Even though we have a few half-written blog posts about Thailand, Cambodia & Vietnam eagerly awaiting our attention, we felt the need to write about South Korea and get it published sooner rather than later. Perhaps this is because more than one person told us that the country was “boring”; perhaps it's because we feel like there's not so much information out there for travellers (whereas there is a wealth about south-east Asia); or perhaps it's just because we've had such a great time here that we can't wait to tell you about it!
Here's a brief summary of how we spent our 10.5 days here:
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| Seoul Base Camp- panelling by Chris |
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| Jeonju - hanok house |
You may notice a theme – we were continually amazed by the delicious food that we tried. There really wasn't anything we didn't like, and since you generally receive several banchan (side dishes) with each meal – with free refills – you will never go hungry! We even felt comfortable ordering at random.
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| Paht bingsu |
Here is a list of local foods that we ate, for posterity =) This doesn't include many random snacks we grabbed along the way!
Mystery meal in Seoul – a bibimbap-like item (see below) with barley or some similar grain, instead of rice; mushroom & lasagna-noodle soup; and a thin noodle soup with shellfish. This was our first “point & shoot” menu experience ;-)
Soondeh- blood sausage
Pajeon – somewhere between pancake & omelette; chock full of onions
Paht bingsu – ice flakes topped with ice cream, red beans, dduk (rice cakes), fruit & whatever else they feel like adding...
Bibimbap – a bowl of many, many vegetables & rice, topped with an egg. We had this in the originating town (Jeon-ju) with over 25 ingredients, and later we had a free one at a temple – see below!
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| Bibimbap |
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| Sides for bibimbap!! |
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| Soon to be sashimi |
Shellfish BBQ (grill your own)- including
fresh octopus that wiggled and jiggled inside...
Pork BBQ (grill your own) - with plenty of banchan, soju (sweet potato liquor) and great company, and finished with mool naent myeon (buckwheat noodles in chilled soup – icy and delicious!)
Choose your own fish for sashimi or as you like it, at Jagalchi Fish Market
Ssambap – rice & banchan which you wrap in various types of leaves, served with fermented soybean stew
Bbang - red bean pastries
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| Ssambap |
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| Bbang - two types |
Also 3 quite special pizzas – chicken, garlic and sweet potato (from Dominoes!);
one with a green tea crust; and bulgogi (beef) & sweet potato with an Imsil (Korean-made) cheese-stuffed crust. And of course, many different kinds of kimchi (fermented vegetable in chilli sauce...Lisa was familiar with the most common version, cabbage, but apparently there are over 200 different kinds! That's why you can buy a special “kimchi fridge” in Korea ;-) Radish was particularly nice.
And cake for breakfast, courtesy of the lovely Jyeon-Ah, our host in Busan!
There is one particular day which we'd like to describe in detail, because it was especially good for a lot of different reasons. On our first night in Busan, we joined a Couchsurfing meet-up at a seafood BBQ place. Lovely local, Sunny, arranged everything and even picked us up from the Metro station. Ironically, one of the other attendees was Talisa, an Indonesian girl who was staying with the same couchsurfing host that we were (she just beat us to the honour of being Jyeon-Ah's first couchsurfers!). It was funny to meet her at dinner and then go home together.
The whole group, minus Talisa, reconvened the following morning for a hiking trip up nearby Bongrae mountain. We all piled in Thorsten's (German engineer working in Busan for a few months) car and headed for the hills! It was just a short drive to the mountain and we were soon heading up the path to the peak. Till (German guy who's travelling around Asia for several months) raced on ahead, but the rest of us sauntered along quite slowly, chatting to local people as we passed them. We couldn't help but notice an inordinate amount of outdoor gyms – seems weird to hike halfway up a mountain to work out, but we guess it's common in Korea. Saves on the gym membership!
