Hi again! I’ve left Singapore and now I’m in Seoul, South Korea. We had a red eye flight from Malaysia to Korea. We flew with Malaysian Airlines, which I now think is the worst for these reasons:

During red eye flights, people try to sleep on the plane. But on Malaysian Airlines, they fed us gross meals at weird times and kept interrupting our sleep by bombarding us with numerous amounts of useless announcements in three different languages.

I was trying to watch a movie, and every 2 minutes there would be an announcement. And I couldn’t even understand what the captain was saying. So don’t ever, ever fly with them unless you really have to- like in a life or death situation.

After the plane landed, we were exhausted. My mom was angry because she only got 3 hours of sleep during the long flight. Then we had to stand in a long line. And when I say long, I mean it was so long it took us three hours to get through immigration.

There were only a few people working in the immigration department and mostly there were too many people. By the time we finally got out of that long line, I felt like it had been days. We took a bus to our apartment in Gangnam.

When we got there we were impressed. My mom had booked the apartment on Airbnb. It was right on the first floor, so we didn’t have to carry up our luggages. There were 3 beds, 2 TVs, 3 closets, 2 bedrooms, 3 smallish tables, and lots of drawer space. The furniture was nice and it was very spacious.

We settled down and rested. Now, it was about 11am. We went out to explore and find somewhere to eat.

In Korea, everything is nearby and convenient. Wherever you stay, restaurants, grocery stores, cafes, and bakeries are close by. It’s really nice. And you can walk to get everything you need.

Also, in Korea, you don’t have to tip, even if you want to, they won’t accept it. The food is so cheap here, it’s more cost effective to eat out everyday than to cook your own food.

We went to a Korean BBQ and ordered doenjang jjigae. Doenjang is fermented soybean paste and jjigae means soup. The soup was scrumdiddlyumptious! Doenjang is very good for you because it has probiotics.

Some banchan and rice came with our meal. (Banchan means side dishes.) There was kimchi (fermented spicy lettuce), cucumber, and anchovies.

Then, we decided to take the metro to Jamsil. I have been to Korea twice before, as my dad is Korean. The first time we had stayed in Jamsil. My family liked that area, so we frequently visit it.

First, we visited a mom and pop bakery called Angel Bakery. We go there every time we visit Korea. Their pastries are really yummy. We got some duk (sweet rice cake) for a snack.

Next, we went underground to a row of restaurants and shops. We bought some banchan to bring home. We got sweet fermented beans, fish cake, kimchi, daikon, quail eggs, and anchovy.

Then, we bought some street food. We got soondae and tteokbokki. Soondae is soft noodles with cow blood in a sausage form. You dip it in pink salt. Just so you know, it tastes way better than it sounds. Don’t be afraid to try it- eating it won’t make you a vampire!

Tteokbokki is plain duk (remember, the rice cakes) in sweet, spicy sauce.

Also we bought kimbap. Kimbap is basically Korean sushi. It’s different than sushi, though.

Finally, we came home to crash. We watched Tomorrow’s Cantabile (a Korean drama series) till bedtime. And bedtime on this particular day was at 6pm.

 

Tune in for more adventures in Korea.

-Mackenzie

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