Seoul, Korea Rep.

What an action packed 4-day weekend! Last night I went to Karina’s place for some drinks before heading out to a salsa evening at a pub/club called Dolce. She introduced me to the first South African I’ve met here, a fantastic girl called Aalia from Cape Town. It seems so silly but it just felt so good to meet someone from home and be able to chat about certain things that other foreigners just don’t get 🙂

The salsa evening was fun but it had been a looong day of lessons and I was exhausted! I saw a few people I know from the language exchange so it was good when I realised that I actually do know a few people here. We also met a guy called TJ, a Korean guy who has spent the latter half of his life in the States. He came back to do his compulsory military service here and now lives in Seoul. He is a lovely guy and can salsa like a demon! He tried to teach me…but soon realised that when I said I had two left feet, I meant it. Crawled into bed at 3am and slept happily until 10:30am. My, how I love weekends! It is still such a novelty to have a weekend after working flat-out for 3 years in the hospitality industry.

On Saturday I made the mistake of going into a pet shop and asking how much the puppies and kittens are…a mere W45, 000. I made the even bigger mistake of holding one of the kittens. I really feel the need for a little fuzz ball to love. Anyway, I had to meet up with Karina so I tore myself away and we headed to the Indian restaurant for a quick bite before meeting Aalia at the train station to head to Seoul. Due to Buddha’s birthday on Tuesday coming, all the Buddhist temples are decked out in beautiful lanterns and there is a huge festival in Seoul to celebrate. This was my first time to go to Seoul “properly” so Karina and Aalia enjoyed showing me around and seeing everything with “new” eyes again.

They took me first to Insa-dong, the main touristy place. There are great Korean souvenirs in all the shops and street food galore. People are everywhere as well as performers in the street. We watched some guys making the “king’s dessert” from a blob of honey. It was amazing to watch. They also had a little “act” where they spoke in English and said a rehearsed script all together. Another guy stood in the street with a sign saying “free hug”. Weirdest thing but everyone was dead keen so I had my turn too. It was a nice hug…and the guy wished me a great day. I don’t know what he gets out of it but maybe it’s his good deed for the week? Who knows?

We met up with TJ who we had met the night before and hung out with him. It was nice because he only got out the army two months ago so hasn’t seen many areas of Seoul & we all took zillions of photos and pulled plenty of Asian “peace signs” for the camera. The Buddhist temple was amazingly decked out with lanterns and all things festive. I loved all the bright colours! I had been wanting a lotus flower lantern for a while and managed to find one so I was happy about that. We also went to an amazing teashop which was like a peaceful haven after the madness of the street outside. I sampled a delicious ginger tea which was sweet and had big slices of ginger in the bottom. Delicious and finished way too quickly.

Soon it was time to eat again, so Karina took us to an Arabian restaurant called Petra Palace. She warned us that the service is not great but the food is good. True to her word, the food was really great, the decor was lovely, but the service left a lot to be desired and the manager made a profit by ripping us off when we paid! We were all paying separately and he gave us the wrong amounts. It was only afterwards when we calculated it that we realised. Pity, I would’ve gone back there but not anymore.

After dinner we headed back to the area where we would see the end of the parade…but alas! It was finished!! We had missed it by 15 minutes!! We were all a little irritated and disappointed, but I was happy to have been there anyway as there was a great vibe. I saw someone’s photos of the parade and it looked absolutely fantastic. Sleepily we climbed onto the train and I got back home around midnight, only to crawl exhausted into bed in preparation for the trip to Busan in the morning!