another side of Korea

A few closing thoughts on our visit to Korea...

When we went to Korea last August, it was mostly a stopover on the way to Australia and the rest of our trip. We spent two full days in Seoul, knocking off all the touristy items on our list.

This time, although we spent only one full day in Seoul, it felt like more than enough. Other than the food (which was yummy as usual), we mostly hung out in department stores and malls. Unfortunately, the weather was a bit rainy, which did encourage much additional city exploration.

The good thing was that we'd already planned to spend three full days on Jeju Island. Even on arrival, it was obvious that Jeju was different. D was a bit apprehensive about driving after our experiences as pedestrians in Seoul, but once we'd picked up our rental car and gotten out of the area immediately surrounding the airport, traffic was light and the roads were well-paved and clearly marked.

Over the next three days, we found that there were lots of things to do on Jeju. Jeju is a volcanic island and there are lots of natural attractions and formations like waterfalls, lava tubes, and other interesting volcanic rocks.

Choenjeyeon Falls


Manjanggul Lava Tube (4km long!)


"Jusangjeolli" volcanic rock formations


Some of the man-made structures were also unique and picturesque.

Seonimgyo Bridge


The omnipresent "dol hareubang" statues are protective spirits, carved from volcanic rock.


We saw lots of other cute statues in Hallim Park; not sure if they also have a special meaning.


Generally I felt like the food was more home-style and "authentic". We did eat at hotels once or twice, but generally we would drive around until we saw a sign that caught our eye. One time we ended up at a place in the middle of the island that served only one dish: spicy pork bulgolgi, cafeteria-style. Luckily it was not too spicy for D, there were unlimited sides, soup, and rice, and the total bill came out to roughly $8 USD.

This pork bone and potato soup may be the most delicious thing we ate in Korea. It was also huge; when we ordered it and another dish, the guy taking our order hesitated a bit, but as he spoke no English and we spoke no Korean, I guess he decided it would be too hard to try and change our minds.


There were little "museums" and studios all over the island. One of the most famous is the Teddy Bear Museum. I was skeptical at first but in the end I was really glad to have gone; there were teddy bear replicas of famous paintings (Mona Lisa, Sistine Chapel, The Thinker, The Kiss), famous people and moments in history (Charles & Di on their wedding day, the invasion of Normandy), and lots of other cute displays.

My favorite exhibit at the Teddy Bear Museum was this "seven continents" display.


Nearby was the Joanne Studio, where we saw lots of gorgeously handmade teddy bears.


We also stopped by the O'sulloc Tea Museum, known for its award-winning green teas (their green tea ice cream was delicious).


Of course, the hotels also had lots of activities going, too. We happened to coincide with the PGA's Ballantine's Championship (there were golf courses all over the island) and often saw people checking the players board in the hotel lobby. Before arriving, we'd chosen to stay at the Shilla rather than the Lotte Hotel based on price, but we eventually decided that the Shilla was more our style; the Lotte had lots of "family-friendly" attractions such as cute windmills and a volcano show, but the Shilla felt more laid-back and Zen.

We did go to the Lotte one night to check out the volcano, though I thought it was no more impressive than the Mirage's volcano in Las Vegas.


On the last day, we discovered the Shilla had an entire PS3 game room, complete with a library of games. Unfortunately, we only had time to stop by and take a quick glance.


We found Jeju Island quite pretty, and relaxing but not boring. I was glad that we'd rented a car; there were many tour buses and we were able to avoid the crowds by timing our stops (best times: early morning and during lunch).

On our second full day, after stopping by the teddy bear museums, we decided to drive out to Sunrise Peak despite the fog and rain, and we were rewarded by a short break in the clouds.


Then, on our very last day, we finally spent some time exploring the Shilla Hotel grounds.


Many Korean dramas are shot on Jeju Island, and there are little signs indicating exact filming locations. We ran across this one while wandering around the Shilla.


Before our trip we'd been debating between visiting Jeju Island, Gyeongju (a historic city), and Seoraksan (a national park). Based on advice from two native Koreans, we picked Jeju despite its touristy reputation, and I'm glad we did.

onigiri roulette

D and I are in Asia again...we're in Korea this week, and then we'll be in Taiwan the following week.

After arriving in Seoul today, we were hungry and thirsty, so after checking in we hit up a 7-11. They had what looked like onigiri, but all the labels were entirely in Korean. We bought two random different ones anyway, and they both turned out to have kimchi in them (one had lots more than the other). I was stoked, D was less so. Yum.

Seoul, Korea: Day 3

I think I'm going to start writing in less detail, because this is taking way too long. But, for now, here's the wrap for Korea...

We didn't have much of an agenda on our last day in Seoul. After getting packed up and checking out, we went to a nearby Korean BBQ place to try "samgyeopsal" (grilled pork). Luckily, our second Korean BBQ experience was much better than our first; the waitress spoke excellent Chinese (yay!) and helped explain how to eat everything, and the food was yummy, too. Actually, it turns out that in general, Chinese goes a lot further than English in Korea. I'll have to remember that next time. After the meal, instead of getting candy or mints, we got free yogurt drinks (aka "yang le duo"). I love the yogurt drinks; I used to drink crates of them when I was a kid spending summers in Taiwan, so I was pretty happy about that.

We went walking around the neighboring area after eating; first to Shinsegae, a department store, and then to Namdaemun market (much like any other street market in Asia, with lots of yummy-smelling street food). Then, we hung out in the Myeungdong (downtown) area for awhile, just window shopping and marvelling at the hordes of shoppers.

I watched a street vendor guy make this fried potato strip thing, which I thought was pretty cool:


He managed to cut the potato in one long strip, so it was like a continuous potato chip. I guess it appealed to my inner geek, somehow.

