thoughts on seoul – overview and food

i spent the last week of march in seoul, which was unfortunately long enough to discover that there really isnt much to do there.

i admit to not being the biggest fan of korea, but with so many people around me raving about the country, plus it’s right there and so close to japan, i did go there with an open mind and the intention to give it a chance, be objective about the country and, most importantly, enjoy myself there.

seoul’s main attractions remind me of china, japan and thailand all rolled into one. the palaces are a combination of chinese and japanese stylistic elements – just less grand than the forbidden palace, for example - while the many markets about the city are very similar to those in thailand. having been to all of those countries very recently, seoul didnt really present anything new; i felt like i’d seen it all before, just rehashed.

the city itself reminded me of shanghai. while certain areas were new and shiny, with skyscrapers and conspicuous consumption, just next to them might be the older neighbourhoods, with buildings that clearly display signs of age and dirty roads.

lots of older people in seoul also like to hack up phlegm and phtttoey it out onto the streets – which is really disgusting behaviour – and the several times when i heard the sharp, short beep of the horn from a motorcycle speeding up from behind on a narrow alley, or when a car ploughed through a red light and still had the audacity to horn at the pedestrians, reminded me of beijing.

frankly, china really wasnt the best of experiences, and the whole look of seoul reminded me too much of china for comfort.

that doesnt mean seoul wasnt interesting though. seoul has great museums, and what attractions it has are interesting. however, beyond those attractions – and especially if you’re not interested in shopping – there isnt much to occupy your interest. i like being able to sit somewhere picturesque, like a park or along a waterfront and relax, but there werent any opportunities for that. places that were described as pretty in the guidebook – like Wolmido in Incheon – turned out to be disappointingly underwhelming, thus we decided not to check out the Han River – which was described as good for cycling and walking, and not for the view anyway - lest we get disappointed yet again, especially given the freezing winds and cold weather when we were there.

food in korea is quite cheap in comparison to japan though, which is really good. i discovered that there isnt too much variety to korean food however – it’s either some variety of barbequed meat or spicy soup, or bibimbap or chijimi, or some unidentifiable item – but fortunately there’s plenty of other types of food in seoul. we couldnt stomach more than 1 korean meal a day, but had some good italian, not very nice fried chicken, tasty food at an irish pub, and not bad japanese food.

apparently, the korean custom is that if a restaurant is doing well, it shouldnt undergo renovations, else its luck will be altered. this meant that there were some new, nice-looking restaurants that sold food as cheap as elsewhere. we had a korean dinner at one of these places one night, and it was it was fantastic. we ordered 1 chijimi (mistake, cos a chijimi is big!) and a serving of barbequed pork ribs with side dishes. it came to about 2400yen for both of us, which is ridiculously cheap – we ate till we burst, and essentially paid half of what we would have paid in japan.

our side dishes – the chijimi wasnt out yet, and note the bowl of rice which went untouched:

here’s the deboned ribs, which were extremely tasty and soft, as well as a huge bowl of stodgy soup, the contents of which are unknown. i think there was some tofu inside, but it wasnt tasty and there was much more delicious food to eat, so it went largely untouched:

my favourite 2 side dishes:

the above is some cold but spicy soup. it was very delicious and the noodles were firm, like chinese la mian. below is zucchini with dried shrimp – it’s near impossible to get haebi in japan, and this was so so good. i would have ordered more of these 2 dishes if i had exra space at the end, but it was a struggle to finish the chijimi and meat.

 

the first lunch i had brought some tasty side dishes too:

above are, clockwise from the right – kimchi, spicy dried cuttlefish (this was amazing!), bai chye cooked in lots of sesame seeds and sesame oil (i heard that korean cooking uses a lot of sesame oil. that’s the way to go), seaweed soup, tasty beansprouts and potato with chilli.

korean food is especially cheap – unless you order the barbeque meat – as they usually come with lots of side dishes that fill you up. for example, you might be paying the same price (or less) for a bowl of bibimbap than what you do in japan, but get all the side dishes too. wonderful!

china snippets – breakfast

chatting about the omelette i just made reminded me of the hostel breakfasts in china – they were all so amazing!

we had breakfast in the hostel for the first half of our trip, and i swear i went into major cholesterol and oil overload thanks to the breakfasts that came with 2 sunny-side ups, ham/bacon/sausage, toast, orange juice and perhaps a fruit salad/fruit.

