Author: Oli

We began our South Korean adventure with a week in Seoul, before zig-zagging our way through the country, stopping in Seoraksan National Park, Gangneung, YongPyong, Daegu and Golgulsa Temple. After a brief excursion to the island of Jeju, we ended our month in the city of Busan.

We’ve already talked about signage and the tiny towels, which turned out to be ongoing themes throughout South Korea. We also mentioned how friendly, generous and helpful people had been in Seoul, and this continued throughout Korea, too – at various points, complete strangers offered for us to share their makgeolli (while hiking), gifted us with small packages of yakgwa (while queuing for a restaurant), shared their locally grown persimmons (while checking out of a hostel) and insisted we help ourselves to their bag of kiwi fruit (while waiting for a bus). We aspire to have this level of outgoingness and generosity!

But probably our most unexpected discovery about Korea was when Sara went looking for deodorant…

While at high altitude, ‘our’ deodorant (yes, I’m afraid we now share deodorant to save weight and space 😬) exploded and so we needed a new one. Cue nearly a week of increasingly puzzled browsing in convenience stores, pharmacies, supermarkets and cosmetics stores before we realised something funny was going on. Why on earth couldn’t we buy deodorant anywhere?! I felt like a total idiot googling it, so imagine my surprise when the search results brought back a series of blog posts from foreigners living in Korea about earwax genes, the resulting struggles of buying deodorant and how to get hold of it. I’m sure this is vastly simplified (and I’m afraid I haven’t done a full literature review – after all, I was just trying to shop for deodorant), but it seems that the same gene that determines whether you have wet or dry earwax also determines whether you tend to produce armpit odour. While over 97% of Europeans have wet earwax and so need to buy deodorant, almost all Koreans do not. Who knew?! With the help of one of the blog posts, we eventually managed to buy an extremely expensive imported deodorant in a branch of Olive Young, you’ll be happy to learn!

A very confused Sara

Carbon

Our travel to and within South Korea emitted the greatest amount of carbon of any country we visited on this trip so far. This was almost entirely due to our five hour flight from Almaty to Seoul, which emitted just over a tonne of CO2e. While we’re disappointed to have emitted so much carbon on a single hop, it’s also highlighted how much carbon we would have emitted if we’d not been making every effort to travel overland where possible.

This has pushed our total emissions since leaving London to well over 2 tonnes, which we’ve offset via Gold Standard’s Climate+ Portfolio. This means that as much CO2 has been prevented from entering the atmosphere as was emitted by our modes of transport, and consequently the net carbon emissions are zero. As always, carbon offsetting isn’t as good as avoiding the emissions in the first place, but it is a way of taking responsibility for emissions that couldn’t be avoided otherwise.

Cost

South Korea was our third most expensive country per day, though I feel like this does South Korea a slight injustice. Our high expenditure was mostly due the flight we took to get to Seoul and our 3-day skiing trip to YongPyong, while both food and accommodation were consistently impressive and affordable.

Cats

South Korea accumulated the third lowest cat count of our trip, despite our intervention at a cat cafe. I wasn’t sure if it was fair to include these cafe cats, so I’ve separated our “cats per day” metric into “naturally occurring” cats and “paid for” cats. Sometimes I find it hard to tell whether I’m taking this too seriously or not seriously enough…

Meanwhile, Sara’s been mulling over the fairness of visiting countries in different seasons, since cats are far more likely to be inside and out of view when it’s cold outside. She’s now considering introducing a “seasonally adjusted cat index” to control for the effect of outside temperature. Good to know I’m not the only crazy one!

As always, we met some cats eligible for our prestigious awards.

🏅Joint award for friendliest caretaker

🏅Least menacing cat gang

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While we were sad to say goodbye to South Korea, we were also excited about our 33 day itinerary for Japan. On top of this, we couldn’t wait to catch up with our good friends George and Erin for a few days in Tokyo, and also spend a week travelling around Honshu with Sara’s sister Katie.

Even though we had less than a week until our ferry to Japan, we were keen to squeeze in a visit to the sub-tropical island of Jeju. Jeju sits in the East China Sea about 100 km south of the Korean peninsula, and is a favourite year-round holiday destination for Koreans owing to its mild climate and stunning landscape.

To make the most of our time before leaving Korea, we opted to take overnight ferries both to and from Jeju, which seemed like a great idea when we booked our tickets. Our outbound ferry departed at a very sociable time (around 7pm), and we treated ourselves to two rather comfortable beds in a four-berth cabin with the hope of waking up fresh to enjoy the next day.

