Busan) so the really cheap guesthouses (15k/night) were all snapped up. Amongst the other guesthouses around this price, Guesthouse 710 had the highest review score of 9.3/10 so I decided to book it for me and Zenn. Its location seemed to be further away than the other guesthouses at its price and located in Haeundae, but we thought it should be fine.

Turned out to be a fabulous decision because the location was actually fantastic. Not 10 minutes walk at all like the website stated. In fact it was under 5 minutes walk from the station, at least at our pace lol. It was probably 10 min to the beach.

From the outside. Bad angle sorry D:

The moment we entered and went up the staircase, we saw a signboard that had my name written on it! I think sort of as a notice board for who is staying in which room (inviting stalkers though?!) which i thuoght was cute and welcoming.

 

The bad part was the staircase, but the staff ran down to help me with my luggage. They gave us our shoe locker assignments and there were bedroom slippers inside ready for us!

 

We were greeted very warmly by the two owners, led to our rooms and briefed all in Korean. Hahaha. Proud that we were able to understand most of it. I read online their English is also good though so it shouldn’t be a problem ^^

 

Very nice, clean and spacious!

So messy omg lol

We were supposed to be in a 6-bed room but because 6 people moved in together and awnted to stay in the same room, we were upgraded to a 4-bed room~

Inside the rooms, we were given spacious lockers which had two fresh towels each in them. They replaced the towels the next day for us! 😀

There was also a small lounge area on our level.

Zenn was very impressed with the makeup area seen above, because they had literally everything including nail polish and all.

They even provided coffee in this room, and its own fridge with juice and tea that we could take any time!

To be honest, the part that really made me want to write an entire post about this guesthouse is its incredible eye for detail. Just by walking around the guesthouse you can tell how much effort the owners of this guesthouse put into making sure we are comfortable. It’s honestly the little things that count, and the little things that show how much thought they put into setting up the guesthouse.

They left refreshments everywhere and even had plasters ready!

The bathroom area on our level consisted of two female toilets and one male toilet. It was clean and spacious. 🙂 They also provide hairdryers in the area outside and a place to drop your used towels.

Bathroom area

Upstairs were the PC rooms, laundry room, kitchen and lounge areas, as well as one or two other bedrooms and toilets.

PC area~

Lounge area!

Kitchen!

One thing that surprised me was that they had cereals!!! All of my previous guesthouses never have cereal!!!!

Toasters and cooking area

They also have cheese!!! My previous hostels never have cheese!! Hahahaha.

❤

It’s the small things that matter. Fresh towels. Cheese and cereal. Refreshments left around the guesthouse. Little notes with smiley faces. And of course, the big things too. It wasn’t super duper spacious, they do have space constraints, but they made the best of it and kept the place very clean and tidy.

Personally I felt the sincerity first hand when i was having breakfast on one of the mornings and the owner went down to the kitchen (they live on the third floor, i presume they’re married) all bleary-eyed and clearly having just woken up. He walked around the kitchen greeting guests and checking to make sure everything is in order for the guests.

I felt that the couple really cared about the comfort of the guests and are sincere with their efforts, that’s why i felt so comfortable and happy to have stayed there. Sincerity can be felt really strongly and it matters a lot.

This guesthouse also hosts parties (5000 won for unlimited beer) and organizes small day and night tours around Busan for a small fee.

You can book Guesthouse 710 on booking.com here. Prices vary for room type and on/off-peak seasons. Mine was 23,000 per night for 6-bed female room.

Busan D1: Read here!
Busan D2: Read here!

Day 1: Mamas and Papas Hongdae Guesthouse, Ewha University and Myeongdong

After a long terribly restless flight and a bittersweet goodbye, we finally (barely) made it to our hostel via airport bus (only 10,000 won!), dragging our luggages and stuff. I have to say the location was a little more disappointing than I expected but I don’t regret my decision because I really love this little hostel. It’s more like an apartment with dorm rooms rather than a full guesthouse, which is the best part. Since I’m on this topic I’ll write a review of this dorm in case anyone is looking for one.

First off, this dorm is located 10-15 min walk away from Hongik Univ. station exit 9. The walk feels really long when you’re dragging your luggage and when it’s cold, but personally it hasn’t bothered me yet because I see a lot of interesting sights on the way.

So the host of this hostel is actually this guy, didn’t catch the name cuz he disappeared, but there’s this girl from Malaysia called Nisa who works here. It’s super cool cuz she travels a lot and works here when she’s in Seoul. And she’s really friendly and always willing to talk to the guests. She told us we can only come in at 2pm so we went off to explore Yonsei and Ewha area! Which were pretty and we even did our own photoshoot otl.

