I is for...

Itaewon.

The biggest foreigner district in Seoul, Itaewon is located right next to one of the biggest US army bases in Korea.  It is the best place to find foreign food, both restaurants and shops.   It has a huge expat community, not just English teachers but people from all over the globe.   I found it a little dodgy at night time, although you can find real cider at the Irish pub there...

Here is a glorious song about Itaewon:

H is for...

Hongdae

It had to be really.  Hongdae is the area I lived in for a year, and possibly THE biggest party district in Seoul.  I know, Hongdae + Abi/Me are not a natural sounding fit, but the area has a lot to offer other than drunkards.  I moved there because the hagwon (private school) I worked in was in an area called Sinchon, just one stop on the subway, 5/10 minutes by bus or a 15/20 minute walk away and our apartment building was in Hongdae.

Hongik university.

 At first I thought Hongdae was loud, dirty and busy.  I left loving it, but still thinking it was loud, dirty and busy.  It is a bonkers area to live in, Seoul is a city that NEVER sleeps, I mean never ever.  I would sometimes go for a run at 7am and I would pass people going home from the night before.  Living in that area was pretty interesting, and extremely convenient as it is super central (and not far from the river).  I'm not a big one for night life, but I still found things to love about the area.

The Hello Kitty Cafe.

Stall selling random cute things.

On a Saturday morning you will find a craft fair in the "playground", this hosts a collection of local artists selling their wares.  They are usually up to a pretty high standard too.  The area is named Hongdae because of the local arts university Hongik University. 

Free gig inside a clothes store.

The playground becomes a completely different place at night, then it is a meeting ground, a place to hang out and buy a dodgy street cocktail or to watch buskers.  There is also an older guy that sells makgeolli (Korean fermented rice wine, aquired taste but I found it delicious), he is literally called the Makgeolli man and is known to any regulars of the area (google him for a photo).

Local mart.

 It has a multitude of restaurants, cute cafes, bars and clubs.  A gazillion fashionable shops selling oversized jumpers and little skirts,  stalls selling funky mobile phone covers every hundred yards and a lot of street performers.  It is also down the road from the area of Hapjeong, this is also a nice area but I didn't get to explore it enough before leaving.

Buskers.

I'm going to pop a collection of photos taken in Hongdae down below.  There's one thing to be said for Hongdae, you'll always see something interesting...

G is for...

Gangnam style

I didn't want to do this to you all, as I am sure you have had enough of Psy and his antics, but I want to catch up with my A-Z and this is the easy option for G.

But, whilst on the topic of Gangnam, take a look here for a description of this affluent area south of the river in Seoul.

F is for...

I really struggled with this one, there aren't really places or things starting with this letter.  Apart from a restaurant, for example Fry Pan (best fried chicken in Seoul), or using my friend's idea of Face and discussing the crazy cosmetics industry in Korea I've been coming up clueless.  I might hit upon the latter in another post though.  A look at the index of my Rough Guide to Korea just proved it, there are no places beginning with F!  It is not a sound you hear in Hangul.  

Until about two seconds ago I was going to go with Fitness and discuss how outdoor gyms are really popular in Korea (and how old people do not just sit down and became immobile, they work out).  But then I spotted Fortress in the index and thought about a day trip I took with my friend to the fortress at Suwon.

So, today, F is for Fortress.

Located just an hour or so south of Central Seoul is the city of Suwon.  It's been a little swallowed up by the ever growing Seoul, but it is a city in it's own right rather than just a satellite city built to house workers for the capital (although some of these are quite nice too).  

Hwaseong fortress is a UNESCO-listed fortress at the centre of Suwon.  It was completed in 1796, built on the orders of King Jeongjo (an important ruler from the Joseon dynasty) to house the remains of his father, Prince Sado.  Sadly for poor Prince Sado, he never made it to the throne, instead meeting his doom by the hands of his father, King Yeongjo, at Changgyeonggung Palace in Seoul (thank you to the Rough Guide, 2008).

