6/9 – We left at midnight between Wed/Thurs. arrived at 4am Friday, but couldn’t check in until after 2:30. We wandered around our hotel’s neighborhood for a while, and saw some neat stuff. A small park with some outdoor exercise gear (heavily in use by 6am), and a restaurant that was serving sit-down meals that was absolutely packed.

We ended up at a place called Cafe Onion, which had a neat variety of interesting pastries from traditional croissants to very un-traditional stuff. Their signature thing was a large bready canele-looking thing that was covered in a mound of powdered sugar. Delicious, and weirdly less sweet than I’d expected.

The place was PACKED by 7:30am – but weirdly, mostly with Japanese tourists? It’s probably in some K-drama that’s popular in Japan or something. But it was bizarre. Everyone in there was Japanese or white-ish.

We went to a palace and toured around, which was rad.

The palaces’ paintwork was super interesting, and there was SO much of it. Maintenance must be a nightmare. There were also some neat details – roof “trim” that showed what seemed to be clear evolution from a dragon to a Korean – the way those t-shirts show cavemen evolving into people, then into computer nerds. We took an English-speaking tour of the palace’s garden, which was long, exhausting, but gorgeous and super interesting. You’ll see in a later post the difference between Japanese and Korean “palaces”, but the Korean one was very chill and serene.

We parked our big stuff in a locker, but I didn’t sufficiently empty out my backpack, and carried around way too much rando shit. I ended up very, very wiped out. But we finally checked in, and then collapsed in a heap.

6/10 – At N Seoul Tower waiting for some sort of music/martial arts performance to start with Ei-Nyung’s high school friend, who lives in Seoul.

N Seoul Tower was super fun. The martial arts performance was super fun. Mostly katas, but then at the end they chopped a bunch of reed bundles with swords and polearms. The traditional Korean drumming was … very confusing. I kept trying to figure out what time they were playing in, and could not make it work.

I asked Ei-Nyung’s friend after the performance, because she used to play those kinds of drums, and she said that Korean traditionally drumming is always in a triangle. But it wasn’t 3/4, I think – there were parts that were in 4/4, parts that were in something else, constant tempo changes (which they all adjusted to immediately). It was really neat. But disorienting. And as with most “Traditional” drum performances, there’s a point where you’re like, “Oh, yeah – this is the rhythm section that gets you motivated to go kill your enemies.” It was great.

We wandered around the neighborhood a bit – ended up at this PIKNIK place to have breakfast. There are a LOT LOT LOT of cafes in Seoul. Like, in this neighborhood, we passed at least 50, while walking.

N Seoul tower had two things, aside from the usual ridiculous views that you’d expect from an observation tower.

1.) They had an array of massage chairs that were AMAZING. Legs, arms, back, neck, head. Huge pressure from little air bladders and textured fabric. Fantastic. 10 minutes for 1000 won ($1). Incredible. After all the walking, it was a godsend. We both assumed we’d get a massage in every single massage chair we passed for the rest of our time in Seoul, and technically, we did. We just didn’t see any more after this.

2.) The men’s room was the greatest bathroom I’d ever seen. The stalls were whatever. But the urinals were essentially right up against the viewing window without anything surrounding them. It was like you were peeing directly out of the tower onto the city from the sky. Brilliant.

Then we ended up in Gwangjang market, which was… not. This is probably the low point in the trip for me (…which isn’t that low! But it’s also the only time I got actually upset from frustration & exhaustion and crowds and hunger).

We also met up with Hannah, who you can see in the photo. But yeah – Gwangjang sucked. Too many stalls all serving basically the same things. Nowhere to sit. Too many people. No way to tell what’s good or bad or why or how, because everything is super overwhelming and crowded. Are these bindaeduk good? Or are the ones that look exactly the same, prepared in exactly the same way, in the stall right next to this one better? I have no idea. I have no idea how anyone could tell other than trying it. So combine a weird sense of analysis paralysis with HUGE CROWDS AND TIGHT SPACES AND NOWHERE TO SIT AND NEVER STOP AND WHERE ARE THE KIDS AND IT’S REALLY HOT and yeah – it wasn’t for me. At all.

6/11 –

I think this might have been the best sign we saw in Korea. You have to zoom in and look at the pictures of how not to use the escalator.

We went to a place for breakfast called Bonjuk. It was really close (and my legs and feet have just been trashed from a lot of walking over the last two days). I’m not normally a huge fan of jook – it’s just … kinda there. And this is a chain. So even though I’d suggested it, it was more “Hey, here’s a pretty Korean-y breakfast, we should do it,” than “I am very excited about how this is going to be.”

It was GREAT.

It was bulgogi with a lot of garlic, and “Shepherd’s Purse”, which I’d assumed was gonna be some seafood that was euphemistically named or something, but it was just an herb – the green stuff in the porridge.

The rice was porridge-y, but not obliterated. It was like having properly al-dente pasta, where the rice had structure and bite, but was still rich. The meat was salty and very garlicky, in a way that really worked well with the porridge without being overwhelming, but cancelling out the “boringness” of rice porridge.

