thranos

Spam Post

2015-05-13T21:16:00.001-04:00

Sorry about the previous spam post! Shouldn't happen again ...

Home safe, more to come

2014-09-27T05:27:00.000-04:00

Sorry, now that we got home all we want to do is sleep and rest. I'll try to post the rest soon-ish!

Saturday

2014-09-23T04:33:00.000-04:00

Sorry I didn't catch up at all! I think yesterday we mostly just had to relax and recover from the busy weekend.

Saturday morning we headed into Seoul and met up with my wife's great uncle, whose family owns a couple shops, one in a hotel and one in a market. He wanted to take us to a couple of the markets since he knows his way around them and knows what things are worth.

First we went to this flea market type thing that had many traditional items as well as a lot of old junk (picture 1 - is that an A track stereo?). At one of the markets we had fresh ginger drinks, kind of like a milkshake but no ice cream (picture 2). We also saw a traditional dance (picture 3) and had a bowl of makkeolli (picture 4), which seemed homemade since it was just in this huge jar and was pretty tasty.

For lunch we went to a small restaurant that was just on the corner of the street and only had like 10-15 seats total. They served cow intestine cooked up with a spicy sauce and some noodles and then they put it on your table in foil on top of a small gas hot plate that keeps it steaming hot (picture 5). You can eat it as is or put it in a lettuce wrap with some sauce and garlic. It was alright; didn't taste like too much to me, but it was really chewy.

After lunch we went to Insadong area, where there are a lot of souvenir type places and a lot of foreigners and (according to her great uncle, who has all the same stuff in their shops and knows the real prices) everything is expensive. We saw some people dressed as the king's entourage walking around (picture 6), drank coconut water straight from the coconut (picture 7), and ate some street food (picture 8). The street food was pretty good! The egg toast (picture 9) was tasty except interestingly the toast was kind of sweet flavored and the egg was a little overcooked. The little fish pastry filled with red bean (picture 10) looked really good but was not super fresh so it wasn't crispy on the outside or very hot.

After that we met up with her aunt and family and hung out for a while with them before dinner. Dinner was at a really nice restaurant and our room was in this little separate place that had water and stones leading to the entrance (picture 11)! Dinner was a multi-course affair, including sushi, japchae, jellyfish, salad (picture 12), duck, pork belly, a flat meatball kind of thing (picture 13), and finally some rice came out in a little stone pot with some side dishes (picture 14). You take the rice out and eat it with the other stuff and pour hot water in the pot with the leftover rice to make nurunggi with a kind of broth (picture 15) almost like rice porridge. Dessert was frozen blueberries that were delicious and refreshing (picture 16).

After all that we stayed in a nearby hotel for the night since we were going to church in the city the next day.

Friday

2014-09-20T11:00:00.001-04:00

Friday we just hung around the house and didn't do much, although we did get jjajangmyun and udon delivered, which was a fun experience because it was just like in dramas where the delivery driver brings the little box (picture 1), drops off your plates of food (picture 2), and the comes back later after you finished to pick up the empty dishes (which you put outside your door in a provided plastic bag). Yum! (Picture 3)

For dinner we went to a nearby restaurant and got samgyetang (picture 4), which is a stew where they put a small whole chicken. Very tasty!

Thursday

2014-09-20T10:46:00.000-04:00

Sorry, we just vegged out for most of Thursday and Friday so I didn't post anything, but then today was really busy. Still trying to catch up 100%!

Thursday morning we met my wife's aunt and cousin and ate this huge multi-course meal:
Pumpkin porridge, beef carpaccio (picture 1), salad and mung bean jelly (picture 2), seafood nurungji (burned rice? It was cool because they put baked/hardened rice in a hot pot and poured seafood stuff on top - picture 3 is the whole thing, picture 4 is one serving), mung bean pancake and shrimp tempura (picture 5), dumplings (picture 6), sushi and pork belly (picture 7), bibimbap and seaweed soup (picture 8), and rounding it out was some shaved ice (picture 9). We were sooo full afterwards! It was a really fun and enjoyable meal, especially because of her aunt. At one point, her aunt was on the phone and when the dish came out she put her arm out in front of her daughter, stopping her from doing anything before she and I had taken a picture. Then she proceeded to frame and take the picture on her phone, and then immediately went back to talking! Apparently she hadn't even paused the conversation to take the picture. So funny.

Then my wife and I were dropped off at a place called Aqua planet or something, which was like an aquarium and zoo. There were many elementary school aged children, I guess they were on a field trip. We saw jellyfish (picture 10), a short show with synchronized swimmers in a fish tank with a scuba diver, penguins, seals, a very big and funny walrus, some otters, whose cage area had a place where you could shake hands with them (picture 11), jaguars (picture 12 - with an odd Korean girl who happened to have a jaguar patterned cardigan and was bothering them), among other animals.

Apparently owned by the same large corporation is a water and snow park right next door. One of the water slides starts from outside high up and spirals around before going inside (picture 13).

After spending time walking around some nearby shops we stopped for coffee and a smoothie (picture 14), and then her aunt took us to a place that she said had the best tangsuyeok she's ever had (sweet and sour pork, picture 15). I think it may just have lived up to its name. The batter was super light and since it was rice flour, parts of the inside, after you took a bite past the crispy exterior, were kind of like mochi! After that we had a nice hour on the bus back to her grandparents, and went to sleep soon after.