You can imagine how smug we were when the two other berths in our cabin remained empty as the ferry chugged out of the port of Busan. However, the one downside to these ferries was the 6am arrival time, which meant that the in-room announcements began at 5am. And my goodness, there were a lot of announcements. With the help of Google Translate, we sometimes managed to glean a few details from each update, though other translations were complete garbage. Memorable announcements encouraged us to “wait a bit, but not too much,” and to “mind the 13 garlics”. These were funny at first, but I was ready to rip the speaker from the wall by the time we arrived at Jeju!

We disembarked the ferry in the dark and hopped on a couple of buses across the island to Seogwipo, a cute little town on Jeju’s south coast. After dumping our luggage at our hostel and taking a regenerative shower, we stumbled out bleary eyed into the sunshine ready to explore our surroundings. Seogwipo’s Chilsipnisi Park was right on our doorstep, and afforded stunning views out to Munseom Island. Jeju’s mild climate also meant that the autumn colours were still going strong even this late in December.

The park drops off dramatically into a gorge created by the Yeonhee-chun stream. At the centre of the gorge is a 22 m high waterfall, which we reached via a couple of bridges past more stunning foliage and a handful of rather unusual stone statues.

After a short walk along the coast west of the gorge, we came across a 20 m high sea stack famous for its appearance in many TV K-drama series. While the significance of this was somewhat lost on us, we could see why it was such a popular filming location.

Jeju is well-known in South Korea for its mandarins, and our visit just so happened to coincide with the mandarin harvest. Mandarins were pretty much everywhere – in every convenience store, market stall, cafe, and even honesty boxes at the side of the road. We couldn’t help trying them, and they were genuinely some of the best fruit I’ve ever eaten. We later learned that the mandarin harvest is more than business or sustenance – it’s actually celebrated by visitors, and we even noticed fellow tourists sporting orange knitted top hats and anything else that could be vaguely connected to this citrus fruit.

Just south of Seogwipo lies the tiny uninhabited island of Saeseom, connected to Jeju via a footbridge, and skirted with a lovely coastal path. As always, the pedestrian infrastructure was nothing if not impressive!

We also passed through a small harbour lined with fishing boats, each of which had a row of lights between their two masts. These powerful bulbs apparently attract squid when they’re most active – after sunset and during the early morning.

While we thoroughly enjoyed exploring the area immediately around Seogwipo, the main reason we’d come to Jeju was actually for the Olle Trail – a 430 km series of coastal footpaths that encircle the island. The name “Olle” derives from the Korean word for the garden path that connects a house to the street, and conjures up images of the slow-paced amble at which these footpaths are best enjoyed. And what better place to start than Olle Trail 1; a 15 km route around Jeju’s easternmost tip. This trail is one of the most popular for a reason – it summits two extinct volcanoes, and bypasses a third (dormant) volcano.

Despite Jeju’s mild climate, it’s still an island, and its weather changes fast. In fact, within 5 minutes of alighting the bus we’d been hit with wind, snow, sunshine and hailstones, in that order. Still, we were well-prepared for snow after our trip to Astana, and ploughed on regardless. After admiring the views from the two extinct volcanoes, our walk passed through a patchwork of fields edged with stone walls made from black volcanic rock, and then headed along the coastline towards the largest (and still active) volcano of the three. We loved the brightly coloured houses in the village we passed through…

…but we were less keen on the squid lining the seafront promenade. I guess they were there to dry? Either way, Sara came face-to-face with one that was blowing in the wind and it made her jump!

When the snow turned to steady rain, we needed a little more than just warm clothes to lift our spirits. Fortunately, it wasn’t our first hike in Korea, so we knew to do the sensible thing and picked up a bottle of mandarin makgeolli from the next shop.

The makgeolli lifted our spirits so high, in fact, that we decided to climb Seongsan Ilchulbong, the third volcano of our walk, not least because we didn’t want to disappoint our hostel’s owner who had recommended it so highly. The path was actually very well paved and not too strenuous, and the views from the summit were stunning. That is, so long as you could see beyond the OTT decking and warning signage that littered the volcano’s highest ridge.