Finally, we stopped by the Lotte department store, right by our hotel. We both love department store food courts in Taiwan, so we decided we had to see if Korean department stores were similar. Sure enough, the basement was filled with a huge variety of food stands. Not only that, they had a centralized ordering system, so that patrons could place an order, wait until their number came up, and then proceed to the appropriate place to pick up their food. I think the system cut down a lot on people loitering near the stands, and made everything more orderly.

We also briefly visited the "Temple of Heaven", before finally heading to the airport:


Anyway, it was a fun (albeit short) stay in Korea, and I look forward to going back again soon.

Seoul, Korea: Day 2

We weren't too jetlagged on our first morning in Seoul; getting up around 7am after a good night's sleep. We had a list of sights from a Korean friend, but no idea how to get to them, so we headed for the concierge desk, where she not only told us where everything was, but how best to get there, and most importantly, what to eat.

After a quick stop at G25 (a Korean store much like 7-11) for breakfast, we were off to the Gyeongbokgung, which used to be the main palace of the Korean royal family. We had a great time wandering around the grounds, even thought my foot was kind of gimpy from the night before. Good thing I'd thought to bring my ankle brace! I think we spent maybe 2 hours there, before heading to Insadong (a shopping area) for lunch.

I took a couple of photos that I thought were decent:



At the concierge's suggestion, we went to Gugong, a restaurant specializing in bibimbap. We decided to order one of their set menus for two people; it came with a regular bibimbap, a dolsot (stone pot) version, and a mung bean (aka green bean) noodle salad. I added an order of seafood pancake too that, and I could tell that the waitress thought we were over-ordering, but she doesn't know D like I do. Lunch was delicious! We'd been a bit disappointed with the previous night's dinner, but this meal restored our faith in Korean food. I especially liked the mung bean salad; I hadn't had anything like it before, and the pieces of noodle were nice and "crunchy" or "q-q" (as the Taiwanese say).

After lunch, we wandered around Insadong for a bit looking at all the arts and crafts stores, before deciding to hit Changdeokgung, another palace nearby. This particular palace had been inhabited by members of the royal family until 1989, and so it was grander and more modern in places. It was also only accessible via tour, so we were forced to follow around a huge group of English-speaking tourists. That pretty much killed my experience; I enjoyed our time at the Gyeongbokgung much more, in no small part due to the ability to avoid the crowds. It's really difficult to take any good photos at all, when there are people everywhere.

From here we decided to cab it home to our hotel, where we got the concierge to help us buy tickets to Nanta, a cooking-themed show that we'd heard was extremely popular. It was an interesting audience; primarily English, Japanese, or Chinese-speaking. The man to D's left was from Ghana, and said that he and his group had been in Korea for a month (!) on a cultural exchange program. Pretty cool.

There were five actors in the cast, and they spent most of the time doing percussion with various kitchen implements. There was also some juggling, some fire-throwing, some physical comedy, a little bit of audience interaction, lots of knives being thrown, and very very little speaking, which was good for the mixed-language crowd. Anyway, the show was cute, but it was very much Asian-style humor, and I wondered if it would have mass appeal on Broadway, etc.

Nanta "Cookin":


From there, we walked to a traditional Korean restaurant called Hanmiri, where we were served an amazing X course meal. I will let the photos speak for themselves; suffice to say that we were both stuffed and that all the food was delicious.

Seoul, Korea: Day 1

Just before leaving Taipei, a gate announcement was made: our boarding time was delayed to 2:30pm, but we would depart as scheduled, and that the airline apologized for the delay. Our original boarding time was 2:15pm, and I'm pretty sure there's no way an American airline would bother to announce, let alone apologize, for a 15 minute delay. In the end we boarded at 2:25pm anyway.

We arrived in Seoul on time with all our luggage intact. D nearly forgot his warmup jacket on the airplane, but he remembered in the terminal and ran back to get it. When he got there, the flight attendants had already discovered it and tagged it by seat number; he showed them his boarding pass to get it back.

Everything in Korea seems to be supremely organized. The airport is clean and easy to navigate, we cleared customs quickly as there were many queues, and when we got out there was a big screen telling us where to get our luggage, by carousel number. After exiting the airport, we headed for the KAL limousine bus ticket counter, where we bought two tickets for about $11 apiece, to travel 80 minutes to our hotel, the Westin Chosun Seoul. There were probably 20 different bus stands, all numbered. Once we got into the right line, a baggage handler came by to tag our bags, and then later, a woman in a hotel uniform came by to check us off of her reservations list. There was basically no danger of us feeling lost at all.

The bus itself was super nice too; large leather chairs, tons of legroom, and a big screen TV at the front, playing Korean soap operas.

The view from the back of the bus:


The ride was nearly 80 minutes long, but it went by really quickly, and we arrived at our hotel around 8:30pm.

Apparently the hotel representative at the airport had automatically checked us in as soon as she found us, so as soon as we arrived, the bellhop whisked us and our luggage to the front desk to pick up our keys, and then we were immediately escorted to our rooms. Speaking of which, the keys worked by proximity sensor, so there was never any fiddling with the locks. Awesome.

We took about an hour to shower, change, and examine our rooms (great view of Seoul Plaza) and then asked the concierge for a dinner recommendation. She said it was pretty late for most restaurants, but she finally pointed us to Arirang, just across the street. I managed to trip over the curb on the way there and twisted my foot, which was unfortunate as we had quite a bit of sightseeing planned for the next day, but I decided not to worry about it for the time being.

Arirang served Korean BBQ; sliced beef and marinated beef, which of course came with tons of side dishes. The marinated beef and the side dishes were good, but the sliced beef was not very good at all; very fatty and hard to chew. The price wasn't exactly the cheapest, either, but I guess we couldn't be too picky at nearly 10pm.