Awakening on the southern tip of Jeju Island on May 15 of this year, I knew that a big part of our South Korean trip was over. The last week of roaming the country, seeing cultural sites and sporting events, trying local cuisine and hitting golf balls – all of that was coming to an end. Our trip wasn’t over, but we were about to head back to Seoul and move into Fairchild Family Wedding Mode. It’s still very fun, just a different kind of fun. It requires a mentality switch. So I looked out the window of the JW Marriott, took a moment to enjoy a beautiful sunrise, said good-bye to the vacation mentality, and got ready for the Quality Family Time mentality to dominate.
Ten things from May 15 – our travel back to Seoul!
- An update from back home
When you travel halfway across the world, you shouldn’t forget the friends you left behind. Scipio’s favorite dogsitter stayed with him the whole time and sent us plenty of picture updates. As you can see, he loves when she plays fetch with him in the backyard.
- Chasing Waterfalls
Jeju is well-known for its array of stunning and scenic waterfalls – as you might imagine from an island that’s basically the volcano from Wii Sports Resort. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t actually any water flowing on the island here in the middle of dry season, but that doesn’t stop a few of the more prolific waterfalls from continuing. During our drive across the island two days ago, our schedule had gotten just a little too compressed to have time for the couple of cool falls on the southern coast of Jeju near Seogwipo. But if we got an early enough start this morning, we could probably catch one or the other before our flight back to Seoul. This was kind of a touchy subject; Elizabeth’s view of “early and on-time” starts sometimes conflicts with her family’s, which led to a bit of tension between her and Winston as recently as a few days ago when we were on the verge of being late for our flight from Busan. But lo and behold, all five of us were on the move before the morning had really gotten going. I felt like we had time for one waterfall stop.
There are three famous waterfalls right by (in some cases within) the city limits of Seogwipo. The one I wanted to see most was Jeongbang. The Internet makes a lot of crazy claims, and this one (The only waterfall in all of Asia to fall directly into the Pacific Ocean!) is the type of outlandish thing that makes me want to see your natural feature. So off we went, Winston following some windy roads right through the wharf district of town until reaching a parking area on a big cliff just east of the waterfall. The process of accessing the falls was a little annoying – there was a paid entry into the park, and then there were a ton of steps, and the steps were kind of slick so we didn’t want Pam to slip and fall… but it only took a couple of minutes before the hissing sound of a distant waterfall turned into more of a nearby roar of water. The path leveled out right on a rocky beach, and about 100 or so meters away, there was the waterfall.
Yep, it does in fact go right into the ocean!
There was a noticeable difference in water temperature if you stuck your hand down and felt the temperature of the water in the waterfall pool versus the ocean. There was a spot where a certain way-too-easily-fascinated-by-things author of this blog could watch the tide and the stream combine in a whirling churn. Plus there were some very pretty basalt cliffs.
I wish I could say I have the photo of Elizabeth and me at the waterfall, but it’s not on my phone. So you’ll have to settle for the waterfall alone.
- Winston’s final drive
I don’t think anyone was going to miss the roads in Jeju, but poor Winston was looking forward to turning in the rental car the most. To do so, he had to take us back to the north side of the island to the airport. The most direct route took us past the east side of Hallasan National Park. Elizabeth and I failed to visit a Korean national park during this trip (I’m sure she’d tell you that’s just a reason to go back one day), so to get this close but not stop was an ironic twist of fate. Not that it mattered, because there was fog up near the volcano anyway.
It got sunny again as we got back into town so that Winston could drop us off for…
- An absolute airport nightmare
Yeah, this was not one of my favorite experiences ever. I don’t think for any of the five of us it was a favorite. Arguably nobody had a worse airport experience than Winston, who dropped us all off then had to take the van to the rental car facility. We took a bus there, so I have no idea why Winston felt like he had to run the entire way from the facility back to the airport with his own two legs. Probably was worried that it wouldn’t get him in time to not miss our flight? Either way, that’s how he ended up pulling a sprint down the fine sidewalks of Jeju to find the rest of us.
It wasn’t going much better inside the airport. Pam’s bag wasn’t the proper size for checking; she and the lady at the luggage counter weren’t quite understanding each other, either. Pam wanted to wait for Winston to get back but god knows where he was; Moira and Elizabeth had perfected the art of looking distressed; meanwhile, hundreds of goddamn students kept pouring through security as part of those massive school trips we kept on seeing.
