9/13: Seoul for Chuseok

Kimchi Fries at Vatos In Itaewon

Eulwang Beach in Incheon

Lotte World in Seoul

Hello Kitty Café in Hongdae

Coffee Shop in Insadong

Deoksugung Palace

Namdaemun: One of the eight gates that surrounded the city during the Joseon Dynasty

MyeonDong Shopping Area in Seoul

Itaewon in Seoul

City Hall

Icecream cones in Insadong

Eulwang Beach In Incheon

Lotte World

"Trevi Fountain"



Psy in MyeonDong

One of the biggest holidays in Korea is Chuseok which happens in September as is basically the Korean version of Thanksgiving and therefore we had no school on Wednesday-Friday and got 5 days off! It also meant that it was virtually impossible to travel around Korea because all Koreans are traveling to and from cities to be with their families. Imagine trying to fly on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and triple that since Korea is such a small, densely populated country. The only place that wasn’t supposed to be too terrible was Seoul because most people were leaving Seoul to go be with their families and therefore, enter foreigners. I had made arrangements with three other foreigners to go up to Seoul for a couple of days to see the city during the rare, only happens once in a year, population lull.

So early Wednesday morning, Maggie (the Irishwoman I met earlier), Lindsey (an American who started EPIK with me) and Abby (a New Zealander who started with me but lives in another city) and I all boarded the packed train to Seoul. This was the first time I was on a train in Korea and it was….interesting. All the seats were sold out which meant that we had to get standing room. The way it works is they have about 8 cars, 7 of which have assigned seats and Car #4 is always the food car aka the standing car. You can technically stand anywhere in the train if you have a standing ticket but in car 4 there are seats you can sit in if you are lucky or if you purchase something from the train. Car #4 was packed so for a while we just tried to find a place to stick our feet and hoped that we wouldn’t fall over. Luckily this nice man who was sitting at the “bar” seats took our bags and put them by his feet which helped a bit. And then after a couple of stops he motioned that he was getting off and we should buy something so we could sit in his seat. Two of us fit on the seat and the rest of us sat but this nice halmoni (grandmother/old lady) gave us newspaper to sit on. The trip was off to a great start.

My first glimpse of Seoul was awesome. You have to cross the Han River to get into Seoul and it reminded me of taking the metro across the Potomac as you go into Virginia. That beauty that comes with nature and civilization where you can see the entire city as you ride across the water. We arrived at Seoul Station and took the subway to our hostel in Hondae and even that was awesome. The city of Seoul is full of people hustling and bustling around and it feels so alive with energy. I loved it!! And our hostel was awesome. Maggie had stayed there before and we knew it was good. Seeing as how I am my mother’s daughter all I wanted to do was drop my bags and go exploring but we took some time to settle in and look some stuff up on the internet before heading out to explore.

We first met up with some of Abby’s friends in Insadong for lunch. Insadong is this ridiculously awesome neighborhood/couple of blocks that mixes artisan shops with tourist-y chachkies. It reminded me a lot of a Korean Eastern Market with people selling streetfood, actors on the street, wonderful little unique shops. I also got my first look at some pretty interesting food like poop shaped bread (this country is obsessed with “ddong”), phallic shaped ice-cream cones (don’t ask), hotteoks (cinnamon filled pancakes that are amazing!) and this weird honey string thing. At each honey shop they usually have three young guys who sing a chant as they take honey and stretch it and stretch it into strings that they mush together to become sweet candy. I fell in love with Insadong immediately!!!

As the sun fell we did some more exploring and shopping before heading out to the bars to experience some of Seoul’s nightlife. The first stop was an Irish pub followed by Ho Bar, a famous chain Korea that plays loud techno music, great people and great whistles. There was this really friendly Chinese guy with his girlfriend who kept buying us snacks and chatting with us. Not to mention the extremely attractive Korean guys who kept blowing whistles. I would soon learn that blowing whistles as bars is really popular in Korea and done throughout the country not only at bars but special events as well. We fist-pumped and danced the night away! The only downfall was I danced so hard my camera fell out of my pants and I didn’t notice until it was too long. Farewell to the most amazing camera that has traveled around the world with me!

