Seoul, Dec 2003

Trip Report
Seoul (Dec 2003)

Winter in Seoul is pretty much like winter can be in New York. You can get long stretches of cold gray days separated by a few days of sunshine. The snow falls, screws up traffic and makes life miserable for anyone walking the sidewalks and, after a few days, it melts.

I was sitting on a low stone wall in front of a Buddhist temple on one of those sunny days, eyes closed with my face turned up the morning sun. Even though the weather was still cold, it was the first time in days that I had been out in the sun and I was enjoying the mid-morning people watching in the sunshine. Westerners don’t typically attract a lot of attention in downtown Seoul but I was getting lots of odd looks from the passersby. Others had joined me in the sunshine, sitting on the stone wall and after a while it dawned on me that they were all deformed, crippled or otherwise handicapped in some way. It turns out that they were all beggars and I was in the middle of their usual begging territory in front of the temple. Apparently I looked healthy enough because nobody saw fit to give me a donation.

This was my first of many trips to South Korea. We were checking out a factory in the Anyang District and the work days were short so there was lots of spare time to look around. Seoul is pretty easy to get around in. They have a good subway system, most of the cabbies understood hotel names and the sidewalks are wide. Even with the crowds I never felt crowded. I was staying in a nice hotel that had a free happy hour, including drinks and food, for those staying on the executive floors. I wasn’t on those floors but looked like I fit in so nobody ever questioned me or presented me with a bill for all the food and drinks I consumed.

I picked up a few Korean phrases when I arrived in Seoul. They are the same phrases I learn wherever I go; hello, please, thank you and beer. Most of the younger educated people you run into in Seoul can speak English and we never really had any language problems.

I took the subway out to the Itaewon district one evening. It is a tourist zone with shopping and bars. You used to be able to buy some good knock-offs for cheap but now real stores have moved in and the independent vendors are harder to find. It was rush hour and the subway was packed with a standing room only crowd. I was the tallest, whitest guy on the train and all I could see was a sea of black hair.

We arrived in Itaewon without getting too lost on the subway and we started hitting the bars. The buildings along the main drag had storefronts on the lower level with bars either in the basements or on the second floor overlooking the street. Most of the signs were in English, unlike other areas of Seoul.

We moved from bar to bar along the main street and mixed in some shopping between drinks. I didn’t buy anything. I wouldn’t know a Hermes scarf from a herpes infested towel and wasn’t interested in buying a Coach purse that was made of cardboard. We found a couple of bars that had decent music but didn’t stay long at them. Every bar had a fleet of hostesses, each one anxious to be your friend as long as you bought drinks. That gets tired real fast so by midnight we were in a cab heading back towards the hotel. The cabbie was an old guy that didn’t speak any English but did manage to get us within half a mile of the hotel.

We were only in Seoul for a few days and spent the rest of the time there sampling the bars and restaurants in our hotel’s district. I love Korean food and you can eat pretty well for not much money, especially if you buy your food at a cart and eat out on the street. Even in the cold weather there were many street vendors offering up hot food and drink. I wasn’t sure what I was eating most of the time but it was tasty. I’ve always had a fairly robust constitution and can eat anything.

Our host took me out for dinner at an upscale restaurant and I was introduced to a Korean custom that I still don’t like. When in Korea it is polite to pour someone else’s drink and leave yours to be poured by him or her. The guys I was having dinner with always had a full glass, courtesy of yours truly, but mine was always empty. Maybe they were just really bad at taking hints (lip smacking, sighing, knocking my empty glass over, trying to drink out of an empty glass, trying to lick the bottom of the empty glass….) but the dinner was great. We had a constant stream of small dishes that were cooked on the tabletop grill. The grilled meat was tasty and when mixed with the side vegetables provided a great meal. I recognized most of the vegetables but tried everything. Some of the kim chi (fermented spiced cabbage) was a little strong but still very good when mixed with the meats.

Kim chi has a worldwide reputation that I was unaware of. When I left Incheon airport to head home I picked up a gift pack of 3 plastic bags of a variety of kim chi. I took it on the airplane with me and stuffed it in the overhead bin. The smell of the food slowly started seeping through the plastic wrap and soon the smell was just kind of hanging in the back, not really there but just enough to remind me of what was in the overhead bin. When we landed in San Francisco I opened the bin and the smell of kim chi rolled out like a wet porcupine and I almost choked. I pity the poor bastard that had his carry-on luggage in the bin with my kim chi. I made it through Immigration and headed to Customs. I had checked off on the Customs form that I was bringing in a food product. The Customs agent asked what I was bringing in. I replied that I had some kim chi. He laughed and told me that kim chi wasn’t food, stamped my form and I was in the country.