Wednesday

2014-09-18T07:47:00.001-04:00

Wednesday was just a travel day. At our hotel we went down for the breakfast buffet (picture 1). I was excited for it because it also had American/Western style breakfast items, like scrambled eggs (picture 2)!

After eating breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and walked with our luggage to the bus stop. When we tried to get on the first bus, after my wife had paid for her fare, the bus driver saw the rolling luggage and said we couldn't get on and promptly refunded our money via coins. But after we got off we counted the coins and realized he had refunded us a discounted fare or something! Sigh. 40 cents poorer but none the wiser, we asked the second bus driver if we could get on with our luggage and he said no as well so we promptly flagged down a cab and took that to the KTX terminal. Maybe it's a Busan thing or that particular bus route, because when we were taking our luggage from my wife's grandparent's house to the Gimpo airport the drivers had no issue with our luggage.

The KTX train is a really nice train that goes super fast (190 mph). It took us just over 2 hours to get to Seoul and the landscape flew by! I have a timelapse of it, maybe I'll try to post it up later. I really enjoyed riding in the train because:

1. It was like taking a plane but with more space and less hassle. You don't need to go through security and be there over an hour before it leaves and check your luggage, etc. You just walk into the terminal and buy tickets from a machine and walk down to the train when it's boarding, find your assigned seat, put your luggage in the rack above your seat, and you're ready to go!

2. We had wifi from our mobile router so I could play Hearthstone while we rode the train. We also checked email and instant messaged with some family members.

3. My wife had found some great food for us to eat while we were on the train - hardboiiled eggs, some rice triangles that have seaweed on the outside and filling (I forget what those are called). My filling was bulgogi, my wife's was kimchi and tuna. We also drank a delicious and well-named yogurt drink (picture 3). =]

4. They have little carts that go by every once in a while with food on them (sorry I didn't get a picture of those). One was a cheaper, every-man's kind of food cart with banana milk and bags of chips and sausages and things. The other cart was a more expensive, name-brand kind of food cart with muffins and fancy cookies and nice wrappers.

When we got into Seoul we spent some time trying to coordinate with relatives whether we were going to go back to her grandparent's house that night or stay with some other relatives near Seoul, but we ended up just feeling like we were pretty tired from traveling for a good portion of the day, so we took a subway and bus ride to get back to her grandparents.

It really did feel like coming home after a vacation, like a trip within a trip. Although I'm definitely glad we took this trip to go to Jeju and Busan on our own, because it felt much more like vacation with us traveling alone and enjoying ourselves.

For dinner we had a nice home cooked meal that my wife's grandmother made, including bean paste stew (denjang jigae).

Tuesday

2014-09-17T11:14:00.001-04:00

Tuesday was our full day of Busan wanderings. We mostly hung around the general area that had marketplaces. We also walked down this one street that is supposedly lined with nice shops, similar to Newbury Street in Boston. Mostly it just seemed like another set of retail stores with all the same brands and wares that we had seen in the department stores. Generally we're not super into the shopping scene and on top of that all the name brands that have presence in the US are usually 10-20% more expensive in Korea, so we don't really see a point buying name brand items while we're here. The most fun time shopping I've had so far was at the E-mart in Jeju, where it was really interesting to me to see the quality and variety of items that are in a reasonably large Korean "Walmart-like" store. And the non-name brand items there were reasonably cheap. But alas, I digress.

So for lunch, my wife found this place that serves neng myun (cold soba noodle soup) that had really good reviews and the lines are really long on the weekends. Fortunately for us since it was a random Tuesday, there was no wait. Picture 1 shows the food - my wife got the normal cold noodle soup and I got the "bi-bim-neng myun", which is kinda like a cross between bi-bim-bap and neng myun. You have the cold noodles from the neng myun and the veggies and sauce from the bi-bim-bap and you just mix them up similar to bi-bim-bap. On the side, the server delivered a steaming pot of what we thought was tea, until we poured and tasted it. It's actually broth! It was really interesting to drink hot broth with the cold noodles. Like an oddly good inversion of what you normally do (hot food, cold drink).

After walking around the marketplace some more we decided that it was time for some street food. There is a large street that's pretty well known in Busan area for having really good street food - many variety shows come and eat at the different stalls. Picture 2 shows a few of the stalls selling various foods. Picture 3 shows the particular stall where one variety show called "1 Night, 2 Days" came to eat hodduk (a type of fried pastry where it's flat like a pancake with a sweet mixture inside). We got 2 for ourselves to try out (picture 4) and apparently the way it's done here is to fry it with the sweet mixture (seemed like brown sugar and maybe some cinammon) inside and then cut it open and put a nut mixture (pumpkin seeds, chopped peanuts, and sunflower seeds) inside. I'm not sure if adding the nuts is a local thing or a recent thing or what; originally I had only heard of hodduk with the sweet mixture like cinnamon and brown sugar inside, but some of the food stalls claimed 50 years of making it like this so ... yeah.

