Seoul

The next few days I would spend traveling around Seoul. I stayed in a hostel in Myeongdong which is near the heart of the city. Myeongdong is probably the Seoul equivalent of Times Square in NYC. It has huge malls and department stores, big Christmas displays, and crowded streets filled with local and foreign tourists. It’s a good central location, although a bit hectic, especially on the weekend nights. 

The hostel was nice. It’s my favorite type of hostel, where the bunk room has a bunch of cubicals. There are 2 main types of hostels there are rooms that have a bunch of bunk bends in the room, or there are cubicle rooms. The cubicle rooms are far superior. The best usually has 3 walls and you enter your cublicle from the foot of the bed and have walls to your left and right and a curtain at the foot you can close. Usually there is space for your backpack in the cubicle as well. Bunk bed hostels are more common, usually slightly cheaper, and definitely less nice. It’s jusually just 4 bunk beds in one room, you may or may not have a curtain, and you store your bag under your bed in a small drawer.w This is much less quiet and dark, so generally just not as nice, although it can be more social because people can’t hide away alone. That being said,the cubicle isn’t large so most people end up in the common areas anyway so it works out. 

While working in the common area I met a French girl who just moved in to the hostel. She is on a working holiday visa and just took a position working for the hostel the same day i arrived. So she will stay there for free in exchange for a couple hours of work a day and a small stipend to cover her other expenses. She had been in Korea for a few months now traveling around and gave me some ideas of places to go which was helpful and nice.

Before I arrived I contacted my friend Seong, who I went to university with at Oregon State. He is Koreans and returned here after finishing his engineering degree in 2018. He took me to a really delicious Michelin start restaurant that served traditional Koreans buckwheat noodle coup. It’s a cold soup with noodles and beef and we got it with a side a bulgogi and also a pork dumpling soup. Korean dishes come with soooo many sides like pickled radish, spiced green onion, kimchi crab, kimchi, seasoned seaweed, and some other sides as well. I wasn’t a big fan of the crab which is eaten with the shell on and is a bit crummy for my taste and some of the kimchi was too spicy, but the food was good. He was so excited to show me lots of Korean foods and I was happy to try so many things. Next we wandered around Seoul at night before ending up at a Korean fried chicken shop where we got sticky soy fried chicken and a side of picked radish, both were delicious, although the sauce was a bit sweet for my preference, I still enjoyed it. We had drinks with our chicken a mix of Korean beer and soju, Korean rice vodka. It was strong and I tapped out after one drink. I could already feel the effect despite the large amount of food id eaten. Finally we went for dessert. It had a shaved ice like base, although I believe it’s shaved frozen milk, topped with sweet red bean, sweetened condensed milk, mochi, chocolate, and this light brown nutty powder. It was strange and delicious. Id absolutely get it again. 

The next day I spent wandering around Seoul. I was a bit sleepy, I think the travel days was catching up to me a bit so I just spent the day wandering through the streets within a mile or so of my hotel and sitting in parks and people watching. It was a nice way to spend the day and I had a few Koreans university students come up to me and ask if they could practice speaking English with me. I of course was happy to participate in chatting and they told me all about Seoul and their lives and gave me suggestions of things to do. It was really nice. 

I also visited the Hanock village, an area preserved of traditional Korean buildings. It’s a bit of a tourist attraction, but it’s heat and highlights a lot of traditional Korean art, architecture, and culture. There are places here where people can rent Hanook, the traditional Korean dress and the streets are filled with Koreans and foreigners dressed up in traditional clothes doing cute little photoshoots. 

For dinner that evening I went to the bottom floor of the mall. Food courts here are typically quite good and offer and interesting variety. I tried a Korean version of sushi which is wrappedin a thin tofu instead of seaweed and a crab spring roll. Both were delicious. I also got some muscot grapes which are incredibly delicious. They are large green grapes, burying with flavor a perfect blend of sweet and tart.