Sunday, December 11, 2022

A Saturday in Seoul

Having bought a (used) iPad, part of my needs for upcoming vacation in Thailand, I also needed a charger or power bank, whatever you call it, so I headed on Saturday to Sindorim TechnoMart--which I previously mentioned here and here. Found what I needed, a Templer "Metal Battery" with 10,000 mAh; also got a new screen cover and a case that also holds the iPen. Then headed down to the Food Court for lunch:


You go around all the stalls until you decide what you're looking for--Soup Village for me, on this chilly Saturday. That's 육개장 (yook gae jang) spicy beef soup. Rice in the covered bowl, black beans, pickled turnip, egg custard, sprouts, stewed veg, tiny bottle of drinking yoghurt, and a mini-chocolate bar. 8,000W (~USD 6.50).
The beans seem to me similar to the little wooden toys you might find at Cracker Barrel or Po Boys: you play the how-many-beans-can-I-get-on-the-chopsticks game until the soup temperature cools from center-of-the-sun to molten lava. But it's delicious.

Saturday evening, I joined a group of friends for "S@R", Seoul at Random, where a subway station is chosen at random and we congregate for dinner and drinks. Yesterday's station was Yeongeungpo on Line 1.
We gave a pass to Jurassic Chicken, as we prefer our meat fresh, and opted for beef Korean BBQ style. Awesome!


As we left, there was a traditional street cart selling a hard Korean candy called 엿 (yeot). "Hard" is an understatement; I have pretty good teeth, but I don't eat it for fear of chipping one! But I am glad to see they are still plying the trade in the middle of a rather upscale eating street in 2022!