TRAVEL AND LIFESTYLE DIARIES

Little did we know that Gangnam or Gangnam-gu is primarily the trendy and high-tech business district of Seoul. The real Gangnam style We went to Gangnam with the city bus. I personally wanted to mix with the locals, feel what it is like living in this city, commuting, and experiencing first hand the Seoul rush hour, and in particular, in Gangnam. Seoul is massive! Go here: Amazing city views of Seoul from the N Seoul Tower  to grasp how big the city is. Gangnam is just a little portion of this metropolitan city but it houses the most number and highest skycrapers of the country. Unfortunately, I was not able to take pictures of these intimidating buildings as we ourselves were facing the challenge of finding our bearings around Gangnam district. It was rush hour. Everyone was busy trying to get to their destination. The bus was packed like sardines, and we had to stand for 3/4 of the ride. Talk about really going local, haha. High end boutiques of course in ...

When Dutchman and I were in Seoul, South Korea last October 2012, it was the height of the Gangnam style and PSY craze. Naturally, we were curious what Gangnam style is all about and we found out that Gangnam (or Gangnam-gu) is an affluent district in Seoul. Budae Jigae (noodle, meat and vegetable) soup. Koreans like to cook a lot on the table when going out to eat. And so we went! But I’ll tell more about Gangnam in my next entry because this entry is about the food we discovered while in Gangnam. Our plan was to have dinner in this place but we were not sure where and what. We want something local and traditionally Korean, something that will speak to us. PSY huh? Then we came across this restaurant with a big poster of PSY on the front window. Is this the real PSY or just a PSY look-alike? Well, it doesn’t matter; we are in Gangnam! And there is a life-sized PSY or a PSY look-alike sticker of the Gangnam style idol plastered on the window of this interesting tra...

Seoul is a modern and affluent city boasting of big brands under her belt that are now conquering the world such as LG, Kia, Samsung and Hyundai... and oh PSY as well, but that is reserved for another blog entry. So you would obviously think that you can simply get by going around Seoul with (at least very basic) English. Well, this was not the case when we were there. Based on our experience, the average Korean you meet on the street does not speak English. We noticed that only the ones who are in corporate jobs with international contact and entrepreneurs speak English. Given this fact, we were faced with the challenge of asking around for directions. Moi here waiting near Anguk station for our bus to Myeongdong. This is our second day in the city and it has been raining on and off the whole day. Dutchman and I prefer to walk of course but Seoul is a massive city, a conglomerate of neighbourhoods that extends to the north and south of the River Han, so eventually we would need ...