Seoul, Day Three: Dongdaemun and the Missing Key

The foreigners' market. Sounds great doesn't it? Rumor has it we could find anything we might be missing from home in Itaewon, the foreigners' district of Seoul. We'd been looking forward to this for months. We'd heard mixed reviews, but mostly people said it was an amazing place, with Western food, toiletries and regular-sized threads. We were giddy.

But heavens to Betsy, what an utter letdown it turned out to be. A series of dumpy knockoff stores and dozens of custom suit tailors (sorry, I don't want something that looks like it's 40 years old and has a 28 inch crotch). The clothes were basically the same stuff we'd find in cheaper areas of Daegu, with a few second-rate gangsta brands thrown in for good measure. We walked around for 45 minutes, ate at Subway and jumped in a taxi to head back to Insadong.

On the plus side, this gave us enough time to spend part of the afternoon at Dongdaemun, a massive shopping district in central Seoul. Dongdaemun means 'Great East Gate' and refers to the large ancient gate the market is built around - it was built during the Joseon Dynasty. You'd think I would've got a photog of something so historic and significant, but after wasting our time in Itaewon, we didn't have a lot of time before Cate would need a nap - and it was raining buckets. So we did some shopping.


One thing I learned about Seoul is no matter where you are, you'll see every part of Korean culture in some way. Although Dongdaemun is a major fashion district and attracts mostly young hipsters, there are seniors selling street meat, jewelry and carrying cardboard around on bikes. This is often the case in Korea but I found it especially interesting in this major part of such a large, modern city.


When we returned to our hotel from Dongdaemun we were hot, tired and ready for a nap. We got to our door, and I realized the room key was not in my pocket. This was a problem for a few reasons. First of all, the key had a magnetic tag with it that's used to turn everything on in the room. You insert the magnet into a slot on the wall and the lights, TV and A/C power on. I knew this would be expensive to replace and that this hotel most likely would not have extra tags. Secondly, the magnetic tag had the hotel name and room number on it, meaning whoever found it would have a free room in Insadong (and they'd definitely want to visit there after reading my blog). The third reason this situation was a problem was the fact that as I was searching my pockets, our bags and the stroller for the key, the geezer next door was watching porn. How do I know he was watching porn? Because he had his television turned up to, what I'm assuming was, the maximum volume level for his listening pleasure. What a perfect soundtrack for a panicked situation, and perfect for our 17 month old daughter to be hearing in a smoky hallway of a seedy hotel. We went to the front desk and explained what happened and the manager was clearly worried. She said it would cost 30,000 won to replace which, to be honest, was far less than I was expecting. So we paid the replacement fee and had to use the 'master key', which had to be returned to the front desk every time we left the hotel. A little awkward.

One more day to go.