Vive: Our Korean Hotel Room - A Lilliputian Delight

After Marty’s meeting was over on Saturday, he and I left Pohang, but not before asking his Korean colleague to arrange a hotel room for us in Gyeongju, the ancient capitol of the Silla Dynasty, our next destination. Having been limited to western style hotel rooms, we made sure to emphasize that we wanted to try a Korean-style room.

We arrived at the Hotel Concorde in the evening, somewhat disappointed by the absence of anything even remotely Asian in its name. Likewise, its nondescript exterior gave no hint that we were 5,000+ miles from home, and aside from the somewhat grim nightshift staff who stared us while we approached the reception desk, there was little to suggest the Far East in the lobby. We thought that perhaps Marty's Korean colleague had been misled when making our arrangements and started questioning whether we would finally get our Korean-style room.

We took the elevator to the third floor, found Room 319 and opened the door. The light from the hallway cast far enough into the room to show us two pairs of sandals waiting for us near a step that led onto a raised floor; finally, we had arrived in Korea.

According to our guidebook, Koreans traditionally live on the floor. Consequently, you always trade your shoes for sandals or slippers upon entering a Korean home (or hotel room). Many of the restaurants we ate in required that you remove your shoes before sitting at the Korean style tables, which are so low to the ground that you either sit on the floor or on a small pad on the floor. Sitting on the floor through a whole dinner was particularly challenging and painful for some of Marty's older colleagues who hadn't enjoyed a lifetime of floor-sitting to keep their muscles and ligaments supple. Not ones to be kept far from food, Marty and I had enthusiastically negotiated eating from our floor positions, although Marty had a few less-than-graceful moments when trying to fold his 6'2" frame to fit under the almost legless tables.

We found the light switch to our room and with great anticipation clicked it on. I was a bit dumbfounded when the light illuminated an expanse of yellow vinyl floor that dominated what can only be described as a largely empty room. Yes, the quality that most defines a Korean hotel room is not so much what is in the room but rather what is absent, that is, the bed. Looking around what seemed like simply a box, I admit that I wondered if our quest for a Korean hotel room had been well considered. I do, after all, like a bed.

Marty tried to assure me that when he stayed in a Japanese hotel, a woman came to his room and arranged a futon on the floor for him to sleep. I had little hope that the unenthusiastic staff from the lobby were going to come to our rescue, so we started hunting around the room and found a pile of futons neatly folded and piled in the closet. Each futon had with it a comforter and sheet. The sheet was stiff and starched to the point where I think we could have built a tent with it and not required any external supports. The comforter was lime green with a magenta edge and white nylon cover that completely covered one side and was folded about a foot over the edge and tied to the lime silky material with small bow ties every six inches. It seemed warm and clean, but we were unsure which side was up.

Before I came to Korea, I pictured a futon to be a folded mattress stuffed firmly with about six inches of pure comfort. The Korean futons were a disappointing 1.5 inches thick, and a quick test indicated that we were in for a night full of bone-to-floor contact. By this time we had noticed the absence of pillows, and I remembered that I read something in the guidebook about Koreans sometimes using wooden blocks for pillows. I started wondering if we had pre-paid our three nights in what was increasingly seeming like a torture chamber; perhaps it was not too late to bail.

Not wanting to lose face, I hung in there while we tried to untangle the puzzle of the futon, sheet and comforter. A looming question was whether to sleep on top of the sheet or under the sheet. While the choice of sleeping under or on top of a sheet may seem trivial, I had found two hairs on the futon cover and was feeling a strong need to know which covers had been washed and which had not been washed since the previous users. Obviously the sheet went between us and the not-been-washed surface, and the identification of that surface was paramount.

Feeling exhausted and close to panic, I decided we needed expert assistance and called the front desk. Realizing that my long explanation in English about how we had never slept in a Korean hotel room and weren't sure how to fix the bed was completely incomprehensible, I finally just pleaded "We need help." That worked. Two minutes later, a young Korean staff member was at our door looking exceedingly nervous.

He lingered at the stair looking into the room while Marty and I babbled away in English and gestured helplessly. He seemed to come to some realization of his own, searched through our closet and darted from the room. We looked at each other wondering if we had been abandoned. He came back just as suddenly and provided us with two, thankfully normal-looking, pillows.

Still standing at the stairway, he gestured that we should put the futons on the floor and lay the sheet on the futons. With that, he bolted, never to return again. Seized with a panic that all of our questions had not yet been answered, I had to stop myself from running after him. His look of terror in the face of our babbling English brought back memories of my own challenges in France, and I couldn’t help but show him mercy.

Sympathy aside, I was still unsatisfied that there was a clean sheet between me and all potentially-not-washed-since-the-previous-user surfaces, so we hunted through the closet and found another stiff-as-cardboard sheet to put between us and the comforter. We then laid down on our creation and faced the reality that there was no way in hell we were going to get a good night sleep with our bones jamming into the floor. We went back to the closet, rustled up a couple more futons and started all over, this time with a two futon base.

With the bed emergency over, we had a chance to look more closely around the room. It wasn’t entirely empty as there were various cabinets, a vanity, a table and a light box pushed to the edges of the room. The furniture gave one the same impression that one gets in a daycare or a kindergarten of having been built for people who are much tinier than the average adult. While Koreans are probably on-average shorter than their western counterparts, they are not so short as to require Lilliputian-size furniture. Again we realized, the furniture was designed for life on the floor.

The vanity offered a tissue box and a can of mosquito-cide, which was simultaneously comforting and disquieting. The glass-covered box labeled “EMERGENCY IMPLEMENT” on the wall held a piece of coiled rope and the instructions to “Please use like the picture to put in a handrail of balcony.” If I understood this correctly, in the event of an emergency we were expected to hang from a flammable rope attached to the balcony. Should we be relieved or alarmed?

Korean floors are heated, which feels quite nice when sitting on the floor. The futon in combination with the heated floor gave the impression of sleeping on an oversize heating pad. I imagine this would be a lovely sensation in our 55 degree bedroom at home, but in our overheated hotel room, I couldn't help but feeling like I was being grilled. I had to flip myself over regularly to keep from getting overdone. Marty, who has an acute fear of colds and drafts, liked the feeling of being cooked until well done during his night as a human barbecue.

We are actually experienced floor dwellers. In a recent allergy fit, I removed our box spring and bed frame at home, and we have been sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Before this trip, I thought it just made our bedroom look like apartments I have had that were furnished with that just-out-of-college-and-don’t-have-any-money style. Now, I know, however, that our bedroom at home simply has an Asian flair and now, like Asian-Western cuisine, can be fashionably referred to as “fusion.” Korea has saved us from yet another fashion faux-pas, and we are feeling pretty hip.