Love & Running

Above is Whit, one of the ultra marathon runners I mentioned yesterday. Unfortunatley, it turned out the event was not the most well organised affair, and a poorly marked out course meant that after an already astounding 25 miles straight up and down the mountains they finally lost their way and had to call it a day.
After several near misses already, whereby forks in the mountain trails were not marked with directions, a major wrong turn was made at the brief road section of the course. By the time they realised their error they were an hours run away from returning to the trail, which was then a further four hour run up and over mountain peaks that rose as high as eight hundred metres.
It was at this point they made the wise but difficult decision to do what any sane man would - jump in a taxi and join us for beer and analysis of their momentous efforts.

The sheer strangeness of Whit's location is down to a somewhat peculiar but incredibly common slice of Korean culture - the love motel.

Love motels are present in every city in Korea, often in mind-boggling numbers. They are high-rise motels which can be rented by the hour during the day, or for a full night once the sun goes down.
This may sound horribly seedy, and Korea does have prevelant and varied forms of prostitution (despite it officially being illegal), some of which are unfathomably blatant.
The main reason for the rise of these motels however, is in fact born out of a need for privacy. Korean families generally live together as a large family unit, with Grandparents commonly moving back in with their adult sons and daughters as they approach their twilight years. Add to this the fact that the majority of Koreans also stay at home right up until that get married, not moving out until they are engaged or wed, and you've got quite a crowded home that certainly puts paid to any thoughts of evenings of romance.
And so whole generations commonly spend hours or nights in love motels, doing what we would be doing either secretly upstairs in our bedrooms (In Korea the one-floored apartment is king) or in the houses we rent having moved out of home.

The bonus in all this for the foreign traveller in Korea, is an abundance of cheap accommodation the length and breadth of the country. The motels are sometimes absurdly kitted out (see above) but are always clean as a whistle. Pretty much all come with their own computer and internet connection, free tea and coffe (and condoms of course) and a huge flat screen TV complete with cable and movie channels.
All this comes for an astonishing twenty quid per night, which adds up to the ability to explore the country's towns and cities in comfort at bargain basement prices.

Above was my first taste of a circular bed in a love motel. It was also the last available room and so five of us piled in it for thirty five quid - three on the bed and two on the floor. The slighty bonkers owner didn't bat an eyelid when we hauled a beer-stocked cooler up to the room, and she even bought us up extra blankets and pillows.