The place we stayed in Gangneung is a type of bed and breakfast
known as a pension. I’m not sure where
the name originated from, but it may have to do with pensioners (retirees) tending
to go on vacation a lot. The room we were in was a blue room with a loft with a
bed that John and Laura slept in. It being Korea and all, the floors were kept
nice and warm with hot water, so we slept on the more traditional style cushioned
floor mat, called a Yo. This suited us well. However, I (Riley) kept waking up
at 3AM due to jet lag. Going home is
going to be rough…
The proprietors of the pension we’re at are super friendly.
Having never stayed at a pension before, we didn’t know what to expect. Similar
to many Korean services, the customers were treated extremely well. During our 8
night stay, we got 3 free rides, a set of 4 Olympic souvenir towels, 2 liters
of complementary beverages, and 4 little Korean dolls that we may convert to
refrigerator magnets. We mostly communicated in Korean, which is a bit unusual,
since most everyone is keen on English here, but for the hard words, our hosts
had a voice translation app on their phones. (I actually think our voices are part
of the English training dataset for the translator’s AI, since we participated
in a voice recording study in Korea way back
in 2012 [or 13?] for such an app.)
 |
| View from Riley + Margaret's floor mat |
Our pension was complete with a kitchenette, and mini-fridge.
There was no washing machine, so Laura, our heroine did the clothes for us in
the sink, and we dried them indoors, which worked well. Breakfast tended to
alternate between kim-bap (California rolls), eggs, fruit & yogurt and
sweets—no squid soup. This is the Airbnb posting. I was sad to
leave.
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