We have learned we shouldn't go from a 5 star place directly to a 3 star place, we arent above staying at a 3 star place, but the contrast is abrupt when we come from the swank that is a 5 star hotel. Our hotel here is akin to the lesser of the hotels we stayed in the last time we toured Asia, 7+ years ago when we had less money. So, the place is ok, we didnt understand that turning the heat down didnt necessarily make the room cooler, we had to use the TV remote to operate the air conditioning, and the in floor heating was up to the whims of the entire floor/building automated sytems, the fact that it was 80 degrees while trying to sleep, on a 3 star bed, meant we had a not great sleep. Also at various points the auto-on lights tripped (Laura is convinced it is a ghost, I think it is Chinesium electronics) on and forced us out of bed to turn off lights. so we woke up ready to try and find a new hotel, honestly this spot was so inexpensive, if we paid the same rate for the next hotel it would still be in our budget, so we literally walked to other hotels in the area and asked for vacancies, there were none...
We also called the concierge services on the back of our upper-mid tier travel cards (rant incoming).
The last time Laura and I took any significant vacation was on my way out of the Army, the big 10 week travel around Asia (dig through the blog, youll find it), and we both got seperate Chase Sapphire Reserve cards, and given the travel, and my myopic attention to detail, left us ahead of the credit card companies. However, then, and basically through my whole life I have put little value in the concierge services associeted with these "high end cards" I am pretty good and planning travel and finding deals, and outsourcing that effort might have value if they can do it faster/cheaper than I can. BUT after today, my suspicions have been confirmed. Atleast when it comes to Visa Infinite, they have access to nothing that I dont have access to, they cannot search any better than I can, and chances are, any specific service rep that you get on the phone knows less about the parcticular country/city/district than I do, and ultimately calling them is a waste of my time. Maybe the ultra-high end services associated with invite only (looking at you AMEX) cards, but anything us plebs can get isnt going to beat what you can do with a little gumption (that being said if you dont want to put any gumption in, I suppose they can do things you are unwilling to do, which I will judge you for, but again who the fuck am i? do what you want). ANYWAYS I HAVE GOTTEN WILDLY OFF TOPIC.
The hotel we were in was not great, last minute booking somewhere else was prohibitvely expensive, we complained, and left the AC blasting all day so now things are maybe ok. We went to start our day proper.
I havent entirely figured out why, but there is a sizable Central Asian expat population here in Seoul. Big enough for Seoul to have Mongol Town. We went to the Mongol town to go to an Uzbek Restaurant
These pictures really dont do the area justice. There are a half dozen malls that are all 5+ stories, the old school shopping areas are literlaly miles long. The indoor pictures are from a single line of stalls that was 2 floors of over 700 linear meters of shops. Just stall after stall of hats, and jackets and socks. I suppose if I had an interpreter I could have gotten a suit and then later gotten in tailored for me for around 50USD, but we werent really here to shop, we were here to be stimulated beyond reason with capitalism.
Last night, while drunken, we discussed making Makgeolli at home, because this stuff is probably my favorite alcoholic product. US hyper-pro pasteurization regulations makes import or mass production of makgeolli impossible, as it is a "raw" fermented product, so the only way to get it as good as it is here, is to make it myself. So I started poking around, and like most fermented product you need a yeast starter, and the thing that makes makgeolli is Nuruk, which is a wheat/rice mash that kickstarts the process, it can be found online for not too much monies, but I thought it would be fun to try and source here. So we went to Gyeongdong Market (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongdong_Market) which is probably the last remaining old school open air market in Seoul. There were no other discernable foreigners here. This place has the largest selection of traditional herbs and the makgeolli blogs said this is the place to find stuff to put in your recipe.
It looks like effective chaos, there are people everywhere, with vendors yelling, and people bargaining left and right, theres always more than one vender selling whatever you are looking for so there appears to be haggling abound. A few meters into the place laura spotted the pucks of Nuruk and, I am ashamed to say I didnt negotiate for it, the little old lady was so nice, and the base price was so low, I just paid 5000KRW for what I think is an 850-1000g puck of Nuruk and a packet of yeast (that may or may not be necessary) to make some rice wine back in Seattle next week, I hope to perfect a batch by the holidays (given that it is a fast ferment of only 7-10 days I should iterate to something tolerable by christmas. I hope I can get through US customs with it.
We headed back to the hotel to dump the precious cargo.
Once we got to the area, we realized we had indeed been here before (again, Ill leave that to you to dig through past posts, im drunk, and dont care to facilitate your journey beyond making you read this post). Myeongdong is the place to go for K-Beauty products, there are hundreds of cosmetics shops, with several of the same brand in the area. We found some Joseon Beauty products that Laura wanted to try to encourage some honey skin (I dont fully understand what honey skin is, but I know I shouldnt describe it as "being extra shiny"), we then meandered about the very bustling streets with the most foreigners we have yet seen, and ultimately settled on a restaurant because they had an exhaustive makgeolli list. We got a bottle, and a hot plate of stir fried pork
The rice wine and pork went so well together, it is almost as if the cuisine has 500 years of co-development alongside the booze. I have also pictured both of the makgeolli we tried at this place. The first bottle had actual short grain rice floating in there, not enough to provide a real textural difference, but they were in there, and the second had a lot of "body" making it super smooth.
From here we went to the 7.8 Makgeoli place we tried to hit last night, we got in and sat down, getting the recommended makgeoli and "snack"
Pictured are the 3 bottles we drank at the restaurant, and here is the one we got for takeaway, and I managed to drink while writing this and the previous post.
That was one of the samples, it had yuzu infusion giving it a slight citrus flavor. Anyways, we stumbled our way along the canal to get to our hotel, where we still had the AC running (despite it being late november in Seoul, its supposed to be 36F tomorrow, and we are still running the AC all night to fight the very aggressive heating in the building), drank said Yuzu Makgeoilli, and I wrote this and previous post while laura fought a losing battle with sleep.
I have no intention of proof reading this, so I apologize in advance for errors, but my readers are very intelligent and will be fully capable of decoding my ramblings.
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