This sweet little building is Mr. Kim's Friends Guest House, a hostel in Seoul where travelers "come as a guest, leave as a friend." It's true- the staff and guests were the nicest and warmest group of people I've met in a long time. The hostel itself was great, but Saturday was an awful night for me.
These pictures are not my own- they're from the hostel's website; on Saturday night, I went out with Peter, Liz, Danielle, Danielle's friend Loanne (I don't know how it's spelled), and a couple of her guy friends visiting from Singapore. I took nothing but my money and ID so that I wouldn't have to worry about losing anything; this ended up being a terrible decision, in part because I didn't have a camera with me to document the night. We went out drinking (Soju is deadly), then to dinner (meat and cheese is delicious always), and finally (at about 2am), we went to a club where foreigners get in for free. I enjoyed the club for about three minutes, then decided it wasn't for me.
Peter did what he could to make sure I knew my way back to the hostel, and I was pretty confident that I understood. I was just really ready to get out of there. I was fine getting from the club to Hongik Station (the first landmark on my route to the hostel), despite not knowing where the club even was. It involved asking several strangers and a couple of taxi drivers for directions ("Hongik University Station odi-iitsoyo?"- "Where is Hongik University Station?") From the station, I followed Peter's directions within a block of the hostel- but then I just could not find it.
For a while, I retraced my steps and tried to think of anywhere along my short route I might have strayed. It was 2:30 in the morning at this point, and the area was very quiet. I started asking people if they knew of the hostel ("Mr. Kims Friends Guest House arrayo?") so that I could ask for directions, but no one did. And passersby were becoming fewer and farther between. Seoul becomes less and less bilingual at night.
Finally, I wandered through a nearby hostel (hotel-style with an elevator and bleak white hallways) until I heard English or found the check-in room. I ended up waking and getting directions from Ann of Anne's Guest House at three in the morning. Mercifully, she spoke English. With a printed map, I had no trouble getting to my hostel a few blocks away, where I gathered my things, curled up in a bunk bed, and slept in.
That night shook me up. For the first time, I was alone in Korea. I had no phone, no directions, and no adaptive knowledge of Korean language. For the first time, I felt far from home.
I don't think I ever felt unsafe, but I did panic a little. It seems silly and tame to look back on it now; I was unprepared, exhausted, overstimulated from the night, and lost just across the street from my hostel. But without the security blanket of another English speaker or my electronic device, I felt completely in that moment, as scary as it was.
Next time, I'll make sure I'm prepared for inner city adventures, no matter who is leading the expedition. But maybe I can go without quite so many safety nets in the future.
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