I am travelling for work in Korea. A colleague and I arrived in Seoul at about 4:30 pm. We are staying in a smaller town about a 2 hour drive from Seoul Inchon airport. It was a long first day. A mere 13 ½ hour flight from Chicago to Seoul followed by a 2 hour car ride is always a good time.
We had a good dinner of Korean barbeque at a local restaurant. Korean barbeque is very good. If you have a local restaurant I highly recommend trying it. You can skip the kimchi if you like, although I think it is pretty good, plus there is an entire museum devoted to it. Here is some information about the kimchi museum in Korea here
We are staying at the Grand Tourist Hotel. The only problem is the level of English is not as high as I would like. I can’t really complain because I am in their country and I speak absolutely no Korean.
The first night I normally sleep well but I wake up a few times because of the 14 hour time difference. This was the case last night. I think I woke up 3 times in the night and did not have any trouble going back to sleep until about 5:30 am local time. Then I was up for the day.
My colleague did not have as good a night as I did. He could not figure out how to turn the lights off in his room. None of the switches on the walls turned off the lights above the bed. The rooms also have the large key that must be put into the slot inside the door in order to turn the power on inside the room, so one would assume that removing the key would cut the power to the lights. This did not work either.
Also due to the language barrier he could not convey that he wanted someone to come to his room and show him how to turn the lights out. So sleeping with a pillow or blanket over your head is not conducive to a good night sleep. Is that because of the Dutch oven effect? He also received a phone call at about 2:30am from a company in Indiana to let him know a part he ordered for his boat arrived and he can pick it up any time.
If you are wondering here are the controls for the lights in the hotel room.
The next morning we were meeting for breakfast at 8:00 and we would be taken to the factory at 8:30. I arrived for breakfast about 20 minutes early and decided to check out the workout room/sauna I noticed in the directory inside the elevator. I guess working out in Korea is a little different than in the USA. Before entering the “gym” I had to remove my shoes. So I’m not sure how I am going to run on a treadmill without shoes. It does not sound to appealing to me. So I take a few steps into the gym and sure enough, I spot a treadmill in one corner of the next room. I walk towards it and when I make it about half way there I look to my left. There is a Korean guy standing there next to a towel rack… naked. Not even wearing a towel. Not even attempting to get a towel off the rack. I’m not sure what kind of gym this is supposed to be so I turn around and walk back out.
I think I will run outside tomorrow.
I’m not sure what happened to this chair. I know if I am going to be sitting in it I will be using a towel.
I also wonder if there is some type of bug problem with this hotel. My colleague also says there is some of this paraphernalia in his room.
On the bright side, the internet is blindingly fast. Except when I am connected to my company’s VPN, then it is as slow as always.
There is also a toe stubbing device in the bath tub/shower. I think it is really an ass pad.
I know the reason for the design of the bath tub. The person will draw out a hot bath. Before getting into the bath they will wash utilizing the drain on the floor of the bathroom. This also explains why you have to step down into the bathroom and also why the hotel provides you with bathroom shoes – to keep you out of your own nastiness. Notice the bathroom shoes are designed for very tiny feet.
Here are my steel toe shoes next to the bathroom shoes.
There are also slippers for the rest of the hotel room. And to go into one section of the factory it is required that you change out of your shoes and into the slippers provided. This is the lab and it is a clean room. In our lab in Indian we are required to wear steel toe shoes. I have never found any steel toe slippers but maybe they are out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment