Korea

About⌗

Trip is South Korea (Seoul and Jeju) from 2025-11-07 -> 2025-11-21.

Below is my daily notes from the trip, lightly edited post trip. (Edits are bolded).

I’m picking one photo from each day to include.

Summary Thoughts⌗

Korea Travel Log⌗

Korea journal

2025-11-07:

Currently waiting to take off for SF. Today was very chill compared to yesterday where I got a flat tire on my way to present at our summit. (This was a work summit where I was presenting on Q CLI).

Feeling pretty good, back is still a little tight, I kind of tweaked it riding some gravel with Kaiser a week or so ago.

Anyway, feeling pretty relaxed overall, ready to sleep on some flights. Landed in SF, walked around and talked to my girlfriend. Got some ramen and sat next to the cofounder of some startup talk about how his life is designed around revenue, dreams about his customers, doesn’t know what holidays are all he does is work, and how he’s slept with his gay banker but he’s not gay… going to keep tabs on this one and see how it does lmao!! Welcome to San Francisco. Preferred meeting Charles Barkley last time when I was flying to Japan hahaha.

2025-11-08: 3

I guess it’s the 8th now although it’ll be a short day for me. I’m like 9-10 hours into the flight to Korea. Slept ok for first 8 hours. Almost 18 hours since being driven to the airport, I can’t decide if it’s felt like a long 18 or not. Anyway, going to wrap up the last few hours of this flight and then on to the 9th.

2025-11-09:

Landed, struggled to figure out T money but eventually got it and got in the right train hahaha (This involved me realizing I needed to get cash to load the things and going back and forth between thinking I needed cash or not… then figuring out how to get cash). Got picked up from very nice Airbnb lady who brought me up to the room. I made coffee, cooked breakfast (homemade jam) and talked to pal on the beautiful porch. Sent the airbnb lady a picture of my breakfast and she gave me more eggs and tomato’s… so nice.

Took the bike they have out for a nice ride on their river path. It was awesome, so many riders out, great weather, and nice pavement. (This didn’t feel grerat on my back but was a beautiful windy day for a ride)

Got back and then walked over to the noodle place that our host recommended. (This place was extremely surprised to see me and was located in what seemed like a neighborhood surrounded by small statues). The walk was nice it was almost in a neighborhood and then I came to a place with a ton of statues, walking to the end of them lead me to the noodle place. I took my shoes off and sat by myself and had a massive bowl of buckwheat noodles. Had a nice walk back checking out the town a bit before heading home.

The bathroom was so cramped I had to sit in the tub to shower hahahaha. Zach arrived around 8, I let him up and went to bed.

Noodles: 인천광역시 계양구 학고개길 15-29 Sufia : 인천광역시 계양구 정서진로 1247

2025-11-10:

Woke up at 3:45 so almost got 8 hours. Made coffee/toast with Zach, cleaned up and headed out (watched a little football too). (This required some finagling with a VPN/location settings).

Took an uber to GMP where we got dropped off at the international terminal so had to walk over to the domestic one. I needed a new boarding pass so it would match my passport so we had to wait and got Jamba Juice. Then at security at turned out Zach needed the same thing but they didn’t do it for him so he had to go all the way back and redo it.

Anyway hope we make this flight to Jeju hahaha.

Flight got delayed and had plenty of time. Met some nice people from Sevilla if I’m there I need to visit Bar baratillo.

We landed in Jeju and Zach forgot his water bottle on the plane. We got that, picked up Ray and then drove to some random noodle place to get lunch. It was good and then I had Zach drive to the Airbnb without routing it and he did pretty well. We also saw an f-150 on the drive over, America!

Stopped at an emart for groceries and went to the new Airbnb. This place is ok, good views though. Went for a walk and the surrounding area is beautiful. The JW Marriott we are next to is crazy as well. There’s some good restaurants around us.

Anyway feeling a bit tired, going to try and stay up until 8pm and call it a night.

Also lemon sour hi-chew are good and strawberry snickers are bad.

2025-11-11:

Slept for like 11 hours and got up at 7. Cooked up coffee and oatmeal which took forever in this tiny little kitchen. Of course we don’t have salt, pepper or laundry detergent.

Went out for a quick walk along the coast which was beautiful. Then face timed Ally and watched the packers vs eagles a bit (won fantasy football this week).

We decided to go check out a waterfall which wasn’t really happening because it only happens when it rains, but saw some big spiders and oranges. On the way there we stopped at this cute coffee place (I got orange juice and a slice of cake) that had an amazing logo. I think I’ll use it to make ally a shirt.

Then we drove to a forest loop hike where the entire path was paved with this braided rope that was very soft to walk on (about 5k) (This hike smelled pretty bad as we’re pretty sure we were surrounded by manure from the thousands of farms on the island)

When then headed towards a running track on the north western part of the island so Zach could run. It was by Donatos a place we wanted try for pizza. While Zach was running I walked over to hanmart and bought detergent. Then we decided we’d go to some little Thai food place for dinner.

We walk into this Thai food place (Lam Taetae) and there was nobody there. In fact we’d be the only people to enter the entire time we were there. It was just a guy and, I assume, his wife and we had amazing fried rice, pad Thai and he had us try soy bean soup. He was very nice and we chatted a bit with him, apparently he had been a chef at a thai restaurant for a decade. Amazing meal, just another example of randomly walking into a great experience while traveling.

We drove back home (1 hour ) in the dark, hitting speed bumps and making a wrong turn or two. What an interesting place/culture.

2025-11-12:

Woke up and was a little quicker at making coffee/oatmeal today. Heading to hike Hallasan (the mountain in the middle of the island). Didn’t realize we had to make a reservation so did that really quick and headed over there before our 10am cutoff time.

Parking lot was full and we missed the cutoff time. So then we decided to do a different hike that climbed another side of the mountain, while that one didn’t meed a reservation it still had a cutoff time to start for some reason and the guy wouldn’t let us go through hahahah. So we ended up looping around this cool cemetery and we’ll try hallasan again tomorrow. (We did not realize that we needed to be a bit more prepared to do this hike, they seem very regimented about it)

Our new plan was to drive back to Cheonjiyeonpokpo Falls and have our sandwiches. We parked kind of close which led us to walk around for a few hours before finally getting to the park and checking out the falls. (We did not park close, we parked on the absolute wrong side and walked all the way around the park to get to the falls haha)

We took photos, ate sandwiches and started back towards the car. We got some snacks from CU (I like seaweed lays chips) and watched old people play put-put golf. We both kind of wanted coffee so we ended walking back down these stairs we had just gone up and into the town.

The coffee place we wanted to go was closed so we walked past another that looked cool. Had coffee and I bought some beans for my mom. We then went up this small street that seemed to be dedicated for an artist and get gifts for people from a small book store and another shop.

We walked back to the car and drove home. Out on the roof, I was helping Zach improve on chess while we ate yogurt and hatched a new plan for the Hallasan. After the sunset, we needed to get dinner. I found this random place called inupaen that was incredible. Some of the best steak I’ve had in a very cute place that was well decorated.

After getting back we decided we wanted to sleep in tomorrow. We’ll drive up the eastern side of the island tomorrow and do Hallasan on Friday before our omakse experience.

2025-11-13:

Woke up and I burned some avocado toast. We charted a few places to stop on the way to the eastern most part of the island where they have this cool glass house cafe.

We headed out around ten and went to seosokkak. It was this little inlet where freshwater meets the sea. We rented a small boat and paddled up it. We walked the beach a bit and then headed towards our next stop. (I found a small heart shaped rock for my mom on the beach)

After driving past a place that said Texas bbq the next place was closed, opening in late November. So we decided to go to a burger place instead. It’s called fantastic burger. With a view of the sea we had large quantities of curry and onion sauces poured on top of burgers with milkshake and fries. Suffice to say we had to go for a walk after. (Zach did NOT enjoy this meal)

Leaving the car at the burger place we walked down to some tide pools to help digest the slop. We then headed towards an herb farm.

The farm was pretty cool, extremely well manicured. There were tons of cool looking plants and we got some grapefruit tea which was pretty nice to walk around with. We couldn’t figure out how to play the put put golf so after a bit ended up leaving (think it was more for couples at night).

We continued on to the glass house. We parked our car by the ocean on this peninsula and walked to this massive glass building. Inside I bought shoes and Zach bought more gifts. We then went to the bakery and got some baked goods/coffee. We sat up on the second level overlooking the sea and played chess. (This place and the surroundings were highly aesthetic, would recommend)

After this we walked around outside to a small lighthouse before turning around and heading back to the car. We drove to a supermarket to get supplies for tomorrow. After wards, we went to a nice Korea bbq place for black pork. It was excellent we had pork, egg dish, rice, and tons of sides.

Driving home I booked our tickets for the hike tomorrow (I think they were literally the last two available). Got back and made some sandwiches and am going to bed now. Going to be a great day tomorrow but we are getting an early start.

2025-11-14

Woke up at 4:30 had coffee and oatmeal and then we were out the door around 5:30 headed to the parking lot. The drive up was cool in the dark the rods are tight and it was a little hard for Zach to see.

When we got to the parking lot it was already full at 6:30. Luckily we had a backup plan to park at the university and grab a bus back to the parking lot (comprehensive shooting range west was the bus stop name). We parked and got a taxi instead which worked out fine.

Back at the parking lot we showed them our QR codes and were hiking by 7:00am. The hike started off pretty chill then we hit a middle section which was steeper/rockier and the last bit was extremely steep pretty much just stairs. The weather was great, there was no water but there were rest stops/bathrooms. People kept giving us oranges and on the way down we must have said hello in Korean 1000x.

The top of the mountain was pretty cool, great views. We had some snack and then hiked down, we didn’t wait too long as we didn’t have much water. The way down was rough, the rocks we had hiked up now required constant attention/balance while dodging people going the other direction. At least passing was easier as we had nobody to pass.

It took us about 6 hours total to do Hallasan about 5 hours of hiking. We took a bus back to the car (the driver just waved us on as we had no idea how to pay). Driving home we made it back by like 3PM after getting some gas that we thought we didn’t pay for but turns out we did. Zach and I had a bet about how many “dings” we’d get which occur when Ray hit a bump too hard.

We showered quickly and then hung out a 60 beans, Z got another flat white and I got a hot chocolate. Even though the Airbnb wasn’t great it was in a good location and we just sat and watch the ocean.

Afterwards we walked back up the hill a bit to our dinner at Hachi. This was an amazing omakse experience. I got to butcher a bit Japanese, eat some amazing pieces of fish, and ended the night with a little green dessert ball that was amazing.

This was one of the best meals I had, and for only $100 per person it was a bargain. If I end up in Jeju again I’ll have to go back. This was an amazing day to end an insane stay. I was telling Zach that I didn’t think I would be able to be as cool as Japan and this week has been! It’s been great in pretty much every way.

2025-11-15:

Alright our big travel day begins. Calves are a little sore but we’ve got nearly every possible form of transportation to take.

We cleaned up the Airbnb and hit the road at like 7:50. Apple Maps fucked up and we ended up taking a scenic route on the other side of Hallasan we had been the day before. We dealt with some slow/dumb drivers. Before retuning the rental car (not full). We took a shuttle to the airport where we checked our bags and then headed through foreigners security.

Through security I got some snacks at 711 before our flight was delayed 15 mins and our gate was changed. We got on a bus which took us out to the tarmac where we boarded our flight. On the plane now hopefully no issues as we need to take the subway over to Busan Station to catch our high speed train to Seoul.

Took the subway to Busan Station. No problems and we got lunch at the station (Ramen + Kimbap). high speed train rolled up on time and we headed to Seoul. There wasn’t much to see and our ears kept popping. I ended up watching Seinfeld and playing chess poorly. We both agreed we were glad to say we’ve taken the KTX but it was NOT worth the hastle.

After we got to Seoul station around 6pm and we were both tired. Butttt we had more subways to take. Lugging our bags we took several crowded Friday night subways to Walkerhill. At our final station, we had another 1km walk ahead of us UP THE HILL to the hotel. We did all the travel but wow it was not worth it haahahaha.

We checked in. We were going to get an extra bed but decided against it because the room was small and our single bed was big. The shower is great and the hotel it really nice but everything is overpriced. I was so tired I just skipped dinner and went to bed.

2025-11-16:

Got up early. There was some coffee I could make in the room but I thought it was instant coffee so I poured it straight into the cup but you were supposed to poor water through it via a filter lol. So I went downstairs to the buffet and got a fucking $8 Americano. I chugged that and then got my stuff together for my hike.

Ready to go I set off for Baegundae peak in Bukhansan National park. My right calve is pretty sore but overall I feel ok and today is the best weather for it. I took the subways without issue. Grabbed a snickers bar at the base and started up.

The first bit was basically on a road before the actual hike. Some taxi crashed his car on the road oof. I made it up to the start but was a bit low on water. I went downstairs to this small shop that this lady was trying to open. I helped her get the lock open and then got some water from her shop. I threw a liquid IV in one of bottles and started off.

This thing was steep my legs were still tired from Hallasan. While this was shorter it was tough. Reaching the top, I threw my gloves on for the final scramble to the peak. It was kind of like half dome but with less ropes and more metal railing. It was very crowded and I don’t hang out long at the top. Took a few photos and heard back.

Rather than heading down the same way I decided to descend the other side and cross the park. This side may have been steeper than the other and there was no stairs whatsoever just straight rocks. I got down to this road and then it was easy from there. The road was beautiful with fall colors and I was having a great time listening to 80s music. I wasn’t super hungry but decided I needed lunch. I needed up at a small Korean restaurant where I ate a bunch of rice tofu and fermented vegetables. This white fig and some Koreans sat at the table next to me and I think they worked for black diamond. I was going to show them my carabeaner but decided not too.

I walked to a bus and then took subways back to walkerhill. Shower felt great and than Z got back from exploring the city. We waited a bit for his lab mate Skylar to show up. We had to go down and get Skylar his room because his card was getting declined.

All three of us went and got dinner, I randomly found some place called Bao Seoul that was amazing. We had Bao, Fried chicken, and noodle… insanely good. After walking out it started raining so we waited underneath a convenience store and I debated purchasing these little nipple patches that looked hilarious.

The rain stopped and we walked over to this place called nowhere which was an art installation that also seemed to be selling glasses and perfume (Gentle monster was the name I believe). I talked to this lady about what her favorite weird glasses were and then we Ubered back to the hotel. we made sure to clear out the complimentary minibar before hitting the sack.

2025-11-17:

Going around and exploring the city today. Got up around 7 and Z went to the buffet. I had coffee in the room, watched football and called my parents. my dad has his surgery scheduled for 12/11 so that was good to hear.

I headed downstairs to go explore the city and was hit with a blast of cold air… went back up and threw my thermals on. Another breakfast at Starbucks for 1/8 the price of the hotel and then I was off to Gyeongbokgung Palace. It was pretty cool but my legs are shot from the last few days of hiking/travel and the amount of tourists here is nauseating. It’s hard to do anything without getting in the way of somebodies photo. I walked around for a bit before taking shelter in the modern art museum across the street. This place is pretty weird but it’s nice to sit inside and eat a little pastry and type this out.

I think I’m going to go to the national museum of Korea next and look for lunch.

Started toward the museum and immediately found a cute lunch spot by the palace. More Korean food but it was really good and had a little purple flower on top. Finished up and took the subway to the museum.

Zach sad he would come but ended up getting hung up so I walked through the museum by myself. It was pretty cool but my legs were hurting from all the walking and a left around 4. It was freezing outside and the sushi place I wanted to try didn’t open until 5pm so I ate so MnMs in a 7-11.

I pulled up to Sushi Tei right at 5 and was the first one sat for dinner. I got the sushi set which was a bunch of sashimi (tuna, white fish, squid,etc) as well as some udon. It was excellent. Took the subway back to the hotel and read a book about hotels in the library. After that I helped Zach practice his presentation and called it a night.

2025-11-18:

Got up around 8:30 and went to Starbucks again to get a little breakfast. It’s just convenient and cheap. I’m taking the subway to go make Kimchi with a nice lady named Grace.

At my final station there was a little flower shop so I could buy grace flowers I don’t know how these things work out so perfectly this happened the last time I did one of these Airbnb experiences as well.

Two other people showed up and we made/learned about kimchi, made kimchi pancakes, and ate pork with kimchi and drank tea. It was amazing and grace was so nice. She even made us homemade dumplings and we got a nice jar of kimchi we made to take home. Amazing experience, and I’ll have to go back and do her dumpling class!

I’m now sitting at bean brothers with a cup of coffee it’s quite cold. Not sure where the rest of the day will take me but I need to get this kimchi back to the hotel hahaha. Crazy I’m taking this home.

Went back to the hotel with the intention of leaving but ended up staying at the poster session for a few hours. It was fun to talk with various people about their work and I could understand enough that it made for good conversation. I worked up an appetite so I headed to a restaurant that grace recommended called namdosikgark. I’m sitting here now waiting for my food to come out, I’m the only one here.

Food was excellent. I got a large vegetable pancake and spicy beef stew. I learned how to say radish in Korean today so I asked the lady if the kimchi was radish in Korean even though I already knew it was radish.

I was kind of in some sort of shopping district so I walked around after eating and got a few things for ally. This one artist had drawn John wick on a scroll so I bought that for Louis. There is an endless supply of cute tiny things here

Took the subway back uneventfully and then hiked back up to the hotel. Showered and then hung out in Zach’s lab mates room (Skyler) who has a great view of the river/bridges. Went to bed around midnight.

2025-11-19:

Woke up to all the lights coming on in the room randomly around 9:15. Called ally and talked with her for a bit. Got out of the hotel around 11 and headed toward inwangsan which is a mountain in the middle of the city. Took subway over and stopped at Starbucks for a hot chocolate.

The inwangsan hike was pretty cool. My legs are tired it was steep as hell but the view of the city at the top was unbeatable. The Seoul wall is also pretty cool. Hiked back down while eating some wasabi covered almonds which are excellent. Decided to take the subway over to the buk-seoul art museum. I’m sitting on the roof now and it appears to be a bit of a mistake to have come here, there’s only like one exhibit. I think my plan now is to head back to the hotel and meet up with Zach and Skyler for dinner. I do need to go to bed at a reasonable hour as the DMZ tour is early tomorrow and I don’t want to be wrecked for it.

Went back to the hotel and met up with Z and Skyler we took the subway to some chicken place where they put bunch of stuff in a big pan right in front of us and we ate it. The guy that worked there was nice and showed us a little donut shop so we got donuts after. While leaving the donut shop i used my new ability to say “see you later” which was a hit.

We went back to the hotel and a realized that I didn’t want to get up at 5am for the tour. So I booked a 10am tour and wrote the 7am one off as a loss.

2025-11-20:

Woke up at 7:30 and had coffee/yogurt in the room. For some reason I checked Viator and noticed a message saying meet at 9:30 instead of 10 so I hustled over to the station and made it there on time.

We hopped on the bus and our tour guide Lina talked us through some basic instructions as we took the highway towards the DMZ.

We got to our first stop after about an hour which was just a little tourist park with a train going over a river. I think it was sentimental about a particular battle there and there were memorials. I walked around, got some snacks and bought some North Korean currency which is kind of cool to have, I think I’m going to give it to Jeff.

We boarded the bus and headed to the tunnel. This was the point where we actually crossed into the DMZ. There was a little checkpoint and some 20 year olds on military gear hopped on the bus to check our passports. Anyways, Apparently North Korea has been digging a ton of these tunnels under the DMZ toward South Korea. Every once in a while SK finds one, and this one they turned into a tourist attraction. We watched a 8 minute SK propaganda video which was pretty funny and then got to go into the tunnel.

We were given a hard hat before walking down a 300m long very steep tunnel. This one was well built. At the bottom we hit the North Korean made tunnel. It was quite small, hence the hard hats, and you kind of walked bent over to the end of it where the blocked it off. Then you turn around and huff it all the way back up. Lina gave me a sticker for being the first to make it back up. It was pretty cool to be there.

Next we want up to the Dora observatory where you could look at but not take pictures of North Korea. There was a tit-for-tat flag battle between the two nations that was finally needed when North Korea built a 160m tall flag and SK decided to stop playing the silly game. That flag is pretty cool to see it’s very large and high up, even from 5k away and a bit foggy it was very visible. Otherwise there were just abandoned factories and mountains you could kind of make out in the distance.

I went to this little cafe and had a chocolate muffin while looking out at North Korea. It was a cool experience, they also sold shitty hotdogs and a had to listen some lady bitch out her sister next to me while I enjoyed the view.

We went back to the bus for our last stop. This stop was through a village of farmers that were still allowed to live in the DMZ before stopping at a glorified convenience store/bathroom to allow us to buy things before heading back to Seoul. I bought a water and met some nice guys from London who K chatted with for a bit outside.

Back on the bus we headed back through a military checkpoint to make sure that everyone that was in the bus on the way in was on the bus on the way out. I chatted with a nice guy named David from Charleston as we drove on the highway back into the city.

I asked Lina for some food recommendations, she pointed out a few places and then one of the lady’s on the tour mentioned she was going to this dumpling place that was on the Michelin guide (for value restaurants). We got off at myeongdong station and decided to get dumplings with her.

The tour made it difficult to remain sincere about the whole thing and the tragedy that is the war and the current state of North Korea with how curated/touristy each of the sites was.

We walked up to the third floor of this restaurant and they sat us and brought out noodles and dumplings almost immediately. They were pretty good, the kimchi was very spicy. She was nice, she was traveling for several months after being laid off due to trump cutting all the funds of USaid. We talked about politics a bit and she’s also going to stay in some Buddhist place for meditation which sounded cool.

We parted ways after our dumpling snack and I headed back to the station to go have dinner with Zach. Dropped stuff at the hotel and we headed towards this place by the lotte world tower. That place closed at 9 so we were cutting it pretty close. We ended up walking around and randomly found a small restaurant called dokidoki. We got fried chicken, a tepenyacki noodle dish which were both amazing. Then we got one more dish which was some sort of fish roe pasta that was great. An amazing dinner to cap off the trip.

We headed back to the hotel and Zach packed a bit and I got a coffee from the CU on the basement for tomorrow and headed to bed.

2025-11-21:

Woke up around 7:30. Packed up my stuff and dropped the bags off at the concierge. We checked around for anyway to load our T Money Cards but realized we’d need to leave the hotel. We walked over to a bank and pulled out 10k krw for a fee of 4200krw hahaha.

I got a banana from Starbucks and we waked over to a little park. Zach walked barefoot on some barefoot walking trails and I chatted with a lady about Achason mountain which I didn’t get to hike but was right next to Walkerhill.

We headed back to the hotel, grabbed our bags and took the bus to the station. Two hours of subway later. We made it to the airport. We got Chinese food and then I said goodbye to Z and we parted ways as his flight was in Terminal 2.

Flight was delayed a bit, so I walked 5-6 miles around the airport which was mostly just souvenirs shops and extremely high end fashion. I wonder if there’s an arbitrage opportunity for buying things here and selling them back in the US. I didn’t go in to check any of the prices but would’ve been interesting to know if they were priced differently. I also wonder how often they update the price with given exchange rate changes.

On the flight we had a massive tail wind which saved us probably over an hour of flying time. I chatted with some of the flight attendants I had met in the airport after I found an AirPod and gave it to them. One guy was 51 and had fun out clubbing in Seoul the night before, he told me to visit Singapore and Greece.

Once we landed we got stuck on the runway and lost all the time we had gained in there. I hustled through customs, re checked my bag and easily made the next flight, so the rush wasn’t as warranted as I thought.

On the flight from SFO to PHX I sat next to a guy who works for openAI we played chess and had a good conversation. He’s had dinner with Tyler Cowen before (no wonder he’s so bullish on “AI”).

Mom picked me up and then I showered and had dinner at home. I picked up Zach from the airport and brought him home. I wasn’t really tired, so I decided to drive down to Tucson to see ally and pick up my bike. I made it down to Tucson in about 90 minutes getting there before midnight. And that closed out an extremely long day (21 hours of travel to Phoenix + another 2 to Tucson).