The next day we headed to Lotte World which is the largest indoor amusement park in the world. Since it was Chuseok Lotte World had a 50% discount for all foreigners so of course we had to go. Before heading over to Lotte World we decided to just to grab a quick sandwhich or coffee but seeing as how I had only been in Korea for a couple of weeks I didn’t really understand that coffee shops are not open in the morning. Unlike in the US where the lines for Starbucks and Caribou Coffee wrap around the block in the morning, in Korea the shops are barely open. Coffee is something you drink later in the day and the shops actually stay open very late like 11 or 12pm. Therefore trying to find something for breakfast with a bunch of closed coffee shops wasn’t exactly easy and instead we had to opt for some good old fashioned greasy Dunkin Donuts. We then hopped on the metro and made the long voyage to the southern part of Seoul for Lotte World. The Lotte company is a huge company in Korea that has a lot of department stores so naturally we had to walk through an underground mall to get to the front gate. But it was awesome because as we were walking through this underground maze we actually found a replica of the Trevi Fountain, ONLY IN KOREA would there be a huge, beautiful, marble water fountain located underneath the city.

              Finally arrived at Lotte World and spent our day running in and out of rides including an underground roller coaster and the gyro spin which is supposed to be like you are in a tornado. I did not enjoy that one at all! It was a blast except that it was so hot. The way Lotte World is set up is that there is an indoor and outdoor park with the outdoor park containing more of the huge rides. We were able to break up the day with some terrible kpop concerts including a band full of scantily clad girls marching around. Unfortunately by 3 or 4 the park became more and more crowded and the lines for all the rides were upwards of a 60-120 minute wait. After 4pm the ticket prices are half and therefore people flock to the park. Since every ride was more than an hour wait, we decided to go home to rest before going back out for dinner and drinks later.  I’m so glad we rested up a little bit because there were a lot of people from our orientation who were in Seoul that weekend so we met up with a lot of them later to see more of Seoul’s nightlife!
            We wanted to explore a little bit more of the surrounding areas of Seoul on Friday so after having an amazing American breakfast at this little restaurant (hashbrowns, eggs, pancakes and bacon!) we headed to the Incheon International Airport. From there, there are buses to some of the beaches surrounding Incheon. I was super excited to see the beaches here especially since this would be my first time seeing the Yellow Sea. For anyone unsure of where Korea is exactly it basically hangs off the east of China between China and Japan, surrounded by the Yellow Sea to the west and Sea of Japan to the east. The ride from the airport to the beach took forever because of intense Chuseok traffic. Koreans like to go glamping (glorified and glamorous camping) and the land surrounding Incheon Airport is perfect for glamping leading to a whole bunch of traffic. Finally made it to the right bus stop and began walking to the beach. Along the way there was so much street food and one particularly awesome looking fried thing looked amazing so I had to try. What a mistake! It was a corndog that had been battered and fried and then coated in sugar and ketchup. I felt so sick after eating that!!
            We made it to the beach and we were less than impressed. The water was really
murky with a bunch of stuff floating in it and the sand itself was rather coarse and yet people were still playing in the ocean. But what was so interesting was the fashion. I had noticed the Korean fashion basically consists of really short shorts/bottom and really high collared shirts (and I mean high-collared). They also really value pale skin and in almost all the creams you buy here there is  whitening agent. Therefore on the beach, people were either in the water or they were in a tent in the shade. Plus most of them were completely covered up wearing wet-suit looking bathing suits. The water wasn’t even that cold! The only people in bathing suits on the beach were two other foreigners. I couldn’t believe it! In the US the beaches are flooded with people sunbathing but here people were fighting over shade and when they were in the sun were covered head to toe. It was insane.
