{"id":1754,"date":"2026-10-22T10:45:54","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T10:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/the-plot.com\/blog\/?p=1754"},"modified":"2026-10-22T13:30:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T13:30:34","slug":"seoul-travel-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-plot.com\/blog\/?p=1754","title":{"rendered":"Seoul: Travel Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We’re just back from our second trip to South Korea. This post isn’t intended as a blow-by-blow write-up of our trip as I’ve done for other long haul holidays<\/a>; it’s more a point in time set of observations about various places that we visited, just in case we ever decide to go back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incheon Airport<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time of writing, Incheon ranks as the busiest airport in the world. It is, correspondingly, absolutely enormous. It is also, as appears to be the case with all things Korean, a model of efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transport<\/strong>: after a lot of back and forth before we travelled, we decided to get the ‘Limousine bus’ both to and from Jongno (specifically the 6011 service), where we had an AirBnB. Based on a poll of precisely two trips, it was fantastic: it was on time, pretty reasonable (17000 KRW each way), and very comfortable. You buy your ticket from a machine at Terminal 2. For the return leg, you pay getting on the bus. We paid cash but you may be able to card it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food<\/strong>: airside, it’s really not great at Terminal 2. If you need to eat, you are better off doing it before you go through security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tax refund<\/strong>: we spent the equivalent of about \u00a3360 on 3 pairs of glasses and weren’t really sure if it was worth the effort. First off, it’s apparently up to the store whether or not the tax refund is processed in situ. Secondly, it appears to be a sliding percentage based on the value of the purchase. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The long and short of it is that there are banks of machines at the opposite ends (relative to where you come into the airport) of the check-in areas. They aren’t at every area. We went to Area F after hunting around for them, and then were tripping over them before security. It’s very straightforward. Assuming you aren’t flagged for inspection, you scan your passport and the receipt with the barcode, and then airside do the same at one of the refund machines. Getting KRW back (about 7.5% for our purchase) was instant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Navigation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time of writing, Google Maps is of limited use, apparently due to a restriction on out-of-country mapping data: while it’s still occasionally useful for reviews and locations, the directional navigation doesn’t really work. We relied very heavily on Naver. For the uninitiated (us), it takes a little bit of getting used to, principally because it’s not Google Maps. We bumped up against the odd indexing issues but it’s really good. I used an Airalo E-Sim and managed to prep it successfully before we travelled as we knew we would need it for getting to the AirBnB. While we avoided video-heavy apps while we were out and about, we only consumed about 6Gb over the course of 12 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subway is absolutely world class, and puts The Tube to shame. When you are at a station with trains on opposite sides of the platform, look for the name of the next station in the direction you are travelling. We spent about \u00a3<\/span>9 over the course of 12 days, using it for multiple journeys every day (excluding the days going to and from the airport).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Myeongdong<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is fantastic shopping. Best kimbap of the holiday was at a chain called Gimgane. Also the best noodles of the trip at Myeongdong Kyoja<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Insa-Dong<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chopstick Making<\/strong>: this popped up on a ‘things to do in Seoul’ list. It was good fun – here’s a link to the booking site<\/a> liable not to work in the future. The upselling costs – for better, harder woods – are rather high. We decided to go with one of the default wood types (cypress), as we didn’t trust ourselves with something more expensive. Someone on the same desk ran into problems with a hardwood variant and had to be helped out by one of the (very good) instructors. The wheels fell off our instruction when a bunch of morons turned up 40 minutes late for a one-hour session. There is no fancy case regardless of which wood you choose: you get a flimsy cellophane wallet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Street food<\/strong>: we went to eat at what we came to call Mad Street a couple of times, because the first time we went it was a Saturday night, and was absolutely heaving. It was fantastic, particularly the kimchi pancake. All the prices seemed to be pretty much the same. The stalls are cash only. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gangnam<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The standout of this – for me, for this trip – was a random walk-in food place on our way to the Samsung Gangnam flagship store (not really worth the trip but it was something to do). I think this was it<\/a>. It was about \u00a38 for lunch for two, and it was the best kimchi fried rice I’ve ever had in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We stayed in Gangnam all day so that we could incorporate the Banpo Bridge light show<\/a>. It was fantastic: a really nice atmosphere, and not too busy where we were sitting (bearing in mind it was mid-October). We got eaten alive, so either cover up or take your bug spray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jongno Guitar Shop<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am obsessed with guitars and it’s the second time that I’ve been to the Nagwon Musical Instrument Arcade. It’s in a huge building, and there seemed to be more shops there than when I was in it 3 years ago. Lots of exotica, and absolutely worth a visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jung District – Mugyo-dong Bugeo-guk<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a single menu item restaurant: dried pollock soup which, it has to be said, doesn’t sound that appetising. We queued for about 20 minutes or so and it was fabulous. If we ever go back to Seoul, this would be close to the top of the list of places to revisit. One side-bar note: like a few places that we went to, we were presented with some side dishes (banchan) that we weren’t entirely sure what to do with, so were discreetly spying on our dining neighbours to figure out what went into the soup and what didn’t. You pay at the end at a counter. This is in contrast to Myeongdong Kyoja where you pay before you get to your seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seongsu-dong<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is good shopping to be had here, but it was a bit young for us. When I say ‘a bit’, I mean everyone was about 30 years younger than us. There were a couple of points of note, starting with the shopping centre made out of shipping containers called Common Ground. Maybe we caught it at an off-season point in time (there were a lot of “pop up” shops everywhere we went) but it wasn’t really worth the walk. There is quite a nice pen shop<\/a> close to the station which we bought from. Note to self: refills are Parker G2 compatible. Other than the weird bear bread (not a typo<\/a>) that was about it for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Point of note: this was our last full day and we were running out of steam. There is undoubtedly a lot more to see and do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What passed us by on our first trip<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two things spring to mind. The first is ‘salt bread’. This is croissant-adjacent: buttery, but hollow, and very nice. There was a bakery on the street we stayed on<\/a> that we bought from at least a half a dozen times. There were a few variants (garlic and cream cheese) but the plain ones were our favourites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second was coffee. For a city that is wholly obsessed with it, it appears to be against the law to have an Americano with milk. We were told we couldn’t have any the one time we asked, in a cafe at the airport. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of coffee in general, we went into a couple of branches of Caffe Pascucci. It had the best coffee of the trip, and outstanding cake. Thoroughly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re just back from our second trip to South Korea. This post isn’t intended as a blow-by-blow write-up of our trip as I’ve done for other long haul holidays; it’s more a point in time set of observations about various … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-longhaul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-plot.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-plot.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-plot.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-plot.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-plot.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1754"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/the-plot.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1761,"href":"https:\/\/the-plot.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754\/revisions\/1761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-plot.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-plot.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-plot.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}