This hodduk was so amazing, I cannot describe it (but I will try). Texture: the crispy outside of the pastry give you a nice mouth feel when you first bite in, then the chewiness of the inner dough comes into play as well as the crunch from the seeds inside. Taste: the flavor of the sweet mixture balances nicely with the dough and the nut mixture - there wasn't too many nuts either and the sweet mixture was spread fairly evenly throughout the pastry. Delivery: they hand it to you in a paper cup, making it easy to take bites out of as you walk around and not get your hands dirty. The only tricky part is to not let the pastry fall completely inside the cup once you've eaten it down a ways - you have to squeeze the cup tight enough so it doesn't fall in but not so tight that you squeeze out all the filling. I recommend eating almost halfway down from the top and then rotating it 90 degrees such that you have a good portion above the cup to eat and also since it can easily fit in your mouth horizontally if it's halfway down and then rotated, you can pull it up bit by bit as you eat it. I need to do a diagram or something; the word explanation is too hard to visualize.

I guess it also had something to do with this particular stall, as after we had come back from the fish market I got another one from a different stall to try it out while my wife got some fish cakes on a stick and some soup. That one was pretty good, but not as good as the first one. I think it had something to do with the ratio of the nut mixture to the sweet mixture, the density of the sweet mixture, and the crispiness of the outer portion of the pastry. Those three things were slightly off, so the end result was that my reaction to the second hodduk was not as favorable as to the first one. Still tasty though.

Speaking of the fish market, there is a really famous one in Busan. Unfortunately for us, this particular Tuesday they were closed. Why, I don't know. But apparently there are plenty of people who are still selling fish in random markets right next to the famous one, so we walked down that area for a little while (picture 5). Tons of seafood everywhere - fresh, dried, whole, filleted, squid, octopus, you name it. It also smelled very fishy. I tried to ensure that fish guts didn't get splattered on my shoes as we walked through. My wife found a good deal on some nice socks in one of the stalls near the fish market, so she bought those.

After all that walking around and stuff, we were tired, so we relaxed at a nearby cafe and had some more pat-bing-su (shaved ice, picture 6). We had green tea (could you tell?) and this shaved ice is actually made from milk!! Oh man, sooo good. Even just the ice itself was tasty. And the green tea flavor was there but not overpowering and the powder wasn't too dry such that when you took a bite with some of the filling and mochi and ice, your mouth was still refreshed by the ice rather than getting dried out by the powder.

After that we went to the nearby Lotte mall and department store (Lotte is another huge brand/company and is in direct competition with Shinsegae). Every hour on the hour they had a cool water/light/music show (picture 7). Hard to see in the picture but the water comes down from the ceiling as well as shoots up from the ground. They played different classical music pieces and the water show was timed to that. At the very end the water coming down from the top spelled something like "Thank you for watching, welcome to Lotte". Also, on the roof there was a zoo and an observatory!

Dinner was at a restaurant near our hotel (picture 8). We picked it because it had good reviews and you could grill your own meat on the thing in the center. Unfortunately after we sat down and tried to order they informed us that you had to order at least 3 servings of meat for them to setup the grill, so we said forget that and just ordered two kalbi-tang (beef rib stew). I was trying to get the meat off one of the bones and my spoon slipped and sloshed broth all over my shirt and some on my pants too. I was really embarrassed and so I ate slowly hoping it would dry by the time we had to leave. It mostly dried, but there were some (I guess oil?) stains, so I tried to wash it off at the hotel last night but this morning they were still a little noticeable, so once we got home to her grandparent's house (today, Wednesday night) I put them in a real washer. As for the soup, it was actually really good =]. But I was still a little bitter about not getting my grilled meat!

It's Wednesday night late right now and we're back at her grandparent's house for the next few days, so things should be fairly slow and I should be able to catch up to the present tomorrow. That and the fact that not much happened today (Wednesday).

Monday

2014-09-17T07:58:00.000-04:00

I think I'm going to try to do one post for each day again, otherwise it would get too long with too many pictures. But there's just so much to show! I'll try to do a few today to catch up. Also, these next few entries will probably be longer since I broke out the bluetooth keyboard for my iPad so I can put my thoughts down a lot faster.

Monday was a travel day. For breakfast we had a Korean fusion stew (picture 1) cooked by our wonderful hosts. It had bulgogi and mushrooms and the broath was earthy and slightly sweet (likely from the bulgogi marinade). Hearty for breakfast, but good. Also accompanying breakfast was some local Jeju fruit - grapes and tangerines. My wife says the proper way to eat these grapes is to suck out the insides (which remarkably come out completely intact and entirely separate from the skin) and then spit out the seeds. I, however, just ate the whole grape and spit out the seeds. I think the skin has a lot of flavor anyway. My wife thought the hosts would see my empty bowl with only seeds left and wonder where the grape skins went =]. As we checked out of this airbnb, the hosts wanted to take a picture with us and took a few of us with their house as well. They were super super nice and we told them if they came to Boston they should definitely let us know. I would highly recommend this place to anyone traveling to Jeju. I took a panorama of their house when you're inside the gate (picture 3) - our separate apartment-type thing was behind me (you can kind of see the door on the left side) and their house is on the right side. They have a fridge and table and stuff in the little glass room in the middle - that's where we had our breakfast on Monday morning.

After checking out we drove towards the airport, stopping at this one church that was built in the past few years (2009 maybe?) and is built to resemble Noah's ark (picture 4). Very interesting feel to the church, I liked how the water surrounds it - there's even a kind of infinity pool effect at the front so when you're sitting in the sanctuary you could see out like there's water all around.

