After just over a month-long extended pit stop back in Montreal that allowed us to sleep, eat and mingle with the other teams, we were back on the starting mat ready to begin another leg of #MyTAR. This time my teammate was the Husband, the only guy on the planet with the skills to make me blissfully happy, insanely frustrated, and somehow also keep me calm, if that makes any sense.
Clue rip: Fly to Seoul, Korea, and make your own way to the Best Western Seoul Garden Hotel.
Asia, Baby!
Boom, suddenly we were onboard a Korean Airlines A380 from JFK-ICN – I genuinely thought it would be scary to fly on a plane that large, but it was one of the most comfortable long-haul flights I’ve ever had. Would do it again. Great legroom and the food and service was lovely.
As you may have picked up from my last post, a whole bunch of good things converged in my life right now and I’m getting the oppourtunity to do my favorite things in my favorite places. While London will always be my second home, Asia – the whole continent – is my happy place. There is just something about the way of life, the colours, the smells, the chaos, the noise, the food… all of it just genuinely Marie Kondo Sparks Joy for me. If you ask anyone in the travel industry, they will all have that one part of the world that just keeps calling them back, and for me it’s Asia. At work it’s also my specialty to sell. I was lucky enough to grow up in Vancouver, where flights to Asia are direct, plentiful, and relatively inexpensive, so I have more than a few trips to the continent under my belt. And my Husband was like “I like Korean food and K-Pop, let’s go to Seoul!” So we did.
A mere 22 hours after departing Montreal we touched down in Incheon, grumpy and sleep deprived, you know, the usual after a long flight. We bickered all the way through the airport and on the hour long train ride into downtown, but still made it to the Seoul Garden Hotel in decent time. Our next clue was waiting for us in the room – get a good night’s sleep and then meet your guide in the lobby the next morning for your Seoul city tour.
Due to jet lag we were up before God the next morning, and got to fully enjoy the wonder that is an Asian hotel breakfast buffet. Because of the vast collection of tastes and traditions, there is always basically anything you can think of at one of these buffets – in Kuala Lumpur I once saw a woman at 6am eating 2 Eggos with peanut butter and a whole head-on fish. I kept it simple, and went with bulgogi beef, stir-fried veggies, a slider from the build your own slider bar and some fresh fruit, because that’s normal, right?
The first thing you notice about Seoul, aside from it’s clean modernity, is the number of coffee shops. They’re everywhere. I thought Vancouver was bad, with it’s Starbucks on adjacent corners, but compared to Seoul, they are a barren coffee wasteland. Like every second shop is a coffee shop, and even the 7-11s had an entire wall of coffee drinks to choose from. This city must be caffinated out of their freaking minds. They even had a chain of coffee shops just for me:
The mood for our city tour was immediately set when, as soon as all 20 passengers were on board, the guide began to sing one of John Denver’s classic love songs. In it’s entirety. Not kidding. It was cringey. But aside from that, his guiding was good. We started at Jogyesa Buddhist temple, home of the most adorable Buddha ever:
I’m not a religious person at all, but I really enjoy Buddhist temples. I personally find them very peaceful and non-judgmental, as well as stunningly beautiful and colourful. This one was nestled in the middle of a circle of unremarkable high rises, a step back in time setting itself apart from the encroaching modern world.
Then on to the Gyeongbokgung Palace, which you’d best believe I knew was the pit stop for The Amazing Race Season 4, leg 11 🙂 I totally got my nerd on and imagined myself running to the pit stop through the crowds and grand stone boulevards within the Palace grounds.
Here our guide, while the majority of the group waited for a couple of people in the bathroom, performed all of “Gangnam Style”, complete with dance moves.
Walking around the palace you quickly notice a large number of people milling about in traditional Korean attire. Let’s just say it – the Feudal Koreans had really amazing taste in hats. Our guide explained that this has nothing to do with the Palace itself, it’s purely for Instagram. Excuse me, what? Apparently it’s big business for Koreans to pop into one of the many nearby costume rental shops, get a head to toe historical makeover, and then go to the palace and take epic shots for the ‘Gram. Welcome to Korea in 2019.
The included lunch on the tour was Bibimbap, basically beef, rice and veg in a hot bowl. Nothing scary, nothing you can’t readily identify. But it will always be funny watching suspicious tourists who clearly don’t normally eat Korean food, poking at it with their chopsticks, waiting for something in the bowl to move.
At this point it was grey and was threatening to snow. Being super busy at work prior to departure for this trip, neither of us had bothered googling the weather in Seoul and we had totally not packed for -3c temperatures, in our hoodies and light raincoats. Because of this, I don’t remember a lot about the stop at Changdeokgung palace, aside from that it was pretty, looked like the other palace, and was cold.
