If I didn’t mention it before, the trip to Korea was one that I took with my mother. The idea was that way back when, my dad and sister went together, so it seemed like a suitable idea that this would be a mother and son trip. My mom had recently retired, so she had nothing but time on her hands, and from my perspective, this was a trip that had to be done sooner rather than later, because I didn’t want to live my life with the regret of never going to Korea with my mom while she was still physically able to. Not to mention, my mom had never been back since I’d been alive, so it was literally 38 years since she’d last been in Korea.
This is without question one of the best ideas I’d had in my life, and although I’m not going to sugar-coat and say it was a perfect trip, I don’t have any regrets about going to Korea with my mom one bit. It was meaningful and memorable, and I’m glad to be able to say that my mom was there the first time I visited the Motherland.
I let my mom drive when it came to planning for the trip, since my initial idea of planning a trip to see the places of her childhood and upbringing seemed to fall on deaf ears, so it ended up with us having a few days in Seoul on our own, but then ultimately going on a multi-city tour group through the rest of Korea, back-ended with two more days in Seoul before coming home. I’m not going to pretend like I was pleased with the idea of being on a guided tour, since typically I prefer to be in control of my own destiny, but it was what my mother had wanted, and she didn’t seem to understand that I was quite the competent planner on my own.
Whatever though, if there was one good thing about letting a travel agency do some driving is that they didn’t really scrimp on transportation and lodging.
I’d never flown with Korean Air before, because I had never flown to Korea before, but I have to say it was one of the more pleasant airline experiences that I’ve ever had. The aircraft was gigantic, and even being in the plebe class literally at the very back of the plane, the seats were still spacious and comfortable for a 13-hour flight. Little amenities like power outlets were present as opposed to the flights to and from Europe, and there was a pretty vast amount of in-flight entertainment to watch on both legs of the trip. But what I really enjoyed were the slippers they provided, and that the in-flight meals were stuff like bibmbap and other Korean options.
One thing I found amusing about Korean Air is that in today’s American airline industry, it’s all about equality and inclusion when it comes to the workforce. This is another way of saying that people cannot be hired based on looks and appearance, which is also another way of saying that flight attendants for American carriers come in all shapes, sizes and colors. Yeah, well none of that applies to Korean Air, whose flight attendants are all young attractive Asian (not necessarily exclusively Koreans) women who all fit into a particular look and shape. I found it to be quite amusing the differences immediately from the get-go of the trip.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last two years of doing international flights is that I can’t really fall asleep, even with sleeping pills. So when I arrived in Seoul, I had been awake the entire 13-hour flight on top of however many hours I’d been awake prior, and by the time I went to bed that first night, I’d been awake for over 24 hours. Regardless, I was pretty invigorated when we landed in Seoul, that I was running pretty okay, to where my mom and I immediately went out with her friends that my mom had been communicating about meeting up with while she was out there.
So needless to say, I didn’t waste much time getting my feet wet seeing Seoul. After settling into the Airbnb apartment that I had booked for the first leg of the trip, we immediately took a walk through Insadong, one of the more well-regarded neighborhoods in Seoul, as it pertains to tourists and vibrant scenes. I was pretty immediately impressed by how lively the whole area was, but it was a Friday night, regardless of how jacked up my sense of time was throughout the whole trip, so there were couples everywhere, making me further miss mythical gf, and imagining what it would be like if she were there with me, although I was happy to be there with my mom as well.
We ended up going to Dongdaemun afterward, another fairly popular neighborhood in Seoul, because we may as well dive right in, to the shopping culture of Korea. Initially I had associated the name with solely a shopping area, because that’s what Dongdaemun seems to be best known for, and sure, we did go into a market that was open and thriving at 10:00 pm local time on a Friday night which was a little mind-blowing to me despite having read about how such was the norm, but seeing was believing, but Dongdaemun is also a very vibrant neighborhood in general with a very robust art and creative community. Not far from the market district, was the gigantic Design Plaza (tear blob-looking building) which is the centerpiece for a massively vibrant and alive food truck park, filled to the brim of people indulging in food and the generally jovial scene.
The first night ended with me being completely drained after being up for over 24 hours, and hoping that being so tired, a full night’s sleep would rejuvenate me. Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be the case, and I suppose I was getting a true jetlag experience, after waking up at three in the morning, forcing myself to fall back asleep, before waking up again at six, and being unable to fall back asleep.
Needless to say, when sleep wasn’t happening, I got on my computer, because if there was one thing I was curious about, it was the idea of playing League of Legends, while in Korea, on the Korean server, widely regarded as the pinnacle of skill and challenge. I figured I would get my ass destroyed by Korean bronze players, but it would be an experience to see first-hand.
So funny thing about Korea, is their extremely stringent and regulated policy for signing up for, well anything. Like a League account; in America, signing up for a League account requires an email address. Subsequently, there are an abundance of people who have multiple accounts, most of the time primarily with hopes of curb-stomping low-level players. But in Korea, signing up for a League account, much like signing up for anything else, requires not just an email address, but stuff like legit identification or mobile subscription, or anything else that also requires full, factual identity verification.
Apparently, Korea is really big on trying to make sure that solely Koreans are the only ones utilizing Korean services online, whether it’s a message board account or a League account. And being an American citizen, it was literally impossible for me to sign up without some Korean identification.
Thankfully, my mom’s friend’s husband, being well into his 70s, couldn’t care less about me using his cell phone account to verify a League account. And the funny thing is that upon sending a request for an account, the Riot registration page in Korea literally gives you a timer of three minutes to verify and enter the verification code that’s texted to the phone number provided. And with a verification code acquired, I now had my access onto the vaunted Korean League of Legends server.
However, I was starting from the ground floor, and PVP access wasn’t going to happen until I hit level five, so every now and then when I had some free time at the apartment, or when I couldn’t sleep, I was grinding out some bot games here and there to level up my Korean account.
Anyway, back to actually doing stuff in Seoul, the next few days were a whole lot of exploration. I had created a Google map with lots of pins of historical landmarks and intriguing shopping centers that I had hoped to see. The Airbnb was deliberately chosen for being somewhat centralized and with convenience to rail, to help expedite the possibility of seeing as much as I could in the time that I was there.
Needless to say, there are a ton of pictures.
