A Week of Seoul Searching

“What city do you think that is?”

That’s what my mom asks on the top of a mountain overlooking Seoul.

That’s how big Seoul is. It’s hard to imagine that an hour's subway ride away, we're still in the same city.  

But we are — technically. A bunch of cities are grouped into the Seoul National Capital Area. A bunch of people are grouped there, too. More than 25 million.

You thought New York was crowded? Seoul's population density is almost double. Most everyone is Korean.

"I feel like I'm in a pod movie. Where they steal my identity and we all look the same." Mom says this during one of our cross-current swims through a wave of people crashing over us in a mall.

So many people and so much to see. We have a week. So little time, but so much done.

At least by Mom and me, who weren’t tied up at the Tall Building Conference like my engineer dad.

We went from museums and palaces to markets and malls. From traditional villages and performances to TV tapings and spas. Plus the mountain, and, of course, lots of restaurants.

We ate lots of Korean — barbecue, bib bim bap, kimchi and Buddhist temple food, plus Korean pancakes, Japanese noodles and sushi, and plenty of Western-style breakfasts. 

We did everything but hobnob with Korea’s ubiquitous pop stars. Oh, and make it to North Korea. Maybe during a future Tall Building Conference.

Below are some of my reconstructed memories of our trip (hopefully minus the boring bits).

Day One – Cambodia to Bangkok

I leave in the morning by taxi and arrive in the afternoon by van.

My flight doesn’t leave ‘til nearly midnight, but I’m here early for the best Bangkok has to offer: pad Thai, Thai iced tea and movie theaters.

That means MBK, a massive mutant of a mall. The van drops me near MBK. Or at least I think it’s near. The driver points one way, but no one on the street has heard of the mall. I follow one helpful girl up and down a huge concrete overpass and end up at a bus. With my huge rolling suitcase? No thanks. I retreat and ask the first white person (hopeful English speaker) I see.

She directs me to the Skytrain, Bangkok’s above-ground subway. It's up another huge staircase, but this time a kind woman helps lift my beastly bag.

Finally MBK. The promised land of free Thai iced teas — at least for foreigners with passports. The drink’s more ice than tea, but hey, it’s free.

The phad Thai line is slow so I make for the movie first. The Three Musketeers — in 3D. The flick’s entertaining but feels like a rip-off of several movies, including The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Except these boats fly.

Dinner isn’t phad Thai, but some other noodly Thai dish.

Sky train to the airport and then five hours to Seoul. We leave at midnight and arrive at 7 the next morning. I sleep most the way.

Day Two - Settling in Seoul

The subway from the airport to the hotel takes about three hours. It’s like coming from a different country.

The train goes along highways, past the sea, towers of apartment row houses, mountains, flatlands and treelands.

Many of the passengers are old. Those who aren’t old obviously value the old. Seats are given up. I’m not old, but I want to sit. I pretend not to understand the seat-giving custom. This gets me a dirty look. I finally stand up, but long enough after the dirty look so it looks like my idea.

I immediately notice that Seoul is a high-fashion place. Most men are in suits and women in heels. Even on Sundays. Big, black Buddy Holly glasses are on lots of faces and black tights are under skirts and shorts on most women's legs. 

I expected lots of bright colors and crazy clothes, but it's mostly blacks. There are also lots of uniforms. Preschoolers wear matching sweatsuits and older students skirts and blouses and shirts and trousers.

The city is also very uniform — and very clean. No trash, and lots of order. Escalators have yellow lines down the middle and subway platforms have paintings of feet showing boarders where to stand. No jaywalking.

I arrive at the hotel 10 hours before my parents. I’m not expecting check-in rights. But the deskman takes pity on me and lets me check in early, even without a credit card.

I head downstairs to the Hyundai Shopping Center while waiting to check-in. No cars here, only a luxury food court. After several lookarounds, I settle on sweet potato salad that I think is a steal at $2. Turns out it’s $2 a gram — $6 total.