I went there with my friend Jenny, she popped by to visit me on her way home from Australia (via Korea and Hong Kong) and we had a great 10 days together.  Unfortunately, I had to work during her visit, but she's a well seasoned traveller and soon had both her solo days and our together days and evenings planned.   We popped down to Suwon one weekend and had a walk down to the fortress, we didn't get to see much of the rest of the city as we had a deadline to meet a friend of mine at the Art Park in Anyang, but what we saw was nice.  It was one of those days where nothing quite goes to plan, as is often the case with us, but it was a good day none the less (and hot because it was August).

We arrived at the train station and followed signs and the map in my Lonely Planet through the town and to the fortress.  

When we knew for certain that we were heading in the right direction.

It's free to enter and the thing to do is walk the wall.  As we followed it round we came to a gift shop, restaurant and place to buy tickets for the little dragon trolley that you can ride up and down the hillier part of the wall.  Korea has it's moments that leave me perplexed and we had one of them that day.  There was a possibility that it was going to rain, so they had decided to stop running the dragon trolley.  This is fine, and I agree that it was a typical humid summer day, but later we saw the dragon trolley packed with people enjoying the ride!  

 

Ah well, it was still fun to follow the wall.  At one point it disappears and you walk through the town trying to find the next segment, in fact the centre of the fortress is no longer really there and instead it now surrounds regular concrete buildings.  Every now and then you come across something resembling the original centre, the odd pagoda or green patch of grass, but the city has definitely grown up around this old relic.

The whole wall stretches for 5.7km so it's a walk-able distance and takes a little while if you want to stop and look at things.  It winds around quite a bit.  

 

There's a big Buddha statue and a small former palace you can see as well. 

When you get to the higher ground there is a big bell that you can pay to "gong", you pay tuppence to do so, I think it was 1,000 won for 3 goes, but it's quite fun.  Apparently, it's one gong for your parents, one for a healthy, harmonious family, and one for whatever you desire (Rough Guide).  All in all, it was a great day trip.

Hazy day in the city.

Something childishly thrilling about ringing a big bell.

 

A walk down memory lane to Chuncheon (ROK)

I just saw this photograph and was reminded of a great day, almost exactly a year ago...

"What, where and when?" you ask?  Well, let me fill you in...

This photograph was taken last February in a convenience store in Chuncheon, in the Gangwon province of South Korea.  In the photo you can see me holding a little samgak kimbap triangle, this one contained Spam!  As you can see, the shelf behind me is covered in the stuff.  Samgak kimbap triangles are basically triangles on rice with a filling and covered in seaweed.  They are tasty (depending on what filling you choose), cheap and convenient (although the art of successfully unwrapping one took a while to achieve).  Briefly after this photograph was taken, we hopped into a taxi and headed to the city centre.

Chuncheon is a small city and known as the home of dak galbi, a delicious chicken dish.  It even has a whole street dedicated to restaurants selling this spicy morsel of flavour.

After arriving in the city centre, we wandered the streets to take a look.  The friend that I went with had previously lived in Chuncheon so I had a guide!  We went passed the city hall and on to the main street.  For me, it was one of very few occasions where I visited a smaller city, having lived in central Seoul, and it was nice to see the differences.  One of them was a random Korean guy spotting my blonde hair and calling me beautiful!  Apparently, it would have happened quite often had I lived somewhere smaller, ha ha.  

After walking the main strip we entered Dak Galbi Street (see picture above) and took our time to choose our restaurant.  We ended up in a cute little place and were served by, who we presumed was, the owners mother, a grandmother, who seemed to delight in serving us foreigners.  It was possibly the BEST dak galbi I had ever had, and that alone made me happy to have visited Chuncheon.

What exactly is dak galbi?  It is a dish consisting of marinated chicken (as with lots of Korean food, it contains the hot pepper paste called gochujang) which is stir fried with cabbage, rice cakes (tteok), potatoes and onions.  

