Final South Korea post... until our next visit!

Phillip and I returned to Texas last week and are into our home routine: checking on the cows at the ranch (they were fine, frisky and fat from the green grass), taking Zelda to the "spa" (aka pet grooming), and working on the remodel of the Crowley house (granite countertop installation went well and they look fabulous). I've had time to think about our Korean adventures to now compose this post.

First, a description of our final days in South Korea... We traveled by subway from Suwon to Seoul. Once we knew to identify the exit from which we needed to leave a subway station, life became so easy. More praise for the Korean subway system: clean, efficient, and at times, like on our travel to Seoul with luggage, not crowded. Only three times on our numerous subway rides would I call it crowded and only one of those times would I call it sardine-crowded. No luggage except my backpack that day, but I had to hold it up as we were smushed into the car during rush hour. Fortunately, we only had to go two stations and were positioned just to the left of the door.

When we got to Seoul, the hotel let us check in early, so we dropped our bags off and began shopping. My quest was to purchase the pans to make egg bread. First step: buy an egg bread and ask the vendor if we could take a picture of her pans. That was the easy part!

We had a list of things in addition to the egg bread pans that we wanted to get, so I didn't worry that we couldn't find them on our first shopping day. By Wednesday, however, I started to get frantic about them and we became determined to find them. Finally, after a dedicated three hour search, with help from two young female market employees who were able to get us to the right market, then to the correct section of that market, we found them. I was willing to pay as much as $3 a pan for them, so I was pleasantly surprised when the vendor said 1500 won each (about $1.35). I bought 24 of them so I could take some to the ranch.

I liked shopping in the traditional markets with vendors and crowds best. Phillip liked going to Myeong-dong with its stores and crowds. Lonely Planet described Myeong-dong  shopping as "an overwhelming experience that borders on sensory overload." I agree with that assessment, except that for me, I'd change the "borders on" to "is a." For Phillip, we joined the masses in Myeong-dong for our last two evenings. We did have some excellent bulgogi on our last evening at a restaurant there. That was a nice experience as we arrived just as the first floor of the restaurant had filled, so we were the first customers to be seated upstairs. For awhile, we had a private dining experience above the crowd, with our own waitress.

Myeong-dong was the only shopping area we frequented that had the 32-cm ice cream that Phillip liked! While we were in Busan, Phillip found this ice cream, mango flavored, just a couple blocks from our hotel. He was quite pleased to have it again in Seoul. The ice cream is over 12 inches above the cone. He also liked that the cone itself was full of ice cream and tasted good. Unlike the fish-shaped ice cream cone he'd gotten once that didn't taste as fresh and had been filled with cornflakes instead of ice cream. Just 2000 won, an excellent snack, which he did share with me.

Our shopping done and our sights seen, we packed and boxed up our final purchases and prepared to come back to Texas. Our return flight on the 28th was uneventful, the way airline flights should be. We loved the people of South Korea and the country and plan to return in two years during our next travel year. I do have some tips and final impressions of the country and our experience to share:

• I highly recommend a cooking class. In addition to the actual culinary experience, meeting Jessie and her mother started the trip on such a warm, generous tone. We learned a lot about modern-day Korea from Jessie, as Phillip only had 1978 Korea as a reference in his head (from his time there in the Air Force). She explained a lot to us and gave context to the changes that Phillip saw as we traveled after the cooking class. I plan to schedule cooking classes in the future when we travel internationally.
• The most important phrase to know in the language of the country being visited is "thank you." In Korea, more than in any othe country we've visited, people always offered to help us and we could see the happiness on their face when we could thank them in their own language, even when they spoke English with us.
• South Korea has an amazing infrastructure in its technology and mass transit. Wifi everywhere, including routers on the subway trains. It is not a third world country, it is a modern country with all the amenities of home. With its modernization does come modern prices, but they are still less than in the USA. Except meat prices - because they import most of their beef, meat prices are higher than here. Of course, I am spoiled because we raise our own beef.
• Don't push the buttons on a bidet toilet unless you are actually sitting on it. Phillip learned that lesson and then had to get more towels to wipe up the water that spouted across the bathroom.
• Use your smartphone camera liberally. I have many pictures of subway maps on my phone that I took to use as reference. When we did our laundry at one of the hotels, the washing machine instructions were in Korean, so I took a picture of the control panel and went to the clerk with it. Restaurants would have pictures of entrees posted outside, but no pictures on the menus. We started taking snapshots of the outside picture and showing it to the waitress if we weren't ordering something that we knew, like bulgogi, bibimbap or kimbap.
• Leave room in your planning for spontaneous activities. The baseball game and the horse race were not on my itenerary, but were great additions to our adventure. I've learned to have sufficient unplanned time and to be flexible. If we don't make it to something that I'd picked out to visit, that's OK. Our alternative activity will be just as enjoyable! We never made it to the arboretum in Daegu, but the flowers in the street median, the small botanic garden in Busan, and the cherry blossom festival in Seoul provided many colorful flower viewings.
• Try new foods. If you've read posts from previous adventures, you know that tip already. Thinking about the foods we ate in Korea, the grilled pork intestines were the most different from our usual fare. We ate many foods that we hadn't had before, but not necessarily exotic or unusual. Egg bread, sugar pancakes, sweet red bean pastries, bibimbap, tteokbokki (the glutinous rice cakes in red sauce) and Korean noodle soup (different from Thai noodle soup) come to mind as favorites. Admittedly, there were a few thing we ate that we didn't care so much for - a vendor meal of room temperature fried flounder with bones comes to mind - but I'd say 98% of what we ate was tasty and enjoyable.

Of the countries we've visited, South Korea now ranks at the top of our list for a return visit. Yes, we will probably return to Thailand (fruit, food, climate) and the Philippines (language not a barrier, climate, my half-brother lives there); however, Phillip and I will definitely return to South Korea (people, food, infrastructure). I'm not a fan of Ernest Hemingway's novels, but I did come across a quote of his that I like. "It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end." May your journeys be full of adventures and good food!