Escalator
The first thing I noticed when we arrived at Seoul airport was that the escalators in Korea require standing on the right and moving on the left (opposite from Singapore). I had to remind Calder a few times not to block the left side. Not easy especially since he had a luggage to take care of. We were on a 12-day trip with hotel offering laundry facility (coin-operated) only on Day 9, so we brought two medium and two small luggages - each person towing one. It's the first time Calder had a luggage to mind and he kept abandoning it (when he went toilet/bee-lined for a seat on subway).
Bakeries
It's not common for hotels in Korea to offer breakfast. Initially, I was concerned about Calder getting hungry while we scouted for breakfast. Turned out there're many bakeries with a great variety of tasty bread and pastries displayed attractively on trays. Calder was happy with the familiar food. While exploring Gwangjang market in Seoul, we saw a long queue at Garlic Boy and decided to join the line. This stall sold variations of garlic bread and we tried four. All were good! I noticed the stall had slogans like "Lucas is back", "Emma is back". At first, I thought they were names of popular staff. But the same signage appeared at another branch. Turned out they were names of their bread varieties. I was soon to discover that almost all garlic bread sold in Korea were tasty - deeply flavoured and sweeter than the ones in Singapore. It made me want to choose garlic bread flavor for the HBAF almonds that we later bought back home.
Seafood
Besides garlic bread, my other favorite food in Korea was seafood. In Busan, after taking the cable car, we stumbled upon a row of stalls that sold seafood. One vendor earnestly invited us to her stall, assuring us that a large set (90000 won) would be sufficient for our family of four. Since it was lunch time and we wanted to eat seafood in Busan, we sat down to a meal prepared for us. Calder was wary of the spiralling smoke as the seafood was grilled over charcoal briquette. He ate prawns and some squid, but didn't take to abalone and scallop or other shellfish. The staff placed before us a plate of squirming octopus tentacles that we thought were meant for grilling but turned out to be sashimi. I was going eeeks! when one of the still-moving tentacles dropped from the table onto my hand. The plate had raw orange sea squirts too. Ethel tried the raw octopus and pronounced it good. But the rest we asked the staff to kindly cook it. So she grilled them on scallop shells. Scallop she grilled with lots of shredded cheese. I realized it's nice to not to have to decide every dish but be surprised by what the set meal offers. I suppose the surprise was partly because we couldn't understand Korean words on menus. Thank God for Google lens (that translated well for print but not handwritten words) and Google Translate (which we used often to convey that we didn't want our food spicy). We decided to try barbeque seafood again and found out that the items offered were similar across different stalls. Since Calder wouldn't take shellfish, we ordered for him fried rice. During trips, he always looked happy to meet familiar food like bread, pizza and fried rice. He ate non-spicy fried chicken too.
Alternative food
Many restaurants in Korea require each customer to order a main meal. After a number of over-sixty dollar meals, we looked for cheaper alternatives in the supermarket. Cup noodles! Supplemented with gimbap or roasted chicken or sliced pork trotter (which turned out to be rather tough). Did this twice during the trip. Ethel had certain food in mind that she wanted to eat in Korea: Grilled meat, Korean fried chicken, jajang noodles, cold noodles etc, so we left meal slots to try these. Calder was fine with cup noodles and meat dumplings and gimbap. Good thing we packed a fork because the eateries usually supply just spoons and chopsticks. A few times, I nearly forgot to keep our personal fork after the meal. Later, I taught Calder to use another spoon to push food, like what he does with a fork. In this way, he dined with two metal spoons, unless he was eating noodles that required a fork.
Drinks
The eateries usually supply drinking water from a dispenser or jug. We took the opportunity to fill up our water bottles. To reduce plastic waste, tour agencies in Korea do not supply bottled water. Many hotels do not supply toothbrush either. While Ethel and her Dad drank coffee, I bought yogurt drinks and flavoured milk from convenient stores for Calder and me. Hubby discovered that makgeolli was cheap (around 2000 won a bottle in convenient stores) and refreshing. In cafes, strawberry latte (no caffeine) was something Calder appreciated. We saw a hot drinks vending machine on a subway platform and elderly uncles sitting beside train doors, sipping from paper cups. Actually, on our first train ride in Korea, air hostesses were snacking on chocolate stick wafers on the train. It's probably permissible to eat and drink on Korean mrt. Like Singapore, the trains have special seats for disabled/elderly (I had to stop Calder from choosing these seats). There were even designated seats for pregnant women and cabins for those who prefer weaker air-conditioning.
Activities
In this trip, we figured out a way to do shopping without the guys impatiently waiting - Ethel to venture out on her own during our afternoon siestas. She was able to find jackets that she liked in Hongdae. Of course, there was also Olive Young for the facial products. We enjoyed exploring the markets and travelling on buses, besides trying out Korean food (especially the wide selection of bread).
Fruit was strangely scarce in the Seoul city area, sold expensively in cups in convenient stalls. We decided to head to Cheongnyangni wholesale fruit and vegetable market. That was one of the best decisions made. There were big baskets of strawberries selling as cheaply as 4000 won. Ethel chose a 5000 won basket which had bigger strawberries (though I don't suppose bigger means sweeter). We also bought a big basket of loose grapes for 1000 won and they were so sweet!
Ethel likes to do costume photography so we let her rent a hanbok when we were visiting Gyeongbokgung Palace. The rental (Dorothy Hanbok Travel) was only 12000 won for 2 hours. Since those wearing traditional costumes enjoyed free entry into the palace (otherwise 6000 won), hubby suggested I rent a costume too. Calder was patient waiting as Daddy took pictures of Ethel and Mommy. Occasionally we beckoned him to take a family shot together. There were hardly any seats at the palace, so Calder spent some time sitting on steps. The steps were so low that he unbuttoned his pants and after a while, proceeded to pull out the button. Two pants became button-less in this trip but I think Calder was outgrowing them anyway, so no big loss.
In Jeju, we tried cycling but it was a bad idea because the slopes were so steep (no wonder the vendor kept recommending electric bikes). Calder was not used to mountain bikes (at home, his was the foldable type) and what with having to get off so often to push the bike (the leg had to swing back high to dismount), he got upset and tried to ram our bikes. Thank God it didn't escalate into a meltdown. But we gave up the activity soon after and returned the bikes in less than 2 hours (although at 25000 won, we could have them for the whole day).
On the other days, we followed local tour guides to explore Eastern and Southwest Jeju. Through these tours, we briefly visited parks, waterfalls, cave, beach etc. The first Jeju tour was awful because of the rainy weather. The wind was so strong it kept flipping our umbrellas backward. Calder fairly gave up on his umbrella. To keep him warm, we gave him a woollen neck warmer. It was so cold and wet that I much preferred to hide in the tour bus. Fortunately, the other days in Korea were sunny. We were told that because of the strong wind, Koreans use raincoats instead of umbrella. But our first tour guide (in Seoul) carried a black umbrella in the sun - probably to protect his fair complexion.
Towards the end of the trip, we spotted an empty photo booth and had fun taking 10-sec shots of the family. It cost only 4000 won and made a lasting good memory of our first trip to Korea.