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Sara, Thorsten, Sunny & Chris
at Beomeosa |
Lisa spotted a sign for Beomeosa temple and made a beeline for it. The others (except Till, who was probably at the top already!) followed her and we arrived in time to catch the end of a ceremony (Sunny said this is a daily occurrence). The temple was covered in beautiful murals and had a line of super-cute Buddha statues. We paused to enjoy some Korean cookies (courtesy of Sunny) and some huge oranges (courtesy of Thorsten). Then Sunny broke the news that the temple would be serving a free bibimbap lunch after the ceremony! We called Till and he came to join us for a hearty lunch. Everyone was really sweet, asking Sunny if we'd enjoyed our lunch and giving us extra “dessert” (small squares of glutinous rice – better than they sound!).
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| Free lunch! |
Now we were ready to reach the peak...if only we could find it. As we ascended, we entered a huge cloud and it became very misty (but thankfully also much cooler!). We eventually reached a marker at a “lookout” point (not much to look at!) and celebrated with a glass of makgoelli (cloudy rice wine). Then, we split into two groups- Till & Lisa were determined to visit the other two peaks on the trail, and convinced Sara & Chris to join them; Sunny & Thorsten headed back towards the car. Ironically, after wandering around in the clouds for a while, the larger group found that they'd gone the wrong way (affording them the opportunity to meet 2 cute dogs and some huge free-range chickens!); whereas Sunny & Thorsten ended up on the other peaks! Finally we all managed to reach the car (in fact, we returned to find Sunny & Thorsten sound asleep in the front seats!). As we arrived there, a Korean woman came up and randomly gave Till a bag of chips. Sunny said it was because Korean ladies like handsome foreign men ;-) Actually, Lisa thinks it was intended for Chris, but he'd just ducked off to the bathroom!
We crammed our sweaty selves back into the car and Thorsten dropped Chris & Lisa at the Metro station. We were off to watch a practise session of traditional Korean drumming by Jeong-Ah's percussion group “Duruk”, who meet every week at a school in central Busan. In fact, this is where she met her husband!
The percussion was great (see the video), although it did look like awfully hard work, and the group was so welcoming. They describe themselves as a family, and it really seems to be true as everyone brings their kids along. Apparently we were their first foreign visitors. Talisa was also there and one of the little girls enjoyed playing “rock, paper, scissors” with all of us, although she had some unusual rules that we didn't quite understand...
Talisa left a bit early to go to the jimjilbang, but we took the group's invitation to join them for dinner & soju-drinking. We were duly slotted into someone's car and set out to a restaurant. After slipping off our shoes, we took our places on the floor around a low table. There was a huge amount of banchan, including some crab claws in a chilli sauce, and we were asked to select the meat for our table. The majority of the menu was beef but our neighbour recommended a type of pork, so we chose that one. The waiters threw a bucket of hot coals into the well in the center of the table, and slapped a metal grill tray on top, and we were left to cut & cook our meat (see point 2 below). It was really tasty & there was plenty to go around, as well as our ever-full shot glasses of soju to wash it down. Jyeon-Ah explained that it was very rude to let our glasses stay empty! We also managed to squeeze in a little of the amazing honey-soy (?) marinated pork that our neighbouring table had selected. And in the interest of spreading English slang around the world, we taught the group the term “pass out” (what happens if you drink too much soju!) which they put to use immediately =)
Eventually we were all stuffed, and baby Su-Min had been asleep in a corner for quite some time, so we bade our good-byes to the drummers (who insisted on paying for our meal, so they also learned the term “my treat”!) and hopped in a taxi with our hosts for the short journey back to their apartment.
Finally, some things we noticed about South Korea & Koreans:
- Food items surprised us – we quickly learned NOT to think we knew what something would taste like, just from looking at it. And we ate a lot of red bean paste – but luckily we liked it!
- A big pair of scissors is pretty handy to deal with long pieces of kimchi, stubborn shellfish, strips of meat, and anything else that can't be manipulated with chopsticks & spoon. Normally these items are cut by the customers themselves, after the food has all be served.
- Korean people are not so good at standing in a line; nor at respecting any kind of personal space. Prepare to barge and be barged!
