The Hipster's Guide to Seoul, Korea

Unbeknownst to me when we arrived in Seoul, Korea in May 2018 we had booked an Airbnb in Hongdae, which is central hipsterville. It is to Seoul what Shoreditch is to London or Silverlake is to Los Angeles. And it was fabulous.

1. Cafe Culture

My first surprise was that Hongdae, and in fact all of Seoul, has a banging coffee scene. Literally there are dozens of highly creative, beautifully presented work spaces including one cafe that has a pink vending machine for its main door.

2. The Rancorous Nightlife

Hongdae is so happening because it is near Hongik University, which is absolutely surrounded by bars, KTV (karaoke rooms) and Korean BBQ restaurants that will keep your mouth watering for days. What's interesting about Seoul nightlife is that it feels like every weekend is celebrating some major event because of the intensity of their drinking culture. Not in any other city in the world have I see the sheer numbers of young people out completely inebriated at 6am on a typical Friday night. One culprit for this is the infamous Soju drink, which is a very tasty, easy to drink alcohol that is like a smooth sake. You can get flavored Soju too and which tastes like juice, very dangerous stuff. The best part or the worst, depending on how you look at it is that Soju only costs about a dollar. So it is true that after a few Sojus we did make new friends and end up at a KTV at 4am. Another reason, though that Koreans stay out all night long and are even seen sleeping on the curbs is because despite there being a sea of taxis seemingly available none of them pick anyone up. I still can't quite get to the bottom of this mystery, but it is really frustrating.

3. Colorful Festivals

Seoul is up in the northern part of Korea, not too far from the demilitarization zone that meets with North Korea's formidable border. But you'd never know that such authoritarianism is so close by because of the happy-go-lucky vibes of the Koreans, who love festivities, food and getting to know people. When I was there it happened to be Buddha's birthday and so all the temples were beautifully decorated with bright and colorful strings of lanterns. Although, there are loads of very adamant Christians who offer to show you the sights of Seoul for free if you'll just agree to come to church with them and to promise not to go to the Buddhist temples. We did not accept the offer, but found it intriguing.

4. Korean BBQ

Maybe we would have taken pastor Paul up on his offer if he had explicated lunch would be plethoras of Korean BBQ. Yes, I ate meat. You don't go to South Korea and not eat meat. You just can't. I challenge you to find a vegetable in the country, and even if you did find one I'm sure it would be slathered in meat juice. The only consistent, albeit delicious vegetable on offer is Kimchi, or pickled cabbage. Kimchi is almost always offered as a free side, with peanuts and bowls of sweet pickled garlic being the other sides. The most challenging aspect of eating in Seoul is getting the knack for cooking your own food. Sara took the lead on this as she is passionate about well-prepared meat. We noticed the other Koreans would cut off a piece of fat with the provided scissors and rub it around on the hot, coal driven grill and then place the strips of meat on it.

Occasionally the food came preprepared and that was equally exciting. Korea really knows its way around a piece of chicken. We made the rookie mistake of ordering extra sides of rice, but we began to get the impression A) that it was totally unnecessary to the meal and B) Korea is not really a rice kind of place.

5. History Immersion

Other than eating, drinking and wandering around the streets of Hongdae, we did venture into other parts of the city occasionally to visit tourist attractions like the royal palace. At the palace, you can opt to dress in traditional dress to get free entry into the museum, which is a pretty fun and clever way to get people immersed and excited about history but the costume rentals are about ten dollars while the basic entry ticket is only three, so we did not dress up this time. However, when we stopped to take pictures a group of costume-clad locals did ask us to pose with them, which was fun. It's definitely flattering when people who have put a ton of effort into their costume want to take a photo with you when you're only dressed in jeans and a sweater.

6. A Bar for Everyone

While I was traveling in Seoul I found my local favorite bar which is called RetroGame Bar, and it is so awesome because it reminds me a lot of the Loading Bar in London. There are tons of gaming consoles and it's very foreigner friendly, with some of the staff being westerners. I made a local friend who had chosen the English name of Chloe for herself and she showed me around the city from an insider's perspective over the next few days.

Chloe was super cool, with a leather jacket and a hip vibe that reminded me of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeah's. She took me to a place called "hooker hill" and "gay hill" I kid you not, that's what they're called but they're not quite what they sound like (except they kind of are). "Hooker hill" is only accessed by climbing high, high up a hill in central Seoul and then you find all these very American type dive bars that underneath of them have prostitute dens. It's basically the red light district of Seoul. The "gay hill" is more or less a hill covered with gay bars. What was interesting though, was that the queue that formed for the gay guy club on gay hill, was literally only guys. There wasn't a single girl in the entire line, sorry fag hags, not in Seoul! In Seoul, gay clubs are exclusively for the sex of that orientation and no, they don't make exceptions for Trans people.

7. Amazing Nature

Because Seoul sits on the cusp of Bukhansan National Park, there are loads of good mountains to climb and explore. I told Chloe that I wanted to hike the highest mountain in Seoul and she laughed at me and said in Korea only old people go hiking. I dismissed this and woke up at 5am to go. I took the public transport all the way to the mountain town on my own (my friends are not morning people) and then walked an hour to the trail head with a large bottle of water in tow. It was when I arrived at the trail head that I realized there had been some truth to what Chloe said, for all around me, decked out in all the latest and greatest hiking kit were elderly people. Some of them looked old enough to be in their 80s and this was supposed to be a very challenging eight mile hike. I was just as confused to see them as they were to see me. A woman who worked at the park entrance tried her best to tell me directions or some clue about the hike but the language barrier prevented it so I just smiled, thanked her and continued walking.

The first thing that I came across was this beautiful old gate. Apparently back when there were monk warriors in Korea a lot of this fortification was used to defend the city and its military power from invading Chinese or Japanese.

At first the path was all very wide and paved, so much that I was disappointed and worried that the trail would remain as manicured the whole way. But then it started to verve in crazy directions with signs that said things like "waterfall" or "temple" scrawled in English. I tried my best to make good executive decisions about the right path. I mainly tried to stay ahead of the old people who were slow but very constant in their hiking, so we had a real rabbit and turtle situation on our hands.

There was lots of water, many interesting statues and temples scattered throughout the hills.

Then the trail started to get a bit more off-road. I couldn't believe that all of this stunning nature, that smelled so good and was so fresh was right next to the sprawling metropolis of Seoul. The trail became increasingly challenging to the point that I often needed to use both my hands and carrying the water bottle was an issue so that I fell on wet rocks and scrapped the skin off my fingers.

Finally, after surviving my harrowing journey, I made it to the summit. The 360 views of Seoul, and the surrounding mountains were stunning. It was well-worth the effort and I definitely think more young Koreans should get out and enjoy their surrounding national parks.