After the precursory shopping stop at a ginseng market where I’m pretty sure they were trying to indoctrinate us into a cult, we then hit the Hanok Village (apparently we were running ahead of schedule and they were able to throw in this as an extra stop), Antique Alley and Namdaemun Market. The guide started off by saying that there was not going to be time to shop, as this tour was to see the sites, and there would be no free time. Now hold up. What? Street markets are one of the great joys in life, and walking through one without time to delve into it in depth was like being slapped in the face with the wet noodle of sadness. But the blow was slightly lessened by the fact that we could no longer feel our hands and feet, and really wanted to get back into the van for warmth.
The next day we had a half day tour of the Hanok Village booked, but as we had already been there today, and Eric was battling a slight head cold that he had before departing Canada, so we canceled that and decided to sleep in instead. Of course, thanks to jet lag, that didn’t happen, but we could spend the morning relaxing in bed with Korean coffee and Discovery Asia on TV (because apparently, that’s the most important channel to have in English in every country). In the end this day ended up being all about food and shopping – what else do you really need? We hopped in a taxi (I was all like, let’s take the subway, it’s cheap! And Eric gave me that look that said “what are we, poor?”. The answer to that is yes, but my stuffy princess got his way after some whining and it turns out he was right, because the 12 minute taxi ride ended up costing us only CAD$5) to Dotta, the new modern shopping mall recommended to me by by shopping afficianado former boss. The shopping was good, and I got a sweet Union Jack purse that matches my wedding shoes (read my London blog post to understand this reference), but it was a little fancy for our tastes – see the aforementioned “poor” comment.
Luckily, this mall was surrounded by at least 4 other malls and like a million coffee shops, so we walked to the next one that probably has a name, but I didn’t notice one. This mall was more like a street market, with random stalls set up and little old ladies monitoring them – a week later it occurred to me that we may have been able to barter for the prices here, as nothing had a price tag, but we totally didn’t. We were those white tourists just throwing around our money like Tony Stark. That being said, the prices were really reasonable anyway, no more than $30 for a dress/sweater and around $20 for a t-shirt. Now this place was more our speed and my non-fashionista hubby had a good time here. Also, I got this sweet sweatshirt that I’m currently wearing and am totally in love with:
Then another cheap cab took us to Myeongdong, which is where the young, urban Seoul-ites (?) shop. It was overflowing with H&M, Adidas, Zara, every modern Korean brand, and like 400 shops selling nothing but complexion face masks. Koreans take their skincare super seriously – on the plane over, we noticed that one of our air stewards was wearing makeup, and 10 hours later, when he reappeared after his rest, Eric noted he was extra glowy and dewy. Knowing what I now know, I bet he had done a sheet mask up in the crew quarters. In less than 5 minutes, walking in a straight line, you are guaranteed to pass a minimum of 8 shops selling nothing but every type of sheet mask imaginable, and even some unimaginable, like this one:
Yes, please, let’s lay fermented snail on my face to improve my rough and crumble skin.
As fate would have it, Antoine, one of Eric’s co-workers, just so happened to be in Korea at the same time visiting his girlfriend’s family, so we met them at a nearby restaurant for lunch. This was a thing of beauty – Antoine had learned of the magic that is cheese dakgalbi about a week before we arrived and we all shared a giant platter of this magic. It’s basically a super yummy spicy chicken and veg stir fry that you dip in the ring of freshly melted cheese surrounding it. We got so excited about this meal that we have a photo of it, but we totally forgot to take a selfie with our friends to commemorate the time were were all serendipitously in Seoul at the same time. Here it is in all it’s glory:
After a bit more shopping and Korean coffee we searched the labyrinth of shops and street food stalls to check in at the pit stop for this leg, an unassuming ice cream shop that sold hand scooped cones that looked like this:
Seoul was pleasantly surprising. From what I had seen on previous seasons of the Amazing Race (seasons 4, 17 and 29, but who’s counting?), the language barrier was going to be an issue, but we found the opposite to be true. Everyone was super friendly, getting around by both subway and taxi wasn’t bad at all, and the sightseeing was better than expected. Admittedly, I didn’t know a ton about Seoul before arrival – it’s a destination that rarely is requested at work, and aside from a flip through a Lonely Planet, mainly to learn how to say thank you in Korean, I hadn’t researched it in depth before departure. It’s a great city, a bit of a mix between New York and Tokyo, modern Asia without out much culture shock to our western sensibilities.
Leg Result: Second place. We were making good time this leg with good use of taxis and google maps, and we were still comfortably on budget, but we were running a bit slower than usual due to Eric’s head cold and the ridiculous amount of food we had eaten at the chicken galbi place. We were still so full that we couldn’t partake in the pretty floral ice cream. Eliminated: The girls who got so distracted by the skincare that they missed the bus back to the hotel after the city tour and were never seen from again. But wherever they are, I’m sure their faces look like porcelain dolls. 
Another Pin On The Map 