South Korea Trip Report March 26 - April 6, 2009

This trip has been in the planning stages for about 15 years – ever since our son came to us from South Korea – and it was better than any of us would have expected.

First the logistics, we saved miles for awhile and secured 4 business class seats on AA/Japan Airlines for the trip. I can’t imagine doing it in coach! We flew Chicago to Tokyo and had a 3 hour layover before our Japan Airlines flight to Seoul. Because we left Chicago at 11am, it was still only midnight to us, so while we were tired, we didn’t feel so bad. After a few hours in Tokyo and a 2.5 hour flight to Seoul I couldn’t say that anymore.

The airport in Seoul is about 1 hour outside of town. We were booked at the Fraser Suites (more on that later), but were warned by others that taxis do not know how to get there (proved to be true), so we took the airport limousine – basically a nice coach bus that runs many loops and scheduled stops around the city. On trip advisor I was given the stop and some loose directions to get to the hotel. A five minute walk. While at home in the comfort of your own language and not sleep deprived, it seemed like the way to go! Schlepping our luggage, reasonably confident we got off at the right stop, down a busy Seoul street at midnight after being awake for a long time to some unknown location 5 minutes away – all I can say is that my kids are troopers!

We found Fraser Suites on trip advisor and it is a wonderful find!! I would confidently stay at their other locations. It is basically an apartment building where people can stay for months, weeks, days. We had a 3 bedroom apartment (room a loose term – it had a bed in it), kitchen, washer/dryer combo for 285,000 won or about $225 a night! This included free breakfast 6 days a week. Eggs, cereal, toast and some international surprise – could be spaghetti or fish cakes. The place was clean, light airy and in a great part of town. The desk help was not really a concierge. It was hit or miss, they were always polite, but about half the time, you came away empty handed. You needed to be a bit more adventuresome and able to figure out some things by yourself. We were well equipped with guide books and maps and pointing always worked with them. We learned the trick of having them write your destination in Hangul, and then at least you could get some help outside of the hotel.

We quickly were up and negotiating the city, subways were extremely easy to use and all signs were in Hangul and English. I think our biggest surprise was the amount of spoken English. It was very small. The deluxe or black taxi could speak some, but the general taxi could not speak or read English off of our maps. We found the subway a lot easier than the taxis. Shops, restaurants etc was a general point and mime to get something. We found that even when we spoke Korean, they didn’t understand us, so we ended up pointing to it in our book.

In Seoul, there is so much to do. We saw palaces, markets, the musical Jump, the electronic market (a video games heaven), the DMZ (very cool, very sobering, and very freaky all at the same time). We went on the full day DMZ tour which takes you into the JSA and into the split conference room and into N Korea. My kids were certainly holding tight and listening to the rules. After the strict dress code (no slip-on shoes so you can run if needed), to walk in a straight line, no sudden movements, no standing on the bus, it was very sobering to see very close up the North Korean soldiers. We spent a day at the adoption agency that our son came from. Emotional for us.

For a few days we took a KTX (bullet train) south to Gyeonju. This are is basically an open air museum of really old, sacred, and historic things. It is also a big tourist area and we stayed at a Hilton which happened to be next to Gyeonju World, so we experienced some Korean roller coaters as well! This area was full of children’s field trips from school; they all wanted to say hi. After hi, my name is and I am 13 years old – conversation came to a halt.

We were very impressed with the Korean people. They were as polite and reserved (bowing when they entered and leaving a train car) as we expected – but in Gyeonju we found out how great they were when we left a camera in a cab! We realized it about 2 hours later. Our daughter remembered a phone number on the cab and we knew he had on an orange shirt. Keeping in mind that no English was spoken on these gentlemen’s part, they spent about 1.5 hours calling around until they found our camera. What a relief it was.

We returned to Seoul the next day for our final few days and hit all of our favorite restaurants again. In a first few days, we had a hankering for some American food and the city is full of pizza, Bennigan’s, and Outback, We tried both Bennigans and Outback and vowed never to return. It was horrible, some weird mix of what they think American food is. The pizza was pretty good, but otherwise it was all Korean food. We all had our favorites and you could eat very good food pretty cheaply.

I would recommend to anybody to go to Korea, it is a very beautiful country with great people. I have many details of my trip if anybody is interested in them, but there as so few trip reports posted I thought I would throw something together and maybe interest someone else in a trip.