breakfasts are really cheap in china for the price that you’re paying, and they’re not stingy on oil either, which means PERFECT sunny-side ups – with the yolk still runny – and very greasy and tasty bacon. the best breakfast i had was in suzhou, as the eggs were so well done that the whites were still slighty soft and not overcooked in the least. and of course they had a good portion of bacon too :) :)

plus, travelling with someone who doesnt eat eggs meant that sometimes i got FOUR eggs a day. i think this happened about twice, before i got really really sick of eating that many eggs in a day.

but china is awesome for sunny-side ups. and i’m really craving some bacon now. help!!

hangzhou day 3

the hostel that i stayed in had an extremely beautiful and playful male kitten:

he’s an amazing kitten and i REALLY wanted to bring him home soooo badly.

look at how he was trying to play with my arm and gnaw and claw at it.. so cute!!

on the hunt and distracted by a hand

stalking his prey over the couch

we were on our way to Qu Yuan Feng He, a collection of gardens on the other side of the lake. however, the taxi driver dropped us off halfway cos there was a traffic jam up ahead and he didnt want to get caught in it. we ended up having to walk about 2km :S

there are a lot of lotus plants along west lake

bridal shoot:

the weather was very hot that day though..

one of the gardens in Qu Yuan Feng He:

more rocks

i like this lotus, cos i’ve never seen dual-toned ones like this before! unfortunately it wasnt blooming very prettily..

the name of the gardens – things are a bit confusing in china, cos sometimes you’re meant to read from left to right, and at other times from right to left. in this case, it’s right to left:

i like this view:

i thought this was very innovative too, incorporating the pavilions and the round walls:

we caught a double-decker tourist bus on the way back, and here’s the view from it:

the man united team was in hangzhou as part of their asian tour, and a group of fans was waiting outside hyatt hotel:

hangzhou day 2 - 飞来峰 and 灵隐寺

Feilai Peak and Linyin Temple are apparently the premier sights of hangzhou. the former is described as such on Lonely Planet:

“The walk up to the temple skirts the flanks of Feilai Peak (Fēilái Fēng; Peak Flying from Afar), which is supposed to have been magically transported here from India. The real highlights here, though, are the Buddhist carvings lining the riverbanks and hillsides - all 470 of them, dating from the 10th to 14th centuries. To get a close-up view of the best carvings, including the famous 'laughing' Maitreya Buddha, follow the paths along the far (east) side of the stream.”

it was rainy that day, so the climb up some of the slopes were a bit dangerous.. here are some pictures. not many pictures at all, mainly cos of the rain and cos i was trying to keep my balance while trying to avoid all the china tourists. and i hate rain, so i was in pretty much a shitty mood that day..

look at how heavy the rain was:

here’s the entrance to the grounds of the area:

it was also here that we met some pple who were trying to scam us. first, they told us that we were going in the wrong direction, then offered to show us to the correct place and were trying to lead us somewhere else. they said that you also have to wash your hands to purify yourself before praying as that’ll work better and some other crap.

here’s a pic of a guanyin who was carved into the rock:

i’d rented the audio guide, which came in mandarin for 10RMB. there werent any in english for this place, but in most of the tourist attractions, the mandarin guide is only 10RMB, while the foreign language ones are 40RMB. quadruple the price! but i still rented the english guides though, as this chinese one had cheem words that i didnt understand.

check out this big rock! can compare the scale with the boy:

here are more rock carvings that are in the open, rather than in caves like those above:

check out the number of tourists:

just look at the stream due to the heavy rain:

 

it was such that some areas were flooded, so we had to backtrack all the way to get across the stream to the side on which the temple was. and of course, my shoes were all wet and gross.

this is lingyin temple:

 

it was here at the ticket counter where i first experienced discrimination cos pple think i’m from china, compared to if you’re obviously a (white?) tourist. the lady at the ticket counter was so gross and pissed me off so bad. dont want to say anymore about her. gross.

anyway, the temple is quite nice as it has many really pretty buddhist statues, but i was in an awful mood then and you’re supposedly not meant to take any pictures anyway, so i dont have any photos of this place at all.

after we left that place, we had an extremely late lunch in this nice cafe:

and then went to check out another one of the parks next to the west lake, called “Orioles Singing in the Willows”:

it had nice carvings on the pavements:

mandarin ducks and dragons

i believe this below is Leifeng Pagoda, another famous landmark:

i think this would have been such a great pic if i had a DLSR, cos it’s blurry!!

sunset:

and at night, while we were walking in the rain looking for dinner, we saw this:

quite interesting rite? it looked like the structure was on fire. no idea what it was though.. haha.