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Published: April 29th 2015
Our connection from Athens to Seoul was in Moscow and I was pumped to finally be stepping foot in Russia. Binnson has heard stories of Russia being a pretty racist place for Asians to travel to which has deterred us from getting there so far..... but I won't rule it out just yet! Although we weren't leaving the airport, we still had fun walking around checking out babushkas, lavish faberge eggs, and other such goodies - my favorite being a Putin t-shirt and cell phone covers vending machine :-)
We shot into the future and landed in Seoul late the next morning. As we were meeting up with some friends in Korea to tour around with, we hung out at the airport for a little bit waiting for one of them who was getting in to ICN around the same time as us. After finding him at the airport, we made our way via the express train and metro to our hostel in Seoul. The 5 of us decided to stay in a "family room" which consisted of 3 bunk beds crammed into one room. We all quickly claimed the top bunks before our other 2 friends arrived, first come-
first serve. This was semi regrettable later on when it was discovered that the beds were not bolted down to anything and would literally tip over as you climbed up or down if there was nothing weighing down the bottom.After staking our claim, the 3 of us navigated the metro to the War Memorial and Museum of Korea. We didn't plan on staying long but 3 hours later, a man working there informed us that it was time for us to leave as they were closing. We walked outside to the outdoor section containing giant missiles, ships, airplanes, and tons of other war vehicles, arguably cooler than the entire museum that we had just killed hours inside of.
Heading back to Dongdaemun, we checked out the Pyounghwa Clothing Market before deciding to try our luck at getting some street food. None of us spoke Korean but when we approached a street vendor with some tables under a tarp, the old lady cooking waved us over and offered Binnson and Russ a couple of toothpicks to test taste one of the dishes..... as they were chewing they both came to the same conclusion, "Is this skin?", "Ya, definitely skin texture",
MMM.... pig skin, glad I skipped the tester. Russ pointed to a different dish covered in red sauce and said we would take it, she grabbed a plate covered in plastic wrap and filled it up until the sauce was dripping off the sides. We sat under the little tarp eating the spicy dduk boke when the little old lady brought us over another small plate, inspecting it carefully and determining that it was chopped liver and a sausage type dish. I took a piece of the sausage and plopped it in my mouth when Binnson looked at me and said, "you know that's blood sausage, right?" I paused chewing, it was too late for me. The boys did their best to eat some of the liver even though neither of them were big fans, especially Russ... I thought he might throw up. As we were finishing up, we realized that we had no idea what this was going to cost us and we didn't know how to ask. Russ racked his brain and came up with a phrase that he remembered from his previous visit but really couldn't guarantee that he knew what it meant. He gave his best
go at Korean to the lady, she held up her first 2 fingers and a thumb, okay - 3,000KRW? 30,000KRW? We decided that we would start with a 10,000KRW bill (a little more than $10 CAD to put it into perspective) and see what happens. The lady attempted to communicate with us but we all stood there looking at each other thinking that she probably wants more money, she waved her hand in a motion that seemed to us like "Get the !@#$ out of my face" and got up to walk outside. We started walking away not really sure if we had offended her or if we owed her more money until we figured out that she was just getting us change from the stall beside, 3000KRW was the damage - good thing we didn't just throw an extra 20,000KRW at her and run away.
Tim and Yeon arrived not long after so we walked back to the hostel to meet up with them. Together, we all hopped back onto the metro to look for more late night eats- first stop was a little BBQ place where we ate some kalbi (pork ribs) before looking for
2nd dinner. Russ really wanted gamjatang and there was a 24 hour place right around the corner, it was really busy and when we walked in they informed Yeon that they had no tables, when a table did open up - Yeon asked again, this time they said they had run out of food. Tim and I blamed our caucasianness as we headed back to the street to look for a new 2nd dinner place. It was getting late and a lot of places were closing but there was still a couple of busy restaurants open in the area, Russ picked out a new place and this time Binnson and Yeon went in first to secure a table while the foreigners waited outside. After they had a table, we came inside and sat down with them- the waitress' face twisted with horror at the site of us and immediately informed Yeon in Korean that she didn't think foreigners would like the food here. We asked Yeon what "the food here" was and she informed us that the specialty at this place was a type of fermented stinky fish that is really an acquired taste that she doesn't even like. Conflicted
between feeling like we had something to prove to that lady and buying the expensive stinky fish, we settled on 3 huge pancheons (Korean savoury pancakes) and beers - an order that could be compared to going to a place famous for steaks and ordering baked potatoes. We were almost crying laughing as we joked about rating this place on trip advisor as 'THE place to get pancakes in Seoul' and 'The Most Amazing Pancakes Ever' and picturing a hoard of white people coming in ordering pancakes afterwards.
We started out the next day at the Changdeokgung Palace, purchasing tour tickets to the Secret Garden in the Chinese language time slot. After checking out the palace, we headed to the gate where we would start the secret garden tour - the man taking tickets stops at Tim and says to him, "This is the Chinese tour, do you speak Chinese?" "Yes," he replied laughing. The guy shakes his head and then looks at me, "and you?", funnily enough I probably speak the most Mandarin out of our entire group. We really just wanted to take pictures and with our limited time in Seoul we didn't want to
wait another hour for the English tour to begin. The Bukchon Hanok Village was walking distance from the palace and we wandered around there slowing making our way to the Gyeongbokgong Palace, pausing for various yummy snacks along the way. We stopped to take pictures of the cherry blossoms outside of the side entrance at Gyeongbokgong, and when we finally arrived to the entry gate the man working informed us that it is 5:01pm and the last entrance admitted is at 5:00pm. In a sort of disbelief we walked away disappointed and decided that we would go out to eat again, this time Tosokchon's famous samgyetang, ginseng chicken soup. On our way we noticed that there were massive gatherings of police all around the palace and areas around the blue house, buses were set up inches from each other forming giant barricades. The night before we had redirected our walk for food when we saw that the streets ahead were shut down due to a giant protest walking down a street, it was the one year anniversary of the Sewol ferry sinking and people everywhere were carrying white flowers. Apparently they were expecting major riots to happen this night and
had called in 10,000 troops in preparation. It was really something to see, I had never seen so many police gathered anywhere, but to be on the safe side we kept far away from the action that might be about to go down.
After our soupy goodness, we hiked up to the N Seoul Tower. The path was really nice and at the top was a huge gathering of people checking out the views and going up the tower. We walked around the grounds, opting out of the tower view, checking out the walls filled with Love Locks and all of the other fun things made out of a crazy number of locks - including full sized trees. It was getting late when we took the gondola back down so we hopped in taxis to another busy street area where we tested out our singing skills at a karaoke house. Working up an appetite, we made our second attempt at gamjatang- it was 1am by the time we finished and headed back to the streets to find a couple of taxis to take us back home, success!
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Local at work
I always love these snapshots of daily life. Great one.