We stopped at a gas station right near the rental place, but the attendant kept saying no, LPG, and crossing her fingers like an 'X' when we pulled up, so my wife had to ask for further explanation and apparently the Sonata we were driving around in runs on liquid propane (which explains the gas tank that you can access from the trunk) so we had to find a special gas station that had this "LPG" stuff. Fortunately there was one only a few blocks away, so we filled up and took the rental car back. After we returned the rental car I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders =]. Although it was nice to be able to go where we wanted and not have to worry about how we were going to take our luggage on a bus, the stress of driving and worrying about someone else hitting the car and the hassle of dealing with insurance, etc, etc if that happened outweighed the pro's, so I was glad to be done with that. Although the international driver's license is valid for a whole year, so I guess I should travel to another country where we would need a car within the next year to get maximum value =].

We ate lunch at the airport at a Lotteria (picture 5), which seems kind of like a Burger King except Korean (although I don't know what the actual Burger Kings around here serve, so maybe that's a bad comparison - but it's definitely fast food). We got three burgers to try and some cheese sticks (picture 6, cheese sticks not shown). The bulgogi burger (with beef from Korea), while sounding like a really good idea, was the worst one in my opinion. My wife didn't seem to mind it. The pattie of bulgogi just seemed too sweet - I guess I like my burgers more on the savory side. The Lotz burger looked like a normal Big Mac except with only one pattie and too much lettuce. It had beef from Australia apparently (side note: my wife and I were discussing the fact just today that where ingredients for products come from is very important to people here - maybe more on that later). That burger tasted the closest to home and was pretty decent, except it was lukewarm. I'd imagine that it'd be pretty good if it were hot. The wild shrimp burger (picture 7) had actual whole little shrimp in the pattie and was the best of the three (it was also hot).

We then got on a domestic flight and flew to Busan (picture 8), which is a port city on the south-eastern edge of Korea. After checking in to our hotel we walked to the nearby beach and enjoyed walking in the surf for a while (picture 9).

We then went to the world's largest department store (picture 10), the Shinsegae in Busan. We marveled at the large number of floors housing a full spa, ice skating rink, restaurants, a grocery store, not to mention all the luxury goods and brands. At the ice skating rink there were a few young girls who looked like they were training with coaches in the center of the rink while a child in the outer area of the rink attempted to walk/skate around with an ingenious invention - it looked like an elderly person's walker except no wheels and the bottom was connected in an upside down U shape, like the top. This allows the person to have something that slides and stabilizes them while they try to skate. I wonder why we don't have anything like that in the States?

We thought the department store closed at 9 but apparently on Mondays they close at 8, so when we went to get food everything was closing or already closed, so we quickly bought some stuff that was being sold at a discount and ate dinner (picture 11 - ddukbokki and pan seared buns) and dessert (picture 12 - peach and melon bars, made from real fruit).

Picture 13 - also present in the basement of the department store was a Johnny Rockets! Who knew that brand had made it across the ocean?! And it looked like people even went there!

Saturday & Sunday

2014-09-15T22:53:00.000-04:00

This will be relatively brief as I try to catch up.

Saturday we checked out of our first hotel and went to a few places on the way to our next place, which was from airbnb; kind of like a "mother-in-law" apartment (I think that's what it's called when you have a separate complete room with bath on the same property). Our first stop was the Yeomiji botanical gardens (picture 1) and it was superb! We enjoyed walking around seeing all the different kinds of plants. Inside the big structure they have different zones like a desert, flowering plants, and a jungle complete with dinosaurs (picture 2)! Outside they have different styles, like Japanese Zen garden, Korean style royal garden, even Italian and French style gardens (picture 3).

We also walked around outside one of the nearby super fancy hotels, which had "glamping" tents that you could reserve, a private beach house, and a lookout, among other amenities.

Then we checked into our room to rest and relax - the place is called "beau-stone", like beautiful stone, but in Korean it's written and pronounced the same way as Boston. The place is really beautiful and the owners built it from different stones, including the volcanic rock that's common in the area. The owners house is on the right side of picture 4 and the rooms are on the left.

After relaxing a bit, we went to this huge dinner buffet where they had all kinds of food including local specialties like seafood and black pork. I had to try the international food that they offered - burger, quesadilla, and pizza (pictures 5 and 6). The burger and pizza were pretty good; the quesadilla was not. They also had a wide variety of drinks and desserts (picture 7), like fanta, coke, Jeju tangerine juice, plum drink, and sweet rice drink.

Later that night we went to the glass museum, where they light up all the exhibits when it gets dark (picture 8). There were these really hilarious bathrooms that have two way mirrors all around you so when you are using the bathroom during the day you can see everyone around you but nobody can see in (picture 9).

Sunday we woke up to an awesome breakfast provided by our hosts (picture 10) and then we went to a nearby beach (picture 11). The beach was so great! And surprisingly empty. Picture 11 doesn't show the actual beach but just south of it where there are lots of volcanic rocks and a great view. Two things made the beach so awesome (other than the fact that it wasn't busy): 1, the sand is really fine and feels great, and 2, there isn't really a drop off, it's almost like a pool. There's a small cove-like area that's roughly the same depth (knee height with the waves) and we walked out at least a few hundred yards into the water and it was still only about waist high.

We walked around the beach for a good long while and also walked around the small boardwalk type area surrounding the beach entrance.

