First 24 Hours in South Korea

Yesterday, early in the morning, I left my house in Kunming, finally found a cab, and flew with all of my tons of stuff to Seoul. After a lay-over in Shanghai, I got into Korea in the late afternoon, and found that I could no longer use Chinese to get around. Despite this, I managed to accomplish all of the necessary things you need to do when entering a country: find an atm, use a pay-phone to call my friend here, and get on the correct bus to the hostel I'd booked on-line. Everything went really smoothly. Pretty much everyone I tried to talk to spoke English, which I was a little surprised by but was very convenient. I can only say "hello" in Korean, so I'm completely in the dark. But there are signs in English all over the place (and a fair amount in Chinese, too).

The hostel I'm staying at is pretty funky. Every wall has a different color, true to its online description, and they play a crazy mix of hipster-esque/Asian-asthetic music in the downstairs lobby/sitting room. It is located downtown near several "hip" neighborhoods, and several palaces and temples. Last night, I met my friend and her sisters for Japanese food and then walked around one area that is FILLED with coffee shops. Literally nearly every building had a coffee shop. And they were all filled with people at 9pm.

Stylistically, Seoul so far seems very similar to a lot of Chinese cities, especially Qingdao (due to the natural geography of sea and mountains, as well as similar archetectural styles). There are the bumpy yellow paths for the blind on the sidewalk, among other similar kinds of streetsigns and what-not. The buildings are half ugly like Chinese buildings tend to be, but then the other half are lower to the ground, some more traditional wood, some brick. There are big main streets, but then narrow winding streets surrounding them, with low buildings and cars that actually slow down as they pass you (I've been in shock, I don't fear for my life in traffic so far).

Today I went and got a lunch set that included about a thousand little bowls, including a fish soup, kimchee (a spicy pickled cabbage, for those who don't know), pickled onion greens of some kind, maionaise-covered cabbage, pickled zucchini with little dried shrimp, diced sausage of the plastic-y variety, some scallions in a sesame sauce, and rice. There was a box of dried seaweed squares on the table into which you could fold up the various food items. It was pretty good. I am a big fan of pickled vegetables here, as well as dried seaweed. I'll see how it compares to the next meals I have...

written by

agentsarainkunming on July 15, 2010 from Seoul, South Korea

from the travel blog: Korea

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