Seoul

Ahh, Seoul…. Not the pain in the backside we’d feared, but a wonderful antidote to the madness of Shanghai. Though South Korea was in the throes of its annual Chuseok (harvest) Festival in early October, for once this played to our favour as a great many Seoulites had left to return to ancestral hometowns to pay their respects. Thus the city was a lot less crowded than normal and it meant for a wonderfully relaxed, albeit rather soggy, time.

Our apartment was tiny, but at least had a toilet that provided several varieties of service, including a warm bottom douche from a pipe that slowly emerged from the basin like a lavatorial version of ‘Alien’. Alas, without musical accompaniment, unlike our washing machine that merrily sang to us for 5 minutes after a particularly vigorous spin cycle. The ‘jingle’ definitely seems to be a thing here. On the metro, a fanfare announces the imminent arrival of the next train, and each stop is punctuated by one of several lively songs, a mash of K-Pop tunes and traditional strings.

We spent our first evening in travel paradise. A walk through the rain, under pink and blue neon, to a restaurant bar in a shabby part of town serving pork noodle broth and chilled cheap soju, Korea’s everyday rice wine that tastes of weak vodka. We made friends with the barman, sat at the long steel table and supped & slurped our way through the soup next to the other punters. Simple, local and immensely satisfying.

Food is a big deal here and we’d heard stories of incredible meals from people who travel here purely for the sake of eating. We tried out some street food – unusual for us as we’ve had bad experiences from eating at dodgy roadside joints, but here we joined a tour with a guy called Han, a Dutch couple and a German girl. We wandered round the markets and sampled spicy fried kimchi with tofu, sweet potato pancakes drenched in light rice vinegar, gimbap rolls (a bit like sushi), fried seaweed, mung bean pancakes, japchae glass noodles and something puzzling called a baked baffle. We hung around in side street cafes where tourists generally never venture and sat at crowded market stall benches where everyone seemed to gather. Pouring with rain outside, pulsing on the inside, the markets were a wonderfully heady mix of smells, shouting and steaming pots of who knows what. Even the first degree burns I suffered as the red-hot goo from my sticky fried pastry spurted onto my hand did little to stop our enthusiasm. More food fantasies will be just around the corner I’m sure….

Ghwangjang Market, Seoul

Dondgdaenum Market, Seoul

Ghwangjang Market, Seoul

The Chuseok Festival had other, unexpected pleasures. Not only were many of the sights of the city free, but several were full of picturesque ‘Hanbok’ wearing tourists, both Korean and western. The Hanbok is the traditional dress of Korea and hugely popular with both males and females. A multitude of shops either sell or rent out the outfit and Geongbokgung Palace was evidently the place to be seen wearing it. For a country whose recent past has been dominated by Japanese colonialism, followed by the horrors of the Korean war and then constant threat of annihilation from their northern neighbours, it’s unsurprising that a good deal of effort is expended on reinforcing the national identity and Hanbok attire is an ideal way to do it. It was heartening to see so many Koreans decked out in their full regalia, showing-off and indulging in elaborate photo shoots in the most photogenic locations. What really surprised us, though, was the amount of non-Koreans doing the same thing. About a quarter of the tourists flouncing around in their finery were clearly caucasians, mainly women, and mainly with dresses far too small for them. The idea, for women, is to wear a dress with a hem that almost touches the floor to ensure your progression over the ground is glide-like. While the Koreans pulled it off to perfection, most westerners had around 10 inches to spare and looked somewhat foolish sporting thick bouncy trainers underneath their elaborate frocks…..

Geongbokgung Palace, Seoul

Our experience of the Korean ‘situation’ was somewhat mixed however. We visited the marvellous War Memorial museum where a fabulous display of photographs and explanatory panels took us through the causes and progress of the war between the North and South in the early 50’s, largely generated by ideology foreign to all Koreans, trapped as they were between the aftermath of the Japanese occupation, the rampant expansionism of the communist North and the ‘democracy at all costs’ preoccupation of the South. ‘Reunification’ was a word we saw and heard many times and it seems, at least here, that a desire to be one nation easily transcends any bloody past history or current politics. This was a major theme of our trip out to the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) at the border between the two countries, where bridges named ‘friendship’ and ‘reunification’ pagodas and plaques abound, all in the hope that the peninsula will eventually become one again.

