CHRISTMAS in Korea "Gangnam Style"
We had seen on the Internet current temperatures of -6 and a low of -15 Celsius. But despite knowing this and preparing all our winter clothing, we weren’t prepared enough. The last real bitter freezing winter we felt was in SLC 2009, because last year while visiting was unseasonably warm. Well Seoul sure felt like a classic Utah winter. I’m sure as a normal resident going from car/subway straight into work or your house it wouldn’t be so bad. But for us tourists walking and taking photos and admiring the sites, the cold chill is biting.
Once again our vacation begins with an airport adventure, this time it was our fault. We had timed all of our trains and subways to the airport wrong, and got to the check-in counter with flight with just 10 minutes before departure time. Luckily FUK airport is so small and with the help of the attendant we zoomed through security and emigration. We got on the plane and within the hour we were in Seoul.
The ICN airport is known to be as one of the best airports in the world. It is only 10 or 11 years old, so everything is incredibly modern and new. Since we didn’t have a layover we weren’t able to fully explore the airport and its extra features. Apparently there is a golf course, spa, ice rink, casino, indoor gardens, and a Museum… and of course hundreds of high fashion stores. Reminds us of Singapore Changi Airport.
We took a train to Seoul station and then on to the subway system. Far easier than Tokyo’s, with the exception of 3 or 4 shades of “blue lines” that were barely distinguishable. We get to our destination: Gangnam Station, yes indeed our hotel was even called Gangnam Star Hotel. You may be familiar with the song/video, but we thought we should actually see what this neighborhood and “style” is all about. As I had mentioned the weather was very cold for us, so we decided to take it easy the first night and just wander around Gangnam and see the stores and restaurants. There were many restaurants to choose from, and a lot of variety. South Korea is known in Japan by all of our friends and co-workers as the place to go for food and shopping, and indeed they were right. We saw so many Japanese, Indian, even Mexican restaurants, but we wanted to eat things that we wouldn’t be able to eat in Japan. Though being vegetarians excludes us from probably 80% or more of traditional Korean dishes, but we managed. We found a place that had Bimbimbap. This is one of our most favorite foods ever. A hot stone bowl with layers of rice, veggies, an egg, and chili/sesame/etc sauce. Also every meal is accompanied by small amounts of Kimchi and other pickled veggies. Another big difference of eating in Korea vs. Japan are the utensils. Chopsticks are not wooden nor are they cylindrical shaped; they are metal and flat, also always accompanied by a long metal spoon.
After eating we continued walking around, but any excuse to get inside a warm building eventually drove us to call it a night. And return back to the hotel to experience Korean TV. It is interesting to see the close similarities of Japan and South Korea, especially through the media. The humor, the sound effects, the subtitling of everything is practically the same. But the technological look and contemporary style of Korean news and programs makes Japan’s look like it’s from the 1970’s. Now we know why so many Japanese people enjoy watching Korean TV dramas.
Anyways enough about TV, the next day we ventured on to the main downtown area of Seoul. Walking from palace to palace, discovering that Mondays are the “day off” for most places including the palaces. But luckily the largest and main one Gyeongbokgung was open. We were able to see the changing of the guards and then wander the grounds. The cold and hunger got to us, so onward we went. We went inside the national history museum to warm up a bit and we got to see a lot of traditional crafts and goods. Afterwards we explored the Bukchon area, then down to Myeong-dong shopping area. We ate some more bimbimbap and tried “soju” for the first time. It is one of the most popular drinks for South Korea. It was quite a bit stronger than we had anticipated and tasted a lot like rubbing alcohol. We then explored the underground shopping area, I found all the K-pop stores I could dream of, K-pop is far better than J-pop in many ways but I’ll save that topic for later. We saw the Namdaemun Market, an outdoor-ish small vendor street market. Definitely the place to get all the touristy items. We went back to the Gangnum area to escape the cold by wellll… eating some more. We had a delicious soup dish that had the best spicy flavor. Also throughout the day we found that in Seoul almost every store and restaurant big or small accepted credit cards! We couldn’t believe this. Having lived in Japan, yes including Tokyo (the largest city in the world) we can only use cash. We have been in huge department stores in Japan that cannot take a VISA but in a teeny tiny ma and pa restaurant the size of a coat closet we were able to use one. I give Seoul major respect for keeping up with times with technology. On that note; as you know Samsung and LG being from South Korea, every one on the subway had very large smartphones. I don’t know how America is in this manner, but when compared to Japan and their one-color screen flip phones, Seoul was some futuristic city. Even the subway stations all had touch screen ticket machines, and enormous sized touch screen “city-guide” devices. Again Tokyo is no where near such technology.
Christmas day, we walked all around the south-east area of Seoul. Seeing what a the normal areas look like. Samantha kept commenting on how Western it was; she said it felt like walking in downtown SLC, except the skyscrapers lasted more than 3 blocks. Maybe we’ve been away from our “comfort home” too long, but the sidewalks, the buildings, the normal sedan cars (no weird boxed vans, or 3-wheel trucks), and even the trees truly reminded us of an American city. But again this is Seoul and we presume that the smaller cities are probably not like this. We made our way back up to the area that had many of the closed but now opened palaces. But first some more food. A small little restaurant just out of the Anguk station, we ate delicious soup and even more bimbimbap. You would think we would be sick of bimbimbap by now, but every place has a different flavor and sometimes different veggies. We went to the Jeongjeon Royal Shrine. We spent a brief moment there before becoming too cold and moving on to a warmer place. We went back to the Namdaemun Market and had ourselves some Chichimi. This Korean dish is panacake/harshbrown like. It comes in many varieties but we had a potato and cheese one. Very delicious.
Well it being Christmas day we thought we should do something special and unique. We went to LotteWorld, an indoor amusement park. This area actually has a giant department store, hotel, movie theater, and an outdoor amusement park Magic Island. We couldn’t believe that there were so many rides and attractions INSIDE! Lines were way long, people were everywhere but this didn’t stop us from enjoying it. There was even a “Disney-like” Christmas parade.
After having our indoor fun we couldn’t fight our desire for Papa Johns Pizza. That’s right we found a Papa Johns. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we had passed it by. We got our pizzas and cheese sticks and back to our hotel to watch some good ole American reality TV.
Our brief trip soon came to an end, and we made sure to leave plenty of time to get to the airport this time.