4 April 2019
No ticket no passport no talking
Taking the KTX train to Daejeon
Now I am in Daejeon, in central southern Korea. No one has heard of Daejeon before, not even people that live here.
A few unusual things happened on the way to get here.
First of all I was not entirely sure if my printed train ticket that I printed in Australia was the actual ticket or if I would have to exchange it for an actual ticket at the station. I googled, and was told you do not even need a ticket at all, there are no gates or barriers of any kind, no one checks tickets, the only time anyone has ever been questioned is when someone else was sitting in their seat and would not move. The internet seemed to suggest its entirely free to travel on Korean high speed trains if you are a French backpacker / beggar. Sure enough that all turned out to be true! There were no gates at either end, and no one came to check tickets at all.
Next up I caught the Daejeon only one line in the whole city subway to my hotel, it was a few stops away from the train station, and neither the station or my Hotel are in the centre of the city (I think / hope). Anyway, checking into my hotel was very weird, I walk in, theres a guy at reception who never seemed to even look up, he is playing an online game, with a headset, and yelling commands to his team mates. He hands me a room key. I look at him, thinking I might need to pay or sign something. But no, he did no look up at all. So off to my room I went, the key let me in, hopefully its my room, hopefully (or not?) they know how to charge me for it at some point.
So now for a few really crap pics of my journey from Seoul to Daejeon.
I found another corner of the Seoul city wall on my morning contemplational march through the city. I hereby declare contemplational to be a word.
My walk took me through the Nnammdaemmunn market, which is the fabric market. I have been here and shared pictures of this place before. It is enormous.
The fabric market is like a tier 9 China city, full of fire death traps.
The only other thing of note that I noted was this line down the street of people lining up in a line for Kaya toast. Kaya is a mixture of butter, sugar, egg and coconut, that you spread on toast. So basically cookie dough before you add flour. It is very popular in Singapore....and Seoul.
I am certain that I have taken exactly this photo from this spot before, the Seoul KTX station.
Just before boarding time, a snap strike broke out. Would it impact my travel? No. They did yell a lot and shake their fists in anger, for about 3 minutes. Just long enough for the riot police to arrive before they dispersed.
And now, here is my hotel in Daejeon. THE RAINBOW HOTEL. There are basically zero hotels available in this city on booking.com, by basically none I think I mean 3. Despite that there are at least 30 hotels on this street alone, yet they do not list on English language websites. My hotel backs onto Korean wal-mart, I went in briefly to buy a drink but it was all bulk quantity goods only.
The inside of my room is a little weird. Half log cabin, very dark, the biggest television I have ever seen in my life.
The bathroom also has a full size bath and a really flash Japanese style toilet, but instead of rolls of toilet paper it has A4 sized embossed sheets in a book. Now to work out where I am in relation to anything.