Our First Love Motel Experience — M Motel

Our First Love Motel Experience — M Motel

For our first two nights in Korea, we stayed in what is called a “Love Motel”. Upon leaving Korea we stayed at another love motel, but this was our very first love motel experience. I don’t think we knew this was even a thing, or anything about it when we booked, just that it was a cheap hotel in the vicinity of our housesit. We knew we would be staying there after 50 hours of travel, including a long layover in Dubai. I think the most rest we had on the whole trip was some broken sleep on the two-hour bus ride from the Seoul Airport to Pyeongtaek.

Are Love Motels Sketchy

Many people act as if “love motel” is a dirty word. I actually have not heard a Korean talk about them, but many foreigners act this way. And I can see why if you think about their primary purpose and some other things, but we didn’t dislike it. In fact, I love fun theming and it really felt like a fun local cultural experience. I think more tourists are trying out the love motel experience, either because of the price or this.

So What Are They For?

We don’t know 100% but this is what we’ve heard. Couples in Korea live with their families until they are married and typically do not get married until they have good jobs and income and/or can buy a house. Because of this, they do not really get much alone time. Thus, the love motels. They are a place that young couples (such as in their 20s) go to have that alone time they need. You can rent a room by the hour or by the night. You can obviously stay in the motels as a tourist as well (like we did.)

 M Motel

The motel we choose was called M Motel. We chose it mostly because of its price and location (in proximity to where we would be going afterward.) Lucky for us, it was also pretty close to the bus stop (though we later learned that that is true of most of these kinds of motels.) The M Motel is what the Koreans call a “love motel.” Some other love motels we considered had names like “Lust Motel.”

We arrived fairly late in the evening, showed the front desk a copy of our reservations, and they gave us a key and a little “goody bag.” We headed up to the second floor which had a neat hallway and went into our room.

Great Refreshing Room

The key unlocked the first door (it is more of an electronic box than a key) and there there was a little area with shoes for the room. In Korea, you are supposed to take off your shoes and wear house slippers (usually provided.) This little room lit automatically but after opening the next door and going into our room we faced an issue. We could not figure out how to turn on the lights!

We tried a remote, this pad that had pictures of lights on it, and searched all around with only the light from the little area of the room which we would have to return to in order to activate it again. Finally, we were tired and frustrated enough that Kyle went downstairs to ask them how to turn on the lights. While he was down there a man came up and asked where the key was and I told him Kyle had it downstairs (also using some gesturing to help with the slight language barrier.)

The people here did speak a little English which was nice since all we knew in Korean was hello, thank you, and water. The man communicated to me that the key needed to go into this box which would allow us to use the pad to turn on the lights. Finally. Kyle came back upstairs and we put the key in the box and we were good to settle into our room and find our pajamas, brush our teeth, etc. I did find it a little bothersome that the bathroom door was somewhat see-through, though (another allegedly common feature of love motels.)

The Goods

The contents of our goody bag: face washes, condoms, a face mask, a razor, and toothbrushes:

I used the face wash and mask and we saved the toothbrushes for the future (we had our own):

The room was pretty well equipped otherwise as well. Because people don’t usually want to haul all of their stuff over to these motels they will only be staying at for a little while. The rooms contain all kinds of regular things someone would want to have like toothpaste, shampoo, lotion, robes etc.

Many love motels have themes or cool designs. Ours was kind of neat.

 

Settling Into Bed

Finally, we settled into bed. Korean beds are very hard. It is similar to sleeping on the floor but I had just tried that in the airport so I can say it is a little bit better. We were exhausted and fell asleep quickly. The next morning we woke up early and began our day with some coffee.

So far, our experience with making coffee in Korea is this:

1. You fill this kettle thing with water.
2. You place it back on top of the area it came from.
3. Press a button.
4. You wait until it turns off (once it has boiled which is relatively quickly) and pour it into a cup.
5. You take an instant coffee thing and pour in the contents into the cup and stir. We did this both at the motel and have been doing this at the current place we are staying. It’s pretty good.

Whenever we left the motel we would have to return our key to the front desk and then pick it up when we returned. After we were done learning what we needed to know in our stay here and had eaten we returned to the motel where we flipped through the channels. Gaming on tv.

On a final note, I will say that this motel was far better than the one we recently stayed at in Tucson for a similar price.