My favorite!
After the growing pains of experiencing China with a group of 14 adults (and their strong personalities) and days scheduled from 6:45am to 9:30pm, I was more than ready to get back to solo travel mode and to my next destination: Seoul.
As loyal readers may recall, my couchsurf hosting days in Dallas have already paid dividends. The good times just keep rolling, though. I contacted two of my South Korean guests from back in 2010 (!) and both of them delivered big time. One had moved to Canada (hi Ko!) but gave me the Kakao talk (Korea's version of text/whatsapp) of an awesome Korean girl who was willing to chat with me over dinner (hi Na Rae!), which was really nice. Thanks to Na Rae I also got the inside scoop on the K-beauty scene, which resulted in a bit of a binge. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, Koreans have the most impressive beauty regimens and products in the entire world.
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Note that I did not say "Korean women." Korean men are absolutely in on this and there are aisles and aisles of men's products in every shop. There is also a LOT of make-up marketed toward men. Probably because of K-pop.
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| Majorly famous boy band BTS, K-pop pros |
The beauty obsession has a dark side though: a fixation with plastic surgery. Especially in the trendy Gangnam area, you will see dozens of buildings, each of which has dozens of floors, each of which houses several plastic surgery clinics.
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| A subway ad in the Gangnam area, one of many. |
Additionally, before I stray too far from Kakao talk:
their emojis have absolutely taken over Korea. Anything with a flat surface has been branded with these adorable little characters.
Please stop everything. I just read the bio for Apeach (the character featured above) and this is it, verbatim, from the Kakao Friends website: "
APEACH is a genetically modified peach that left the orchard to seek adventure. This playful and wild creature is not afraid to show off its backside, which may remind you of something other than a peach." I just needed you all to know that. You probably want to see its
backside now, which I cannot confirm being a safe for work search but I did the hard part for you.
Speaking of adorable, here is a side by side comparison of the Boston and Seoul metro cards.
Ok where were we? Oh yeah my second Korean friend. Jong Min (hi!) was in Seoul when I was, and helped me get the most out of my visit with some clutch advice and guided wanderings. We started with a tour of the famous local market. This was a brief tour because this market was, to put it delicately, not "vegetarian friendly". You can imagine for yourself the types of horrific "food" that were on display but this is a family blog (notwithstanding the NSFW apeach) so I won't be describing it for you.
The major tourist destinations in Seoul are sprawling palaces with names that you won't even be able to finish
trying to say because you'll be laughing at your own incompetence too hard (Gyeongbokgung is the most famous, we started with Changdeokgung; when Korean people say these it sounds like one syllable). After visiting Changdeokgung in the afternoon heat, I mentioned that it would be cool to see Gyeongbokgung (although quite honestly... these palaces might just fall into the "seen one seen 'em all" category for all but the most obsessive historians). Jong Min broke the bad news: I happened to be in Seoul during the two weeks of the year during which Gyeongbokgung palace is closed during the day and open at night for a special show; the tickets for the show had sold out two weeks ago. Luckily, Jong Min is a boss and called the palace to see what we could get in, and it turned out there was a simple solution: foreigners are allowed to purchase tickets on a first come, first served basis. Korean citizens were not allowed to visit unless they had booked in advance! Seriously. So we got there before they opened, I bought two tickets for $3 each and gave one to Jong Min and we went right in.
Side note: there is one other way to get into the palace - wear a Hanbok [the 'k' is silent, 'hanh-bo']. These are traditional Korean costumes and visitors can rent them and wear them around for enhanced
instagramming site-seeing. A rental will set you back $10 and includes hair and makeup.
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| From http://funtastickorea.com/m |
Jong Min asked me several times if I wanted to wear one and each time I questioned our friendship because I firmly believed that this is something only a clinically insane person would do. Can you imagine dressing up like a puritan to walk around Boston? But the Hanbok rentals are actually wildly popular. Hundreds of young, cute people were doing it and I admit that the stigma had kind of dropped away by the end of my trip. Still, I just couldn't get on board. I think the 100 degree heat had something to do with it as well.
Anywaaaaay if you wear a Hanbok you can get into Gyeongbokgung for free, but in the fine print of this agreement it says that you still have to book tickets in advance. On our way out from the palace we saw lots of Hanbok-wearing people looking pre-tty outraged that they couldn't get in. Don't forget that the tickets cost $3 each.
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| Lovely Hanbok-wearing girls. I admit they make for great pictures. |
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| Here is an egregious example of the Confucian-style gates, seen in Changdeokgung |
So Jong Min and I had an awesome time strolling around the grounds of Gyeongbokgung, and we even got to see the show they put on with one of the ancient buildings serving as a stage. There were traditional instruments, Italian opera (?!), plenty of singing and dancing... but my favorite part was a troupe of female drummers. Jong Min takes awesome pictures (his
blog and
instagram here) and some of these (the good ones) are from him.
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| Drummers |
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| Lotus of dancers |
So thanks to my generous guides, Seoul was my favorite place to visit!
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| Gyeongbokgung palace at sunset |
Book for this part of the trip:
Fall on your knees by Ann-Marie McDonald. Tough tough tough. It made Oprah's book club but jesus christ it's depressing.
I stayed at: Mapo, a cute neighborhood right next to the Han river. However, I would recommend staying in Gangnam, since that's where the biggest shopping/restaurant scene is.
Note: When you first arrive in Seoul, you will need to get Korean cash since the subway card machines don't take credit cards. I used the subway several times a day for 5 days and spent about $17 total on it. Most shops do take cards though. I would go to the 7-11 in the airport, buy a subway card at the counter, get cash at the global atm next door, then go to the subway machine and load the card with cash.
Another note: Google maps is not optimized in SK. I was looking for a store and googled it and it showed that there was one 2 towns over. I asked Na Rae and she said there was one ON THE SAME STREET that I was on, and sure enough a few blocks down there it was, with nary a mention on the google map. Kakao talk has a navigation app which is very thorough but the slight hiccup is that it's only in Korean.