            Since we couldn’t really sunbathe we instead just wandered along the beach. Even though the water looked pretty dirty and the sand was less than pristine I thought it was beautiful as the beach was in this little cove surrounded by smaller mountains and hills. I really liked it and wished I could have sunbathed without standing out so much.  We also spent some time wandering around the restaurants that line the beach. They all basically sell the same thing but it’s cool because they have the fish in tanks right outside the restaurant swimming around. Plus there were a couple of little game shops so Abby and I played darts and won a little stuffed animal bear.
            The beach was nice but after a little while we headed back to Seoul where we went to the Itaewon neighborhood. This is basically little foreigner world. I heard it was where you can get American foods, American clothes, English speaking barbers, etc. I really wasn’t that impressed by it. I didn’t see half as much American stuff as I expected nor did I find good stores for shopping. Abby and I wandered around a for a while trying to get a feel of the neighborhood but I couldn’t find one store that I liked. However, we were able to get Mexican food at a really well known restaurant called Vatos for dinner which I had been craving! I didn’t realize how much I liked Mexican food until I got here. The food was pretty good, but the portions were so small. I couldn’t believe it! I thought when I ordered a burrito it would be huge like at home but instead it was smaller than many of the meals I had already had.
            Our last day in Seoul consisted of just wandering around and exploring more of the city. The day started by going to Ewha Women’s University to see the gorgeous campus and meet some of Abby’s friends for dinner. This area was really cool and trendy with a bunch of make-up stores and coffee shops. Plus I think we might have found the wedding district as there were so many wedding dress stores all over. Along with a bunch of wedding dress shops we found an awesome cheese restaurant. Basically everything on the menu had cheese in it so I got a fantastic tuna cheese kimchi rice ball plus a bacon and cheese and kimchi bowl. This place was so cute and the food was delicious! After breakfast, we headed to MyeonDong which is the main shopping district in Seoul with a bunch of foreigner stores like H&M, Forever 21, Uniqlo, Teenie Weenie (apparently an American brand), etc. This place was crazy busy bustling with so many people. I couldn’t believe how packed the streets were and how crazy the stores were. The stores were huge too like H&M which was like five floors. I also found it funny that in many stores they had sections for couples. In Korea it’s really fashionable and trendy for couples to match from head to toe and therefore many stores had complete sections devoted to it!
            We still had some time to kill before we had to head back to Seoul Station to head back to Jochiwon so while the others went to the station to rest I decided to head over to City Hall. I am so glad I did because they had some event going on outside of City Hall for Chuseok where women and men were wearing the traditional garb and handing out food. Not to mention there is a huge palace right next to City Hall that I was able to wander around for a bit. I love visiting the palaces and the juxtaposition of the old and new. These palaces are from dynasties that were around thousands of years ago and yet they are still standing and now surrounded by modern, dynamic skyscrapers. It is so cool!!! After looking around I decided to walk back to the station instead of taking the metro which let me get a better idea of the city and see more of it including one of the eight entrance gates to the ancient city center that now sits in the center of busy traffic circles. Finally made it back to the station and headed back to Jochiwon to complete the end of an awesome couple of days.
            My first impression of Seoul is that it is awesome. Being a foreigner in Seoul was so easy as almost everyone at the restaurants spoke English and a lot of the street signs and announcements were in English. It was so easy!! However, it also made me realize that I am learning much more about Korean culture by being in Jochiwon and in such a rural town. I am forced to listen and try to pick up as much Korean as possible when in Jochiwon and get to see how most Koreans live. What I also didn’t realize about Seoul that it is basically two cities. There is the one aboveground but then there is also one underneath the city that is the metro lines. The metro is so huge and runs all underneath the city and not only are there multiple stops on multiple lines but there are literally between 5-15 exits for each metro stop. It seems as if you could reach any building in Seoul without ever having to walk aboveground which I bet will be convenient in the winter. Overall, I loved Seoul! The city was huge and crowded and bustling with people. A lot of Koreans I know complain that it is too crowded but I thought that it felt alive and young and new! It was awesome and I would love to go back as soon as I can!