That evening, we braved an almighty queue to try out Jeju’s famous black pork at Ppolsaljib. While we were waiting, our neighbours in the queue offered us some Yakgwa, a deep-fried, wheat-based sweet made with honey, rice wine, sesame oil, and ginger juice. It was absolutely delicious and just about kept our hunger at bay until the main event – a selection of tender cuts of pork (inexpertly barbequed by us), alongside a baffling array of side dishes and washed down with a couple of victory beers.

Our journey back to Busan was a little less straightforward, when the ticket counter clerk couldn’t find any evidence of our booking. We ended up having to purchase two brand new tickets, but thanked our lucky stars that at least the ferry hadn’t been fully booked. Feeling sorry for us, the clerk very kindly upgraded us to a ‘special class’ two-berth cabin. We’re still chasing a refund for the mystery unbooked ticket, though! 😬

Daegu is South Korea’s third largest city (after Seoul and Busan) and although it has few big-hitting sights, it’s a modern and lively city full of food, cats and fun.

After a day spent skiing, we zoomed the 379 km from YongPyong to Daegu via Seoul on a couple of high-speed trains in a single evening.

The trains were impressive not just for their speed and comfort, but also for the wireless phone chargers at every seat. Honestly, it’s hard not to feel embarrassed about the state of the trains in the UK after travelling on these.

Daegu’s history lies in Oriental Medicine, owing to its central location between mountains from which a wide range of herbs and remedies could be foraged. We learned about the development of the old medicine market from Daegu’s Museum of Oriental Medicine, which had some enthralling CGI videos to accompany the dioramas to keep our attention.

We also thoroughly enjoyed the interactive display which allowed us to determine to which of the four body types we belonged. This rather knowingly described Sara as someone who has “to rush their work because they start late and are slow” (fair), but also more insultingly claimed she likes “to slander other people” (less fair)!

While the original market was destroyed during times of Japanese colonialism, this didn’t stop Daegu from being a centre of Oriental Medicine, and the shops selling these medicines are still trading today in the area surrounding the museum.

Feeling suitably informed about Daegu’s history, we next needed to address South Korea’s shockingly low cat count, and for that we headed to a cat cafe. The cat cafe was split across two floors; the lower floor acting as more of a cafe and the upper floor a games room. The cafe was the perfect way to combine the two loves of Sara’s life (coffee and cats), and it gave us some respite from missing Thomas back home.

All in all, we met 30 new cats, though I’m not sure how to account for them on our cats per day metric. Is it fair to treat “paid for” cats in the same way as “naturally occurring” cats? I’m not sure, but here are a few of our favourites:

We probably spent more time eating and drinking in Daegu than anything else. There were so many restaurants close to our Airbnb, and a very popular street food night market to keep us grazing. We became particularly partial to a post-lunch Hotteok (rice-flour pancake filled with cinnamon, sugar and crushed peanuts). There was a lady making them in the street just down the road from our apartment, and the smell was so good we couldn’t just walk past it without buying one.

Here’s a close up of the finished product, along with a few of the other stand-out dishes we tried in Daegu:

The most extravagant dinner we ate was at 가장맛있는족발 종로점, where we ordered a joint of sliced pork shoulder, which came accompanied by the customary wide range of sides. We also ordered some rice balls, but were flummoxed when a plate of dried seaweed and a plastic glove turned up. We eventually worked out that there was rice beneath the seaweed, and the glove was to make your own rice balls. The end product didn’t always look good, but at least they were tasty! Fully embracing Korean culture, we ordered a few beers and bottles of soju to wash down our dinner, which more than got us on our way.

We ended the night with a much anticipated karaoke session in a private room, where we spent nearly the full hour trying to find a song that we recognised in the Argos-catalogue-of-songs and trying to work the machine (unsurprisingly, it was all in Korean!). I think we managed to sing a grand total of one intentional song (Just No Time To Die), although that didn’t stop Sara freestyle rapping over the various K-pop songs that I played by mistake. I think we’ll have to try again another day.

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Our onwards travel required us to get to one of Daegu’s bus stations, which could be conveniently reached from our apartment via a single underground metro. However, it would have been criminal to visit Daegu and not ride its monorail, so we cut our connection time quite fine in order to crowbar the monorail into our route. While monorails seem like quite an expensive transport solution, they definitely hold the top spot of the coolest mode of transport. The views over the city were awesome as we cruised around over the streets below on our all-too-short ride.

The subsequent bus took us to Gyeongju, which was the jumping off point for our stay at Golgulsa Temple.