On the first week of November, my manager and I went on a business trip to Seoul, South Korea. This is the first time I am in Korea and it's autumn. Temperature was nice.. around 16 or 18 degree Celcius so it was really pleasant.We landed in Incheon International airport around 8.30am local time and decided to take a cab to our hotel. My Korean colleagues warned me not to take the black taxi as they are extremely expensive. Heeding their advice, we decided to flag a white taxi who ran the meter. To our dismay, even that cab to the hotel cost us US$70. US%70!! Half of the money I changed for my trip went to the cab ride. That was my first taste of Korean's economy. The standard of living in this place is EXTREMELY high. McDonald's meal cost US$4 and that's the cheapest around. A typical Korean noodle in a hawker stall cost US$4. Eating in a typical restaurant, which most of my Korean colleagues eat in, cost US$7. A ham sandwich cost US$3! The picture above is a picture of a bus which was converted into a eating place. There are tables outside the bus. Customers can sit outside, or inside the bus though the interior is very cramped. It is a self service. We ordered our Udon noodles inside the bus. The noodle cost US$5. It was very tasty though and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Generally, I think Korean food agrees with me.
My colleagues brought us to one Korean restaurant called Nolboo. This is a nice restaurant in that they have traditional Korean performances on the stage. As you can see from this picture, the beautiful ladies were dancing some traditional dance. There are almost 10 performances ranging from dancing to the performers playing traditional instrument. Very nice.Another unique thing about this restaurant is that they ushered us into this floor and gave us cushion. We sat on the cushion but there were no tables at all. My Korean colleague told me that the meals will be prepared in the kitchen. The food will be laid on the table and two waiters will bring the table to us. This is depicted in the picture. When the table came, I was surprised by the variety of food available. I think there must be like 30 dishes in 30 bowls! It's amazing. Here's another picture of the type of food available.
I couldn't even start to describe the type of food. There's raw crabs and fish. Then, there's scrambled egg and some really nice potatoes. The soup was excellent - almost as good as Thai's tom yum. There's radish and some other weird but wonderful vegetables. And guess what? They keep on refilling the food! It's such a waste. It's almost as if they wanted to stuff you until you burst!Oh.. speaking of food, Koreans use metal chopsticks. These chopsticks were not even round. They are flat and slim. And VERY difficult to use. I mean, I use chopsticks all the time in MY and yet I feel as though I was an ang moh using chopsticks for the first time in my life! Koreans must have very good fingers.. LOL!
Koreans generally are really pleasant and nice people. They are honest, well, at least the cab drivers are. I think Malaysian cab drivers are the crookest bunch of thieves. Korean cab drivers are like saints in comparison to Malaysian cab drivers. The cars on the road are generally large cc cars. I did not see any small cars at all. All cars are Korean made. There are zero Japanese cars and I think this is due to the age-old enmity between these two countries. The subway is about the most extensive and complex I have seen.. and I thought London's Tube was complex. I have been to HK and SG MRT and the Korean's subway train is much, much wider and longer.. and faster. Malaysian's LRT is really a joke in comparison. Subway is cheap. It cost US$1. If you consider a bowl of noodle is typically US$4, US$1 for subway is really cheap. It's so small it is negligible. I bet the Korean government is just collecting the fare for collection sake.
This picture showed the beautiful autumn landscape. I like autumn. I liked the multi-coloured trees. I enjoyed the cool wind. I loved not sweating my ass off for the whole day. I enjoyed sipping hot coffee while walking under the cool autumn wind. I wished I had more autumn moments like this. Sigh...
I mentioned that I was in Seoul on business trip so I didn't really have much time to see the city. I asked my Korean colleague what I should do and they recommended a few places.We didn't have a lot of money so we skipped taxi rides but instead opted for the subway. It was difficult to get our orientation right. The subway is very complex. There were so many lines and interchanges. The worst thing is that no one speaks English in Korea. It's really rare to find someone who could speak English. Thankfully I have this list of phrases written by my colleague whom we used to ask people aorund. I would point to a "Where is" phrase and point to the place we wanted to go in the map. From "Express Bus Terminal" station, we stopped at "Jungo Sam Kor" (something like that) station and begin our adventure. Looking for Insadon, our first stop was a challenge. The station has 7 exits and we have to figure out where is the nearest to Insadon. This picture shows Insadon, a street that sells artistic stuff like paintings, handicraft. It wasn't very impressive, probably because I am not the type who shops for artistic stuff. We breezed through this street as we wanted to head to the Geongbokgung Palace.
This is the Geongbokgung Palace. The palace is surrounded by a range of mountains. I think even Koreans believe that having a range of mountain behind an Emperor's dwelling brings good feng shui. Unfortunately, the palace tour was closed on Tuesday so we could not walk inside the palace. But I wasn't disappointed. I think when one has seen the Forbidden City, one has seen all palaces..
This is Namdaemun. It's a direct translation from 3 Mandarin phrases which meant South Big Gate. This place is like Petaling Street. They sell pirated stuff like branded clothes, bags, trinkets, etc. Very boring. There is another place called East Big Gate which sells the same thing.Later at night, we went for a Han River cruise. It was perhaps the most disappointed river cruise I ever had. I have been on a Sydney harbour cruise. I took the Thames River cruise with Anti Ringgit. I went on a Golden Gate Bridge river cruise with rotitelur. The Han River cruise sucked so bad I think I'd rather cruise Sungai Gombak. There's nothing to see!! Seoul does not have many high rise buildings near the river bank. All you see are bridges and they are hardly impressive.
If this is what Korea has to offer, I would not want to come here for a tour.