Then for dinner we went to a small unassuming place that was supposedly pretty famous in Jeju. They have something like 3 locations already, with the one that was near us being the newest. It's inside an old tangerine warehouse, which was interesting in and of itself, and they serve organic and locally sourced food. We got a pizza salad, which was exactly like it sounds, but interestingly the salad had a good amount of fruit in it (pineapples and peaches), and an aglio e olio pasta dish. Both were delicious. I took all the salad off my portion of the pizza and ate it separately so that I could enjoy just the pizza and be reminded of home.

Friday

2014-09-13T02:46:00.000-04:00

Yesterday (Friday), we slept in a bit and had a very relaxing breakfast while looking out over the view from the cafe (picture 1).

We drove to a nearby waterfall and enjoyed the scenery and walked around and (thanks to our mobile wifi hotspot) video chatted a bit with my parents and showed them the waterfall (picture 2). It felt very surreal to be sharing an experience in the middle of nowhere on Jeju island with my parents halfway across the world via my cell phone.

We also saw plenty of people taking pictures of themselves using these "sel-ca" (self camera) rods (picture 3). They are probably one of the most ubiquitous things I've seen out here, sold almost everywhere you might want to take a picture, even the random stalls on the side of the road. Well, I guess the exercise equipment that we see is also everywhere (picture 4). That was on this trail where we had gone after we left the waterfall. Very random; but I guess the view is superb for when you're exercising (picture 5).

After working up an appetite walking along that coastal trail we headed into town for a late lunch. My wife had found this great place where you cook your own pork belly on a pot lid (the pot lid is basically sitting on top of an open stove, so it gets pretty hot). First you coat the surface using pork skin with the fat (picture 6, lower right on the pot lid). Then you add your pork belly and they add the kimchi on foil. They also provide some side things that we cooked up as well, such as garlic cloves, onions, and potato slices (picture 7). You can make a lettuce wrap with the meat, some seasoned bean paste, and the kimchi, or just eat it straight up with a mixture of salt/pepper/sesame oil (small dish lower center of picture 6). After all that you can get fried rice, which they put on the lid with foil to get a little crispy (picture 8). The mechanics of the pot lid are quite genius, I have to say, because a) it probably developed as a way to cook some things quick on the outside while there was an actual pot of stuff cooking underneath, b) because it's slanted, all the fat drips down so the meat is not just sitting in the fat; kind of like a George Foreman grill, and c) because all the fat is dripping down, when you put garlic or potatoes or something towards the outside, they get to absorb some of this fat while they cook! Yum!

Later that night, after a harrowing drive through windy roads and a crazy intersection (think Davis Square with no lights and aggressive drivers at night in the rain), we ended up at this outdoor, but covered, market. My wife bought some fresh sea squirts to eat raw. I was hoping there would be some cool street food, but other than raw seafood and the normal ddukbokki and fishcakes, there wasn't much (picture 9).

This morning as we checked out I took some more pictures of the place where we were staying. Picture 10 - our balcony, picture 11 - the smart toilet (!), and picture 12 - the small driveway leading up to the place, from the vantage point of leaving.

Thursday

2014-09-12T11:22:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was a really busy day. We flew on a domestic flight from Gimpo airport to Jeju island, then rented a car and drove from the Jeju airport, which is basically in the northern part of the island, an hour over a mountain to get to the southern part of the island. The video (assuming it works - I'm just emailing these entries in so I hope the video attaches properly) shows a brief shot of what it was like to drive around the mountain. The first picture was our meal at the Gimpo airport before we left.

Driving in Korea is a pretty stressful experience. It's like what would happen if the aggressive Massachusetts drivers suddenly all decided that all laws were now merely suggestions and they could drive with impunity. People seemingly ignore red STOPlights (not stop signs, mind you) and make left or right turns, or even just go straight through after they come to a rolling stop to look around the intersection. It also seems like people will not stop for you if you're a pedestrian, so you have to be careful. Nowhere to park? No problem! Just stop in the right-most lane and park your car there, I'm sure nobody will mind. Everyone seems to be as impatient and pushy in their cars as they are in person (see previous entry re: frustration there). Cars will honk or squeeze around you in situations where most people in the US would just wait the 10 seconds until you move. So while I am impressed that I've only seen one accident in my entire time here and everyone is able to drive really close to each other and squeeze through spaces I would have thought impossible (inches of clearance) while going normal speeds, it makes for a very stressful driving experience.

After driving around for a while trying to find our bed and breakfast motel (which is pretty small at only 6 rooms and not really in the city) we found it via a combination of the GPS navigation in the car that couldn't find the address to the B&B, my wife's phone that had a map with the address, and my phone that could show where we were on a map. We had missed a small side road turnoff that looked more like a driveway leading up a big hill into a newly paved road where there was a big cement truck and a construction vehicle blocking the only way to the B&B, whom we had to call and they sent an employee out to tell the vehicles to move so we could get in (which was rather tricky on this small road where one side had a drop of ~10 feet down the side of the hill).

We checked in and relaxed for a while; it's a really modern design (see the hallway in picture 2). Seems to be very new construction. Apparently some heavy rains had washed away some of their steps? So they were fixing that, thus the cement truck. We ate a light early dinner from the B&B's cafe (steak sandwich, see picture 3).

As we were about to head out to the local e-mart, the main employee (so far we had only seen 2 people who worked there, the main employee who checked us in and ran the cafe and someone who was cooking in the cafe) told us that the owner's husband was an artist and had a gallery with one of his works in the building next door. So we took a look at it while he explained and bragged for a good 10 minutes at least. Picture 4 shows his piece, which was three bronze sculptures that had been welded together from small triangles or squares and then there was a light inside to cast light and shadows all around the room. Pretty neat effect.

