Playce Camp Jeju — Hotel in Seogwipo-si

Jeju can be an expensive island, since it's such a tourist destination. The price at Hotel Playce for a clean, modern hostel-like place is reasonable and the pictures appealed to us, who booked most of our trip online, before we got to Korea.||||This hotel is on the east side of the island. Jeju isn't a small island and there's so much to see there but not so much on the east side. You can see Sunrise Peak and Manjanggul (the longest Lava Tube in Jeju) in the same day as they are closeby/a reasonable cab ride from the hotel. Gwangchigi Beach is also just across the street from the hotel and worth a visit. We went at sunset and saw a bunch of wedding/couple photo shoots happening. I wish instead of staying for 3 nights, that we had only stayed 1 at this hotel because there was so much more to see on the southern and western parts of the island an everything we loved on the eastern side could be seen in the same day. This is clearly a weekend party hotel though, so while not for us, other young Koreans might enjoy more time there as it's set up for young night life.||||The biggest positive was The VIEW (so spring for the extra $15 for a room with the view). I woke up at 5:20 every morning I was there to watch the sunrise over Sunrise peak and that was just STUNNING.||||Their bar, the Spinning Wolf, while strange (I am still unsure what exactly the menu is selling with sexy bartender photos) was staffed by people who made solid cocktails and had an English menu I could point off of. You order from the host desk and pay up front with each cocktail (though I found out on the last night I could run a tab by leaving my credit card). We clearly were there on their slow nights (all weeknights) but it is set up for parties. Because we like to drink and had at least 2 each night we were there, the last night, our bartenders sent us strawberry margarita shots and some fruit. It was a nice touch.||||They have artwork scattered all over the compound. Some of it is very instagrammable type art. My favorite was the motion sensor light installation at the front desk. If I had known what that was when I first got there, I would have spent hours there because I loved it so much.|| ||The compound has a resident dog who took a shine to us when we first arrived and decided to be our tour guide, running in front of us, as we crossed the street to explore outside the compound. He was adorable and stayed with us for over an hour and I loved him. (But he wasn't the petting kind of dog.) He was not adorable to a resident older woman, just walking down the sidewalk when he lost his mind barking at her. He also wasn't adorable when barking all night, presumably at residents of the local town walking by. I guess he's why they gave us 2 sets of earplugs as part of their amenity package?||||The food:||There is nothing open before 8AM, food wise (and if you are up at 5:20 to watch the sunrise, that sucks). And when the 2 places that open at 8AM on weekdays (Mr. Breadly and their Korean restaurant) offer their food- you'd better be happy with bread or full on hearty Korean food like beef fried rice for brekkie. We ended up crossing the street to the Starbucks (which also doesn't open until 8) and having their egg sandwiches, because while bread was nice- bread with protein is better- for breakfast every morning because we couldn't deal with the hotel's options even though we were starving. I understand there is a weekend brunch at the Italian restaurant, Dito, which maybe would solve that problem if you stay over a weekend.||||The Korean restaurant at the compound was delicious for dinner. We just need lighter food for breakfast.||||Dito, their Italian restaurant, was WONDERFUL! The food inventive and a Korean spin on high brow Italian and they succeeded. Also they had the only English speaking person on staff.|| ||Mr. Breadly's bread was delicious but I can't have Nutella bread or plain bread for breakfast. I need protein. If they just had a single egg sandwich offering here, it would have solved our breakfast woes.||||There's a bunch of restaurants across the main street in front of the hotel. There was one BBQ one that served Jeju Black pork BBQ (Cuh Q Min)- go there for at least 1 meal as it was great!||||Things I wish we knew ahead of time:||||If you take the bus from the airport, tell the bus driver, Hotel Playce and don't read the address off to him or you'll end up in the town around Sunrise Peak, instead. ||||Do not stay here unless you have a car. We didn't and were basically screwed on multiple fronts because of it.||||No one speaks English there and while they love using English for headers/names- all their written materials are only in Korean. My childish broken Korean, which is enough to communicate with my relatives and taxi drivers, just didn't help at all, here. By pantomime, we were told after check in that we should use some tokens to play a game outside the front desk for prizes. It turns out the prizes are coupons to stores on the compound but we didn't know what they were since they were all in Korean. Our friendly waiter at Dito translated them for us.