Tim Tayag » seoul

The Final Installment of On-Foot Korea

Tim — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 06:26:58 +0000

In this final installment of On-Foot Korea, I visit one of my favorite places in Seoul – Insadong. How do I describe this place? It’s kinda Bohemian with lots of restaurants, coffee and tea shops, art stores, trinket stores, street food, etc. I was able to check out Ssamziegil, a small building of shops with only ramps and no stairs. I also shopped in Face Republic, a chain store of face and body beauty products with the famous Korean popstar Rain as the endorser (or maybe he owns it). I bought some Korean placemat, bookmarks, tea, and other artsy stuff. Insadong is a good area to hang out if you’re tired of the typical mall.

On-Foot Korea Part 6

Tim — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:49:50 +0000

And now it’s time for a little culture as On-Foot visits a traditional Korean Village…

On the Seoul of Your Foot Part 5 (On-Foot Goes Web)

Tim — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:40:16 +0000

In this episode, I tried out a Korean fastfood owned by the mega giant corporation Lotte. I also sampled some street food. I visited the night market and the lively streets of the Myeong Dong district. Seoul turned out to be a lot of fun.

On the Seoul of Your Foot Part 4 (On-Foot Goes Web)

Tim — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:03:59 +0000

One night we were so hungry so we decided to explore the nearest district with some nightlife and it happened to be Sincheon. We had the biggest king crab and met some nice Korean people. We also tried this drink that’s kinda like beer. I didn’t really like it much, maybe because the waitress had her finger inside the bowl.

On the Seoul of Your Foot Part 3 (On-Foot Goes Web)

Tim — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 08:37:39 +0000

The third installment of On-Foot in Seoul. In this episode, I go to the 2 famous palaces in Seoul. They are conveniently located an MTR stop away from each other. Seeing some old palaces was a nice break from the modern buildings and shopping. The architecture is similar to the temples and palaces I visited in Japan, but the Korean ones are much spicier. They were both worth visiting, though I suggest you go a bit earlier so you can enjoy them longer as we got late to the last palace and were not allowed to go inside anymore. I am also told that there is a secret garden behind the Gyeongbokgung palace which we missed.

On the Seoul of Your Foot Part 2 (On-Foot Goes Web)

Tim — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:33:15 +0000

Every city has a famous tower that serves as its symbol. Seattle has the Space Needle, Paris has the Eiffel Tower, Manila has the Smokey Mountain which has been moved somewhere else ( I don’t know where). It’s a touristy thing to do but you still have to do it just so that you can say you did it. I lived in San Francisco for over a decade and it wasn’t until my 5th year when I actually visited the Rock, otherwise known as Alcatraz. If it wasn’t for my family visiting, I probably would’ve never even visited. So now I make it a point to do at least one tower per city. In Korea, we visited the Namsan Seoul Tower. Roll VTR!

On the Seoul of Your Foot Part 1 (On-Foot Goes Web)

Tim — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:10:34 +0000

Why Korea? Well, since they’ve been invading our country for the past several years, I thought it was high time we paid them back for their atrocities. Yeah, that’s right I said it! Go to their country and give them a taste of their own medicine: slap their golf caddies, make them watch our horrible telenovelas, and rent an apartment and sublease it to students, who leave a trail of slippers outside the door. While I’m at it, I might as well taste their delicious spicy food that makes me sweat on the back of my head and eat their wonderful ice cream desserts.

We arrived in Incheon airport 10 minutes early but since they’re ahead by 1 hour, we lost 50 minutes. It always makes me wonder where the lost time goes when you travel to different time zones. Is there a country that just keeps lost time and when you visit that country you get to live out those missing hours? Incheon airport, where most international flights in Seoul arrive, is typical of any first class airport. It makes me sad when I think of our airports back in the Philippines (although NAIA 3 is quite impressive even though it’s relatively pretty small by international standards. To get to the hotel, we took a bus, which came out to be about P600. One Philippine Peso is roughly around 25 Korean Won. So in Japan I was a millionaire and in Korea I’m a billionaire. But so is everyone else.

The first thing I noticed about Korea is their toilet. Similar to Japan, they have these high-tech toilet seats that have heaters and bidets that can control everything from the water temperature, water pressure, and gyrating movements of the bidet. Of course I couldn’t resist, I had to fiddle with it to get the controls just right. They also had other weird machines that I found amusing. There’s a word in Kapampangan for how I felt that cannot be translated: “bana”.