So country 88 and country 91 South Korea. We’ve both watched Squid Games so we knew what to expect. We also knew to avoid men with briefcases in the Subway.

Our flight landed very early in the morning and so there is always the “Can we check in early” gamble to take. Thankfully after bussing it from the airport to our hotel in Gangnam (Whoopah Gangnam Style) we won the lottery (There is a whole joke there about Won being the local currency of Korea, I just can’t think of it) and got into our room at 9am. Had showers and naps and then off for our first culinary adventure.

Found an awesome little bbq place nearby and settled in. Not long after getting our food a single woman at the table next to us sidled up to me and told me I was using the wrong glass for the Soju (rice wine). She then proceeded to chat away in broken English and a bit of google translate. She then taught us that you need to put a soju shot into a glass of beer, put one metal chopstick in and clang it with the other chopstick to mix it and turn the beer cloudy. Apparently that’s how all the locals drink soju and beer. After about a half hour of chatting she started to get very touchy…huggy…”oh I do love you” stuff. Awkward! And Weird! And obviously the road to some sort of scam.

We’re still not sure what sort of scam it was as we saw through it pretty quick and disengaged with her suddenly. She got the message and left. Chat GPT gives three suggestions.

1. Cult recruitment that then requires donations and monetary support

2. Distraction to get you drunk and then steal your stuff

3. An invitation to a bar where you will be told it’s free drinks but you will be charged a hefty fee to leave. Ha! We’ll never know coz we didn’t fall for it.

We spent the next few days exploring and eating more amazing food. In Seoul you are never more than 20 metres from an icy cold ice tea and as it was 32 degrees most days we had plenty of them.

Our first Subway experience was hilarious. They don’t necessarily have the names of the stations in English, so often we were looking for 양재 “two circles thermometer man big H” to make sure we were going in the right direction. We also hadn’t paid enough money for the ticket so when we got to the other end the gates wouldn’t open. Thankfully a lovely lady came by and spoke to the intercom to work out what we had to do and then made sure we were ok before leaving us. I don’t think she was trying to recruit us into a cult. That’s one thing that will last is how helpful and sweet the South Koreans are.

Google translate has also changed the game when travelling. We had an entire conversation when we went to get the refund on our travel card before we left, they guy spoke no english at all. Then turned up to the actual office to get the money and he greeted us in English with “hello how may I assist you today”.

We went to a local market to try the local food. Found a local restaurant filled with locals (always a good sign) then looked around at what everyone was eating. Number one South Korean delicacy, beef tartare with freshly chopped baby octopus (still writhing) and a raw egg. When in Seoul… Nigel ended up with a few blood blisters inside his check as the suckers tend to fight back and suck on your inner cheek. I don’t know as I had the bean sprout fritters.

But you can’t get that close to North Korea without trying to get as close as you can to North Korea. So we booked a trip to the demilitarised zone and to the observation point where you can see into North Korea. What an interesting day. You can google the history of the Korean Peninsula but basically at the end of the Second World War Russia claimed the top half and America claimed the South. Then North Korea invaded the South in the 1950s and the Korean War began. In 1953 there was an armistice but there has never been a peace deal signed so technically the North and South are still at war. As recently as September 2024 there were still niggles going on. The North Koreans were sending balloons over the border containing trash and used toilet paper and manure along with the key message “We are the best”. The South Koreans were sending usbs with K Pop videos and Southern propaganda. Kinda funny when you think about it. However, there have also been some recent missile launches over the border and a bit of shooting back and forth and the whole area is still covered in hundreds of thousands of landmines. It’s not entirely safe to visit.

At the observation deck you can see the massive Hollywood sign on the North Korean side that says “We are the best”. Ironic that it’s just behind the propaganda village they have built to look like everything is amazing but no one actually lives there. We did see people wandering about in other areas doing their daily North Korean thing. Their flagpole is also one of the tallest in the world. For a long time there was a tit for tat war with South Korea where they kept increasing the flagpole height. Now the South has given up and the North has an ungainly tower with a few tacked on extensions to it which is taller than the South. It was a surreal experience to be voyeurs into a strange and unknown country.

The thing we love most about travel is exploring new places, learning about new lands, seeing and breathing the culture and growing as a human. Every country teaches us more about what makes the world great and what makes it not so great. We are grateful to be able to do this. Overall our time in South Korea was 엄청난 “Circle thermometer over box, man with head and thermometer over oval and L thermometer over short L”