Hello everyone, this is a bit of a throwback post that I never got around to writing until now because well, life happened and I have so many things to write about, but better late than never. I had an interesting conversation with some fellow vegans the other day and I was reminiscing about my travels and the amazing food I’ve had in different countries. One standout is Korean food. While not easy to find vegan, when you do find it, it’s amazing! I really liked eating vegan versions of bibimbap, kimchi fried rice, kimbap, and of course Korean fried chicken. Before I went vegetarian, I loved eating chicken so I’m always looking for vegan versions of chicken dishes I used to love! All the great taste, but none of the animal cruelty.
My brother is also a fan of Korean food and when we planned our Japan trip, we decided that while we’re still in Asia, why not stop in Seoul for a few days on the way back?
If you want to read my Japan posts, you can find them linked here: Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto.
Day 1: Airport Hyatt
My parents are frequent travellers so they have a lot of loyalty club memberships and earn points for free hotel nights or free flights. Since it’s a bit of a trek to get from the airport (which is beautiful and modern by the way!) to the city centre, we decided to take it easy and stay in the airport hotel. There, we got to have a few nice meals in the hotel restaurant and they were very happy to make a special vegan bibimbap for me. One thing that I love about Hyatt is the excellent customer service, or Service Essentials. Instead of saying “No I’m afraid we don’t have any vegan options on the menu”, they’ll figure out a way to do it and give some options. Meals were served buffet style so it was nice to try all sorts of things.
Day 2: Getting Our Bearings
The following day we made our way to the airport, where they had a tourism desk with little “passports” on which you can collect stamps at various tourist attractions. They also had some VR headsets and short films and nearby was a theatre with some video installations. Just like in Japan, you’ll need a transport card (T-Money card) to use the trains and buses in Seoul (and various other cities in Korea), and you can only top them up with cash at either a machine or a convenience store. Unlike London, you cannot use contactless to pay for subway or bus fares. Like Hong Kong’s Octopus card, you can use your T-Money card to buy things at participating shops. Another quirky thing about Korea is one does not simply use Google Maps. Because of government regulations on foreign maps/directions apps, the information is quite limited, so you’ll need to use a local app like Naver or Kakao.
After getting our stuff to our accommodation, we were in the mood for some food so we went to a market. In the market we didn’t see too much for vegans or vegetarians, but right around the corner from the Mangwon Market, we found a kimbap spot that did vegan kimbap called Treasure Island Kimbap. Very good and cheap too!
We were in the mood for some coffee and tea so we went to a nearby cafe with vegan pastries called Bgomi. Of course I had to have an iced drink because it was warm.
For the evening, we walked around the Red Road/Hongdae area, where it’s buzzing, full of shops, restaurants, and busking musicians. Of course you’ll see a lot of groups of dancers and pop singers and some guitarists. My favourite busking act I saw were this group of young guys playing acoustic covers of Oasis songs, quite timely that I’m thinking about it now because I’m seeing all over my feed people going to Oasis reunion concerts (I’m jealous, but I’m prioritising saving up for another Japan trip).
For dinner, I think I just kept it cheap and picked up food from a convenience store, but don’t worry, I’ll make up for it the following day by visiting two amazing vegan places.
Day 3: Palaces and Amazing Vegan Food!
Of course we had to visit some palaces and see the beautiful traditional architecture. This was a day of a lot of walking, but we wanted to see as much as we could. To encourage people to get into Korean culture, you can get free admission if you’re wearing traditional Korean dress (Hanbok), conditions can be found here. My dad really likes getting pictures with people in traditional clothing so he asked some Hanbok wearers for pictures and they were more than happy to do so! We decided not to rent hanboks, but I would have loved to. We went to Changdeokgung Palace, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Changgyeonggung Palace, and Gyeongbokgung Palace. At one of the palaces there were multilingual tours and my parents opted for a Spanish language tour and we were blown away by the tour guide’s excellent Spanish! She had spent a decent amount of time in Latin America and is fascinated by the language and various cultures of Latin America. We also went to a museum about Korean culture and it was fascinating.
We also saw these planes flying overhead and I got some really good shots of them!
In between visiting the palaces, we went to Vegan Insa and it was amazing, one of the best meals I had on this whole trip. Eoin got vegan fried chicken and I got kimchi fried rice. I tried a bit of the vegan fried chicken and it was amazing! What I love most about Korean food is the spice and flavours of the sauces.
For dinner we went to Vegan Kitchen and it was once again really good and they had robot servers in there, which was a total novelty to me. We also walked around a shopping district and what I love most about Asian countries is how much more alive it is at night, lots of street food and shops being open. Way different from Europe where the night options are basically just get drunk.
Day 4: N Seoul Tower and National Museum
To get some really nice views, we took a bus to the N Seoul Tower. While we didn’t go up the tower, there were some beautiful views of the city on the hill. After that we went to the National Museum and we saw a lot of cool artefacts and went to a dance show and saw some more planes flying overhead! We finished the trip by visiting Bongeunsa Temple in Gangnam and that was cool. Right nearby was a K-Pop festival.
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