One of the benefits of having smart, capable, adventurous people in your life is that they move all over the place to do cool things, and going to visit them gives you a good excuse to travel. It’s taken me waaaaay too long to sort through these pictures (thanks, grad school), but in March I went to visit my friend Thad, who is currently teaching English in Seoul.

I’ve been trying to get to Asia for a really long time. I’ve wanted to go to Japan for at least a decade (my interest in Japan predates even my obsession with Iceland), but I haven’t managed to make it there yet. Somehow Korea has never been on my radar, but I’m glad I had an excuse to go – I loved it and I’d go back in a heartbeat.

I flew the long legs of my trip on Asiana Airlines and I highly recommend them. In my experience, non-American carriers are leaps and bounds better than anything we have to offer, and Asiana was especially good. Everything was classy, polite, and efficient. It was a stark contrast to my return leg from San Fransisco to Denver on Virgin Airlines, which was a study in “I bet all those rich kids will fly with us if we make this feel like a trendy nightclub”. I don’t need my flight to be “an experience” (on a plane complete with smoked plexiglass cabin dividers and mood lighting), and I don’t need throbbing dance beats and staff with endless Macklemore haircuts when I check my bag at the airport. And we don’t even need to talk about the “we don’t give a fuck about you” experience that is flying United, which I did for my short leg on the way out.

Luckily, public transit in Seoul continued to be just as good an experience as flying, and I spent the week getting very good use out of the subway system. I find subways – no matter where I go – to be universally easy to navigate. The type of people who design them think in the same logical way that I do, and they always make me feel comfortable and safe. In Seoul, the stations have signage in both Korean and English, and the announcements on the train are also in Korean and English (and sometimes Japanese and Mandarin too). Korean subway stations are often massive and function as their own underground shopping malls. The subway system is extensive; between walking and the subway, I was able to get everywhere that I wanted to go. I do love to walk though, so take that with a grain of salt – my definition of an acceptable walking distance may not be the same as yours. There’s also a very thorough bus system, but I didn’t try it out since the subway gave me everything I needed. 

I learned how to say hello, goodbye, thank you, and “I want that” in Korean, and familiarized myself with Hangul using this awesome website, and I was able to navigate and communicate well enough to do just about everything I wanted. As an anthropologist interested in language, and as a graphic designer who loves typography, I’m completely fascinated by Hangul. It’s efficient, and logical, and seems (in my limited experience) very easy to learn. I’m currently trying to learn a bit of Japanese in hopes of going there this summer, and I wish it were as straightforward as Hangul.

In the end, big cities the world over are simultaneously completely foreign and exactly the same. Everyone goes to work, everyone goes shopping, everyone goes out to eat, everyone socializes. The patterns are always familiar, even if the way they look is very different. Seoul is covered in KFCs and Subways, and there are 7-11s and Starbucks all over the place. There are H&Ms and giant ads for American movies and bars with Jameson specials for St. Patrick’s Day. But there are also tiny local hangouts where you can get a filling lunch of dumpling soup for $3, and people wandering around in hanbok, and beautiful temples hiding amongst skyscrapers, and soul-crushingly good k-dramas, and a whole sub-culture revolving around cartoon emoticons, and a million other beautiful, unfamiliar things. From the familiar to the strange, I loved it all. The more I travel, the more I think that big cities – certain ones, at least – might be where I am meant to be.

Anyway, a video and then on to the photos. See part 2 for the palaces, temples, museums, and other touristy bits.

A wobbly video of one of the less busy sides streets in Myeong-dong, Seoul’s busy shopping area. So many food carts and skincare shops. If you’re ever in Seoul, find a cart and buy an egg bun; it’s like cornbread with an egg in the middle, and it will burn the crap out of your fingers, but it’s delicious.

I started the trip by giving the U.S. government all kinds of data on my travel habits.

One of many delicious airplane meals.

Convenience stores and churches, everywhere.

The aforementioned dumpling soup and communal banchan (side dishes).

So many strange and foreign things.

Tiny hidden green space.

I’d live behind this gate.

Lots of the parks around Seoul have gym equipment in them. I’d exercise a lot more if this was my view.

I tried all week to become friends with this neighborcat, but it wasn’t interested.

A market somewhere en route to Thad’s church.

A school in Gangnam. Apparently parents forcing their kids to play soccer is universal.

Things were still pretty brown while I was there, but the city was starting to roll out planter flowers and other decorative landscaping right as I was leaving.

Hazy sunset from the stairs of the Jamsil subway station.

The entrance to Olympic Park, home of the 1988 summer games.

More Olympic Park. Imagine this later in the year, when the plants are green and the dirt in the middle-ground is a picturesque lake.

There are several Fallout-esque buildings around Olympic Park, and I love them.

Olympic Park.

Olympic Park.

The city is full of hidden pockets of sculpture and other types of random art installation. I have no idea how these cartoon characters relate to anything else here, but the vertical lights in the background pulse slowly and I watched it for way too long.

Korean grocery stores are pretty much the same as American grocery stores, except that the aisles are teeny.

My home base was in Gangnam, which has embraced all the popularity it gained from this song (this video has almost 3 BILLION views now?!?)

Bookstores always feel good, even if you can’t read anything.

Everybody wants to go to Iceland!

The Arario Museum. “If all relationships were to reach equilibrium, then this building would dissolve.”

I passed this amazing shop full of ancient-looking somethings (books? maps? art prints?) in Insa-dong. I was intimidated by how not-touristy it looked and wasn’t sure I’d be able to communicate so I didn’t go in, and I regret it.

A side street in Insa-dong.

The plaza outside Gangnam Station. There’s a sculpture in the lower-left (where the pink path leads) where you can pose next to a metal outline of PSY.

Fancy tea with this fancy guy on his fancy lunch break.

Kakao Friends, a three-story store dedicated to the characters from Korea’s instant messaging app. The guy in the center is my favorite: Ryan, a lion with no mane. There’s also a sentient radish in a bunny costume and all kinds of other nonsensical things.

Subway stuff. Is it art? Who knows.

Probably the best meal of the trip. Ssambap: grill up a bunch of delicious toppings, wrap them in lettuce with some banchan, shove the whole thing in your mouth, repeat until nirvana is attained. 

One of the side streets in the busy shopping area of Myeong-dong, with Namsan Tower in the background.

Myeongdong Cathedral, seat of Catholicism in Korea and one of the oldest examples of Gothic Revival architecture in the country.

Scenic views from a walk along the Han River.

There’s an impressive multimodal path network across the bridges and along both sides of the river. The banks are dotted with parks and other public gathering spaces, and I passed lots of fully kitted-out cyclists.

A playground along the north side of the river.

I arrived in Korea the day after Park Geun-Hye was officially impeached. American news was reporting all kinds of political unrest, but aside from two armed soldiers outside of a subway station, this is all I saw: a small collection of tents occupying Seoul Plaza.

A couple of cool cats outside a framing store.

Lounge day. Food in Korea is insanely packaged, especially processed food: open the big box, wade through several more layers of packaging, finally arrive at a disappointingly small amount of cookies. Also Taco Bell is very expensive.