A weekend in Seoul

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Seoul was a great weekend trip. Only two hours from Beijing, I landed in this much more modern city, though kind of just as big. We stayed at a cozy hostel, JK House, which I can recommend. The first thing me and my korean adopted friend did was of course eating. Korean food is very spicy and you always get a lot of small dishes. Then we walked around in an area nearby a university, there was a lot of shops, cafées and cool young people. But we waited until the evening to go night shopping in Dongdaemun, in the big warehouses. It was a new experience. The shopping is very good, but it's a bit hard to find sizes for me. The jewellery is very cute and cool. We came back to the hostel at around 3 am, after eating a biminbap.

The next day it was raining a bit, but we had decided that going to one of the palaces, Changdaekgung, was a good idea. I mean it's on UNESCO's world heritage list. So after getting up late and eating breakfast while the staff was having lunch at the hostel, we headed out. After the palace we walked through the old parts of the city, very many cute stores and coffee shops. The we headed to a traditional restaurant after getting some help from three older men, since we didn't know where to go exactly. There were many, many small dishes and we also drank this traditional alcoholic drink. The koreans got all red, since they are not good drinkers, but I think we were ok. It was anyway just a pre-drink since we were going out. We were'nt sure of where to go exactly, but we got advice to head to Ellui. The thing about Seoul is that they have very tricky adresses. The houses are nunmbered after which year they are built, so it's very important to know exactly where to go if you hail a cab. The other problem was that Korea (and China) had mid-autumn festival on Monday, a big holiday overe here. So we weren't sure wether clubs were gonna be fun or not. But Ellui was worth all the troble. A big and great club. In Korean clubs there are often DJ's playing house music and a big crowd dancing. We started to talk to some foreigners that were there for different reasons, for example quarter life crises. That is when you hit 30, and have a crises.
After getting home around 7 am, we slept for a long time. But being smart enough we had planned to go to a Korean bath house, which is mandatory if you are in Korea. It's huge... one floor for women, one for men. There you walk around naked, wash and scrub your skin for a long time, go to the many different pools. We booked body scrub, so now I'm kinda clean. Then we there's a common area of course where you have clothes of course. There you can hang out, watch tv, movies, play games, eat, go in saunas, sleep. And people do hang out there. It's nice.
After that we headed out togehter with a couple of adopted brothers from France. It was their first time in Korea, so we talked a lot about being from different cultures. We took them to karaoke, Naorebang, which also is mandatory if you are in Korea. It was fun and then we went to a club called M2. It was in the student area, so a lot of young people. It was warm and crowded and it was very fun.
The last and final day we were kind of tired. We started the afternoon off with going to a Korean barbecue restaurant. Then we walked around in an area with a lot of japanese people and we did some last shopping. We also went to a shopping mall getting make up in an asian style. Of course they made me more white (tanned is not in fashion) but very cute. I liked it. I warmly recommend to go to Seoul, it's a great city and also very comfortable.

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