Travel: Top 5 Seoul Korea in 36 hours

The flight from Hong Kong direct to Seoul is only 3.5hrs, unfortunately for me direct flights from Macau were all fully booked, so I had to fly via Hong Kong which took me a good 12 hours of commute. Welcome to the life of the international traveller out of Macau. Few people I know travel out regularly for business, and actually fewer people I know who work at all. Working from home is a tricky thing to explain as most people think I sit around all day which constitutes ‘working from home’.

So, Seoul was a quick stop business trip and I managed to squeeze in a little play to see two of my local Korean friends who tried their best to show me as much as possible. I highly recommend the National Contemporary Art Museum, I didn’t have time to go to the Samsung museum but I reckon it would have been equally amazing.

Koreans as you guessed it are big on their meats and BBQ, their wide variety of kimchi preserved vegetables as well as snacks – all sorts of it, plenty of it. A couple of highlights from my quick stop in Seoul.

1. Andong jjimdak  A savory spicy glass/rice noodles dish served with perfectly cooked potatoes, vegetables and chicken. I haven’t seen it on the menu in Korean restaurants outside of Korea and restaurants specialise in making this one dish. I’ve taken a card unfortunately it’s all in Korean! And the only characters I can decipher in Chinese are 凤鸡, it’s a chained restaurant so your hotel should be able to give you a recommendation on where to eat this dish.

Andong Jimdak seoul

2. Tteokbokki My Korean friends LOVE this. It’s a simple plate of chewy rice noodles – kind of like cheong fun we have as dimsum but 10x the chewiness and consistency. It comes with a very spicy tomato base gravy. One of the popular street food.

seoul Tteokbokki

3. Meats on grill. They take it seriously here and most of the beef I’ve been told is local. Local specialties are beef and pork belly and again BBQ places specialise in doing solely beef or pork and some do both. We went to one near the Westin hotel. Wangbijib BBQ, which is a chain.

And my local friend took me to a local BBQ place that opens 24 hours which apparently is common for lots of restaurants.

korean bbqseoul korean bbq

4. Seafood hotpot at the fish market

5. Snacks: Potato spirals, trunk icecream sorbet, shaved ice and creative artisan breads at bread lab bakery (

 13-25 Yeoeuido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, South Korea) a Great spot for a pit stop in between shopping. Then there was chocolate filled poo shaped waffle cakes (I didn’t eat any but there were queues for it)

seoul poo cakesseoul breadlab

seoul ice creampotato spirals

Finally, Art the other of my to-do on travels. The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul is an amazing space in itself with plenty of public area for large scale installations and I’ve also been recommended the Samsung museum that I didn’t have time to check out. There’s alot of Korean pride and many sponsored projects by big homegrown brands like Hyundai, LG and Samsung – really state of the art installations and pretty much a city of the future. Everything is sleek, modern and trippy. The museum stores are also an absolute must. I left with two local artist prints!

MMCA seoul

 

 

 

 

 

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