The kids had a beef & seaweed version, which is like miyukgook, a soup that Ei-Nyung makes that is delicious. And she got a chicken & ginseng version, which was also very distinctly different and delicious.

Yeah, I was super impressed.

Then we went to a VERY INSTAGRAMMY little mall, and I got a shirt. We also went to a tiny cafe & got drinks. There’s strawberry milk everywhere, and some areas where there are like five independent cafes on every block. It’s bonkers. Ended up also getting a traditional-ish Korean dessert, which is a bit of what looks like corn syrup (traditionally honey) that’s then coated in corn starch and hand-stretched a bunch of times until you get like 2^14 little tiny strands of sugar, and then they wrap (filling) in a layer of the cottony sugar stuff. It was a whole rehearsed sales pitch for tourists, but ti was still a VERY GOOD sales pitch, and I was gonna get it anyway the moment we walked over to the stand, so I didn’t feel like I was coerced into something. 😀

Ends up looking like a lot of little cocoons – usually filled with nuts, but since Jin’s allergic to walnuts, we got them with smashed Oreos & chocolate. They were GREAT on the spot, but definitely worse as time went on. Did not age well. Apparently they’re called “Dragon’s Beard”.
6/12 – Breakfast this morning was a vanilla latte and this, which is “sujebi”.

It’s an anchovy-broth soup with vegetables and torn dough pieces. Really good, and like yesterday’s porridge, something I enjoyed quite a bit more than I thought I would.

And a little variety of fried chicken from last night. We went to a food truck gathering at the Han riverside over by Gangnam, which was clearly the rich part of town. Obvious from say, Lamborghini Urus sighting, and a bunch of people riding very expensive bikes on the bike paths. The chicken was alright. Soy garlic, yangnyam (spicy and sweet, this is when done well, my favorite fried chicken), and a bunch of fried chicken skin, which was GREAT, except that it was coated in honey butter sugar, which was way too much, and made it kinda blah overall. But it was really nice to sit outside riverside on the grass. As crowded as Gwangjang was, while this was a well-attended collection of food trucks, the crowds were somehow not overwhelming.

Self-explanatory. Over in Hongdae, where we went yesterday, which is like “fancy, hip, $$$ Telegraph Ave” for the Bay Area folks.

There used to be a “One Piece Cafe” in Seoul, which had a full-size replica (or at least something akin to it) of the Thousand Sunny, but unfortunately, that closed permanently a while back. They moved some of the stuff to a new place in Hongdae called “Play One Piece”, which is a merch shop.

Sadly, it wasn’t all that well stocked – or was stocked with later stuff in the storyline, which didn’t resonate as much with me. A lot of what they sold were figures, some of which were neat, but also bulky – we’re not gonna carry stuff like that around for 2.5 more weeks.  So that was a bummer, but it was still a neat place to go check out.

Kids and I went to the CoEx convention center/mall to meet up with @eingy. It was comically huge. Went to the aquarium, which was surprisingly decent.

The CoEx “library”. Apparently a real library. We also went to the CoEx aquarium, which was surprisingly decent. I’ve never seen an aquarium with meerkats and beavers, though. Pretty weird.

I also got a watch at CoEx. Weird to get a Japanese-themed watch in a Korean mall, but I’d never seen this Dragon Ball watch before, and this is very much an “If you know you know” kind of thing. Super, super obvious to any Dragon Ball fans (ran into one much later in the trip at the Kirby Cafe who commented on it positively), but if you don’t know, it’s just a weird kinda loud watch. 😀

Also, about half the taxi drivers in Seoul are out of their fucking minds. And yet seem to not have their cars utterly destroyed, so… yeah. But between a guy persistently doing 40% faster than the speed limit, someone who only binarily modulated the gas, and a dude who (successfully) basically pushed a bus out of the way in a lane they were already in… taxis were an ADVENTURE. They’d either be staid and normal or completely insane.

I would love a guided architecture tour of Seoul. It’s full of neat buildings. Ei-Nyung’s friend was talking yesterday about how there have been politicians who have pushed for big splashy “event “ architecture, and how it created a lot of tension with residents who wanted more spent on services.

…while I agree that money would be well spent on those in need, there’s no question that Seoul is an internationally top-tier city as a result, and if the focus was solely on pragmatism without a bit of showy nonsense, the city would be measurably worse. I dunno. It’s a weird balance. You spend on some flash, it attracts international attention & investment, the pool of money you have to spend grows. Does it ever actually get spent on those in need? Do they spend more as a result? I have no idea.

Quality art.

I’m surprised at the number of unmasked folks in Korea. I’d expected more. Seems like maybe 30% indoors, 10% in crowded outdoor spaces? We ended up getting caricatures drawn at a place that had a very distinctive style. Turned out alright. I think she captured Jin really well, but Kuno’s not super recognizable to me.