Ironically this is the most militarised area in the world and security is unsurprisingly very tight, with all tourists undergoing several personal checks. But in stark contrast to that, your experience in the DMZ is strangely akin to that of a theme-park, where the North is reduced to caricatures and comic-book villany. To an extent this is understandable – the regime in the North is indeed viscous and ludicrous in most people’s eyes – but the DMZ tends to diminish the very real gravity of the stand-off by selling itself as a tourist mecca, where you can ride in funfairs, buy tacky souvenirs of missile themed toys and hand-grenade styled key-ring pouches. Sitting alongside genuinely moving monuments dedicated to attempts at bringing divided families together, or to the sex-slavery of the Second World War, the result is a confusing and incongruous mix of the solemn and the sleazy. Our attempts to peer into the mysterious isolation of the North were thwarted that day by low cloud cover and persistent drizzle, but you suspect the northerners are equally puzzled at the bus loads of tourists turning up each day to stare at them through the many long range binoculars stationed at the dedicated ‘observation platform’…

M.I.C.K.E.Y M.O.D.M.Z…….

There’s a fabulous diversity in Seoul and our stay there felt like visiting several cities in one. The Bukchon Hanok Village in the dead centre of town, though in parts full of tourists, felt like a step back in time. There are many preserved Hanok villages in the country (Hanok is Korean for a traditional house made of stone & timber, with elaborate roofs and often paper for windows) and many are kept alive by permanent residents as opposed to being merely historical curiosities. Away from main drags, where more Hanbok-clad visitors parade with a myriad of selfie-takers, there’s still an air of quiet solitude that mixes wonderfully with the evocative curves of bowed roof-tops and dark charcoal tiles. In stark contrast, the Dongdaenum Design Plaza catapults one forwards into sleek modernity where a vast amorphous blob full of galleries and design shops sits curiously in the landscape, its several globulous projections bridged by a thick, horizontal concrete mesh.

Bukchon Hanok Village, Seoul

Dongdaenum Design Plaza, Seoul

Myeongdong is a huge draw due to its narrow streets full of shops, eateries and street food vendors. Here, seemingly, is the South Korean centre of the beauty industry, where every second shop sells a bewildering array of creams, serums, oils (including some made from snails), and face masks for both sexes. Competition is fierce, so much so that semi-aggressive touts outside shops literally grab hold and attempt to drag you in. Then there’s Gangnam, a wealthy area strewn with high-end malls and flash cars. Amusingly, next to one mall there’s a monument to Psy, the pop-star whose mega-hit ‘Gangnam Style’ and wacky dancing helped bring Korean music to the world’s attention – two massive golden arms with draped hands, one above the other. People queue to stand under them and perform a half-arsed attempt to do the dance.

More like ‘Grandad Style’….

Our most enjoyable experience was more traditional though. We’d wandered through a field of wild flowers in the city centre (of course) and into the Jogyesa Temple, for once in lovely bright sunshine. A Buddhist ceremony was taking place, with rapid drumming and devotees prostrating themselves on mats, crammed in like sardines. Outside people wandered aimlessly, admiring the vivid colours and flowers, and making wishes by banging three times on the large drum near the entrance. It was both busy and serene, with everyone simply soaking-up the spectacle.

Jogyesa Temple, Seoul

A fabulous, incredibly likable city indeed and one we intend to return to at some point. On paper it shouldn’t have been ‘our thing’. Modern in the main, with just remnants of the traditional, busy with locals and, to be honest, many western tourists and ex-pats, and with hugely changeable weather (it rained a good deal of the time). But it has a wonderful vibe, especially at night. We spent many hours around the temple sites after the sun had disappeared, soaking up the atmosphere amongst the illuminated shrines and pagodas. We wandered through streets just wide enough for two to pass, in the torrential rain under a sea of umbrellas and flashing neon signs to atmospheric bars and restaurants in less salubrious parts of town. It’s part exotic, part familiar, part unfathomable but, paradoxically, rather accessible too.