We Arrive @ Seoul, South Korea
At 10:35am we took off from San Francisco and only 12 hours later we landed in Seoul. It was 3pm local time, meaning we only lost 5 hours in our race against the suns rotation around the earth. Helen’s body was screaming at her to go to sleep and, to everyone’s surprise, Adam was feeling great. Invigorated by the excitement of being in a foreign country he pulled up the train directions and began studying the maps in order to navigate us to our accommodations.
We darted back and forth as we figured out how to purchase and load the correct transit card; eventually making it onto a train set for Seoul station where we’d transfer to the number 4 line. Once on the train we remarked how clean and efficient everything was compared to the bay area’s Bart transit; we didn’t know you could have a public train without open drug use.
After an hour and a half we made it to our destination: a $50 a night guest house that was a slight upgrade from a shared hostel. The hostel was remotely operated, so there was no check in process. We simply climbed the stairs to our 3rd floor room and put our passcode into the keypad. To our joy we immediately heard the lock tumblers turn confirming that we’d done it; we’d safely made it to our destination. Adam pushed opened the door and gasped as he made direct eye contact with a foreign women. Her stuff sprawled out on the floor behind her and it was clear that she was sleeping in this room.
Out of reflex, Adam yanked the door closed and apologized in English. The girl walked out and was very kind despite not speaking English. We learned that we had overlapping reservations. We messsaged the guest house over whatsapp. It turned out they sent us the wrong room number. So we made our way to a different room and finally had a place to call home base for the week. However, we did feel a little uncomfortable with the hotel security after learning that all the door locks have very predictable combinations.
With shelter secured our next mission was food. Helen was still delirious from lack of sleep, so Adam pulled out his phone and found a restaurant around the corner. Much like our hostel room, the restaurant was tiny but efficient. There was a hostess who guided us to our seats at a U-shaped bar with 1 chef cooking all the food in the middle. Helen ordered the beef broth with rice and Adam ordered the beef broth with noodles.
The food was delicious and was just what we needed after the long flight. The broth was flavorful but still light and not overly salty. The beef brisket was thinly slice and cooked perfectly and all for $8. Determined to reset our internal clocks to the new time zone we forced ourselves to stay out later. We meandered through the streets and found a cute whiskey bar with less than 10 seats total. The owner didn’t speak much English but we pointed to a bottle on the list that turned out to be a tasty scotch. As we sipped on the drink we spotted a familiar image in the background.
Funny to travel halfway around the world just to find a little slice of home. After our drink we called it quits and trudged back to the hotel. Content to go to sleep knowing that we were in for a good time as we’d already encountered delicious food, kind people, and good drinks; what more could you want?