Afterwards we headed to e-mart and picked up various snacks and supplies - different kinds of cup ramen, some drinks, chips, and kimbap (rice and veggies and meat rolled up like sushi). They don't bag your purchases like they do in the States and you have to pay for bags so when we were checking out and they said we couldn't use the basket to bring our stuff to the car we were thinking uh oh what do we do now? Fortunately for us we just happened to have bought a new backpack for me since my old one is falling apart, so we stuffed most of the groceries in there!

We ate ramen and kimbap for dinner. My ramen was supposed to be like jjajangmyun (noodles with black bean sauce) and I thought they captured that flavor pretty well in ramen form. The kimbap was sooo good. And it was super cheap. I don't know why it was so cheap, but if they had stuff like this in grocery stores in the States I would definitely get it a lot. Even Hmart's kimbap is not very good compared to this one.

After a nice dinner on our room's balcony we just vegged out for a while before falling asleep.

Wednesday

2014-09-10T10:25:00.001-04:00

Today we slept in a bit, ate breakfast at home and then headed into Seoul. First stop was Seoul station, where we went into the Lotte outlets and did some shopping. There were a bunch of name brands that we recognized and were more expensive than in the states, so we didn't get anything there.

Next we headed up to the Samcheongdong area, where we had seen Running Man (a Korean variety show) go once. We saw one of the restaurants that they had eaten at that had a big sign out front letting everyone know. We are at a cool little place that was in a very traditional looking house. They served some kimchi in this bowl with a very old style spoon (picture 1). We got the pork spare rib stew with udon noodles. There was a spiciness meter on the menu, so we got the 1, the lowest spiciness level, out of 4 levels. When it comes in the pot, they light this small thing underneath the pot to keep it hot (you can kind of see it in the center of the pot stand in picture 1). It looked really good (picture 2)!

Unfortunately, apparently this restaurant SHOULD be famous for its spiciness level (but there wasn't a warning anywhere) because level 1 spice was sooo hot. I couldn't believe it. I thought for sure they had mixed up ours with someone else's or had heard us wrong. Or maybe even that the spiciness levels went from 1 as the hottest to 4 as the mildest. But no, that's apparently just the way it is. It was probably one of the spiciest things I've eaten in months, if not years. I could only manage 2-3 bites and then I had to just stop and drink water while my lips burned. It was comforting to hear that the table of four Korean girls next to us, who had gotten two stews, spiciness levels 1 and 2, were also talking about how spicy it was and that even level 1 was really spicy. In order to finish, I had a bowl with some water and I would rinse each piece of meat and even them I could still taste some of the spiciness. There was a couple who came in after us and sat down and my wife said the girl was contemplating ordering level 4, so she warned her that level 1 was super spicy and the couple got one with less than a level 1 spiciness and was satisfied with it.

After lunch we walked around for a while, even down in a traditional folk village area.

Next we went to the biggest underground shopping place I've ever seen. It took us at least a half hour to walk from one end to the other, not including the extra time to make our way through the masses of people. We bought some slippers for inside the house and some other small things while we were here. I'd say a good 70% of the stores in that whole place were women's clothes or accessories. Towards the end of our shopping time I was getting a bit fed up with the way personal space is not as respected here; people will just push you or bump into you and not care since they were walking, you just happened to be in the way. But I guess that's the way things are when there are so many people in such a small space (just like at Costco).

Finally, tired from everything we did that day, we found a nice quiet small restaurant near the bus stop to eat some selungtang (oxtail soup). So yummy!

Chuseok

2014-09-09T23:22:00.000-04:00

So Monday evening my wife's two aunts/uncles/cousins came over and we all had a huge feast together for chuseok (picture 1).

After dinner, both cousins, aunts, and one uncle took us out to karaoke (picture 2). It was a lot of fun! We had our own little room and sang for almost two hours. My voice was definitely giving out by the end. At first I was pretty timid and sang some easy songs that I know really well. But all of those songs were pretty old and her relatives didn't know them. Kind of like how I enjoyed but didn't really know any of the Korean songs that they were singing. I also noticed that the more you got into the song, dancing, etc, the better it was received. So I had to go for it, and requested Psy's Gangnam Style. I kind of knew some of the words, and definitely the chorus, but not most of the verses. Fortunately her cousin helped me out by singing the verses, so I could just dance and sing the choruses. Definitely over the top on my part, but I think it was fun for everyone.

After that, they sang some Korean songs that I knew so I could enjoy them as well and occasionally join in. Both of her cousins are really good singers (of course, one is a professional musician and the other a professional singer) and I was surprised that they knew and could sing almost every Korean song I knew.

Yesterday (Tuesday) we went to a nearby restaurant for more jjajangmyun (noodles with black bean sauce, picture 3 & 4) for lunch with one aunt/uncle/cousin who had stayed over at her grandparents' for the night.

After that her great aunt/uncle and their kids and grandkids came over. After visiting and chatting with everyone for a while we went to a nearby restaurant and had samgyupsal (pork belly) and duck stew alongside a huge number of side dishes and some beer and soju (pictures 5 & 6). What I thought was really cool was that since her grandparents don't have a car and her great uncle's car was full, her grandparents called the restaurant and they drove over in a minivan to pick us up and bring us to the restaurant. I guess that's a good service to offer if you want large groups of people to come to your restaurant.

