travel diary: south korea
So, Emile (the husband) and I travelled to South Korea last month and I'm finally getting the chance to share my favourite photos and moments. I think documenting your travel memories is so important, and its been something I've always been terribly slack with. But being a little bit older now, with a few fantastic travel experiences under my belt, I regret not savouring those memories more, particularly as they begin to fade as we make new ones. That's why I've made the effort to actually write down our experience and make a selection of photos and videos that encapsulates the holiday.
“Why South Korea?”, you ask? Well, we’ve had this question a lot, and really, it just comes down to a cultural curiosity, an appetite for Korean BBQ and accessibility from Australia for a reasonable price. Emile has always had a fascination with Korean culture through the ‘gaming’ scene (yes, we watched a live StarCraft game), so it’s always been a dream of his. And when we were thinking of where to go next, I thought, why not?! The holiday was really affordable, with cheap flights and great Airbnb accommodation. Food is cheap and we also subway-d and rode bicycles everywhere!
We spent the first week visiting Seoul, which really is a metropolis (I thought Sydney was huge!). Seoul was super easy to get around, with excellent signage everywhere. We caught the Subway from the airport to our apartment on the first night – it was that easy. Seoul was a beautiful and vibrant city, and also doesn’t wake up until at least lunchtime, which was funny for us early-risers. We spent the week roaming the streets, sipping tea at tea-houses and coffee at coffee-houses, checking out local architecture, cycling the back-streets and around the river, eating at the most amazing bakeries, visiting a dog-café, checking the views from N-Seoul Tower, worshipping with Koreans at a mega church, and shopping!
For the second part of our trip (about 10 days) we visited Busan, which is a coastal city in the south. This part of the trip was super relaxed, because hey, that’s what holidays are for! We had an amazing Airbnb apartment, right on Gwangalli Beach with the most spectacular views. We found ourselves constantly standing by the window; trying to get the perfect photo or time-lapse, or just staring at all the people enjoying the lovely spring weather (which, by the way, we totally over-packed in terms of jumpers…it was so warm!). During this week we ate Korean BBQ (where you barbecue our own meat) almost every day, read our books, relaxed on the beach, went shopping, discovered and drank lots of Makgeolli (rice beer), visited a beautiful part of town called the Gamcheon Culture Village (a ‘slum’ handed over to a bunch of university art students, who literally painted the town), oh and visited a traditional Korean bath house (kind of weird but also super relaxing)!
Unfortunately I had a stomach bug, twice, which lasted about two days each. Worst luck ever. I don’t think my stomach could handle all the Kimchi I was eating (worth it though). This meant we took it pretty easy for the most part in the food-department as I wasn’t feeling as adventurous as I normally would when visiting a new country.
All-in-all, an epic holiday and also just an amazing time spent together just the two of us.
