The Weather:
We were in Seoul for the majority of the month of May which is spring season; although we unfortunately missed cherry blossom season (ends in April). Surprisingly, the first two weeks in Seoul were very hot, most days were 25-28°C, however, the 3rd week started to get colder and had temperatures between 20-23°C. I wasn't really prepared for such warm temperatures and so I packed more jeans and regretted not bringing more shorts.
The Clothes:
Although I regretted not bringing more shorts because it was so hot, I'm kind of glad I didn't bring them just because no one else was really wearing them. I really couldn't understand Korean fashion while I was there; whenever it was deadly hot during the day, all the locals would be wearing jeans and long pants but when it was colder at night, everyone started wearing shorts and short dresses (someone please explain this to me). Aside from that, everyone was dressed fashionably, even the guys! Apparently, the fashion trend at the time was wearing a shirt or dress on top of another shirt, because everyone was wearing it.
Exhibit A:
Another thing that I found really interesting was that whenever girls did wear shorts and dresses, they always wore panty-hose (aka. stalkings) underneath them. I guess it hides some of your legs' imperfections or hides leg hair, which is pretty smart although probably uncomfortable to wear constantly.
Garbage:
Korea is really serious about sorting their garbage. Most restaurants had a bin for recycling, food waste, and anything else that's garbage, as well as an area specifically meant to hold cups.
Even our apartment was super strict on sorting garbage. Trash had to be sorted by vinyl, paper, recyclable, food waste, and other garbage. I swear the most stressful part of our trip was trying to figure out what belongs where. Thankfully our building's security guard was super nice and helped us sort our garbage :) (although it was somewhat embarrassing showing him our trash).
Side note: it was actually really hard to find garbage cans on the streets, the streets were really clean though...
Plumbing/Bathrooms:
Before coming to South Korea I did read a bit about how their plumbing system is not the greatest because the pipes are very old, so I was semi-prepared for what would come. However I wasn't mentally or physically prepared for not flushing my toilet paper down the toilet; which was the case in our apartment. However, most public bathrooms let you throw your paper down the toilet so a lot of times we ended up just using the subway station bathrooms (which are super clean by the way). The subway station also had a mixture of stalls with regular toilets and stalls with the squatter toilets.
I didn't even bother using the squatter toilets because I knew it would not end well (my terrible balance). Another interesting thing about public bathrooms is that there are rarely any soap dispensers, instead you will see this:
basically a bar of soap on a stick.
Germaphobes would probably hate it but it was actually pretty cool and still did the job. I did notice though that most people didn't even wash their hands after they did their business which was kind of disturbing but whatever.
You will also never find a decent working hand dryer in Seoul, even when we went to an expensive department store the hand dryer looked 100 years old and was broken. Also, a lot of bathrooms didn't have paper towels to dry your hands (this was especially the case in the subway bathrooms) so your pretty much SOL (shit out of luck) and have to resort to just shaking the water off your hands or just make sure to bring napkins or tissues with you.
Some other side notes that I found interesting:
- I never knew Korea had so many mountains!
The landscape is VERY beautiful with the palaces, temples, and Namsan tower; especially when taking the AREX (airport express train) you can see many mountains and the Han river which is so beautiful. We also went on a tour to Nami Island and did a rail-bike ride nearby and the views were breathtaking (I'll probably make a separate post for the tours we went on).
My beautiful Picture :)
- SAVE ANY NAPKINS YOU GET.
Restaurants, especially when you order take-out, only give you one napkin or two if your really lucky and often times the napkins are small. I usually use about two or three napkins every time I eat so I would sometimes have to use toilet paper since our apartment didn't even have any tissues. Korea please stop being stingy with napkins!
- Koreans really like sauce... especially mayo.
A lot of food I had in Seoul was over-sauced; salads, burgers, sandwiches, chicken, you name it. Mayo is on EVERYTHING. Not really, but it is on a lot of things (I had it on my salad once...) so if your not a fan of mayo, then good luck.
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Hopefully this post was somewhat helpful or entertaining. I'll probably post more about my trip later on. Everything I mentioned is based on my views and trip to Seoul so it may be different from other people. Even though I only went for three weeks I really enjoyed traveling through Seoul. I would even consider living there :) (if I ever found a job).