||||When we arrived, I tried to ask the front desk if they had any recommended tours/tour groups/bus tours in my broken Korean. And they told me "No" This hotel doesn't recommend or have any tours they can recommend on all of Jeju. I tried for a few minutes but the answer never changed. Now I think this is a language barrier issue because they have pictures posted on the walls of activities you can do on Jeju, through them, written in Korean, but the front desk assured me they don't do any tours and they don't recommend doing anything. OKAY. :/ So my solution was to go online and book a private tour on Viator with an English speaking guide for $330, for the next day. That's a lot of tourist dollars lost for this hotel from the get go. ||||The rooms are ridiculously tiny and while trying to be "industrial" the hotel designer basically created modern prison cells with all the warmth you'd expect from a prison cell. But they had really nice room diffusers and lovely scented toiletries. The rooms had a row of hooks and 2 hangers which covered the four hooks so were basically useless. A room this small needs to have better storage. It had no storage whatsoever. Even just more hooks scattered around the room would have made it a bit more user friendly.||||There is absolutely no privacy in that glass wall between the bathroom and the bed. My husband and I felt so embarrassed knowing we were basically only separated by a curtain to poo so we played music in the room and just tried to be kind to each other. Unless you are used to pooping basically next to your friends, I wouldn't recommend these rooms for friends looking to...

Jeju can be an expensive island, since it's such a tourist destination. The price at Hotel Playce for a clean, modern hostel-like place is reasonable and the pictures appealed to us, who booked most of our trip online, before we got to Korea.||||This hotel is on the east side of the island. Jeju isn't a small island and there's so much to see there but not so much on the east side. You can see Sunrise Peak and Manjanggul (the longest Lava Tube in Jeju) in the same day as they are closeby/a reasonable cab ride from the hotel. Gwangchigi Beach is also just across the street from the hotel and worth a visit. We went at sunset and saw a bunch of wedding/couple photo shoots happening. I wish instead of staying for 3 nights, that we had only stayed 1 at this hotel because there was so much more to see on the southern and western parts of the island an everything we loved on the eastern side could be seen in the same day. This is clearly a weekend party hotel though, so while not for us, other young Koreans might enjoy more time there as it's set up for young night life.||||The biggest positive was The VIEW (so spring for the extra $15 for a room with the view). I woke up at 5:20 every morning I was there to watch the sunrise over Sunrise peak and that was just STUNNING.||||Their bar, the Spinning Wolf, while strange (I am still unsure what exactly the menu is selling with sexy bartender photos) was staffed by people who made solid cocktails and had an English menu I could point off of. You order from the host desk and pay up front with each cocktail (though I found out on the last night I could run a tab by leaving my credit card). We clearly were there on their slow nights (all weeknights) but it is set up for parties. Because we like to drink and had at least 2 each night we were there, the last night, our bartenders sent us strawberry margarita shots and some fruit. It was a nice touch.||||They have artwork scattered all over the compound. Some of it is very instagrammable type art. My favorite was the motion sensor light installation at the front desk. If I had known what that was when I first got there, I would have spent hours there because I loved it so much.|| ||The compound has a resident dog who took a shine to us when we first arrived and decided to be our tour guide, running in front of us, as we crossed the street to explore outside the compound. He was adorable and stayed with us for over an hour and I loved him. (But he wasn't the petting kind of dog.) He was not adorable to a resident older woman, just walking down the sidewalk when he lost his mind barking at her. He also wasn't adorable when barking all night, presumably at residents of the local town walking by. I guess he's why they gave us 2 sets of earplugs as part of their amenity package?||||The food:||There is nothing open before 8AM, food wise (and if you are up at 5:20 to watch the sunrise, that sucks). And when the 2 places that open at 8AM on weekdays (Mr. Breadly and their Korean restaurant) offer their food- you'd better be happy with bread or full on hearty Korean food like beef fried rice for brekkie. We ended up crossing the street to the Starbucks (which also doesn't open until 8) and having their egg sandwiches, because while bread was nice- bread with protein is better- for breakfast every morning because we couldn't deal with the hotel's options even though we were starving. I understand there is a weekend brunch at the Italian restaurant, Dito, which maybe would solve that problem if you stay over a weekend.