{"id":2770,"date":"2025-12-03T12:37:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T20:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2770"},"modified":"2025-12-21T12:57:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T20:57:22","slug":"thailand-day-14-seoul-wait-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2770","title":{"rendered":"Thailand, Day 14: Seoul. Wait, what?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we mentioned in the first post, while you can fly direct from Bangkok back to Vancouver, it would be on Air Canada, which I recently described to a zoomer coworker as “mid”.\u00a0 The coworker pretended to be very impressed that I had used “mid” correctly.<\/p>\n

We chose Korean Air Lines instead, as it allowed us to use our accumulated Sky Team miles to cover the entire airfare.\u00a0 And unsurprisingly , flying KAL involves a stopover in Seoul.\u00a0 (Technically Incheon, FWIW)<\/p>\n

Specifically, a nine hour stopover in Seoul, which actually gave us enough time to take the 50 minute train from the airport into the city and see a few things before coming back to make our flight.<\/p>\n

Now, the airport\u00a0itself<\/em> runs excursions for tourists in exactly our situation.\u00a0 They even provide appropriate winter clothes for said tourists.\u00a0 Sadly, those excursions all leave at 9 AM, and we didn’t clear immigration until 9:20.<\/p>\n

So we went looking for our second airport bag storage in two days.\u00a0 On the way, we encountered ANOTHER paparazzi intensive situation.\u00a0 First we saw a bunch of people standing around with remarkably high powered camera equipment in the camera hall.\u00a0 Then, what was clearly an entourage entered, and all the cameras started whirring, and a group of nearby teen girls started jumping up and down excitedly.<\/p>\n

And then there was some running around and general fuss as people tried to get better glimpses of whoever it was.\u00a0 It was all very exciting. Our best guess is that it was probably this person.<\/a><\/p>\n

But at any rate, we disposed of our luggage and headed into town.\u00a0 Where we were confronted with the fact that it was -5 C in Seoul at the moment.\u00a0 Remember I said the airport tours provided parkas?\u00a0 Remember I said we weren’t on one of those?<\/p>\n

Yeah.<\/p>\n

So not a lot of pictures, because it’s hard to take photos when your hands are jammed firmly into your pockets, and you’re shivering so hard you can’t hold the camera still.<\/p>\n

We want to the Namdaemun market, because a) it sounded interesting, and b) it was\u00a0directly adjacent<\/em> to the train station.<\/p>\n

It was interesting.\u00a0 A different vibe from the markets in Thailand, possibly due to the cold, who knows.\u00a0 We got some coffee, we got some snacks, we considered just flat out buying parkas, and then we made our way to a narrow alley in the food market section that specialized in one particular type of food – cutlassfish stew, or\u00a0Galchi Jorim.<\/em> All along this narrow, covered path, was shop after shop with grills outside in the hallway, and tiny little seating areas inside.<\/p>\n

We picked a likely looking one, and discovered that there was exactly one menu item.\u00a0 This stew for two, plus side dishes.\u00a0 Sounds good to us!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There were a million bones, but absolutely worth the effort. So good.<\/p>\n

We then went and saw the nearby sight.\u00a0 Here is the sight.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Apparently this is the Sungnyemun Gate.\u00a0 It was very, very cold.\u00a0 Let’s go back inside now, OK?<\/p>\n

We went back inside.\u00a0 We had coffee.\u00a0 We went back to the airport.\u00a0 We went home.<\/p>\n

I would very much like to come back to Korea some day wearing appropriate clothing.\u00a0 But the one meal we had was a banger, so I’m looking forward to it.<\/p>\n

Also, we once again landed well before we took off.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we mentioned in the first post, while you can fly direct from Bangkok back to Vancouver, it would be on Air Canada, which I recently described to a zoomer coworker as “mid”.\u00a0 The coworker pretended to be very impressed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-korea","category-thailand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2774,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770\/revisions\/2774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}