Somehow, right as the bag-size issue was getting fixed, Winston arrived coated in sweat. Our bags got accepted. We made it through security. Our gate had no AC and everyone was clearly stress-sweating. But we made it on the plane.
Got away with it again.
- Return to Seoul
It wasn’t until the moment that our plane was touching down in Seoul (without my big bag of emotional support Jelly Bellies. They were left in Jeju – gone, but never forgotten) that I discovered there are actually two giant international airports in the area. There’s Seoul Incheon where Elizabeth and I had landed the week before, and then there was this one, which was much closer to downtown and looked completely different. “Gimpo” was the name of it. Who knew?
It was nice that our transfer van didn’t take quite as long to get into downtown Seoul this time. We were no longer staying at the Four Seasons like last week, but the Westin Josun. It’s a few blocks south on that walking route to Myeongdong and closer to the National Bank where a certain wedding would be held in two days’ time. Perhaps I was dealing with “insane hotel fatigue” after our incredible lodgings of the last week, but the swanky Westin was like… yeah, ok, here’s a 5-star hotel. It has a clean room. Nice.
It turns out you can get complacent in a life of luxury very fast.
- Elizabeth’s foray into wedding planning
Elizabeth often talks about how she misses the process of planning a wedding. Personally, I think she’s insane; the last few months before we got married was about the most stressed I’ve seen her in 10 years. But nostalgia does all sorts of weird stuff to people, I guess.
Either way, she was eager to help out when Michael texted us on that Friday and asked us to help him get supplies for the after-party. The way the wedding weekend worked, there was going to be a ceremony on Sunday afternoon attended by many Korean big shots + family members, and the American side of the family would be invited to a party more akin to a traditional wedding reception later that night. Of course it was 48 hours prior to the party and Michael hadn’t thought of decorations yet. Even more predictably, he wasn’t in the slightest bit bothered by the last-minute nature of his task. Sometimes I wonder how Elizabeth and him are related.
We met him downtown and began what turned into a rather epic adventure. I have often said that you can’t get to know the character of a city until you’ve walked among it’s wholesale districts and seen how many wires a single telephone pole can hold.
Koreans also take the concept of wholesale quite seriously. Michael confidently led us past toilet seat shops – an entire storefront of several warehouses that had nothing but toilet seats in them. There was an interior lighting section with chandalier stores in it. There was the carpet section. Could you imagine waking up one day and heading out to the sheet metal alley because you’re working on a construction project at home?
At the end of one of these sketchy alleyways, Michael found what he was looking for: the balloon store. Note: not a party favor store. If it wasn’t inflatable, the store owner didn’t want it. Michael spoke Korean with him (though the store owner wasn’t all that impressed by his linguistic skills) while Elizabeth and I picked out any balloon that looked like it could be wedding-related. It was one of the weirder experiences of the week, but culturally enriching.
- Urban Wildlife
On the way back from this wholesale district, Michael took us on a small detour a block or two north so that Elizabeth and I could see Cheonggyecheon. It’s a stream that runs eastward through the heart of the city. The Koreans, with their superior urban planning skills, built the nearby roads up and away, put walking paths on both sides of the stream, and lined it with trees to create a long, narrow urban park. Gotta be honest: they hit a home run with this one.
There were little stone paths to hop across the water. Everybody heeded the ubiquitous signs to not wade in it, which is probably good because who knows what sort of urban waste sits in water like that. But on the other hand, there were huge koi sitting right under the surface, so maybe the water was perfectly safe?
It’s sort of emblematic of the unconscious poetry that Michael brings to life: asking us to rush around doing last-second chores, then making it all worthwhile with a nice sunset stroll through the park (literally).
- Michelin-Star Ramen
You can infer everything you need to know from the title of this section. If there’s one thing Elizabeth holds dear in this world, it’s ramen. Korea isn’t known for Michelin-level ramen; in fact, in your mind you’re probably thinking about those Buldak cups that you can buy 24 of for like 30 cents at the store. Leave it to Elizabeth to find the exception to the rule. There is a restaurant in Myeongdong that earned a Michelin star a few years ago for their ramen. It’s not a fancy restaurant by the standards you would expect with the star, but it’s a big step up from heating up Buldak in a gas station.
