Seoul, South Korea

We've just finished a 5 day quick trip to Seoul, South Korea.  We intentionally planned this as a short stay, just to have a business meeting and to hopefully get a glimpse of the Korean Church.  We had no idea we would love Korea so much, and it has definitely made our bucket list for future travel.  This visit was only to Seoul and we would love to see more of the countryside someday.

Mike's business acquaintance, Yong Ho, and his wife, Jae Seon, were incredibly welcoming and planned out most of our visit for us (whew...).  Jae Seon owns a hotel right in the heart of Myeong-dong, a very hopping shopping/eating/tourism district, and set us up with a great stay there.

Admiring our cool toilet, just like the City Deli's, that does everything you could want "down under"

This is Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest church congregation in the world.  It has somewhere in the range of 800,000 members.

Jae Seon and Yong Ho took us to a Korean barbecue restaurant our first evening there.  Hot coals are placed in the center of the table and thin strips of beef are cooked right at the table.  My favorite thing?  The servers had scissors and would trim off every little piece of fat as it cooked.

They also arranged a day tour of Seoul.  One of our stops was Gyeongbukgung Palace, the main palace of the Joseon dynasty.

We watched the changing of the guard here.

Insa-dong is a traditional shopping area where it's required that the signage be in Korean, even Starbucks.

 

This is the street right outside our hotel.  In the evenings it would be packed with pedestrians and vendors.  Any night we didn't have plans, we would grab street food for dinner.  The shops all stayed open until at least 10:00.

We sampled some amazing (unhealthy!) street food--hotdog on a stick breaded with either french fries or ramen noodles, eggs hard boiled and deep fried in a little cornbread loaf, gigantic ice cream cones, a crepe with nutella and banana and cornflakes, meat skewers, fresh juices.  Also lots of squid and octopus but I kept my distance from those guys.

Little rolls of sushi.  The girls impress me sometimes--they loved these.

Yong's daughter, Susan, suggested we visit the DDP (Dongdaemun Design Plaza), a huge, unusual building with all things design.  We loved walking through the Design Lab where they had all uniquely designed products for sale.

One of our other stops on the tour was Jogyesa Temple, a Buddhist temple.  The temple and most of the streets of Seoul were decorated with these paper lanterns to celebrate my birthday on May 25 (or maybe it's also Buddha's birthday on that day?)

Little monks in training

Hey, it's Ms. Kelli Korea!!  We saw tons of school field trips throughout our day.  This teacher was very passionately telling her kids about the display in the Korean Folk Museum.

Fashion is all over the board in Korea!  This Minnie Mouse lookalike was interesting.  Hard to see it but the hat even has the black ears!

In Korean, the word for "four" is similar to the word for death, so 4 is considered unlucky.  Buildings either skip the 4th floor or change it to F.

That's ginseng?  Oh OK, thought it was something else for a minute... (we toured a ginseng highpressuresaleslockyouinuntilyoubuy company)

During our tour we had lunch at a traditional Korean restaurant, serving bulgogi, bibimbap, a Korean soup, and of course kimchi.  And when did it get so hard for me to sit cross-legged on the floor?!

Sunset from the terrace of our hotel.

Mike and I realized that we hear a lot about Korea, but for some reason we don't know a lot about Korea.  This was such an educational few days and it was great to have "locals" who could inform us. Some things that will stick with me:

• Immediately it was obvious that this is a country that appreciates excellence, orderliness, professionalism, and cleanliness.  The airport was beautiful, roads and traffic were organized, our taxi driver always wore a suit and apologized profusely if he was at all late.  All the staff members at our hotel (many of whom were young adults) were dressed in crisp uniforms, greeted us immediately with big smiles, worked hard, and were never seen chit-chatting with each other.  And there is no tipping--this service is just expected.  It sounds like Former President Park Chung-hee was instrumental in moving the country forward.  I'm interested in learning more about how it happened.
• I had heard much about the pressures in the educational system (a really interesting book I read is called The Best Schools in the World).  Sounds like this is very real and many families will try to send their kids outside of the country for school to avoid some of this.
• We saw a handful of women openly walking around with big bandages on their faces, obviously from cosmetic surgery.  I googled and found out Korea has a huge cosmetic surgery industry.  The Gangnam ("Gangnam Style") neighborhood is like a Beverly Hills (even has a street called Rodeo Drive) and there are plastic surgery places all over.  I found this super interesting article about it:  http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/about-face. Because of the emphasis on outward beauty, this is also a place to buy inexpensive cosmetics.  In our area, there were at least a dozen different skincare stores and each of them would have shops in nearly every block.  As we flew into Shanghai, we saw Chinese women hefting bags of duty free skincare products.

We're now in Shanghai for the first of our three international long stays, while Mike works.  We're getting settled in an apartment and looking forward to catching our breath a little for the next month.