Are you planning your Korea trip again?

Did you have to cancel your trip to Korea? Are you planning on traveling to Korea soon? My parents are looking forward to coming back to Korea maybe early next year. I hope this video is helpful when planning your trip. A big tourist attraction in this area is Gyeongbokgung Palace, which is actually a huge area to walk around. People hire hanboks to wear and walk around the palace, but all that walking is going to make you hungry.

It’s convenient to head to this street and find a restaurant to eat at. Locals also eat here and there is a big range of food that will be satisfying, especially after all that walking. Even living in Seoul, I wasn’t that aware of this food street, but now I know! One of the great things about doing these tourism videos is that we learn something too, and in this case, we got a chance to actually go out as a family.

A walk through the Cherry Blossoms

This video is from a few weeks ago and the cherry blossoms are no longer there, but I am glad we made the most of the short time they blossom on the trees. Yul was sad when all the blossoms had fallen. We are lucky to have many cherry blossoms trees in our area. There are places with a lot more trees that people travel to, but much easier to just take a local walk. This area was also shown in the Korean drama “The Start-up”. They filmed last year during cherry blossom season and we actually saw scenes being shot many times.

This video is also a bit of a bilingual update as you can see Yul using both English and Korean and switching easily between them.

Our first big project in our new place!

I’m starting to come around to the idea of these types of balconies… I wasn’t much of a fan in the beginning, but as it’s monsoon season in Korea at the moment, I can see the benefits. Originally I desperately wanted real outside space and a lot of the time I had seen these enclosed balconies just become storage areas and they seemed a bit pointless. But giving the space a real purpose makes all the difference.

Of course our priority in our life is our two-year-old son, so I knew early on that this would become a play area for him. I wanted to make him a mini backyard with the things I enjoyed when I was a child: a sandpit, swimming pool and a slide.

While this pandemic goes on it’s important to have areas inside for kids to play in. While Korea has not had a lockdown and things are okay at the moment, we don’t know what the future will bring.

In our video we explain our thinking and process and show you as we get all the stuff and set it up! And of course we surprise our son!

After living in a tiny Seoul apartment for 4 years we finally move to a much bigger one that’s still in the same neighbourhood! We searched for months and months and saw a huge range of apartments in our price range and we knew there had to be a hidden gem out there somewhere!

In this video we show you our new apartment and explain how we can afford an $800,000 apartment without actually paying that much. Getting space this big in Seoul is usually very expensive but we had space as our top priority. As we explain in the video, we were fine with some other not as great aspects, just so we could have space. This apartment seems to be never be remodeled so there are a lot of things we want to change but we are excited about those projects. We will also be making lots of videos about that as well.

There are also lots of great things about our apartment besides from just space. The enclosed balcony for example, and the traditional Korean paper style windows and doors. Hopefully in about a year’s time we will do another apartment tour and show all the things we have changed.

Moving is extremely stressful and unfortunately we made it even more stressful!

In this video we show footage of our move, and talk about what we did wrong, and what we did right…

We search for a new apartment in Seoul

In this video we talk about the different types of homes in our area of Seoul and our search for a new apartment. Korea has a very unique renting system, which we explain as well.

People had a lot of questions so we followed up with this video answering some of them:

We will be moving soon so stay tuned for some moving vlogs and some videos about adjusting to our bigger place.

Although we have lived in Seoul for years, we have never done a proper apartment tour before.

It took years to work how best to use our small space. Since living here we’ve changed what room was the bedroom so we could have a bigger living room space. We moved in with almost all the furniture being given to us, so we just had to make do, instead of buying furniture that fit the space well. Even just a few years ago, options were limited for furniture in Korea too. Now it’s not just the IKEA option, there are many furniture companies designing reasonably priced furniture for small spaces.

Slowly we’ve been switching furniture and changing the space. Finally I felt I could do a video and also give people ideas on how to make the most of a small space. On sites like Buzzfeed they have lists of products that help in small spaces and I always check those lists. Often you don’t even know what awesome products there are that can help you manage a small apartment.

We do love this apartment, but it will be time to move on soon. We want to move into a bigger apartment, but still in the same area. I think if we didn’t have a two-year-old we could continue to live here, but we need more space. We also want more space for guests too and I want to be able to paint in a bigger space.

Seoul can be an expensive place to live, but our neighbourhood is amazing and we got lucky with our lower rent price. Our apartment has lots of natural light and has character. I hope showing our place gives others some ideas on how to live in a small apartment.

If you are moving to Seoul or Korea, be aware that the names for things can be different to what you may expect in English. For example, our place is technically a “villa” not an apartment. Apartments in the Korean sense are the very big buildings and have certain requirements.

How to make the most of your time in Seoul

I think when people visit Seoul they can make the mistake of doing a lot of wandering around but missing all the good points. We recently did this video for Seoul Guided Walking Tour, which is a free government program for tourists (or residents) that offers many walking tours.

For example, a lot of people go to Gyeongbokgung palace and aimlessly walk around. While there are some signs with history points, it is actually hard to get a good sense of the cultural and historical context. There are tours that the palace provides but I was way more impressed with our guide who is from the Seoul Guided Walking Tour program. He also showed us the best way to get around, particularly as we had a stroller. The course we did is designed for those with wheelchairs, strollers, or those who have less mobility.

Our son really liked the palace because of the space and the sand for playing in with his dinosaurs. Our tour guide was also understanding how difficult it can be with a toddler too.

We also had a famous friend do the course with us! Check out the video to see who it is.

There are many different types of tours provided and our friends have tried out some of the others. Even living in Seoul, they did not know so much of what their tour guide told them. There are many hidden gems in Seoul. It’s a lot harder finding these places yourself, and even if you do, you may not have the information and context about it. If you are planning a trip to Seoul, check out some walking tours.

You can view the tours and booking information on the site here.

Visiting Jurassic World Exhibition in Seoul

As you may already know, our son Yul LOVES dinosaurs. A few months ago when my parents were visiting we all went to the Jurassic World Exhibition. We had been told that very young children might get scared of the huge animatronic dinosaurs but we were pretty sure Yul would love them.

Even though some other kids were scared, (you can hear a child saying “Daddy, it’s scary”) Yul was just completely enthralled. Even the scary tyrannosaurus was amazing to him. He didn’t want to leave it. We just wish the exhibition was bigger! He could stay all day there.

I think this exhibition has been in lots of cities around the world already, and it will be in Seoul for about a year. If you missed it in your country and are visiting Seoul you can check it out.

If you love seeing dinosaur content make sure you are subscribed to us as I’m sure we’ll be taking Yul to many more dinosaur things in the future!