The best moments of my trip to South Korea were not on my itinerary ...
Another ode to un-planning, but also an ode to Seoul!
Last month my teenage son and I semi-on-a-whim spent a week in Seoul, South Korea. “Semi-on-a-whim” because we literally decided on Seoul by perusing the cheapest options when putting “Perth to anywhere” into Google Flights for the dates we had available, but not entirely on a whim because he’s long been interested in Korean history and the north/south divide, and I went to Seoul way back in 2002 and have longed to return ever since.
We actually bought our flights just two weeks before departure. This would mean we wouldn’t have much time to plan, even if we were planning types.
My favourite itinerary and planning “method”
So, we didn’t go to Seoul with a daily plan; I booked us a guesthouse for the full week in a neighbourhood recommended by a friend who used to live in Seoul, a place that was small and simple but came with oodles of great reviews, and until the day we left that was all I’d booked.
I quickly got reading - as per my preferred “immersion” method, I read novels set in South Korea (namely Han Kang’s new novel We Do Not Part and Elisa Shua Dusapin’s Winter in Sokcho - both excellent!) and watched My Liberation Notes on Netflix.
And I asked around for some tips: both here on Substack and on Reddit too, where I’ve been surprised recently at the quality of information and ideas!
Along with a bit of googling, I brainstormed a list of places in Seoul that would appeal to me, or my son, or both, and then I threw them onto a Google Map.
We each had one “must” - my son wanted to take a tour to the DMZ, to be able to look into North Korea, and I wanted to visit the Starfield Library.
And then we flew there!
Planning day by day
As regular readers and listeners will know, spontaneity works well for me. If you’ve met a teenage boy, you won’t be surprised to know that spontaneity can work pretty well for them too, in the sense that you have to wait and see what kind of mood they wake up in and then decide what activities suit! I also like to not plan too far ahead so that we can adapt to issues like the weather, how tired our feet are, and how busy (or not) a place gets.
Apart from booking our DMZ tour a few days ahead - going by tour is the only way to go there and we wanted to go with a company we’d been recommended - we had nothing on our schedule for our eight days in Seoul.
When we woke up on our first full day there after arriving quite late the night before (after a pretty long day of travel), we both felt we didn’t want to tackle a huge sightseeing day. I suggested the Starfield Library, which we’d both seen on Instagram and TikTok and couldn’t resist. As a huge library lover, seeing a library this gorgeous was essential. From my map I knew it was in Gangnam (cool place to visit), that there was a big shopping mall (teenager wanted to check sports stores!), and there was a gorgeous temple at the same train station, so I suggested we combine that and it would be a not-too-busy day.
It was perfect! We were both happy! And we continued thus, day by day, picking areas on our map, choosing activities or places one of us was interested in and then seeing what else was nearby. My watch tells the story well: we averaged about 15,000 steps per day. We kept busy, we saw lots of diverse and interesting things, and we enjoyed it. We especially enjoyed it because each day was a bit of a surprise and it was what we felt like doing.
Curiously, by the end of our trip, we had actually visited almost everything from my original map - plus of course a whole lot of surprises!
My favourite unexpected and unplanned moments in Seoul
I’ve said it before but one of the benefits of not planning in too much detail means there are plenty of surprises in store for you. I stand by this being a wonderful thing whether the surprises are good or not-so-great, but fortunately in Seoul every surprise was wonderful.
The first was the leafy, gentle neighbourhood around our guesthouse. I’d looked around the Hongdae area for accommodation because it was still very accessible to the city centre without being completely crowded by skyscrapers, but I still hadn’t realised that Okidoki House in Mapo-gu would be so perfectly situated amongst low-rise buildings with narrow tree-edged streets surrounding it, yet still with so many convenience stores and restaurants within a minute’s walk, and five minutes to metro stations.
But there were surprises to come for us every day of the trip. Thanks to the massive success of “Gangnam Style” a decade or so back (scarily my fact-checking says the song was released in 2012, what?!), many people would have this fun spot on their itinerary, but we walked into it quite accidentally as we wandered between the lovely Bongeunsa Temple and the Starfield Library, and it was kind of funny to see a tour group all lined up taking it in turns to have their picture taken with the “Gangnam hands”.
Near our guesthouse, we often walked past the hardware store pictured below. It was run by an elderly man, and every nook, cranny, sneaky extra floor and tiny corner and even most of the footpath were taken up by the goods. It was very well frequented but it struck us as reminiscent of an older Seoul, not the modern, extremely safety-conscious city we were otherwise experiencing. We smiled every time!
On one day when we arrived back at our guesthouse in the late afternoon (rather than evening), I decided I would take a wander to the nearest small shopping mall and see the proper supermarket. Unexpectedly even my teenager was keen on this outing, and we spent a very intriguing hour seeing what was different and what was the same; we were not in an area with many tourists and we were helped at length by a friendly security guard when we were confused about how to get from floor to floor of this small mall, and we were also bemused by the fruit and vegetable section which arranged the vegetables by colour rather than type.
We had - in the spirit of not planning! - given little thought to the time of year we were landing in Seoul, apart from checking the weather and dressing appropriately. The first bonus was that the autumn leaves were still going strong, and we had many beautiful displays of bright yellow, orange and red leaves, something that we don’t see much of here in Perth. The second bonus was that it was late enough in the year that the Christmas lights were all up, and we intentionally stayed longer in the Myeong-dong downtown area one evening once we realised this, so that we could really appreciate all the lights.
I could go on and on, but hopefully you get a flavour of the fun we had from what we found that wasn’t even on our vague itinerary. If you’re curious about what our itinerary did look like in hindsight, we ended up seeing a lot over our main days:
Day 1: Bonguensa temple, Starfield Library/Coex Mall, World Cup Stadium, Oil Tank Culture Park
Day 2: War Memorial of Korea, Mecenatpolis Mall
Day 3: DMZ Tour, Hongik University shopping area
Day 4: HiKR Ground, Cheongyechon Stream, Myeong-dong Markets and Christmas lights
Day 5: Gyeongbokgung Palace and Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP)
Day 6: Mt Naksan hike, Ihwa-dong Mural Village, Mangwon Markets
We kept starting out to have a “shorter” day but then were both so enthusiastic about Seoul we’d find somewhere else to go “on the way home”, and we did, admittedly, come home to Perth rather tired - but very happy. Another “unplanned” trip for the win!
I never made it to Starfield Mall to see that library, darn it all! Fantastic city with tons to do! Glad you had such a good time.
Love this essay about your spontaneous trip to Seoul. My husband and I have the best memories of trips we did that way. There so much in this beautiful world to experience!