Traveling Applejax

I don’t know how many of you have gone on a bicycle tour before, so I thought I’d share some insight on a FAQ: “Where do you sleep each night?”

Mike & I are the type of tourers who embark with minimal planning. We have a rough idea of where we want to go, but the day-to-day is unpredictable. We know that we average around 50 miles a day (at least on this trip), so sometimes we pick a goal destination in the morning or at lunch, but we often don’t know the specifics of where we’ll end up. We have a hearty tent (the Hilleberg Nammatj 3) plus all the gear we need for bandit camping, and we also have credit cards! Between the two, we always figure out somewhere we can rest.

Friday, June 7th was our last day in South Korea. We arrived on May 14. Over our 24 nights in Korea, we have slept in the following places:

$$$

2 Airbnbs for 6 nights (4 in Seoul, 2 in Daegu)

4 regular hotels for 6 nights (1 at Avatar Gwangju, 2 at Brown Dot Mokpo, 1 at My Hotel Seogwipo, and 2 at Brosis Busan)

2 sex motels

1 paid campsite in Ipobo

FREE

2 established free campsites

2 gazebos

1 green plum orchard

1 park

1 river bank

1 oceanside field

1 soccer pitch

Total accommodation costs for 24 days in Korea: $679.75

Prior to coming here, I hadn’t thought of Korea as a budget destination, but the accommodations at least can be pretty inexpensive and still good quality.

Obviously, bandit camping is the most budget-friendly option, but we “splurged” more than usual on hotels because they were so affordable (and it’s nice to have a shower and a bed and a place to recharge electronics)! We also resorted to sex motels twice since we found ourselves in the middle of large cities at dusk and didn’t want the uncertainty of finding campsites in the dark.

It’s possible you may be wondering about these sex motels. Maybe you’ve never experienced a drive-in, contactless motel that you can book by the hour (or overnight). First, you pull into a car park area that has private garages with photos of the hotel rooms on them. You can pull your car (or bikes) straight into a private garage of your choice and close the door behind you. Then, you walk up a set of stairs. After you decipher the machine interface outside of the room and pay with a credit card, the room unlocks, and you can settle in. There will be a jacuzzi tub, robes, and an assortment of lubes, but it is otherwise similar to most hotel rooms. Mike said he read somewhere that students book them for a quiet place to “study” even.

When it comes to our free nights of bandit camping, we’ve found some interesting spots.

After our second day of biking from Seoul (we stayed at a paid campground the first night), we decided to search for a bandit campsite. As luck would have it, we found a bunch of campers along the Hangang river in one spot. We’d read that Koreans enjoy camping down by the river many places, so we decided to join in. Some set up tent bases while they relax or fish and pack up for the night to head home, but others stay the night. There was even a toilet with running water nearby. Some older men greeted us in a friendly manner when we arrived. The next morning as we were packing up, one brought us two red bean buns and two Let’s Be mild coffee drinks. With very limited English, he told us he has a YouTube channel about Senior Life. It was a great start to day 3–arguably one of our toughest biking days.

The next time we bandit camped, we found an interesting park by the river that seemed to consist of meadows and marshes connected with wooden causeways. It was practically abandoned at dusk, so we scouted a meadow spot. Just when we were getting ready to bust out our tent, a group of three motorcyclists came roaring down the causeway, doing donuts on the planks. They spotted us and headed over to express their amazement and gift us a Gatorade. The rest of the night was quiet, but we woke up to an older man walking briskly along the causeway with his trekking poles in the early morning hours—a theme that would repeat itself.

On two occasions we slept in wooden gazebo-like structures. These are common along bike paths and in public parks. They’re a bit more conspicuous than some of our choices for bandit camping, but nobody seems to mind if we lay out our sleeping bags for the night. The nice thing about these stays is that we don’t set up a tent and barely unpack our bikes. It makes for a quick start in the morning.

One rainy night we set up our tent in a green plum orchard that we found just before the heavier rain started. Another night, on Jeju, we set up in a field next to a low-traffic beach (again with a full bathroom handy).

The third time we didn’t set up the tent was when we got back to the mainland after our loop around Jeju. We didn’t leave the ferry terminal until almost 10:00 PM, but Mike searched the maps for a quick spot to crash. We ended up on a gated, astroturf soccer pitch with just our sleeping bags laid out by one of the goals. It would have been a great spot (quiet with a water refill station and nice bathroom), except there were a few mosquitoes buzzing about. I ended up with about 6 bites on my forehead since my face was the only thing sticking out. At least they don’t itch. At 5:00 AM, two elderly couples swung open the gate and began walking circles around the pitch (they must have done at least 5 laps while we were packing up). They smiled at us and set about their business.

There was one established campground on Jeju at Hyeopjae Beach and another back on the mainland that were free, too. The second one had all kinds of amenities and we were expecting to pay. When we arrived close to dusk, we found a note on the open office door that said “Going out,” so we assumed someone would be back shortly. We waited…but nobody came. It was getting dark and we didn’t have an alternative in mind (the area was incredibly hilly), so we set up our tent thinking we would pay when the owners returned. They didn’t. They still weren’t there in the morning, so we packed up and left. It was a bizarre and slightly uncomfortable experience, but Mike is good at talking me into stuff like this.

That’s it. This is what bike tour accommodations look like the way that we do things. After leaving Korea, we slept in our ferry berth on the way to Japan. Who knows what will happen there!