Miranda Visits! - Acclimating

On her first, full day in Korea, we decided it was best to show her the more Korean side of life here, and throw her in at the deep end, so to speak.

After a quick street-side breakfast of fried goodies from the sea, we boarded the subway and headed to Namdaemun Market (the oldest and one of the largest markets in the country) and the Myeongdong area (the busiest retail district in Seoul).

Leading the way into 남대문시장

High Roller

We were still a little early for a Saturday, so the crowd hadn't reached it's full potential yet. A few hours later, this picture would have been much more difficult to take.

Browsing the countless booths of crap

Each stall/booth in the market typically sells many kinds of one type of thing: ranging from souvenirs to cutlery and dishes to seaweed to pig parts. This one happened to specialize in mirrors!


We worked up an appetite strolling the market, so we made the short walk to our next destination, Myungdong, to grab some lunch. There, we met up with our friend John, and introduced both him and Miranda to 콩불 (Kong Bul), one of our new favorite restaurants.

Kong Bul, a pseudo 'grandma's cabin' themed restaurant, in typical Korean fashion has only 1 item on the menu with 2 variations. The basic consists of thinly sliced pork sauteed with beansprouts and a Korean pepper-based sauce. We opted for the slightly more expensive version that is the same mix as the basic, but with a whole cuttle fish chucked into the mix.

The Girls

The Dudes


The Grub

We don't have an actual photo of the meal we ate because the site of the whole cuttlefish resting on a bed of saucy sprouts and curled raw meat made Miranda pretty uncomfortable, but here are some screen shots from the company's website:

This is how it looks when it is brought to table.

After it cooks down a bit, an employee comes to scissor the cuttlefish and mix it all together, making it look much more appetizing. Once it's ready, you can eat it right out of the pan or mix it with rice and seaweed. Either way you do it, it's deeeelicious!



In an attempt to help digestion, we tried to wander around Myungdong a little, but by that time the crowds had gotten out of control. Myungdong is an area of walking streets lined with 1-4 stories of shopping and dining that is estimated to receive well over a million visitors a day. Korea, Seoul especially, has far too many people and far too small an area for the idea of 'personal space' to even be a concept, so that's why we decided to bring Miranda here at the beginning of her trip. If she was going to enjoy her stay, she was going to have to get used to Asians all up in her business!


When the hoards got to be too much, we walked a few blocks towards a less commercial and more business oriented neighborhood to escape the bustle.

Cafri - Korea's answer to Corona

Here, the streets were wider and the buildings farther apart so we were able to sit down and enjoy the sun a little before heading home to get ready ready for the evenings festivities.

Subway Gobble, Gobble