- Although there is an incredible amount of forest & small mountains throughout the country (and subsequently many national parks & hiking trails), we were never alone on a hike. Koreans are such keen hikers that it's perfectly normal for ¼ or more of the people on your Metro carriage to be dressed in full hiking gear, complete with backpacks & hiking poles. We did laugh when we saw hoards of such people disembarking from buses at Seoraksan and heading straight for the cable car – especially since it was an incredibly cloudy day and even the ticket office had a sign up, warning about “poor visibility due to fog”.
- Over half of all stores in South Korea must be either coffee shops or hiking gear stores. Unfortunately this doesn't make prices more competitive – it's not unusual to pay US$ 5 for a cup of coffee, which came as a shock after the amazing low prices in south-east Asia. The best (and cheapest) one that we found was a Korean version of ubiquitous (in Korea) chain Paris Baguette, which sold coffee for a reasonable US$ 2 and had free samples of many of their pastries (helpful – see point 1).
- There do not seem to be many non-Asian tourists here. At a guess, many of the people we saw at tourist destinations such as the grotto were actually Korean. Subsequently, most of the signage at museums etc is only in Korean (although the title for each information board or section might be written in English, just to tease you!).
- It seems impossible for tourists to buy a SIM card for their phone (something which is easy in most, of not all of the countries we've visited on this trip). It is, however, possible and reasonably simple to rent a mobile phone (or it would've been, if the phone rental company hadn't moved their office without updating the website!). We later found out that the National ID number which we would require to buy a SIM card is in fact, issued automatically for everyone once they've been in the country for longer than 3 days.
- The Metro systems (especially in Seoul) are really extensive, but have lots of features to make them easy to use. Here's a little video that Lisa took of the “arrival fanfare” and train location screen; and here's a very funny song that someone wrote, based on the “transfer station” music that we heard so often! But don't bring your wheelie suitcase, because there are a LOT of stairs...
Now we are enroute to Japan on the PanStar luxury cruise. Pity we are travelling in "ferry class" - they woen't even let us enter the nice lounge, so we are left to wander the decks with lots of noodle-eating schoolchildren! (and also, their wi-fi is so dire that we've had to publish this post in Japan!)
The percussion was great (see the video), although it did look like awfully hard work, and the group was so welcoming. They describe themselves as a family, and it really seems to be true as everyone brings their kids along. Apparently we were their first foreign visitors. Talisa was also there and one of the little girls enjoyed playing “rock, paper, scissors” with all of us, although she had some unusual rules that we didn't quite understand...
Lisa spotted a sign for Beomeosa temple and made a beeline for it. The others (except Till, who was probably at the top already!) followed her and we arrived in time to catch the end of a ceremony (Sunny said this is a daily occurrence). The temple was covered in beautiful murals and had a line of super-cute Buddha statues. We paused to enjoy some Korean cookies (courtesy of Sunny) and some huge oranges (courtesy of Thorsten). Then Sunny broke the news that the temple would be serving a free bibimbap lunch after the ceremony! We called Till and he came to join us for a hearty lunch. Everyone was really sweet, asking Sunny if we'd enjoyed our lunch and giving us extra “dessert” (small squares of glutinous rice – better than they sound!).
Talisa left a bit early to go to the jimjilbang, but we took the group's invitation to join them for dinner & soju-drinking. We were duly slotted into someone's car and set out to a restaurant. After slipping off our shoes, we took our places on the floor around a low table. There was a huge amount of banchan, including some crab claws in a chilli sauce, and we were asked to select the meat for our table. The majority of the menu was beef but our neighbour recommended a type of pork, so we chose that one. The waiters threw a bucket of hot coals into the well in the center of the table, and slapped a metal grill tray on top, and we were left to cut & cook our meat (see point 2 below). It was really tasty & there was plenty to go around, as well as our ever-full shot glasses of soju to wash it down. Jyeon-Ah explained that it was very rude to let our glasses stay empty! We also managed to squeeze in a little of the amazing honey-soy (?) marinated pork that our neighbouring table had selected. And in the interest of spreading English slang around the world, we taught the group the term “pass out” (what happens if you drink too much soju!) which they put to use immediately =)
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