Seoul, South Korea, Trip Report

About 2 weeks ago on Tuesday the 5th of March, I started my trip to Seoul, South Korea. I departed from my hotel in Nagoya pretty early and traveled with the Shinkansen, bullet train to Osaka and another express train from there to Kansai International Airport. I was at the airport quite early, so killed some time learning new Kanji until I could finally check in. After check in I met up with a Korean friend who had been studying in Japan for a while, but was now taking 3 months off for travel throughout Europe, because he has to go to the army for nearly 2 years in June, like all Korean men do. He happened to have booked a flight from the same airport to the same airport on the exact same day as me, only his flight left 30 minutes before mine. SICK coincidence!!! So we chat for a while and caught up on a few things.
The flight to Incheon Airport was short and sweet. I flew Korean Air and have to say it's hands down the best airline company I've ever flown with. The staff is fluent in 3 languages, Korean, Japanese and English, the economy food on board seems more like business class food at least, they have in-flight entertainment on a 90 minutes flight, they have power sockets on board so you can charge all sorts of electronical equipment and I'm 100% sure there were a bunch of other great things that I've forgotten about. I will definitely try and fly Korean Air from now on on any flight I can. Thoroughly impressed!
After arriving in Korea, I got some Korean money and took the train to Seoul. Quite a long train ride and afterwards I also had to take a subway to get to my first destination, the house of my first hosts, a brother and sister. Johnny and Karen(English names). It was quite late already when I got there, so after giving them a few gifts and chatting for a bit we all went to bed.

My first day in Seoul I went to Hongdae with Karen. After eating lunch we took the bus, which allowed me to see some of Seoul. I had expected it to be very modern and similar to Tokyo, but actually it turned out to be a lot less modern and built on hills. Almost every street in Seoul seems to be going either uphill or downhill. After getting to Hongdae we walked around for a bit and I took some pictures of the area.

As you can see it's not particularly modern. Furthermore it seemed a bit dull and quiet, but I was told that this district livens up a lot at night. Karen unfortunately had a really painful tooth, so she had to leave and go to the dentist, but her brother Johnny had met up with us and he helped me buy a new wallet and we went for a drink at a nearby cafe. During the evening I talked to Karen and her boyfriend and we listened to classical music a lot, which me and Karen are both big fans of.

On Thursday it was already time for me to move onto my next host, a Korean family. I met the daughter, Yuna, at the station and from there we went to her house together. In the afternoon she showed me around her university, which is easily the prettiest university I've ever seen. See for yourself:

A beautiful campus, not?

In the evening she took me to her parents' restaurants that served cow intestines, which is possibly the weirdest food I've ever eaten. That and the Tuna Tail I ate in Nagoya last year come to mind. After the dinner I met up with Johnny again and we went to an international party in Seoul. I met a lot of people and had a good time.

 People drinking Absinth at the international party

The next day Yuna had to go to university, but I had an appointment with Karen my previous CS host. We went to Gangnam for some lunch and afterwards tried to find me a nice watch. Unfortunately I didn't succeed in finding my perfect watch, but I did see a few nice ones such as these. Which one do you like better? The 1st or the 2nd?

 

 

Afterwards we went for a drink at my new favorite cafe called Smoothie King. I love smoothies especially when they add in protein powder like they do at Smoothie King. Unfortunately enough it seems like Smoothie King only exists in the US and in Korea, if they existed in Japan I'd definitely be visiting often!

The next day I met up with another Couchsurfer, Amy. We met up in Insadong and after we had lunch we walked around the area for a bit.

As you can see it was very crowded, so we soon met up with her friend and took a stroll around the Korean Palace.

 A gate on the side of the palace

 The surrounding area

 The courtyard

Me, Dahn, Amy and a guard

It was actually extremely warm that day, so we soon found a cafe and had a nice cold drink.

Awesome Yoghurt Smoothie

It was cool meeting them and since they and a 3rd friend are coming to visit Tokyo in a few weeks, I'll be able to see them again soon!

That evening, I played some video games and watched some movies with the brother of my host family. The parents and Yuna had gone to work at the restaurant, but he at 14 years old is apparently too young to work there, so he stayed home.

On Sunday, Yuna had to go to the university for a few hours, but the parents and the brother went to a Zoo/Flower park and invited me along.

The flowers were quite nice and relaxing, but afterwards came the animals.

