Gyeongju

It's been a minute! In the time since the last post we've been to Gyeongju, changed up our travel plans, headed to Hahoe (a lil village) and then back to Seoul.

Gyeongju is my favourite place we've been in Korea! It has that vibe where you wanna do nothing there, just like Chengdu. Rocked up and immediately wanted to cancel our plans and just soak up the Gyeongju life.

A combination of the sweet vibes here and chats with people on our journey meant we reconfigured our trip to skip Busan (the 2nd city) and split our time between Gyeongju and an extra night in Seoul, it felt very peaceful vibes to remove a stop. Also, I'm actually such a 2nd city hater to my core so it tracks that we skipped. Osaka, Birmingham, Marseille - all fundamentally disappointing.

Road tripping

Bus seems like the most classic way to navigate Korea, particularly when you forgot to book your train in advance. I'm literally sooo converted though, this is truly no megabus we are out here living like kings. Insane leg room, fully horizontal recline, separation curtains, and only 15 seats on an entire coach.

Our fave thing about the road trips is the discovery of the perfect roadside snack, Sotteok sotteok. This is a two word combo of so (short for sausage) and tteok (the chewy rice cakes), how cute the word is a skewer too. Chomped one of these whilst listening to a dude jamming really hard on a saxophone in what felt like the middle of nowhere, surreal.

Tellytubby land

So Gyeongju is a somewhat ancient Korean city - it was the capital of one of the original kingdoms from about 50 BC for 1000ish years. The vibe back in the day was to have this massive hill as your tomb if you die as a royal person, but that means that Gyeongju is incredibly green, and covered in these hills that feel like a film set. It's so surreal and very pretty.

There was many cool historical activities but the reason I liked it so much was more the energy - so many cafes, cool bars, and the kinda weather that is ideal for sitting on the grass and watching people live their Gyeongju lives.

Some lil favourites from our time here:

1. Silly bar vibes

   • Gyeongju was full of interesting bars. Specific shoutouts go to the bartender in one who said he was a football fan. When we said we were from Leicester, he named almost the entire starting 11 of the 2015/16 team, it was quite mental.
   • Most interesting drink was a whisky situation with sesame oil and doenjjang (fermented soybean paste). Almost uncomfortably savoury but it got away with it.

2. Nail rerack

   • It was time to say goodbye to the year of the horse nails (sad, they slapped). Popped to a Korean spot here, where the girl doing them was wildly obsessed with David Bowie. She said he was a genius alien and the coolest person in the entire universe. Nails were fun too.

3. Gyeongju world
   • With our extra day of freedom we decided to hit up the local theme park. Turns out Koreans love a mental ride. Ate more sotteok sotteok, did a few loop the loops, probably in the wrong order.
   • The wildest thing was the quantity of mental water rides. Everyone walks around in ponchos tied so tight that not a single inch of them is on show. Initially thought it was dramatic, later discovered how insanely drenched you get compared to a Uk log flume, it's deranged.

Bingsu chronicles

Now also feels like the right time to share our adventures in Bingsu (Korean shaved ice). After an intro in Taiwan I've been somewhat laser focused on exploring the breadth and depth of the world of Bingsu. So far we have eaten 5. It's just the dream light fluffy cold afternoon treat. Bingsu is truly a way of life. In Korea the classic is roasted soybean powder and tteok (the chewy rice cakes again, they can do it all).

To categorise our experiences:

Wildest: Sweetcorn Bingsu in Sokcho. Both extremely good and also too reminiscent of the smell of sweetcorn from the can.

Worst: Theme park Bingsu in Gyeongju, to be expected. Too icy, lacking in creamy vibe, a lot of tinned pineapple.

Best: Black sesame and red bean in Seoul. Sweet but kinda umami, mad light texture, toppings distributed throughout, and extra sauce on the side. Dreamy.

Red bean is a classic dessert flavour in Asia which I've been grappling with on this trip. They literally are just like small kidney beans and I can't quite get over the beaniness. I had a dip after ordering a red bean porridge and it was the exact flavour and texture of refried beans. But Bingsu has changed my tune on them and I think I'm into the lil guys now.

Still on my quest, gonna find one more version in Seoul, and then I'm simply gonna have to find it in London.

Exponential bowl count

As we've travelled through Korea, it feels like the number of bowls you get at dinner is endlessly increasing. We started with a few banchan per meal in Seoul, and now we're at the point where they don't even fit on the table.

We went for an absolutely mental meal in Gyeongju where we ordered the set menu for £11 and were presented with an unfathomable number of plates of different snacks. Most memorable were raw crab, chicken porridge and alpine leek. Everywhere we go the meal comes with a massive smoked mackerel which I have to tackle entirely solo because mum can't eat fish - holidays are hard work sometimes.

Was so full when we left that food baby doesn't capture it, a literal food child.

Hahoe village

As part of our agenda recalculation, we booked a night in Hahoe, a small folk village near Andong where everyone's last name is Hoe. It was incredibly cute, thatched old houses and windy roads, but honestly mostly it was very surreal and hilarious.

1. Taxi driver
   • Our uber app said our driver had great conversation. On route to Hahoe he immediately started talking to us in Korean via his translation iPad and said 3x that I looked like Britney Spears. When we got out he said Bye bye Spears. Help.

2. Terrifying lovely lady
   • We stayed in a tiny airbnb room of a traditional house in Hahoe, hosted by this really sweet old lady who picked us up and seemed really obsessed with us. After we turned up we spotted an airbnb review that said she is wildly horrible to Korean people, and doesn't feed them breakfast. She then kept telling us how obsessed with Christmas markets she is and how many places she's been to in Europe. I think she has a weird thing for euro people, but at least her breakfast was very tasty...

3. Deranged masked dance
   • So Hahoe is famous for its mask making, and the classic masked theatre performance it puts on. We headed to one, and it was honestly batshit crazy. A pervy monk who kept smelling the piss of a dancing girl before they ran off together. A fluffy bull played by two people in a suit, where one was holding on to some massive fake fluffy bull balls. A masked butcher cut them off and all the kids in the audience were literally begging to be given them.

A truly wild and wacky place. We finished with a walk round the lake in Andong where some random European dude was clearly excited by some non Koreans and shouted HELLO WHITE LADIES whilst standing right next to us. Hello white man.

Leg 4 complete!

This is my last Korea post! We headed back to Seoul for a dreamy couple final nights involving cheesy dakgalbi a few hours of karaoke, and a massive bruise from being hit by my own uber.

We've both really loved Korea, it's been wicked! Going to miss mugwort flavoured things, the moon being sideways, and having loads of tiny sides with every meal. Will not miss the confusing process of wet rooms and designated wet and dry slippers, and the uniquely terrible electrical outlets.

Our biggest achievement of the trip was being able to distinguish the words for hello and goodbye by the end. Honestly so much harder than it sounds.

It's also been so fun to go away with mum, and it's added a load of novelty and excitement watching her be in Asia for the first time experiencing a 7/11 or the tables were you sit cross legged. Without her I think some of the fun and excitement of a new continent would start to seem too normal. She got to live out her dreams of feeding me magnesium every night and chia seeds every morning.

Now I'm at the airport about to head to Seattle and continue my circumnavigation of the globe. As Max said, another other side of the world. Im excited for a switch up! I think my enthusiasm for this vibe of sightseeing is slowly waning so it's the perfect time to inject with some different energy, and hopefully meet a real life vampire.

Feeling slightly eek about how close I am to working again, but that's a problem for another day.