I received an invitation to go to the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea with a group of my friends in Seattle. I knew about half the group, and knew the rest of them would be relatively chill so I took the chance and jumped in. I was one of only two women on the trip, and also the only person that did not work in tech or engineering. We planned to spend some time in Seoul, then take the train to Pyeongchang to watch Olympic events for a few days, go back to Seoul, and then fly to Japan to see Tokyo, Kyoto, and go skiing for two days. It would be a lot of travel, but I could not contain my excitement. I had made a weird resolution to myself when I was 27 or 28 that I would go to South Korea by the time I turned 30, and here was my opportunity. I knew that I loved Korean food, thought a lot of Korean people were really pretty, and was just starting to get interested in Korean skincare. However, I was not prepared to fall in love with the country and culture in the way that I did.

Seattle to Seoul

Flying into Seoul was breathtaking — we arrived at night so the whole city was glittering, and the lights framing the gigantic Han River were incredible. Everything in the Seoul airport is perfect, clean, organized, and so efficient. I was so blown away by how simply and beautifully everything functioned and looked. After a bit of confusion in getting a train ticket, we made our way to the rental apartment, dropped our stuff, and then found a nearby place that specialized in fried chicken. I had not realized the South Koreans were so into fried chicken (honestly, who isn’t) but they make theirs really spicy and sweet and use rice flour instead of corn or wheat for the coating. SO GOOD. We were staying in a neighborhood near Hongik University so there were lots of stylish young people walking around being cute. Seoul is full of the cutest alleys and pedestrian shopping streets! It was so easy to get around the City, and it seemed like it was fairly bike-friendly too. I was feeling tired from the flight so I elected to go to bed early instead of going clubbing.

I woke up around 7:30 and went for a walk around the neighborhood. I powerwalked up to university and walked around their very hilly campus, sketching and taking note of all the interesting bamboo I had never seen before. I found a breakfast place on my walk and eventually some of my friends met me there. I made the right choice by going to bed early; when the rest of the group woke up that morning they noticed one of the boys was missing. They told me that when he showed up, he said he had gotten lost at 4 in the morning and fallen asleep in some elderly woman’s stairway. He had taken off his shoes and lost them, so she lent him a pair so he would go back to wherever he came from. The other friend who had stayed out with him said she was groped in the club. Less than 12 hours in South Korea and they had both lived through nightmares. Drunky found his shoes, and the owner of the apartment called to say he had found his passport in the stairway. So it seems he had come back to the apartment, thrown his shoes and passport into the stairway, and then passed out in a different stairway.

Once we had wrangled the hungover kids, we set out for UNESCO World Heritage Site Changdeokgung Palace. It seemed so oddly void of life with the huge gravel-covered plazas and roads between the perfectly-ornamented buildings, but one could imagine that at some point in time all of that space was full of courtiers, horses, carriages, and bundles of food waiting to be turned into lavish meals for the court. The palace was built in 1405 by King Taejong, the third ruler of the Joseon Dynasty. It was used as a secondary palace until it was burned down during a Japanese invasion in 1592 and rebuilt in 1610, after which it became the primary palace for the next 270 years. The palace is special because unlike the rigid orientation of some palaces, Changdeokgung follows the contours of the land, as it is built at the foot of Bukhansan, a mountain north of Seoul.

We kept wandering and found ourselves in the Dongdaemun area, named for the Heunginjimun or Dongdaemun Gate which was of the the eight city gates along the historic Seoul City Wall, and served as the Great Eastern Gate into Seoul. They preserved some of the wall and it was awesome to see how big the wall once was. We also walked by the Chonggyecheon, a beautiful linear park that meanders through the busy urban heart of Seoul for about 3.5 miles. The Seoul government decided to dismantle a 10-lane roadway and 4-lane elevated highway that had been constructed in the 1970s during the height of a global frenzy to build freeways in urban areas. The project daylit a stream, creating hundreds of acres of open space, a new car-free route for cyclists and pedestrians, and dramatically decreased air pollution. We also bopped around the Zaha Hadid-designed Dongdaemun Design Center, which is an incredibly confusing, but awe-inspiring work of neo-futurism. Later that night we hiked up through more adorable neighborhoods to the Seoul Tower for a pretty spectacular view.

The next morning three of us got up really early to go to the Noryangjin Fish Market with the express goal of trying sannakji (live octopus). There are a few deaths each year from the dish, since the suction cups can suffocate you if you do not chew the tentacle well enough. I tried it but thought it really just tasted like ocean and the hot sauce our chef/fish slinger gave us. The market was on the outside of town, so when we got back we were pretty hungry. We bopped back to Eoulmadang-ro and got our fill of hotpot and sundae… It was just soup but because all of the broth was really rich and nutritious bone broth, it was super filling and warming. After brunch we packed up and got on the train to Pyeongchang for the Olympics!

Of course no trip to South Korea would be complete without stocking up on skincare products! I spent a few hours shopping and trying out skincare in the Gangnam area, and wound up with bags and bags full of goodies. I brought an extra duffel bag specifically for all of the skincare I knew I would be bringing home. The dudes in our group thought I was crazy for doing so, but when we were leaving South Korea, I saw lots of people unboxing Korean skincare products and shoving them into bags in the transfer area of the airport!

I have been very pleased with the short-term results of my new commitment to Korean skincare. Since returning to the U.S. I have been committed to cultivating a habit of multi-step skincare with majority-Korean products and my skin texture has improved dramatically. I am not sure what is in all of these products since I cannot read Korean, but whatever it is is working.

Seoulful

Seattle to Seoul