Korea's got Seoul

Belated Chuseok (also spelled Chusok) greetings - Korea's rough equivalent to Thanksgiving. We had six days off, including the weekend, and I spent a good chunk of that time traversing the Korean capital and remembering what it is to be a tourist.

Thankfully my cohorts for the trip like playing tour guide, so they did most of the footwork and I just got to go along for the ride - one of my favorite ways to travel. Through trial and error, and probably just the virtue of getting older and more cantankerous, I'm finding that there are two ways I like to travel: solo and largely by the seat of my pants, or tagging along on others' agendas. I'm just not a natural organizer, nor do I like to be responsible for other people's happiness - especially in situations/places I don't know intimately. Thankfully there are some of you out there who don't get stressed out by that sort of thing - who actually enjoy travel planning for groups or do it as a career - or I'd never travel with anyone.

Anyway, two co-workers were bound for the big city this weekend with a priority set in line with mine: finding cheap accommodations, good ethnic food (not Korean or Western, the two types readily available in Daegu), doing some shopping, some sightseeing, and checking out the nightlife and foreigner districts. All with the understanding that we're here for at least a year and will almost certainly be in the city again, so no need to rush any of it.

Once we finally got to Seoul - another adventure on mass transit, where we managed to get on the slow train instead of the bullet train (so maybe I shouldn't have been following so blindly right then) - we found a vastly different world from Daegu. So many of the things I'd thought were probably just very Korean - the stares you get as a foreigner, the loud ads plastered haphazardly everywhere, the non-discriminatory palates - I now think are more a product of a slower-developing economy in my "small town" of 2.5 million. Although still of course quite Korean, Seoul feels more like a big city anywhere else in the world - quaint shopping areas, more homelessness (though nothing compared to the average U.S. city), hopping nightlife, polished entertainment, and just a cosmopolitan sensibility pervading the whole place. And far more international. There was one particularly poignant moment when we were eating Italian food, listening to American pop music and swapping Spain experiences in Spanish with our South American waitress ... of course in Korea.

And it was super strange feeling like I didn't have to acknowledge every Westerner who crossed my path. Here in Daegu, it's a fairly odd occurrence to see someone who looks like me, and I always find myself staring just as the Koreans do, then smiling and nodding hello. In Seoul, nearly every subway car you catch will have at least one or two others. (Funny note: Today back in Daegu, a little girl shouted to her parents "Chinese people!" when another American and I entered their elevator.)

On the tourist front, we had a highly successful stay - hitting a couple palaces, a changing-of-the-guard ceremony, the foreigner district, the kitschy shopping area, a traditional market, a gargantuan mall, and a bar that seemed to be the Korean male version of "Coyote Ugly" with pyrotechnics. We also had Indian cuisine, Italian, Egyptian, Chinese dumplings and plenty of street yummies.

We also found an awesome hostel, Stay Korea (www.staykorea.co.kr), run by a Korean woman who's fluent in French and English and her Korean husband. A double room was about $50 a night, and a spot in the dorm was about $15. For those not acquainted with the hostel system, they come in all sorts, but the basic idea is that they are cheap places to sleep - often in a common room with bunkbeds. You never really know what you're getting, because the crowd can be vastly different day to day even if the place checks out OK, but in general I've found them one of the best parts of traveling, both for the cost and the chance to meet interesting people.

This time, we found ourselves in a remarkably clean, quiet house four minutes' walk from a subway and a few blocks from the happening university district of restaurants, shops and bars. The owners actually pick you up from the subway stop on your arrival and offer all sorts of sightseeing advice - not to mention friendly conversation. The dorm was silent and dark, the double room was basic but quite sufficient, there was a lovely patio and roof deck perfect for drinking tea and watching the neighborhood - a friend and I stayed there up into the wee hours one night talking politics and religion with a globe-trotting French pharmacist.

All in all, a fabulous trip. Never did find the"Korea's got Seoul" T-shirt, though - a friend in Colorado has one from the year she taught here, and pun-loving copy editor that I am, I rather liked it ... wonder if it was some sort of tourism-department slogan that's fallen by the wayside. Oh well, maybe next trip I'll find one.

Soon to come: a Buddhist templestay.

So what have you learned about your travel style, dear readers? Feel free to post your answer in the "Comments" section below.