Exploring Seoul Day 1 - Ginseng Chicken, Hanboks, Strawberries and Shopping

After moving to Bangkok, we haven't had a proper overseas holiday, with most of our holidays within Thailand. As most of our overseas holidays were tied to CS's work trips, he could never really enjoy them properly. We decided to treat ourselves to a proper overseas holiday and chose Seoul and Taipei since we've always talked about visiting these two places but somehow those plans never materialised. 

We arrived in Seoul bright and early after a late night flight. It was a nightmare clearing immigration  with only a small number of counters opened. For a country which is pushing for tourism, you would think that there would be more counters opened. Once we cleared immigration, it was off to find an airport bus to take us to our hotel. We had chosen to stay in Myeongdong since it is apparently the best place to stay for tourists. We didn't choose to stay in any hanoks (of which there are plenty, and also easily found through hotel booking sites such as Expedia and Agoda) since we were not interested in that. Locating the airport bus counter was a breeze and after buying our tickets, we waited inside the airport as it was just too cold to stand out in the cold. Surprisingly we found a Gong Cha in the airport, and over the next few days, we came to realise that Gong Cha was everywhere in Seoul. 

The bus to Myeongdong took over an hour and we took the opportunity to catch up on sleep. The bus had a recording which tells you which stop it's at but sometimes the timing is a bit off so you do need to take note of your surroundings. 

We booked a room at Ekonomy Hotel Central Myeongdong but since they had two branches at Myeongdong, we got confused and got off at the wrong stop and went to the wrong one.  The staff was rather friendly and told us where our hotel was located, and after a short walk we reached our hotel. Interestingly, both hotels were in a commercial building. The building we were in also had a restaurant which seemed rather popular. We never seemed to see any office workers whenever we went out, which made me wonder what time they start and end work. As we didn't have any Korean won with us, we also sorted out our money exchange in Myeongdong which seemed to have a currency exchange every 10 steps. The area around the China embassy seemed to have the best rates. If you can't find it, just walk around a bit and compare prices, the moneychangers were relatively competitive. 

After leaving our luggage in the hotel, we headed off for some ginseng chicken as we haven't eaten anything since touching down in Seoul. We headed for the one restaurant which every guidebook seems to recommend, Tosokchon Samgyetang, and found out that it's even listed on the map at the MRT station. Since we were really early, there was no queue and we were seated as soon as we arrived. Just as we were hesitating over how to order, a waitress appeared and asked if we understood Chinese, she then handed us a menu and proceeded to tell us the kimchi is free flow, the portion is for one person etc etc. Over our next few days in Seoul, we realised that there were many Chinese working in Seoul, every time we were confused on what to do in a restaurant, there would be a Chinese waitress who pops up and tells us what to do. After we ordered our food, other guests started streaming in. I think this restaurant is in every guidebook in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia as we were surrounded by tourists from these countries. As the weather was rather cold, it was quite pleasant to eat something warm and soothing, however I felt the soup was a bit too thick and since the chicken was stuffed with glutinous rice, I found it impossible to finish everything. While I really love drinking soups (it's the Chinese in me), I didn't find this particular ginseng chicken mind blowing. 

interior of Tosokchon Samgyetang and its menu

After stuffing our stomachs, we decided to head to Gyeongbok Palace to see if we could catch the free guided tours there. We were walking there when we got distracted by fresh strawberries at the grocer. Obviously we had to stop and buy them! They were every bit as delicious as expected. 

When we reached Gyeongbok Palace we realised we had missed the free guided tours so we decided to just buy tickets and wander around the palace ourselves. There were many Korean girls as well as tourists who wore hanboks and wandered around taking photographs. The palace seem to rent out the hanboks but I think many of the Koreans actually came wearing their own hanboks. Some of the hanboks were a little too short and didn't look as lovely whereas some were modernised in a really trendy way.  Since we didn't have a guide, we did get quite bored rather quickly. I had initially thought that the palace grounds were quite small but they turned out to be bigger than expected. We did try to eavesdrop on what other tour groups were saying but since there were so many of them, the information just got drowned out.

 view of the palace

a building in the palace which was out of bounds to visitors

As we were rather tired out from the flight, we decided to head back for a short rest before venturing out for the evening. After a short rest, we went out in the evening to explore Myeongdong. It was really bustling and full of people. For tourists like us who are in Seoul for the first time, I do think it was the best place to stay. There were many restaurants, shops etc which makes walking around rather fun.

obligatory bingsu shot

I did pity the sales assistants who were outside the shops trying to pull in customers, since the weather was rather chilly. There is a Face Shop, Innisfree, Nature Republic etc every few steps away and I'm quite sure their sales targets must be very high since there are so many tourists staying there. As per my usual practice, we went to the 7-11 opposite our hotel so I can see what snacks they sell. I was totally amazed by how cheap the soju and makgeolli was. One bottle of soju was only 1000plus won? Only SGD1plus! It was the same price for makgeolli! No wonder they drink so much, it's so cheap! We bought a sakura soju to try, and it was quite yummy, not as rough as the normal soju. All in all it was a rather good first start to Seoul.