Where are Tinus and Barrie?

Ok lovelies, this is the last South Korea post. I am coming to you today from the gate where are plane will be boarding in about 25 minutes. So this will be not really be a wordy blog, but more of a photo dump. [turns out we had to board shortly after so I finished this at home, jetlag and all]

The lows: Airbnb crack house

It was hard to find a place to stay when we returned to Seoul. The reason: May 5 turned out to be a national holiday (Buddha’s Birthday) and people flock to the city for the festivities. So we booked an okay-ish looking Airbnb for 100 Euros per night. Quite expensive, considering we usually paid a third less. But well, at least you get something nice for that money! Right? NOPE! You get something akin to a crack den, lovelessly and carelessly maintained.

The owner of the Airbnb doing the limbo under the bar called “bare minimum maintenance.”

Why let the sink drain neatly into the ground when you can dump toothpaste spit in the same place you are standing?

This is not a specific place that was greasy and stained. This picture could have been made anywhere in the house.

Yes, this is in the shower. And this is not even the most unsafe electrical wiring in the bathroom.

Two seconds after entering the place, we decided to find something else. We walked around our neighbourhood for 1.5 hours and asked hotels if they maybe had a room. Of course, everything was fully booked. We did leave our number at one place that took pity on us. And our savior called us a day later to tell us he had a cancellation.

So we checked into the room. Yes, it was small. Yes, it had quirks. But it was clean, quiet and safe. And half the price of the gross drug den!

Oh my, what a relief to stay in this place.

The highs: Seoul being Seoul

We really, really liked Seoul. There’s so much to see and do, loads of chill parks and a great restaurant every ten meters. It even had….GOOD BREAD!

An actual croissant!

Find you a partner who looks at you like this man looks at this baguette. I have. His name is Hay, he’s pretty cool.

We visited so many great museums again. One of the highlights was the Leeum Museum of Art (the collection of Samsung). It had a special exhibition by Pierre Huyge. I love me some creepy art and he knows how to make it.

Still from a video in which robots investigate a skeleton in a desert. He also made this terrifying video of a monkey wearing a mask running around in an abandoned restaurant.

Some more museum / cultural heritage we enjoyed:

The excellent kimchi museum even had a tasting room!

Fun art by Jimin Chae that combined physical installations and whimsical paintings in the Suwon Museum of Art.

19th century screen. It is a munbangdo, a still-life with scholarly objects, like books and inkstones. National Museum of Korea.

18th century drawing of cats and magpies. So cute! National Museum of Korea.

From a 16th-17th century album. Leeum Museum of Art

With Determined Face – At the Foot of the Hill (2025). Minsun Lee perfectly capturing how cats can totally pretend to ignore you.

The Secret Garden of the Changgeokdung Palace in Seoul.

This is the toilet museum, shaped like a fancy Japanese toilet and with a giant festive gold turd. We traveled over an hour to get there, only to find out they were renovating. Luckily there was a sculpture garden. It featured many turds. I think you get the picture.

Hay channeling his inner PSY at the Gangnam Style sculpture.

For the Buddha’s birthday festivities, a lot of these temporary sculptures were set up all over town. They are so cute! Also cute:

Hay’s soup was truly a hug in a bowl. So delicious and rich! My mapu tofu was also good, but as the Resident Soup Expert in our household I was a bit jealous.

This SUPER CUTE cafe close to our nightmare Airbnb had a cat theme (see the coasters?!), and made a Polaroid if you left a Google Maps review. Since the coffee was amazing and the owner a sweetheart we did.

The Cheonggyecheon stream in Seoul was transformed into an inner-city freeway in the mid-20th century. In the early 2000’s, the freeway was demolished and the stream was restored, including loads of greenery (not pictured here). There’s a fascinating museum about this whole endeavour. This part of the stream was an outdoor library, providing free books.

The Hmm and WTF: DMZ Tour

Of course, every tourist visits the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the heavily guarded area between North and South Korea. I heard stories from people who had visited, about the K-pop music South Korea blasts across to North Korea and just the general…weirdness of the place. They did not exaggerate.

The tour is basically South Korean propaganda, a lot more refined and subtle then North Korea does it. Our tour guide ridiculed Kim Jong Un, calling him a “a big, fat little baby boy” and made ironic remarks about how bad North Korean propaganda is and how many lies the DPRK government tells. But also heavily promoted the importance of reunification of the two countries and making it seem like logical that it will happen in the future. Of course I have no great insight into how feasible this is, but I presume it will be a tad harder than the West and East Germany unification.

In any case, leave it up to South Korea to create a fever dream of an experience out of visiting a place rife with tension.

Yay, the DMZ!

The ‘Photo zone’ of the unification village aka Daeseong-dong. Around 138 people live here –mostly elderly– and you can only be a resident if you lived here before the Korean War or are a descendant. I am not sure how this is propaganda against North Korea, but it must be.

A fairground in the DMZ. How fun!

I was wondering that the meaning of this sculpture was, so I used a translate app. The result:

All in all, visiting the DMZ was a bewildering experience, but I am glad we did it. What impressed me the most was a place we couldn’t photograph: the view towards North Korea. You get SUPER close to the border –or ‘line’ as South Korea calls it– and from a high-rise building you can see buildings and flagpoles where people live in a totalitarian dictatorship. Very sobering indeed.

The last randomness dump of South Korea

This post has gone on long enough as it is, but if you can muster the energy, here’s the usual random photo overview!

Peekaboo!

This cat has his own little shrine on the street. With a space theme (?).

This museum diorama doll has the best side-eye game ever 👀

I too would like a green plushy penis, I mean dinosaur.

Zonking out is a favourite South Korean past-time.

See?

Honest advertising.

I saw so many South Koreans with National Geographic clothing. Why is this a thing? They even have NG keyboards.

These people LOVE their iced beverages. So much so that there are special trash cans to dump your leftover ice.

What in the abomination…?!

I caved and tried it. It oddly did not taste like peanut butter nor mayonnaise. It did however taste like cheap cheese and Spam.

Because Spam is very much alive and kicking in South Korea.

Ain’t that the truth.

Yim yum!

Why does Incheon airport have coffin benches? Answers appreciated.

Ok, that’s it! Time now to shake of the jetlag and put my feet up. Seriously, we walked so much these last weeks. My body is feeling it. Gamsa hamnida for reading and all the comments and personal responses I’ve gotten over these ramblings. I really appreciate it. Annyeong Haseyo!