South Korea: Day 10 - Korean Gamblers Are Nuts
My 10th day in South Korea was spent at which is a casino hotel resort type of place way out in the boonies of I don't even know what province. It was near the east coast of the South Korean peninsula and was about a 5-6 hour drive from Seoul.
The Pros
We got to the hotel around 5 or 6 in the evening and it was pretty nice. The parking lot was quite full and parking was kind of hard to find. We walked up the the main entrance where they have some peculiar architectural displays?
The hotel lobbies and floors were very spacious and it didn't wreak of that cigarette smell that permeates all the Las Vegas hotels. To enter the main casino, foreigners have to submit their passports for screening and free admission while South Koreans have to present identification and pay, I believe, 10,000won to enter. What a ripoff eh?
Upon entering there are 2 beverage stations that were pretty cool with about 10 different varieties of teas, juices, coffees, and sodas.
The Cons
There is airport style security to enter the main casino floor, except I have no idea what the metal detector was for. I saw countless heads walking through it with plenty of alerts which the staff paid no attention to. They did, however, prevented anyone from bringing in any liquids presumably to make sure nobody brings in any alcohol.
Korean gambling habits are nuts! It seemed like the game of choice amongst the natives were variations of , , , to the max. Shoot, I don't even think I saw many other types of games. All the card tables (I'd estimate ~250 tables) had people on them at least 3-4 layers deep and I'm not exaggerating. The first layer consisted of the players sitting at the table. The second layer consisted of either the players' significant others, or people trying to get a seat. The third and fourth layers were all people trying to get into the action or just watching. So at any given table, there would be a at least 20 people crowded around. Needless to say, I didn't even get to touch the felt on any of the card tables.
The slot machines were a whole different beast. People didn't gather around any of the machines but they were practically all taken up. I'd estimate about ~1000 slot machines of various game styles and the majority of them were all accounted for! And now here's the crazy part. I'd say over half of the slot machines had players which I'd like to call ghost and ninja ATM machines.
The ninja players were the cash cows. They would either scope out an empty row of slots or start with a machine in a row and wait for neighboring machines to open up. Then they would insert ungodly amounts of money into entire rows of slot machines and put them on auto-pilot. This auto-pilot scheme worked by the player stuffing a piece of paper or dollar bill into the crevice of the maximum bid button. Then they would run back to the ATM's for more funds or stand watch nearby. So it was totally not uncommon to see entire rows of slot machines spinning all by themselves without anyone even sitting at them.
The ghost players would insert money into one or more slot machines, leave either a 1000won bill or napkin over the credits and just disappear for unknown amounts of time. Unlike the ninja players, the ghost players do not prefer to put their slot machines on autopilot. These were the most annoying players and made it hella hard to find a cheap open machine to play. The biggest bitch I saw was one that was ghosting a 10cent machine. I was playing on a machine next to hers and every 20-30 minutes she would come grumbling over to pound on the poor slot machine buttons for about 2 minutes and then leave to lose more money elsewhere. This went on for about 2 hours before I left.
About the hotel... The amenities outside of the casino floor were lame! There was an "Adventure Palace"/ arcade/movie theater that we looked forward to instead of gambling all our money away but it freakin' closed @ 8pm! Furthermore, all the shops and bars were closed by 10pm! So after 10pm there was nothing to do except roam the casino floors and drink from the free beverage (juice/tea/soda) bars.