Our room is faaaannncy, but has only two twin beds. I’m good with a rollaway, but my parents are past their twin days.

Back at the desk, I ask if I’m in the right room. The deskman assures me I am. No rooms with double beds. Maybe Koreans do it twin style.

It’s the wrong room. So say my parents. We move twice. The room’s still wrong (too noisy), but the best we can get.

Day Three: Hop on, Hop off

A hop-on,hop-off bus takes us on a two-hour course around downtown Seoul.

Through the bus windows we glimpse markets, museums, a palace, a shopping street for extra-large clothes (aka foreigner clothes), towers and more.

We hop off near Dongdaemum Market — South Korea’s largest market — but we can't find it. A girl points us toward a row of outdoor shoe stalls lining a dumpy building. The stalls end in dark alleys. 

The dumpy building is full of dumpy clothes for old Korean women.

Later we hear that the market is inside two enormous glitzy buildings we somehow missed. Better luck next trip.

On our way to the non-market I buy a hot dog. Not just any hot dog — a hot dog on a stick coated in a cubist batter. I think it’s tempura, turns out to be french fries. A french-fried dog!

Korea's orderly, but still in Asia, so there are few lines. There's no line for the hot dogs. The seller is ignoring me and letting others order ahead of me. I get proactive and grab my own dog.

The seller’s alarmed. “Don’t touch!” she yells, and puts the tarnished dog back on the pile. She then grabs a new dog for me, squiggles ketchup on it and wraps it in paper. Yum!

Post-market, we hop back on the bus and continue the tour past more shopping areas and another, more important, palace.

That night we eat at a Thai restaurant. Nothing Korean on the menu, and my parents convince me that’s OK. Not every meal has to be native.

Day Four: A Palace, a Museum, and Temple Food

The day begins for Dad and me with Omelette Oh My God! Served with triangular croutons masquerading as toast. Mom gets breakfast with a less profane (and therefore less memorable) name.

Gyeongbokgung Palace is next. Once the most important of Seoul‘s five palaces.

In those days, importance wasn’t measured in architectural bling. The palace, in muted burgundies and greens, has few adornments.

Leaders of the Joseon Dynasty were into simple Confucian stuff. The palace's brochure calls the architecture "dignified and restrained." 

There are a lot of buildings (not as many as the original 120) but nothing more than a few tapestries and tea sets inside.  

A visit to the nearby Folk Museum includes snooze-inducing entertainment. A sappy, skipping video tells the story of a girl and guy falling in love.

A zither!

In between showings of the video is traditional music made with a bassoon, cello, keyboard and zither. I fall asleep and wake to hear I missed the brief dancing.

The best part of the museum is the snack bar. I suck down a bright magenta cactus aloe juice and a ginseng drink and eat a pumpkin and egg sandwich, which is like egg salad with pumpkin.

On our way out of the museum, Mom and I are interviewed for TV. Just a three-minute clip for an English-speaking education channel, but still exciting.

Before we start, the interviewer tells us not to worry if we can't answer her questions, we can make stuff up.

Then she asks if we have ever lost our appetites.

"No," I answer. I'm always hungry.

But haven't I ever been sick and not wanted to eat?

"OK, yeah," I say.

"That’s what I'm talking about," she says. "Remember, you can make it up."

I tell her a true story about having giardia in Cambodia. Mom spins a tale about peanuts.

After our three minutes of future fame, we cruise down Insadong (a hip shopping street) on our way to Sanchon, a temple restaurant. The restaurant isn't in a temple, but its food is the same stuff Buddhist monks would have scavenged for in Korea's forests.

But we're not monks in a forest, so the food's expensive. ($40 a person)  

The price includes a traditional dance show and lots of courses. No meat and few spices.

Courses:

1. Lentils, bread, turnip, rice and seaweed

2. Lots of tempura vegetables, soup, hot pepper tofu

3. 20 bowls of food including greens, kimchi, potatoes, sweet red beans, tofu, glass noodles, sticky rice and turnip

4. Cylindrical, sweet rice puffs and small cups of a sweet, possibly alcoholic drink

Green tea comes with the food.