There actually were a LOT more animals and the amount and variety were very impressive. However, I tend to not like zoos and had I known we were going to a zoo I may not have come. I just find them very sad. The patting zoos where the animals can walk freely and you can feed them and pat them are very nice. Those animals generally seem happy. These kinds of African animals and fish however always look extremely sad and they should not be locked up. One elephant specifically was supersad to watch. He stood somewhere hidden away, but you could barely see he was standing with his head facing a wall and shaking his head back and forth. He was clearly extremely sad.

In the evening I did something more enjoyable fortunately enough. There apparently is a market in Seoul where all the Japanese tourists go shopping, so Yuna took me, her brother and a few friends to the market.

 

 

Interesting machine, very smooth

While my host family was extremely friendly, their overabundance of energy had also worn me out after 5 days, so I was somewhat happy to have a day off on Monday after I moved to a hotel in Gangnam. The hotel turned out to be super big, more like an apartment than a hotel.

 Massive bathroom, with Jacuzzi. The Jacuzzi didn't work, but the shower on the right(missing in the picture) is easily the best shower I've ever used, since it was mounted on the ceiling.

 Very big room with a fairly comfy bed.

Computer with about 100 movies, TV with 100s of channels and a surround sound system and it was all integrated so you could play the movies from the PC in the TV using the sound system!!!

The service at the hotel was excellent aswell. They helped me pick out a restaurant and assisted in a few other things. Plus, even though I arrived 3 hours before check-in time, they didn't even mention it and simply showed me to my room!

On Tuesday I met up with Karen again and after we ate some food at an Italian/buffet style place, we went to a somewhat classical concert. There was a big orchestra, but a lot of the music was actually pop music. However I was pleasantly surprised and the concert was great!

On Wednesday I moved to my last hotel in Seoul, the W hotel at the Walkerhill Resort and Casino. The room had been booked by Pokerstars, because I bought an APPT Seoul Package from their VIP Store. While in some ways this hotel definitely sucks, mainly in that everything is very expensive and you have to pay extra for a lot of things(internet 20$/day wtf... fortunately enough Pokerstars got it for us for free). The rooms are definitely insanely nice though and even better than the one at my last hotel.

 Massive room, with one of the comfiest beds I've ever slept in, possibly comfier than my bed at home.

 Good view

 SO big!

 Pretty cool shower seperated from the room by glass.

 Massive bathroom

Again the shower is mounted in the ceiling similar to the last hotel. Absolutely LOVE this!

After checking in and buying some healthy food at a supermarket I went to the casino to play some poker. The first table I got on was a 1/2NLHE table, but soon I got moved to a 2/5 NLHE table and fortunately enough not too long after that I got a seat at 'the big game' a 5/5 PLO table that soon turned into 5/5/10. It plays extremely deep though, probably deeper than the 5/10/25 in Vegas during the WSOP. Lots of 5k+ stacks and a few 10k+ stacks were at the table, so indeed a reasonably big game. Big enough for me anyway. I had a blast playing live poker for 9 hours, but after I got back to my hotel room that night, I sincerely regretted it, because I just couldn't stop coughing.

The thing is, you're allowed to smoke inside the casino and it's TERRIBLY ventilated resulting in some HORRENDOUS air quality. After entering the casino it took a good 5 hours, before I didn't notice the terrible smell anymore and had gotten used to it. When I tried to sleep that night, it took me 3 hours to fall asleep, because I just couldn't stop coughing. Not a good thing, since I had to play the APPT Seoul Main Event the day after.

I woke up pretty tired, but during the 3 hours that I lasted in the Main Event I felt like I was very focussed and played some excellent poker. Here's the noteworthy hands I played:

-Ran over the table playing 5-handed and got up to 25k
-Defended KTo in the BB vs weak CO with 200BBs. Board AKTs 6o 4o and I c/c-c/c-c/c and am shown KK. Down to 15k. May be able to fold the river here, but I don't really like making big folds without reads.
-I cold 4-bet squeeze 72o in a supergood spot. It was a supergood squeeze spot stack size wise for the 3better and I was gonna 3bet any 2 cards there myself if he hadn't. So figured I'd c4bet. Unfortunately enough original raiser(who was fairly aggro) woke up with a hand. Down to 12k.
-Bunch of small pots up to 16k and am dealt AdKd in UTG+1 8handed. I raise and SB 3bets and I'm sure he is very polarized so I flat. 4.5k in pot 15k left behind. Flop 952dd, he bets 2k, I ship it in and he very quickly calls AKo(I had an image of being very good and capable of lots of moves). Unfortunately enough it bricks and I don't hit my freeroll.
http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2013-pokerstars-net-appt-seoul/main-event/day1a/chips.51229.htm
-Final hand I have 16k still and raise in UTG+1 8handed with Td9d. Some nitty girl flats and the 2nd most aggro guy at the table 3bet squeezes 750 -> 1750 so I flat, girl folds. Flop A84ssd, goes check-check. Turn Jd I check/jam and he calls Ad7d so I'm drawing very slim and river bricks.

