Korea 2022

I'm in Seoul, Korea in August 2022!

Sadly Steph is not with me. I am here for Korea Blockchain Week!

This blog will be less interesting but I'll be pumping it full of images as usual on these more boring trips.

We enter the Perth Airport, at midnight. Good time to sleep for new arrivals right?

WRONG!

Sleeping pods are closed. Because, you know, its night time. So no sleeping!

One bag travel for me this time around. 10KG in the big backpack, the Aer Travel Pack 3. The sling bag is to hold my snacks and goodies for the plane ride.

Bars are closed too in Perth Airport. Disappointing!

Economy seats once again sadly. I'm okay with this, the flight was pretty short. About 5.5 hours for Singapore, 6.5 for Korea.

A special technique I developed in my training over the years. Inverted, over the shoulder hoodie. Provides warmth, convenience, and blindfold for sleeping.

In the Incheon Airport, there were phones in a pixel art array! Super cool.

Blue screen of death is the first thing we see!

There is an entire "medical tourism" shop at the airport for those who come for plastic surgeries or just general medicine from poorer countries.

Compulsory PCR testing right from landing. Pretty slick process. Shocking too. The lady stick her hands in those plastic gloves that are attached to the wall, grabs a cottonbud, and basically jabs you in the face, yells "BYE" then you leave. I was still stunned from getting jabbed up the nostril, but at least it was quick.

At the hotel, insert credit card, the the door unlocks. Just grab the items, then scan the barcode for self checkout. Interesting user flow, never experienced it before.

My hotel room. L7 Gangnam.

We had no food to eat so we walked around until we found this stall. 3 bucks a skewer, it was pretty great. Crispy toppoki, cheese chicken skewer.

Traditional korean lunch. Similar to Japanese Kaiseki kinda stuff. Interesting fish dishes and kimchi.

Self service exchange.

Some events we went to. Talks at ETHSeoul and next door were some booths with 1inch, polygon and others. It was okay, a little too academic, too shilly for me.

Fried chicken party! It was "proof of meeting", but it was just eating fried chicken with strangers. Pretty fun! It was hosted by Bifrost and we got to meet the team.

In the Starfield Coex mall they have a gigantic library. I THINK it was just for show. I didn't see anyone actually reading or borrowing books.

Ate some rib soup. It was pretty good!

We were about to hang out at a pub for a bit and chill out but realised we had another meeting to go to. At least I got this pic.

Never got to eat at the Eggslut but maybe next time.

Next morning we headed to the Bongeunsa Temple, there was an event at the tea house.

The temple was pretty cool but we didn't do much touristic stuff.

The conference kicks off! We didn't stay for many talks as they're a little boring.

We had a lunch which was stirfried chicken with melted cheese that was blowtorched. Really good!

That night Korea suffered the worse rainfall it had ever had in the past 80 years. We saw cars floating past, roads turn into rivers, and sewer manholes turn into geysers! It was intense.

Check out these videos of the flooding:

• Video 1: https://youtube.com/shorts/hNKVCMHLBoY
• Video 2: https://youtube.com/shorts/ZN2SqJeV6Vg

We walked through the flood to get to a party for the conference. Our shoes, pants, socks were completely soaked. We squelched inside. The people inside had no idea what was going on outside, so they wanted to "go party" after the event! Little did they know...

Well we made it to the party at least. Lots of people couldn't even make it back to their hotel so they had to hire a room at a different hotel for that night!

Next day we ate some Hawaiian Poco Loco. The first time I've had it and it was pretty great. Basically patty, gravy, rice, egg.

Grabbed some stone pot bibimbap the next morning. Authentic place, all in Korean. Not mind blowing, but its a 24 hour place with cheap food. Many shops are only open after 10am at the earliest. What kind of breakfast is 10am!?!

Pregante women seat. Cool ascii art to show the lady.

Fried chicken dinner later one night. 28 bucks for this plate.

No idea what was going here.

Late night, had some cheese toppoki. It was really good, you put a bit of water and cheese powder, microwave it to death to reduce the sauce, then throw real cheese on it to melt it.

Robots are taking over Korea! These robots deliver ice cream to you at the airport gate. Wow!

https://youtube.com/shorts/1HvlXZ0d_Ro?feature=share

This guy delivers water, slippers and other things to different rooms. It calls the elevator by itself!

https://youtube.com/shorts/Ctq-oOGBJv8

This robot looks at your face and tells you to put your mask on. I'm not sure if it tries to detect if you're wearing a mask or not though.

Conclusions

Sadly we went to Myeongdong and Ehwa, two places I visit everytime I'm in Korea. This time around, however, 80% of the shops were closed, it was almost empty and a complete ghost town. Looks like many stores did not survive the loss of customers through COVID, and the government did not assist them.

Seoul was a fun place! It was futuristic, prosperous, and had tasty food. Plenty to do and explore. Clean and efficient.

Seeya Seoul!