||||The Korean restaurant at the compound was delicious for dinner. We just need lighter food for breakfast.||||Dito, their Italian restaurant, was WONDERFUL! The food inventive and a Korean spin on high brow Italian and they succeeded. Also they had the only English speaking person on staff.|| ||Mr. Breadly's bread was delicious but I can't have Nutella bread or plain bread for breakfast. I need protein. If they just had a single egg sandwich offering here, it would have solved our breakfast woes.||||There's a bunch of restaurants across the main street in front of the hotel. There was one BBQ one that served Jeju Black pork BBQ (Cuh Q Min)- go there for at least 1 meal as it was great!||||Things I wish we knew ahead of time:||||If you take the bus from the airport, tell the bus driver, Hotel Playce and don't read the address off to him or you'll end up in the town around Sunrise Peak, instead. ||||Do not stay here unless you have a car. We didn't and were basically screwed on multiple fronts because of it.||||No one speaks English there and while they love using English for headers/names- all their written materials are only in Korean. My childish broken Korean, which is enough to communicate with my relatives and taxi drivers, just didn't help at all, here. By pantomime, we were told after check in that we should use some tokens to play a game outside the front desk for prizes. It turns out the prizes are coupons to stores on the compound but we didn't know what they were since they were all in Korean. Our friendly waiter at Dito translated them for us.||||When we arrived, I tried to ask the front desk if they had any recommended tours/tour groups/bus tours in my broken Korean. And they told me "No" This hotel doesn't recommend or have any tours they can recommend on all of Jeju. I tried for a few minutes but the answer never changed. Now I think this is a language barrier issue because they have pictures posted on the walls of activities you can do on Jeju, through them, written in Korean, but the front desk assured me they don't do any tours and they don't recommend doing anything. OKAY. :/ So my solution was to go online and book a private tour on Viator with an English speaking guide for $330, for the next day. That's a lot of tourist dollars lost for this hotel from the get go. ||||The rooms are ridiculously tiny and while trying to be "industrial" the hotel designer basically created modern prison cells with all the warmth you'd expect from a prison cell. But they had really nice room diffusers and lovely scented toiletries. The rooms had a row of hooks and 2 hangers which covered the four hooks so were basically useless. A room this small needs to have better storage. It had no storage whatsoever. Even just more hooks scattered around the room would have made it a bit more user friendly.||||There is absolutely no privacy in that glass wall between the bathroom and the bed. My husband and I felt so embarrassed knowing we were basically only separated by a curtain to poo so we played music in the room and just tried to be kind to each other. Unless you are used to pooping basically next to your friends, I wouldn't recommend these rooms for friends looking to...

I was a bit hesitant about this property as the room rate for a 2 pax bunk bed room (10 sqm.) was really low for Jeju. However, upon entering the room, I knew it was going to be comfortable. While the room being small, it's got everything one needs such as air conditioning, private bathroom (albeit it is covered with a glass wall and a shower curtain that covers the entire glass wall for privacy but it will not soundproof anything), good linen and high quality towels and free bottle of water. The entire property provides free high speed internet. While the single and double rooms (except for suites) don't come with TV, mini refrigerator and coffee pot; the property has 6 outlets for dining, coffee and drinking (and a convenience store) at reasonable price and good quality. Also, the onsite activity center provides various activities such as yoga, surfing class, wind surfing, bike rental, scuba diving, etc. to keep its guests entertained (at a cost). The Saturday night market was cool and attractive event to attend and look around with many local crafts to buy. The onsite pub provides many local beers and the main plaza (the open area in the middle of the compound) acts as an attractive site to chill and drink beer with the friends. It has exceeded all expectation at this price and I would definitely reconsider coming back. One thing to note: ask for the rooms facing the parking lot or the lake or pretty much facing out the compound to have less noisy...