Seoul Man

Sara talked a little but about her day in Seoul…let me tell you a little bit about my day trying to find a replacement charger. First I tried to call the hostel in Andong, but there was no one at the front desk, so with the last few minutes of computer battery, I sent a facebook message to the hostel's page.

Right away I thought, “well this is going to be easy”. I figured that there was no way this would be like finding a needle in a hay stack. It would be like finding a needle in a needle factory. And right away I found a "second hand" computer store right next to our hostel, that sold a different model MacBook Pro but would sell me just the charger for somewhere around $50. That different model didn't fit our computer and had an Asian outlet plug.

I had read that, similar to the Japanese, the Koreans take lost property very seriously, and if you ever lose something and someone else finds it, there’s a very good chance you will get it back. So I went aaaallllll the way back to the bus station and looked around for a while before finding someone who understood my interpretation of the Korean word for "Lost and Found" and that person called a supervisor who spoke English, and that supervisor found someone who could help. And that someone who could help called the bus company, the bus station in Andong, and the driver of the bus, all while running around and doing whatever his real job was at the bus station (something to do with getting packages on busses, exchanging money, and counting and keeping track of tickets). No luck.

I then found an official Apple Reseller, or the South Korean version of an Apple Store. There they had official Apple stuff and I could buy a charger that would actually fit our computer for $100. But again with an Asian plug. I did learn I could buy an adaptor to make the $50 charger from the other place fit our model. But then once we return to the States, we would have to permanently use an adaptor for the plug. PLUS we would have to buy all new adaptors for Korean plugs for all the other countries we were going to, as ours only fit American plugs.

So after the Apple reseller, I went to the Yongsan Electronic Market which is an entire 5-floor mall that sells every sort of electronic you could imagine. I systematically walked through, or at least by, every shop on every level so as not to miss anything and found maybe 3 solo Macs scattered across the whole place, but none of them would sell just the charger. Tons of cameras, flat screens, massage chairs, turn tables, guitar amps, computer monitor after computer monitor, AM radios, Ham radios, CB radios, hand held radios. No Macs. It turns out that LG, Samsung, and Windows have a pretty big monopoly on South Korea. If it weren’t for the iPhone and now iPad, Apple would have almost no presence.

After the market I walked to the closest subway station, which happened to be connected to another large mall. This mall was even bigger than the electronics mall. The electronic section was another entire 5 floors and that part alone was a bigger footprint than the entire Electronics Market. Finally, I was able to find two people that would sell just the charger. One was clearly a knock off in a DIY shrink-wrap bag. But again, Asian plug. $70. The other was $100 but the guy would "throw in for free" the American plug, that looked like it had been used for 10 years, and may have been in some sort of electrical fire. I passed on both and tried to figure out what combination of charger, plug, and adapters would be the cheapest and make the most sense. When you're pinching pennies to save a dollar here and there, and eating noodles from gas stations, it hurts to drop $100 on something you already purchased.

As Sara mentioned, we met back at the hostel and as we went to dinner, I thought I’d try to reach the Andong hostel one more time. Luckily, an English-speaking receptionist working the afternoon shift called Pan himself. Not only did he have it, but he was able to send it to us in Seoul. It was a mere $5 and we got it back the next day.

So that’s how I spent my time alone in Seoul. In the end we got our charger back and I saw a lot of the city and did some haggling in a lot of markets. As Sara mentioned, we then treated ourselves to a little bit of normalcy with some beer, and wings, and tape delayed football.

We loved the rest of our time in Seoul. A few Palaces, the N Seol Tower, some markets where you can buy all of your $40 T-shirts for pennies, and a lot of walking around down town made up most of the rest of our time.

Korea, or specifically Seoul, although having less English signage, and less casual English speakers, actually had a lot more western brands, consumer goods, and restaurant chains then Japan. For instance, there are a ton of Dunkin Donuts. A brand that has no stores in Minnesota. There was Mountain Dew, Fruit by The Foot, and many other familiar items at grocery stores as well.There were still plenty of things that were quite different.

Patbingsu was suggested to us by one of my coworkers who had recently been to Seoul. Pronounced by westerners as Popping Sue, it is essentially ice cream broken down into all of it’s different ingredients, accept for the egg. It consists of shaved ice topped with sweetened red beans (the “pat”), fruit (usually canned, jellied, or dried), syrup, ddeok (chewy rice cakes), and milk (fresh or condensed). As you can imagine, it is delicious.

Pojangmacha are everywhere, and were a must try. These are small tented food vendors that are popular for a late night snack or drink. While they all differ in their levels of sophistication, some having nice tables and chairs, some plastic stools, others-milk crates; they are usually all packed.

The list could go on and on, but you can check those out the next time you’re in the area. To be honest we didn’t know much about Korea before coming. To be even more honest, we still don’t know much about Korea. But what we think we know, and what we did see was amazing. South Korea, much like Japan, is steeped in thousands of years of tradition and still exploding with it’s own ultra modern pop culture. A true example of East colliding with West. And at the root of it all, and underlining pressure to succeed. While it may not make your bucket list, it’s a beautiful county with amazing food, a rich history, and well worth a visit.