Once everything quieted down for the night my wife and I took a nice relaxing walk around the small community where her grandparents live and stopped at a nearby mart (convenience/grocery store). I'm really enjoying drinking all the flavored milk and had to restock a bit. Picture 7 shows melon, banana, and coffee flavored milk.

Not doing much

2014-09-08T06:27:00.001-04:00

Yesterday and today we didn't do much; just recovered from our walking around. After church, my wife was feeling sick, likely from dehydration, so we hung around at home. I made ramen and ate with her grandparents while she rested, which was an interesting experience because I don't speak Korean very well. Although I could understand when her grandmother wanted me to add more water or turn the heat off.

In the afternoon I had an adventure of my own wherein I took the bus to the city center nearby and went to a small grocery store to pickup a snack for myself and a boxed pear set as a gift for her great uncle for the holiday. Only when I got back after lugging that huge pear box on the bus did we find out from her grandmother that there was a grocery/convenience store right in the complex! And they deliver! Oh well, good exercise and an adventure for myself.

For dinner we had a simple healthy meal (see picture 1). This contrasted to my unhealthy snack of the Oreo cereal.

Today we hung around and cleaned up to get ready for chuseok and relatives coming over. I made myself a grilled ham and cheese with a fried egg and it reminded me of home.

And some things are very different

2014-09-07T18:51:00.001-04:00

You can't really see it in that Costco food court picture from the previous post, but there's a bulgogi bake right underneath the chicken bake! I wish I could have gotten it, except for that first picture above - if you think your Costco is busy, you haven't seen anything! This one was so busy (because it was right before the chuseok holiday) that it took us a half an hour to merely walk through, because we had to push our way through everyone.

The second picture is the huge mall - so many levels! There was also two levels below us, and one had an e-mart, which is kind of like a Walmart in the product selection.

Another huge difference from anything I've seen in the US - I saw the highest concentration of Canon L series lens I've ever seen at this mall. They were almost all the 70-200mm f2.8 lens and they were all owned by ... middle and high school girls!!! What?!?!?! Man, a) I'm jealous that so many of them had that lens and I don't; b) they seemed to all know what they were doing. I'll bet their camera knowledge surpasses mine! There was a fan signing for some boy band idol group. We were in one of the upper levels but knew immediately when the idols arrived because of all the screaming.

Some things don't change

2014-09-07T07:06:00.000-04:00

I've seen Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Paris Baguette (which is inside the Hmart in Central Square), Costco (still had ALL the same Kirkland brand stuff! Plus, the food court had the same hot dogs and chicken bakes!), Burger King, McDonald's, KFC, And Outback; and that's just the food places.

At the mall we went to, there were all the normal brand stores, including Gucci, Louie Vuitton, Coach, North Face, Uniqlo, and had a Muji coming in a few months! Hilariously enough, this luxury mall also had Auntie Ann's pretzels and Smoothie King!

Saturday was a long day

2014-09-07T06:51:00.000-04:00

So yesterday we started our long day by heading out to Namsan Tower. We rode a bus to the top of the mountain and then had to walk a short distance on a very steep slope (like 40 degree incline) to get to the tower itself. As seen in many kdramas, including the recent "My Love From Another Star", we wanted to lock a lock to the balcony of the tower and throw away the key. So we purchased a lock from a small store in the tower that sold almost nothing but the locks. They also kindly give you a nice pen for writing on the lock. We wrote our initials and the date on the lock and then locked it to the railing (actually all of the railing space had long been taken so we locked it to a lock that was locked to another lock etc etc to one that was locked to the railing). Can you find it in the second picture? Then we threw away the key in the little box they have for that.

When we came back down from the mountain we were already pretty tired from all the heat so we stopped to refresh ourselves with patbingsu - shaved ice. This one had mochi and this powdery stuff that people normally put on rice cakes. I'm not sure what it's made from but when it's in your mouth it had a similar feel/taste to peanut butter in powder form. Super delicious! Especially when you pour the liquid over it (I think it's sweetened condensed milk).

After our nice break we went to the royal palace and walked around for an hour or so. It was so hot I can't imagine how the employees there were wearing hanboks and full guard uniforms. Sorry there's only one picture, I used mostly my dSLR to take nicer shots of the palace.

We then took a long subway ride over to the other side of the Han river where we met my mother-in-law's friend who treated us to a big dinner. Dinner included a cold platter with duck and scallops and jellyfish, "Korean kung pao chicken" (there is a Korean name but this is probably the best way to describe it), jjajangmyun (noodles with black bean sauce), and jjambbong (seafood noodle soup).

Then our family friend kindly drove us to Costco (I just wanted to see it!) and this huge mall. More on those later.

Today's food

2014-09-05T09:24:00.001-04:00

This morning we had an egg sandwich at her grandparents' house before leaving for Seoul.

For lunch we ate the things we cooked at the cooking class, which was fairly light for a lunch. I apologize that I don't have pictures of that. I took them all with my dSLR camera and not my phone so I wont be uploading those until we get home.

While we walked around Myeongdong we stopped at the Droptop cafe (picture 1 and 2), notable for being in multiple recent kdramas, and ate some street food (picture 3 and 4 - French fry crusted hot dog).