The toughest part of dinner was just getting everyone to the right spot. That was a twofold issue: first because the restaurant had apparently moved into a different location in Myeongdong’s maze-like alleys, and second because people had officially arrived in Seoul. James and Moriah had returned after Busan and I invited them to meet us; Winston and Moira had gone to the head spa; Pam was goodness-knows-where; Michael wanted to join us for dinner; so did his brother Alex and Alex’s wife Kate! That’s a lot of different groups to coordinate while Nolan is pinging back and forth between shitty Seoul public Wi-Fi signals and refusing to buy international data. The former 8 of us all managed to find each other among the throngs in front of the restaurant, though, which I thought was a major win.
The previous night in Jeju, Winston and Moira had made Elizabeth and me look REAL BAD by offering to pay for the black pork dinner they found. So Elizabeth and I decided to match the gesture and win some aura with anyone else who had arrived by paying for MICHELIN-STAR RAMEN. I mean, what a high-roller move, right? Yeah, I think the bill came out to like $84 for 8 people. We’re the picture of kindness.
Elizabeth thought the ramen was world-changing. I thought it was okay.
- Cultural enrichment in Itaewon
Over the last week, we’d done plenty of casual drinking. Beer and soju, more beer and soju, and some more beer and soju at dinnertime are not to be despised. But if you’re going to go to another continent, you might as well get rip-roaring drunk at least one night. You may be thinking “Nolan, you were going to a wedding in two days, couldn’t you just do it then?” The answer is no. I had to see what Seoul’s nightlife looked like.
Nor was I the only one itching to do so. Elizabeth, James, Moriah, Winston, Moira, Lyndsey and Evan newly in town – the eight of us made a power group of Americans ready to take on the vibrant nightlife of Seoul’s bar district, Itaewon. Surely when we arrived we would be sophisticated travelers of the world who found some speakeasy playing the trendiest of K-Pop and drink our yuzu spritzes in a classy fashion.
What ended up happening was that the first bar we came upon was like a mock Hawaiian bar. That was so funny that we had to enter. And right upon walking in, we had to order? I don’t know, clearly foreigners (us) were being taken advantage of by the local business. The music was bumping and I couldn’t hear the waitress. She likely didn’t speak a whole bunch of English anyway. So I just pointed at something on the (mostly printed in Korean) menu that said Tito’s. I know what Tito’s is!
All of a sudden, all eight of us were being led to the back of the bar for some prime real estate. Who knows what was going on? And then the staff came by with a big bucket and lit sparklers and I realized: shit. I ordered bottle service.
Well, when you make a mistake that expensive (as I was sure it would be… turns out that like everything else in Korea, even when they’re trying to rip you off on bottle service, it costs way less than it would in the US), there’s no way through it but through it. So we drank.
The night started getting hazy fast. There were some Korean dudes who we called over to our table to help us out with the bottle service. I’m thinking they couldn’t have been far over 21. But that didn’t stop certain people (not naming names here) from trying to set James up with the guys. Nobody could hear anyone. The Tito’s ran out. Winston ordered the next round of service.
This time, when it arrived, I was ready for the sparklers.
I wish I could upload the video, but due to a big PHP vulnerability scare ongoing in the real world right now, WordPress has throttled the size of files I can upload. Grainy images it is.
After Winston’s bottle of caramel vodka or whatever it was arrived, the night started to get a little blurry for me. Maybe somebody else could give a better narrative. I just know we lost our new Korean friends, moved to another table, eventually ended up at another bar, ran up a nice tab on green tea shots, Elizabeth and Moriah got yelled at for getting on an elevated surface of some sort, and then the night got REALLY blurry.
It was the stuff of legends.
- Elizabeth and Nolan get scammed in the taxi
After the ramen dinner and the bottle service turned out to be cheap, I guess I just thought Elizabeth and myself might be a little bit invincible. At the end of the night, everyone split up into Ubers to go back to the Westin. The only problem was that Elizabeth just couldn’t call up an Uber. It was 2:00 am and we were absolutely hammered and in an unknown district of a foreign city, so we did what anyone would do: we got in the brightly lit taxi and gave them my credit card.
Good news: the brightly lit taxi got us back!
Bad news: when I checked my credit card statement, the 5-minute ride cost $40. Ouch.
