What a nice short trip! The food, including street food, was very good for the most part. Besides kimchi and barbecue bulgogi stuff, we tried a few Korean staple food such as bibimbap (rice in hot pot topped with vegetables, meat and egg), japchae (similar to bibimbap but with cold transparent vermicelli) and samgyetang (whole chicken stuffed with glutinous rice). Seoulites are very friendly and it was much appreciated since we didn’t speak the same language as them. People speaking English were pretty scarce but luckily for us, some of them spoke mandarin fluently. More than once did our waiter go look for a mandarin speaking colleague, sometimes from the kitchen, to come help us order. The shopping is much better than in Shanghai but we didn’t find any plastic surgery centers that we here so much about. They have a university area (Hongdae) that pretty big and very lively on the Friday night that we were there. Public transportation is top notch with an extensive subway networks similar to Tokyo. Taxi rides are pretty cheap and they even have a public bus covering all major attractions spot around the city for tourist. Oh, and the internet there is blazing faasst! On the down side, Insadong, the supposedly cultural and traditional place to visit and Itaewon, Seoul’s international district were disappointing. Most likely because there are similar places like it in Shanghai.
Coming from Shanghai, I guess I appreciated some things more than tourist from other parts of the world. For example, the friendliness of the people encountered, the cleanliness of the air and streets and the lack of honking and cars/bus wanting to run over pedestrians. Overall a very nice city!
Pictures HERE.
