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.

What food can you buy at local markets?

In this video we head to our local markets to show you the type of food we often buy from there. One of the stalls was selling dalogna, which has become internationally popular recently because of the TV show ‘Squid Game’. While this show is definitely NOT FOR KIDS, it features children’s games in it. Dalgona is a honeycomb candy where children try to get the shape out without breaking the actual shape. It’s been around for several decades but popularity had dwindled in recent years. It’s now been very much revived and apparently there have been huge lines for it as young adults are keen to try it. We were lucky to find it locally without there being big lines.

You may have heard fruit and vegetable can be expensive in Korea, and while that can be true for big supermarkets or department stores, it’s usually decent prices at markets like this and sometimes can be very cheap. Food in general at markets tends to be cheap and it’s an easy way to put together a meal for at home with a variety of meat and seafood, as well as already prepared side dishes.

Hugh and Yul try out some different food in this video, as well as attempting the dalgona game. This is probably the most natural situation we have filmed that shows how Yul is bilingual. You may notice that he uses English when talking to both of us, he will use Korean when talking to Hugh directly and English when talking to me directly. When talking to both of us he may mix some Korean and English into one sentence and this is called “code mixing” and is normal at this age. This is different from “code switching” that bilingual adults use as this is more a part of bilingual development as he learns both languages, but even at this age he is well aware of which language a word belongs to.

Yul switches between languages easily and is a similar level in both. What he speaks is not “Konglish” as I’ve seen some people say, as Konglish means English words that have been absorbed into the Korean language but have changed somewhat in meaning. Konglish is also different from English loan words in Korean, which retain their original English meaning. Yul competently speaks both languages, knows when to switch and only code mixes when he knows that we will understand. There is a lot of myths about kids and bilingualism, one of them being that they are confused, but it’s really not true at all.

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.

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.

Lao Cuisine at Lao Piak in Seoul

Over the next few months we are going to show some of the amazing restaurants in the Mangwon area. Mangwon is known for having many small but amazing food places. We want to share some of our favourites. Lao Piak is a place we eat at regularly and it’s one of the only Lao food places in Korea.

The owners and chefs are two Korean women who fell in love with Laos on a trip. They learned how to make Lao food from Lao people in the Laos countryside and then came back to Korea to open their restaurant.

A lot of people assume they have never eaten Lao food before. But a lot of Thai food, especially the types of Thai food that has been exported to the west, is actually Lao food. There has been a real problem of Thaification of Lao food and Lao people have faced discrimination in Thailand for a long time. Also since Thai food is known in western countries more than other countries from region, many Lao people will call their restaurant Thai, even though it’s really Lao food.

These days there is a movement for Lao people, whether they are living in Laos, Thailand or other countries to be proud of their culture and food. If you do see a restaurant openly serving Lao food, please go and support it so that Lao people don’t have to pretend the food is Thai to attract customers.

I think it’s great that the owners of Lao Piak have such respect for Laos and want to show what Lao food is. They could have easily said the food is Thai, as there are many Thai restaurants in Seoul and Thai food is popular, but instead they want to educate people about Lao food.

You can see more details on their Instagram here.

If you have trouble finding places from the Korean address, the closest big landmark is the newish IPark apartments which have a park in front of them. Lao Piak is in one of the nearby backstreets, across the road from the apartments and the park.

Hugh and our good friend Sara recently were filming for Arirang TV. As it was about showing all the things open during the night in Seoul, it unfortunately meant late night filming in freezing temperatures!

Hugh made a short vlog that shows the different places that are open 24 hours in Seoul.

Check out Sara’s channel here.

How to hire a bike in Seoul

This is a service Hugh uses a lot, so when they reached out to us to do a sponsored video we were happy to do it. Hugh uses this several times a week to ride around the neighbourhood but also if he has had a big night out and the subway has stopped running, and there are no taxis, it’s super convenient for him to just ride home. There are bike stations everywhere so there are a few very close to where we live.

In this video we also participated in the Seoul Bike Ride/Parade which is an annual event. We had never done it before but definitely want to do it again next year! We could only do some of it, due to me being pregnant and then also for the filming. It gives you a different view of Seoul that you usually only see some inside a car. With all the cars off the road there is the feeling of a much wider space and it’s easily to appreciate the buildings and the city in a different way. Hopefully we can do it again next year.

For more information about bike hire when visiting Korea click here.