One of the things I love most about eating out in Korea is that lots of dishes are prepared either by you or in front of you.  Dak galbi is no exception.  When going to a dak galbi restaurant, many restaurants specialise in one or two dishes, you will be seated at a table with a hot plate in the middle.  Once you have ordered, they will bring out the ingredients in order of when they need to be cooked, light the gas ring underneath and start cooking the food.  

Raw ingredients.

How much involvement you have in cooking dak galbi will depend on how Western you look!  When going for food with Korean friends we were pretty much left to do it ourselves, when out with other Westerners we were regularly checked on by the staff (the waiters are there to take orders and cook your food).  Now this is great, as it prevented us from getting food poisoning or ruining our dinner, but it got a little old after the twentieth time we had been out for it and were capable of doing it ourselves. 

As you might be able to see, we added udon noodles to our dak galbi!

Depending on which restaurant you go to, there are chains and independent ones just for this dish alone, the service and layout will vary.  Most will provide you with aprons, sometimes you need to ask, or bags to put your belongings in, to prevent everything from a) being splattered by red pepper paste and oil, and b) smelling of dak galbi!  The recipe used by the restaurant will vary, and the dak galbi found in Chuncheon can vary again.  There is also the option of adding rice, cheese, noodles and many other things to your dish.  One of our favourite combos was rice and cheese added to the dish, or to get rice cooked in the dish once the dak galbi was eaten.  The waiters would scrape out the burnt parts from the pan and put the rice in (with gochujang).  My friends and I always tended to drink Hite or Cass (Korean beer, very weak to most but perfect for me) with our meal.  This was truly my favourite food, and I am quite sad that, so far, I have not found it in UK!  

As in all Korean restaurants, you will be served side dishes with dak galbi.  In my experience these tended to vary very little.  Normally, we were given a cold soup (often a kimchi type soup) and a side of thinly sliced cabbage with a sweet salad cream like dressing.  We must have had sweet pickled radishes or kimchi as well, but I can't quite remember now.  Water (mul) is always free and provided, either upon request or by water cooler, in restaurants.

And look at that, I have massively digressed!  For a more formal description on dak galbi click here, and for a recipe that will allow you to try and cook it yourself (if you have a Korean/Asian supermarket near you) click here.  Now, I am yet to try cooking it but it looks fantastic and easy enough.  I am going to give it a go once I have moved back to Cambridge and have access to the Korean shop there (Seoul Plaza on Mill Road).

After stuffing our faces, we wandered some more and ended up in Baskin Robbins, for dessert.  Yes, there is a theme developing here, I like food.

I love how many dessert places there are in Korea!  Ice cream alone has a whole heap of establishments devoted to dozens of flavours of the chilled goodness, not to mention ice cream cakes.  I'll have to do another post about this later or I'll be side tracked again.

Back to that day.  After pudding, we hopped in a taxi and headed to one of the lakes that surround the city.  Now, being February in Korea, the lake was a little frozen.

Lured by the site of footprints on the ice, we crossed the bridge to the other side and ventured down onto the ice.

 

It was the strangest sensation.  Living in the south of Blighty, I've never come across a frozen lake before.  This all happened a year ago, but I can still remember the quiet creaking noises and the trepidation with which we took our first steps.  We were soon put a little more at ease as we saw families out on the ice, with their little kids running around.  However, when we decided to venture a little further out, towards the centre of the lake, a siren was sounded and a guy in some kind of snow trolley told us off.  I was quite relieved to be honest as I wasn't feeling too good about it, and we were actually about to head back to solid ground anyway.

Needless to say, we didn't get to pedal around in a swan boat.

We strolled along beside the lake, taking photos of random things made pretty by the snow and crisp winter air, and then headed back to the other side.  We found a random cafe/restaurant (I seem to remember it having a lot of African artefacts) and drank a nice warm hot chocolate to defrost.  

Cute spoons and free Danish butter cookies, score!

