Korea Day 3.2 - Shin Chon Hostel

Reached Insadong at around 5/6pm. Was lost for a while since we were undecided how to get to our hostel. Like which direction we should go to, whether we should take a bus or train. Went down to the underground train station to use the toilet and decided that maybe we should just cab there. So we went back up and found this tourist information center. We went in and they found the directions to the hostel for us. Took a cab to Shin Chon hostel which was located at Edae (Nearest station is Ewha Womans University). We read online that the shopping at Edae is great, that's why we decided to stay here. =D

Edae Station

Also one tip I learnt from booking hostels is to try to look for the hotel/hostel website if there is one. Basically, we searched for hostels for the area we wanted at hotels sites such as Agoda, HotelBooking etc. From there I googled for the website of the hostel itself. Most of the time, if you do the booking straight with the hostel, it would be cheaper as there won't be additional cost such as service fee etc. Also, some hotel/hostels do hold promotions for some months and these promotions are usually found on their main website itself. But do note that sometimes some websites may be just be put up for show. eg. just to fraud you to get the deposit. So I guess it comes with the risk, though if it is a well known one (Looking at the number of reviews), this is less likely to happen.

Back to Shin Chon Hostel, I emailed the website directly to confirm on the facilities and the availability of the room. We planned to stay in the twin room for 8 nights. (From the 15 till 23 of Sept)

They replied me within the day itself and also informed me that there is a 10% discount if we are planning to stay for more than one week. Yay for us!

To make our reservation, we paid the first night of the room through Agoda, since we didn't have a Paypal account. Then we dropped them an email with the paid confirmation of the first night and it guarantees the remaining nights for us (16th-23rd Sept). The payment for the remaining nights was made in cash when we checked in.

The twin room that we booked had a private bathroom and includes simple breakfast, Wi-Fi connection, towels and many other things. It costs 60,000 KRW per night. The total bill was 60,000 KRW * 8 nights * 0.9 discount = 432,000 KRW. So it came up to around SGD 30 per person.

Shin Chon Hostel

The room itself was quite small like there isn't much space to walk about especially after putting in our luggages. The first day when we checked in, the counter staff was just like exclaiming how big our both our luggages were. LOL. The room we were situated in was in the next building beside the one where the main counter was. There was no lift but luckily the room we were allocated was on the second floor. The pantry area, washing machine, etc was all situated in the main building. Since they were situated next to each other, it was not much of a hassle. Just keep going in and out between doors. Haha.

Twin Room

Our snack filled table =D

The first thing we did was to wash PH clothes. Haha

There were restaurants & bars opposite the road our hostel as seen in the pictures below & they open quite late at night. But overall its quite safe as you have to key in a password to access the hostel. & at least there are people when u walk back from the main road at night. So its not so eerie and dark.   

After washing clothes, we went out to walk/shopped around Edae. Though we didn't do much shopping since most shops closed around 10-11pm.