Our Seoul and Tokyo Adventure: Day Three

Since each apartment complex in Suji houses a staggering number of people, it makes sense that farmers' markets are a regular staple of the community. The vendors at the market pay a certain amount to each complex for the right to hold a weekly market, and seem to do pretty good business selling fresh and prepared foods right outside the residents' front doors. My parents' complex has a Saturday market, and although we didn't buy anything today, we would buy quite a bit next week.

In a perfect example of my earlier comment about traffic jams in Korea, we drove a total of ten kilometres this afternoon to Samsung Plaza, a substantial shopping area in Suji. Since it was Saturday, this meant that many people were doing the same thing and it took us about an hour to get there! We walked around in circles for a bit while we tried to find the restaurant that we were aiming for, and when we finally sat down to lunch and started eating, the food was definitely worth the search. A chigae is any kind of stew, usually served in a heated stone bowl that ensures that the contents arrive at your table at what appears to be a distinctly unsafe temperature. I'm always amazed that the serving staff can carry several of the very heavy stone bowls with their sizzling contents with such calm--and keep in mind that at restaurants where there is floor seating, it's not only customers, but also servers, who aren't wearing shoes! Anyway, we'd come to have oyster chigae for lunch, something that was being touted as:

Koreans love trends and this one has miraculously managed to stick around for a few years (usually by the time I visit again in a year or two, any trend from my last visit has long disappeared). "Well-being" is the most popular catchword to sell most anything these days--food, clothes, household goods, toiletries, you name it. The phrase sounds extremely positive, and yet remains so exceedingly vague that it must be an advertiser's dream! While we were in Korea this visit, I ate well-being food, bought well-being socks (they were just normal socks), drank well-being instant coffee (less sugar and cream), and was confronted with advertising that touted the "well-being" features of every imaginable product. In today's case, however, I can't really argue with the restaurant's well-being claims, since lunch was spectacular! We started with some battered and fried zucchini and oysters:

The oysters were amazing--in fact, while we were eating them, Bob said, "I'm in love . . ." to which I replied (baiting him), "With me?" His reply as he put another oyster in his mouth was: "With Korea . . . ." Next up was our oyster chigae, which we allowed to bubble in their stone bowls

before transferring some of the contents to other bowls to cool down the delicious chigae to eating temperature.

All well-being-ed up, we walked back to Samsung Plaza to do some shopping.

Now you may wonder just what is going on here:

My parents wanted to buy Bob a sweater, and we walked through the department store looking at styles (and sizes--very important in a country where men's sizes often don't reach the dimensions that Bob requires). This one caught all of our eyes, and Bob ended up getting it, even though it wasn't a colour he would have initially picked for himself. After he decided to get it, we realised that the saleswoman who had been helping us was wearing the same top, so I asked her if I could take a funny photo of her with Bob, and she very nicely obliged, bursting into giggles when I showed her the resulting photo. As a side-note, I should mention that couples in Korea, especially dating couples and most certainly newlyweds, have the disturbing tendency to dress alike--not similarly, but completely head-to-toe alike down to their shoes. You can always tell when Koreans are on their honeymoon because they're kitted out like identical twins. Cheju-do (Cheju Island, just off the southern tip of Korea, a favourite honeymoon destination known as "the Hawaii of Korea" for its tropical temperatures and volcanic origin) is practically a twilight zone of such twins, and when I was there a while back, I started to feel strange that I was only dressed as, well, myself! Anyway, to your average Korean, the above photo probably looks like a honeymoon photo, which made it even more amusing to my parents. After we finished shopping, we returned home, exhausted from the traffic and crowds, but we didn't spend long at home before leaving again for Seoul. Although my parents live in suburban Seoul, they're lucky that one express bus takes them directly into downtown Seoul, and my dad has perfected the ability to fall asleep immediately upon boarding the bus and somehow wake up with mere minutes to go before his stop. As with everything, the amount of time the journey takes depends on traffic (which makes my dad's skill even more impressive, don't you think?), but travel time in and out of Seoul generally varies from thirty minutes to an hour, which is nothing in terms of a typical London commute, and a whole lot more relaxing, since you just get to sit on the same comfy bus for the whole trip. By the time we made it into Seoul, it was time for dinner, and we had some delicious soon dubu chigae (fresh, soft tofu stew). It's a lot less spicy than it looks, although you can specify the spiciness when you order:

We came into Seoul this evening to see a popular annual Christmas light display at Cheonggyecheon (Cheonggye Stream), an historic Seoul waterway that had been covered with concrete and an elevated highway since 1968, and was restored in 2005, complete with decorative bridges and a waterside walkway. An expensive project that the public initially resented, Cheonggyecheon has become one of the most popular pedestrian areas in Seoul, and is one of the few extensive green areas running through the centre of the city. Of course, during the Christmas light display, little greenery can be seen--it's all lights, people, more people, and did I mention the people?

Here's a view of the waterside paths that had been designated one-way on these busy light-display nights:

It took a while for us to figure out how to get down to the stream, and when we did, we were a bit shocked at the crowds. Relaxing waterside stroll, anyone?

The outdoor skating rink in front of the Seoul Plaza Hotel was filled with people, and we just just watched for a bit before continuing along our way.

It wasn't an overly cold night, but the street vendors were out in force, selling all kinds of hot and steamy food to the crowds. One of the most popular winter treats is oden, bits of vegetables, tofu, and fish-based treats broiled in a soup. To eat oden on the street, you pay for the number of "sticks" you'd like to have, and get a free cup of the soup to sip as you eat. It's cheap and yummy!

My dad and I love roasted chestnuts, but chestnut stands were far outnumbered by oden stalls, and by the time we found some chestnuts, we had already snacked

on some coffee and cheesecake

in this cosy café.

The Cheonggyecheon lights weren't the only impressive ones we saw tonight, and I quite liked this enormous, two-sided Christmas tree right near where we caught our bus home.

By the time we arrived back in Suji, it was after midnight and the streets were very quiet!