My memory is failing me, I must be getting old, I know we took the bus to Chuncheon, but I can't recall whether we got it back or decided to cheat and get the subway back (a long journey).  Either way, here is a photo of the deserted train carriage (we would have been on the subway at one point either way).  Korea has an amazing transport system, very cheap, very efficient and super convenient.

It was a fabulous day, spent in great company.   I hope you enjoyed reading about Korea and one of the fondest memories of a day trip that I have.  If you did, let me know and I will endeavour to write some more Korea based entries.  I really love the country and my time there was fantastic.

About me

Hello, how do you do?  My name is Abi, I'm 30 years old, female and from Britain.  I can't bring myself to saying that I am a woman, and yet I am no longer a girl, truth being that I wish I was 20 again!  But no amount of ranting and raving, or even plastic surgery (perish the thought) will change that fact.

I've been in love with stationery as long as I can remember.  When I was around 6 or 7 I received a load of PINK stationery for my birthday.  I'm not talking about the odd notebook, I mean the whole caboodle!  Pink filing trays, pink rubbish bin, pink hole punch and stapler, a desk organiser....  You name it, I got it (this may be a good moment to admit that I was extremely spoilt in my younger years).  I have a distinct memory of jumping up and down on my parents bed, trying to see what my birthday presents were, as they were stashed away on top of their cupboard.  I don't remember much of my childhood (I have a memory that even a goldfish would poke fun at) but that one has stuck.

I'm a sucker for an optimistic or motivational quote.  I adore Pinterest and have a whole board dedicated to these words of wisdom.  This is not to say that I follow them and am one of those peppy people with a constant grin and a ray of sunshine shining out of their bottom.  Alas, more often than not it has been quite the opposite.

I will never grow out of Disney cartoons and animations (as they are better known nowadays).  I still have my original Disney films on VHS (yes, you read that right, V H S) and I miss when cartoons were drawn by hand and had dozens of catchy songs in them.  I was the child that watched every new film several times within days of ownership and would sing all the songs.  These days I love studio Gibli productions and will still happily rush to the cinema when the latest Pixar film is out.

That is not to say that I am a complete child, though maybe 80%...  I just have a lot of growing up to do.  

What else?

Friends are extremely important to me, I would honestly be lost without them.  The saying that "friends are the family you choose" rings very true for me.  They are my people and I'd do most anything to help out a friend that needed me.  Nine times out of ten I know within moments of meeting someone whether we're likely to be friends or not.  I have, occasionally been proven wrong on this point, but I am generally a good judge of character.  The flip side to this being that if I don't click with someone, or someone irritates me, then I'm not particularly wonderful at hiding it.  A uni friend once called me the transparent woman, which makes me sound awful, but she meant it in a way that my face shows everything, every emotion.

I love to travel, though am an utter nervous Nelly.  I want to see the world, to walk the Inca trails, learn the Argentine Tango in Argentina and go as face to face, as is safe, with a grizzly.  To be fair, I've not done too badly so far.  I have travelled a little, more than some and less than others, but I yearn to do more and live in far flung places.  I spent a year in South Korea and almost 5 months in New Zealand.  I'll write some posts about those if you fancy?

I'm artistic, mainly in temperament than in talent.  Given the chance I will take photos of almost anything and I can be incredibly annoying company when exploring somewhere new.  I am usually the person who has to run to catch up to the main group because I have spotted a pretty leaf.  I recently acquired a DSLR camera and long to be a master photographer.  The truth is that I know absolutely nothing about using it and am next to useless at teaching myself.  This has lead to one of my goals of this year (to be posted another time).  If you bear with me long enough, you will see the truth of this, as I will no doubt post a gazillion photographs.  I like to cover stuff with pretty paper, shoe boxes being a perfect example, and reuse them.  I make lavender bags (with lavender from my mum's garden) and give them to people as presents.  I make my own cards, or in the very least edit ones I have bought.

I ramble, waffle and often digress from the topic at hand.  I don't see this as a truly awful thing, but thought I'd best warn you.

I better take this opportunity to stop writing, otherwise this introduction is likely to go on far too long. 

Bis bald.

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