Dinner is eaten on cushions in front of a low wood table. Mom's fine cross-legged, but the posture is a stretch for Dad and me.

The traditional dance show is 45 minutes of eerie howling and screeching.

The three of us are invited on stage for the grand finale of foreigners walking in a circle beating drums.

Day Five: Market Day

Breakfast at the hotel. The buffet has waffles, soups, seafood, cereal, eggs, pastries — everything one could desire — except a fair price. It's a whopping $37 a person. Still not as pricey as the two orange juices and coffee Dad orders during a meeting in the hotel lounge. That trio of drinks costs him $50. 

It's a day of shopping for Mom and I. First is Namdaemun Market, Seoul's oldest.

Mostly junk. Mom gets a nightshirt and we offer fashion advice to a guy who wants to know which pajamas he should buy for his 60-year-old father-in-law: Burberry or pink cartoon cows?

Mom and I vote for Burberry. He votes for the cartoon cows.

Lunch is Korean pancakes. Mine is octopus and seafood and Mom's is red chili. We split a sushi roll.

After a brief, unsuccessful shoe shopping trip, we end at Insadong, the hip shopping street.

I want to try Korean tea. We find it in a five-story building decorated with antique phones and signs advertising Parisian coffeehouses. The tea's expensive ($7 per mug), but delicious. I get five flavors and Mom cinnamon.

Dinner that night is bulgogi beef barbecue. Bulgogi means "fire meat." The meat, in this case, beef, is cooked over fire.

Day Six: Korean Folk Village

Keep out, bad spirits!

Breakfast is the Dunkin' Donuts' equivalent of Egg Mcmuffins and a fruit and yogurt cup. The fruit and yogurt also has an extra healthy add-on of cake and whipped cream.

Mom asks for a glass of water and gets two, one hot and one cold.

Today is a Korean Folk Village, a swath of land covered with model houses from the late Joseon Dynasty. (The dynasty lasted 1392 -1897.)

A middle-class home.

The houses range from one-room thatched huts to stone mansions occupying several buildings.

Each house has a different type of animal caged outside. The rich get a fluffy white dog, the middle class, geese, the poor, pigs, and the very poor, mules laying on their sides in poop. 

Not real humans.

One of the houses also has a human inhabitant. I notice white rubber shoes outside the hut and a fake Coach bag inside. My mom doesn't notice these details.

"Where do you sleep?" she asks, before peering inside.

"In here," she answers. "Here he is sleeping."

As we're walking away I ask her why there's a real guy sleeping inside.

"There isn't," she says. "He's a model."

I insist he's real. She goes back to check, squinting at the real man's face. He opens his eyes and glares at her.

"Oh! He is real!" she shouts.

Headless horseman?

We see more real people standing atop horses galloping around a ring. "Equestrian Feats," the show's called. 
















The acrobats swing and twirl round the horses like the beasts are no more than stationary gymnastic props.

Dancing (and drumming)

Day Seven: Climbing the Bugaksan

Today we conquer Bugaksan mountain.

The road to the mountain looks like the road to Mt. Everest. It's lined with dozens of shops selling every kind of hiking accessory imaginable. Boots, super lightweight moisture-wicking jackets, pants and shirts, hats, visors, bandanas, gloves, collapsible chairs, cups, towels, walking sticks...

One of the stores has a familiar red and white square logo. Instead of The North Face it's called The Red Face. Is this supposed to mean Korean faces are red? Or just their mountains? The store's logo is "Born in the Nature 1966." The North Face was also founded in 1966.

Everyone we pass is decked out in extreme hiking apparel. I can't help laughing, but surely they're doing the same at the inadequate jeans and T-shirts my mom and I are wearing.

The man at the information office certainly laughs at us.

Is this our first time here?

Yes.

Do we have hiking shoes?