I was very happy to be out, because I couldn't wait to get out of that super smelly casino that was  giving me breathing problems. This also allowed me to go to another concert that night, this time by my favorite orchestra and conductor in the world. The Seoul Symphony Orchestra lead by Myung-whun Chung. They performed 2 awesome pieces. Beethoven's Triple Concerto and Beethoven's 7th Symphony. It was the best concert I've ever been to and a great experience. Quite easily the best thing I did during my 2 week stay in Korea.

Friday I was not feeling great, bit of a cold and I think having spent a lot of time in that terrible casino was also still affecting me. However I still went to the Pokerstars VIP dinner at the N Seoul Tower. The view from up top was actually very nice, but I was too tired to take pictures. The food at the restaurant was actually very disappointing. It was a buffet with lots of different Korean food, but none of it was any good.

Then yesterday my cold had gotten even worse after sleeping terribly the night before, so I tried to leave my hotel room as little as I could. Only going out for 30 minutes to get some much needed groceries and today's basically been the same story, but I haven't left my hotel room at all and my cold has gotten slightly better.

Tomorrow on my last day in Korea I plan to do some shopping if I feel well enough. My watch broke a few days ago, so I really want to buy a new one now and I also need some sunglasses, because those broke last year and spring and summer are quickly approaching. Hopefully I'll feel well and I can spend some of my leftover KRW, because I still have quite a few I'll need to spend or exchange to JPY at an undoubtedly bad rate.

Then Tuesday I will finally fly back to Tokyo, Japan, so that I can eat Japanese food again, go to the gym and continue my quest for Japanese fluency. Talking about food, I ate a decent bit of Korean food, but it's definitely not my thing. I didn't eat anything that I really liked and only 2-3 dishes that I liked a little. Overall the food here is just too spicy and unhealthy for me and often not great quality I think. But then again the food here is cheaper than in any other country I've ever been to, so it really depends on your preferences. If you want to read more about the Korean food I ate, check out:

http://tokyofoodjournal.blogspot.kr/2013/03/south-korean-cuisine-in-seoulsouth-korea.html

I'll finish this blog off with my thoughts on Seoul, South Korea. I was expecting it to be an awesome country, very similar to Japan, but with a somewhat different culture, somewhat different people and a different cuisine. However it turns out that it's much, much more different from Japan than I anticipated. The cuisine is indeed different and not my cup of tea. Seoul is also completely incomparable to Japanese cities. Gangnam is somewhat similar, because it's quite modern, lots of tall buildings etc. Most districts however, are not modern at all, have a lot less skyscrapers and just look quite old.

The culture and people are also much more different than I thought. The only thing that based on my observations is similar to Japan is the hierarchy stemming from the formal and informal speech you have in both languages. For example, more so than in the west being inferior to an older person or your boss. The rest however, is much different. Korean people on average seem to speak much better English than people in Japan, which for me was fortunate, because I barely speak any Korean and half of my vocabulary consists of curse words(no joke...).

One difference that's very interesting is that while in Japan I feel like, possibly because I'm a foreigner, people are sometimes slightly afraid of me or shy to interact with me. For example if I walk around a corner in Japan and nearly bump into someone(especially a girl) she'll look pretty scared. In Korea however, they barely even notice me and just walk on. And in general Korean people don't really seem to treat me any different from other Koreans. Another example is on trains where people in Japan seem to keep more of a distance from me, Korean people really don't.

Talking about trains and public transportation, this is an aspect in which I think Seoul is severely lacking. I've spent 15 minutes waiting for trains/subway on numerous occasions and it seems to take quite a while to get from one place to another. Much longer than in London or Tokyo. London's transportation system definitely beats Seoul's big time, but between Seoul and Tokyo there's just no comparison. Tokyo is lightyears ahead!

Seoul is however very cheap. Taxis are very affordable, subways cost less than 1 GBP and food also costs next to nothing, but all in all I have to say I don't think it's very likely I'll return to Seoul or South Korea. There's just nothing that I really like about the country. I did meet some very nice people and had a good time with them, but Seoul as a city and South Korea as a country I do not like. The food's not my thing, the public transportation is not good, not speaking the language doesn't help and I guess I'm just in love with Japan! =)

South Korea does however still make the best movies in the world and I will continue enjoying them from abroad as much as I can!