Anyway, this first day in Seoul was not planned to be overly busy. It was a bit of a gift - originally the day I landed into Seoul, the plan was to leave for Busan. The other complexity of the trip is traveling during what is South Korea's Thanksgiving, Chuseok, which is occuring the following weekend. The extra day in Seoul allowed me to do the things today I was planning for that day (the final part of the plan is to turn that day into more of a day trip). The other, other, complexity was the good old Typhoon that made me alter the trip in teh first place. As the rocky descent on the plane attested to, I landed very much in the last remnants of heavy rain.
Tired, and arriving far to early to actually do anything (4:30am), I decided to try to nap in the bowels of Seoul's massive, beautiful, but hilariously far away from downtown, Incheon airport. It worked well enough, but around 7am I left by cab to the district that would be my home for a day - the infamous Gangnam. The hotel was the Intercontinental that is stuck to one corner of a massive three block sprawling complex named 'Coex', part mall, part convention center, part office building. By the end of the day, I would become much more familiar with it.
After unsurprisingly being told my room was not available for my 8:15 arrival, I ventured out under cloud and drizzle, the last few moments where this damned typhoon would play any part in my trip. I walked to a coffee shop, the first non name brand one to open (8:30am), called Kihei, where I tried to slowly sip down a well made flat white. While the rain had basically stopped, the lingering humidity would not relent until tomorrow, and coupling that with Seoul being a place that largely has an enforced indoor mask mandate, and it wasn't comfortable, even as the sun started poking out by around 9:30 or so.
With still some time to kill before my first planned stop (the Starfield Library at the heart of the underground Starfield Coex Mall), I then walked across the street from the Coex building to the Bonguensa, a multi-leveled buddhist temple, with many ornate buildings, and a 23-foot buddha statue way in teh back. It wasn't a hike in any real sense except for the humidity and my general weariness after flying making me sweat buckets. During this time the sun fully came out which while adding to the heat was also a bit uplifting.
The Starfield Mall was an experience. Three levels all underground, it houses the pretty awe inspiring Starfield Library at its center. The Library has two levels of floor to ceiling bookshelves in an open atrium with a glass ceiling. It really is the most interesting little library I've seen - though I do question how anyone can actually read a lot of the books that are on the upper shelves that seem fully out of reach. The rest of the mall had an incredible scent throughout and a mixture of fancy brand name stores, coffee shops and weirdly a Pan Am store with Pan Am merch??
From there I braved Seoul's pretty good metro system for a few min to go over to my lunch spot which was more in teh heart of Gangnam. The neighborhood itself, made famous by PSY's song way back when, is known as a more trendy but also flashy and foreigner-friendly encalve, but the lunch spot - Manjok Ohyang Jokbal - was anything but foreigner friendly. The place is known for dishes utilizing pig trotters and I got one of the lunch specials which was three bowls of various kimchi type snack portions (all good, especially a sweeter mushroom one), a dish of braised pig trotters, another kimchi, sticky rice, and a pot of what I thought was soup but realized after a while was getting cooked down in front of me to egg, dumplings and some odd white thing that I couldn't place. In the end, that got mixed with the kimchi and rice, with pig trotters and a gochugaru based sauce on the side, to become a pretty nice lunch for $7.
After lunch was the one true bit of tourism on my first day, visiting the sprawling War Memorial of Korea museum. It has some similarities to the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh, including an impressive collection of old aircraft, tanks and ships to the side, but the inside was something of half history museum of Korea itself (detailing the many wars, conquests and lineage of its trading hands), and half museum of the Korean War, which very much unlike in Ho Chi Minh, the Americans are somewhat hailed here.
The museum had a lot - it was less impacting as the War Remnants Museum (no surprise there - that one called one of its exhibits the "Gallery of Atrocities"), but nonetheless but in painstaking detail the whole war. It also had large exhibits on the Korean Army helping abroad, the UN coming to Korea's aid (mostly the US - the US lost more people than every other country, excepting Korea, combined), and much more. Some parts were tranquil, a particular haunting exhibit was a black room with a spotlight shining on a sculpture of 1,300 ID tags put together in the shape of a teardrop. Some parts were informative, such as original copies of UN resolutions around bringing aid to Korea. On the whole it was a very worthwhile 90 min.
From there I went to Namsan Chemistry for a couple beers. They have their own beers, plus a few from other Seoul craft spots, and of course a few American choices (though craft ones, no Budweiser nonsense). I had a fairly underwhelming IPA and a very overwhelming Stout. The atmosphere was great even if it was unsurprisingly pretty empty midday on a Tuesday. The windows were open, a cool breeze coming through. The place is in a nice, more low-key area of Seoul called Yongsan. More so when I return on Friday for five days, I will become more intimately familiar with the neighborhoods that Seoul has within its urban sprawl.
After finally getting my hotel room and taking a short cat nap, I was back out to head to Yongsan, basically two blocks away from where i just was (great planning on my part), to a place that in English seems to be known as Mr. Ahn's Craft Maekgolli - the last word of that being a korean rice wine that the place serves in bottles. They also have amazingly crafted, presented, interesting food. Despite google telling me Tuesday is their quietest day, I arrived at 8pm to a 45 minute wait. During the wait a walked a couple blocks over to Magpie Brewing, a Seoul outpust of what is a Busan brewery (a place I would have gone to). Their hazy IPA was quite good and the setting quite chill, semi-open air on an alley off of a crowded street. So far Seoul has a lot of Taipei vibes, in a good way.
Dinner was excellent - they have a menu of 5-6 "single bite" dishes, of which I got three - an abalone, yuzu cream and apple dish, a korean pulled pork taco, and a fried "bitterflower" with Korean jamon. All three were great. The main though was one of the best non-tasting-menu dishes I've had in a long, long time. It was a cuttlefish, stuffed with pork and mushrooms, over a splatered plate of squid ink. It was just incredible. I couild have had two if I tried. The place was definitely worth the wait - it is avaialble for reservations with about 1-week notice.
After dinner I strolled aroud the area, checked out a cocktail bar which was great - classy decor, great mixologists, interesting cocktails; it was quite expensive though, roughly $18 for a cocktail, which seems to be the going rate at the more upper end cocktail bars in Seoul. While Korea reminds me a lot of Taipei, its prices are certianly closer to Tokyo.
The night ended admittedly poorly, and I was writing this on the day of, I would be much more engraged. Korea doesn't allow Uber, and my research into a suitable local replacement was spotty,so I was left trying to hail a cab, which I treid to do for about 40 minutes. Not that there weren't cabs - either they just speeded by despite being empty (something that I honestl chalk a bit up to racism), or refused to go where I was headed. In the end, I took a combination of bus and subway back, making it a 90 minute ordeal from leaving cocktail bar to bed, instead of 17 (had I just gotten a taxi).
As I'll write more about in tomorrow's piece, this hopefully won't be a problem again. In the end there will be a whole lot more of Seoul to come, but the first impressions - my issues getting a taxi aside - are all very positive.