No. Mom's wearing tennis shoes. I'm wearing Birkenstocks. 

Our apparel disqualifies us from all four of the trails except one — the one for "senior citizens and the weak."

I'm annoyed. I forged streams and slid down cliffs in Mondulkiri while wearing only flip flops. I can darn well handle a dinky Korean hill. 

I'm even more annoyed because the guy won't stop talking about the best of the four trails, which is "so beautiful it's beyond words."

What about our trail?

"It's only scenery," he says.

I'm disappointed we won't get to hike along the ancient fortress wall, and we won't be required to flash our passports to gain entry into the VIP area. But I try to focus on the positive. At least I can walk!

Many of our fellow hikers doubt I have even this simple ability. At least a dozen of these Sir Edmund Hillary look-a-likes stop me on the way up — pointing to my sandals and saying the Korean equivalent of "Impossible!"

I just laugh and curl my arms like a body builder.

Partway up Mom overheats and has to sit down. She says she feels like she's about to have one of the fainting spells she had as a young girl in church.

I force her to guzzle water and eat cookies. A nearby group donates a couple bunches of enormous grapes.

I'm puzzling out how to carry Mom down on my back when she recovers.

We continue up until we come to a resting point. Also a hula hooping point. 

That's the activity two hikers are engaged in. Several hula hoops hang from a nearby tree.

At another stop I give a group of women some cookies. They reciprocate with a mini package of strawberry Mentos.

The women point out their course on their map. They will go all the way to the top and down the other side.

Mom and I don't think we'll make it all the way up. We surprise ourselves.

The way up has several top-of-the-world views (or top-of-Seoul views), but the top is the best. Seoul is reduced to a smoggy haze of buildings.

A Korean man beckons me close to the edge to check out the rock that 

looks like a cow's ear lobe. Mom discourages me. She's just read the news about a Japanese tourist who fell to her death at Niagara Falls. Nevermind that the girl was dumb enough to step over the rail.

I go close enough to see the cow's earlobe, but no further.

The way down is much easier than the way up. The paths are clearer and some are even paved. Maybe this is the path for the senior citizens and the weak, and we took a tougher one on the way up. We can't wait to brag to the information guy about our lack of senior citizenry and weakness.

The bottom of the mountain looks like a day spa. People are lounging on the flat rocks, eating rice and dangling their feet in the water.

Farther on are more rocks, these ones vertical and implanted with water spigots for filling water bottles.

Even more intriguing is a shoe-cleaning station equipped with vacuums for blowing dust out of eyelets.

Four hours after our ascent, the information man looks impressed that we made it down, but insists we only conquered the weak and elderly trail. We should come back and do the most beautiful one, he says. "Next time," we lie.

The information man has an annoying habit of looking at and talking only to my mom. He also karate chops her arm while talking. Is this Korean flirting?

Day Eight: Dragonhill Spa

Dragonhill Spa in swankier times

I experience my first motion-sensor escalator on the way to Dragonhill Spa. The stair machine looks broken until I step on it.

The subway station also looks broken. It's an above-ground station, which means it's not as popular, and I have to wait longer for a train.

Articles in the New York Times and on CNN's website made the seven-story spa sound swanky. The outside is anything but. Metal scaffolding covers much of the building and the bamboo grove entrance is crumbling.

No one greets me when I enter. I'm confused. My confusion is finally noticed.

Is it my first time? Where am I from? Do I want a massage?

No, I just want to use the spa... This is a spa, isn't it?

I get a green T-shirt with the spa's name emblazoned on the front and a pair of matching shorts, two small towels and a bracelet with a key and an electronic payment tracking chip.

I pay $10 to enter, put my shoes in a locker and take the elevator to the women's changing room on the third floor.

Not naked women, but a clever Korean toilet

I am greeted by naked women of all ages. These women seem not the least bit shy of their flabby, saggy or taut skin as they primp in front of mirrors and strut downstairs to the baths and saunas.

I don't see any of the Russian models Lonely Planet promised, but maybe some of the Japanese tourists. 