Later we were walking around Dongdaemun market and had some more street food (picture 5 - fried rice cake and sausages with sauce) and then chimek for an early dinner. Chimek = chicken and mekju (beer), popularized in part by some recent kdramas (picture 6 and 7, this place was endorsed by the star of one of those recent kdramas!). On the way back to our guesthouse room, we nabbed a very tall ice cream come for dessert (picture 8 - it's green tea and vanilla swirled!).

You get what you pay for

2014-09-05T09:03:00.001-04:00

So, first off let me just say that it has been really muggy both days we've been here so far. Today while traveling into Seoul and walking around for a bit we got quite hot and so decided to check into our room for the night in order to rest and cool off. The place we had booked was a cheap airbnb room with private bathroom near Myeongdong. We get in and check it out; it's small and a bit musty smelling but that's ok, at least it has a/c. It reminds me of the first place in Hong Kong that my brother and I stayed at because the bathroom is like an "all-in-one" deal (see first picture). You could probably use the toilet, shower, and sink at the same time. Except that the sink and the shower come from the same spout, with just a little knob to select which one (see second picture).

I start to wash my shirt in the sink because I had basically sweated all through the back plus the area in the front where my backpack straps touched my shoulders. I then noticed that there was water touching my feet and wondered where it came from. Upon further inspection I realized that not only does the sink also power the shower but in fact shares the same drain on the floor with the shower (see third picture)! The sink water all just flows out into the floor and down the drain for the shower! How weird is that?!?! And kind of gross because say you were brushing your teeth and spit out the toothpaste. That toothpaste-y water is then going to touch your feet as it goes down the shower drain. I guess you might as well just brush your teeth while you shower!

But maybe I am being a bit harsh on this guesthouse in particular, perhaps it's that the building was built this way a long time ago and it would cost too much to add a new drain for the sink. I offer this new theory because while we were eating dinner at a restaurant in a nearby neighborhood that seemed to also be in an old building I noticed that the sink in that bathroom ALSO just drained it's water onto the floor and going out a drain in the floor, narrowly missing where your feet would be. So maybe that's a thing.

Alas, guess the "you get what you pay for" cliche is appropriate here. I think we will book some real hotels for when we stay in Seoul again. Tomorrow night we will be returning to the Gimpo area since we will be spending chuseok (kind of like Korean Thanksgiving; takes place the beginning of next week for a few days) with her family.

Just a normal day (in Korea)

2014-09-05T00:18:00.001-04:00

Yesterday we walked to a nearby (smallish) city. We are sort of far away from Seoul, so there's not much out where we are staying. But there is a lot of complexes with groups of huge apartment buildings; probably about a hundred apartments in each building.

We exchanged some money at the bank and then went to a glasses store. It was pretty cheap to get some glasses, so we bought a few pairs, and it included the exam and only took like 10 minutes total.

After walking back we had lunch that her aunt made (rice cakes with ramen - very tasty!) and spent time with her aunt/cousin/grandparents. For dinner we walked over to a nearby restaurant and had nengmyun (cold soba noodle soup) and loach stew. On the way I saw a sign and pictures for "bap burger", a burger where the bun is like two patties of rice and seasoning. I didn't get a picture but hopefully we can try one later and report back!

Today we rode the bus and subway for about 1.5 hours to get to Seoul where we took a traditional cooking class and wore hanboks (traditional Korean dress). More on that later.

A conversation from yesterday walking back from town:
Wife: I haven't seen any white people since we left the airport.
Me: what about me?
Wife: I see you every day!
Me: I just saw a white person in that ad on the sign over there!

Saw some foreigners once we got to Seoul today!

Korea!

2014-09-03T07:56:00.001-04:00

The first two are pictures of the two airplane meals that we ate. The last picture is the welcome meal we received when we went to my wife's grandparents apartment.

We didn't see much of the airport since we got in around dinner time and we were pretty tired so we went straight through immigration and customs and out to her relatives' waiting car.

Driving to the apartment was a pretty odd experience. The roads and drivers seemed about the same (guess there are bad drivers everywhere, huh?) but all of the signs were in both English and Korean and the countryside looked unfamiliar.

San Francisco Day 3

2014-09-02T01:36:00.001-04:00

Today was a more relaxing day. We mostly stayed inside and planned our Korea trip. We walked down Clement Street, which had too many good food options, resulting in a rather large lunch: spam musubi, chicken katsu musubi, Hawaiian BBQ pork sandwich, roasted pork bun, and some takeout dim sum.

For dinner our hosts made some great fried chicken with various sides.

San Francisco Day 2

2014-09-01T03:54:00.001-04:00

After a lovely breakfast provided by our wonderful host, we went to a local church where we saw many old friends. Lunch was at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant.

We headed down to Sunnyvale area afterwards for more time with (different) old friends. A bubble tea, shaved ice, and lots of Hong Kong Bistro dishes later, we headed back to our temporary home on the last Caltrain (with a bunch of loud people on the train! We switched train cars twice).

San Francisco!

2014-08-31T12:43:00.001-04:00

Arrived in San Francisco yesterday and had a nice time relaxing at our friend's place. She took us to Japantown for dinner and dessert.

Had some delicious ramen and ice cream filled crepe. I'd say the ramen was on par with the one we had in Portland, ME (which was quite good). Definitely better than the Sapporo in Hmart.

Coming soon!

2014-08-25T09:12:00.002-04:00

Epic adventures in Korea! Stay tuned ...