As J and I get older, I find that we do less and less planning for our trips. Many months ago when we got the tickets for Taiwan, we decided to tack on Seoul before the Taiwan portion of our trip. The idea was that we’re already half way across the world in Asia, so we might as well have a little bit of fun before dealing with the family chaos. We picked Seoul for no real reason other than it being a new place for us that’s also a direct flight from SFO.
In other words, we had no expectations. Even stateside, most of our exposure to anything Asian has been primarily Chinese-centric, so beyond having bulgogi, kimchi, and a few spicy stews, we haven’t indulged in any other Korean cuisines nor exports, e.g. K-pop, K-beauty, or K-dramas.
The journey to Seoul was exhausting. Even though we had a direct flight in Economy Plus seating on a new plane, I dunno: we were so stretched on arrival. Immigration and customs were both a breeze, but then it was an 80-minute bus ride to the hotel in downtown. The hotel was a lovely new Lotte (Korean chain): super modern, clean, with excellent location and not too expensive really for downtown. The front desk suggested a nearby Korean dumpling and noodle shop for dinner. Delish. We crashed pretty quickly after that. The remaining days were full of walking and exploration. Thankfully, the weather was quite temperate, similar to back home in the 60s and 70s. And Seoul is crazy clean to boot.
Our second day, we went on a food tour, and one of the classmates is an expat who has previously lived many years in Singapore and Hong Kong (as well as Dubai and South Africa and Europe…). She said the food prep and restaurants here, even with the small street food vendors, are incredibly clean and meticulous. Good to know.
For the brief three days we walked about 18k-20k steps per day and enjoyed BBQ, noodles, dumplings, offal and pork sausage (thumbs down but we had to try bc it was on the food tour), kimchi, fried chicken, etc. So much variety and lots of great flavors. The Korean women are also big on skincare, so near our hotel were tons of shops selling face masks and creams and so forth. The K-beauty routine is notorious for its 15+ steps. I thought about trying some stuff, but our mini suitcases are already filled to the brim AND I discovered that nearly all the k-beauty stuff is available on Amazon for not that much more. I might give it a try after I get home.
Overall, we had a great time. I find the Koreans to be the “hipper” Asians. J also read some tour books that said Koreans are super into new trends… things go in and out of style super quickly. To my surprise, women were modestly dressed but def every bar/lounge we went to had a live DJ. What? Asians who like to have fun? An oxymoron to me! I was so disappointed, bc after extensive late night research, I discovered a bboy dance troupe. And I ALMOST got to see them perform, except they unexpectedly canceled the evening show the last night we were in town. Argh!
But Bubs and I have already decided that we’re going back. The city is nicely navigable, data service is comprehensive, and it can be the perfect pit stop en route to Taiwan. I’m officially on the Korean bandwagon. After I return to the States, I’m going to sample the k-dramas. My cousin, who speaks/teaches Korean, recommends a soap series called Descendants of the Sun. As usual, I am hopping on the bandwagon about ten years too late, but heck, there’s still time to see what all the hype was about.[FAG id=7489]