I follow the lead of the brazen women surrounding me and get naked, bringing my towels and my clothes downstairs just in case I need them. I don't. They just get wet.

First a shower. Then the baths.

There's a regular hot tub, a hot, hot tub, a really hot, hot tub, and a cold tub. There's also a massage bath. Down the hallway are the special baths: an event bath (no event today), a hot bath and a saltwater bath.

Next I try the ocher sauna. I last only a few minutes before retreating to the cold bath.

I return to the saltwater bath, trying the recommended five minutes in, 10 minutes out, repeated three times.

My first 10 minutes out are spent reading the poster advertising the spa's massages and body scrubs.

No one's around to perform these services, so I get back in the saltwater.

But my interest has been noted. A few minutes later, a uniformed woman comes down and tugs me out of the pool. I tell her I want only the body scrub. No massage.

She nods and strips down to a black bra and undies. Like the women upstairs, she's not at all embarrassed by her swinging stomach flab.

She pours a tub of water over the vinyl table and motions for me to get on it. I lay down and she pours a tub of water over me. It's warm.

She starts scrubbing. I feel like the block of wood belonging to the shop class nerd. She flips me from one side to the other, from back to front, sanding everywhere, under my pits, between my legs, everywhere.

After the scrubbing comes a goopy gel rubbed over the raw patches. 

Then a shampooing and neck massage. All part of the "just a body scrub" deal.

After washing off the goop, I'm back in the salt bath, then upstairs to the saunas.

Two of the saunas are housed in a pair of pyramids. One is supposedly good for the mind, and in it is a woman studying. The charcoal kiln smells good, but the fire sweating room is too fiery. The building is shaped like an igloo, but has a door like an oven, and feels like one inside. I have to duck to get in, and the floor burns my feet. My glasses immediately fog.

Maybe it just takes practice. I later see a girl enter the igloo oven while chatting on the phone and sipping a Coke, like she's ready for a day at the beach.

In between the saunas I visit the ice room, inhabited by two snowmen, each made of two balls of hardened snow.

The crystal shining saltroom is my favorite. Socks are required, so I buy a pair for $1. Then I lay atop a towel draped over a bed of rock salt, close my eyes and imagine all my body's toxins seeping from my feet. That's what's supposed to happen in the saltroom. My feet do feel tingly and warm. Is that what exiting toxins feel like?

I won't let a person massage me, but a mechanical chair's OK. Or so I think. I spend the next 10 minutes grimacing while my back is pounded with what feels like sledgehammers. I paid $2, so I refuse to move 'til it's over.

I reward myself with a snack — three eggs the color of used tea bags and strawberry banana juice.

One more visit to the saltbath and I'm done. I'll save the acupuncture, cupping, eyelash perming and horse riding for next time.

I make it back just in time for Dad's speech. Some dope messed up his bio for the Tall Building Conference, first calling him a lowly administrative assistant and then leaving out the description of his speech.

Nearly 100 people still show up to hear him talk, and the emcee calls him “One of the most creative and energetic engineers.”

Dad's talk is about a better, faster way to build tall buildings. A way he's patented.

Photographers snap his picture and pictures of my mom and I, who seem to be the only non-engineers in the room.

That night is Korean barbecue. The picture looks like beef, but it's actually four kinds of pig: ham, bacon and two kinds of sausage. Also mushroom, fish cake, broccoli and bok choy.

The sides are kimchi, a shrimp, greens and onion mixture and a red mixture, plus an over-mayonaised macaroni salad.

Day Nine: Gym and Home Again

Dad and I hit the gym in the morning. We both borrow shoes from the desk. I get a pair of white Air Jordans. No socks. Dad gets kicked out of the pool for not wearing a bathing cap.

After lunch we taxi to the airport. I board a plane to Bangkok and my parents to Toronto.

  

So that's a wrap for Tall Building Conference 2011. Next up: Tall Building Conference 2012: Shanghai. I can hardly wait.