We returned around 2pm and checked in to the hostel, where we met this girl Ran from Texas. She’s pretty cool because she’s been to Yonsei for exchange, and is currently here because she’s getting a teaching job in Korea. Pity we met her when she was going to leave.

There are also people from our cohort going for exchange that are currently staying here, this guy named Patri, and this girl Alexandra whom we just met briefly and will be moving in here today (i’m typing this on Day 2 so yep). Alex is going Sogang too and is staying all the way till 28th like me, so she’s practically my roommate for the next 10 nights stay in this guesthouse. Haha.

I digressed from talking about the dorm. So the room is actualy very very tiny, the whole place looked tinier than on picture of course, I was disappointed at first but later on I found out there is basically everything I”m looking for so I’m quite happy. There’s a mirror in the dorm, small lockers to store our stuff, a table top and a rack hanger which was important for hanging our coats and stuff. They also provide hangers and like this thingy which was so useful fot storing stuff:

I also utilize the ledge for my own purposes cuz basically i think i gt the best spot in the room. HAHA.

Cuz it’s a girls dorm, typically people leave pretty fast. There were this two Korean girls who stayed overnight, nice people, nursing students one year younger than us, they were sweet and talked to us as unnies. Well technically I said 22 but they thought it was 22 Korean age so they assumed we were same age at first and used banmal on us. But after that when they found out 23 they looked really sheepish and treated us as unnies LOL. Yep age really matters a lot here. One of them was called Young-un but unfortunately we didn’t get to hang out with them or get the other’s name or kept in touch. But it was a nice encounter.

Like I said, small dorm and both me and zen have turned our beds into our own fortress so not a neat room, but everything is there. And it’s super warm and cosy at night with the heater and a thin blanket, but it gets hot and stuffy when we dress up and close the door so we leave it open in the day. They have lockers so it’s quite safe.

This is the living room area! Small but comfy to laze around and talk to people. I talked to a couple of people yesterday together with Nisa (the girl on the sofa), but they were drinking Soju and beer and I zoomed back to my room with the excuse of wanting to bathe LOL cuz I didn’t really want to drink with people I don’t know at all. /anti-social

As you can see it’s 230pm and we ony just finished breakfast and getting dressed. but it’s okay we barely slept on the flight so we slept two nights’ worth. Haha.

The wifi is here is awesome btw!!

The bathroom’s also nice because of how complete it is. Like i said, apartment converted to hostel rather than a guesthouse with cubicle style toilets which i hate because most times they turn out disgusting. Mamas & Papas provide shampoo which made my hair really smooth like im totally gonna buy that for the rest of my stay here, and soap and conditioner. Toothpaste too. Towels I’m not too sure, I brought my own so I didn’t ask.

The nice cosy bathroom! There are only two bathrooms but it’s okay to use the guy’s one to bathe as well.

Breakfast supposed to close at 11am but well we just ate today at 1.30pm so *shrugs* It’s just bread / toast, coffee and eggs you can cook yourself. Not much but honestly more than enough, i don’t eat fancy breakfast.

Ewha was really as beautiful as people said it was. But I was disappointed because there wasn’t as many places to shop in as Myeongdong, although people said that Edae was supposed to be a good area to shop sigh.

The main gate that every other tourist always takes pictures of

Loving the style of the buildings!

We even did photoshoots *insert hipster quote here*

We had street food as our lunch, awesome ddokbokki!!

At night we went to Myeongdong to explore the area, it feels very much like Japan. Myeongdong is awesome, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be my fav shoping area very soon. Korea has these leggings with a skirt thing which is super convenient because they are so so warm and snuggly and the skirt makes your outfit pretty. Only $10 bucks btw. Everywhere in Myeongdong and Edae. They also have short-leggings combinations and various designs. Gonna stock up on those!

Koreans are apparently very fascinated with us because we are creatures who seem Korean and can speak basics and sound like a Korean, but when they speak to us in Korean we always blank out for 3 seconds before understanding and they often have to repeat slower with a couple of English words. So to them we apparently speak Korean pretty well already LOL but nah i disagree, we have so much to improve on. I’m sure by the end of it we’ll become better if we continue trying to speak in Korean more. It’s more of training the speed in which we conjugate sentences in our head rather than anything else.

And also, we’ve been approached by at least 3 different groups of Korean in just one day and they asked us for directions. Which got us very stunned cuz first of all they speak fast, next they are all Koreans, and lastly we have no idea how to reply cuz we don’t have direction and we can’t speak well enough. Most of the Koreans we met were just shocked when finding out we weren’t Korean LOL.

Ciao~