The sound of silence in Korea

On the 14th of April we left Sydney and arrived in the evening at the best airport in the world (three years in a row) - Inchon Seoul.





The airport was clean and silent. I even found that they posted a coloured photo of the cleaning assistant to the schedule!

Considering the fact that Seoul has over 10 million inhabitants we found it interesting that it was so silent here, in the airport and generally in the city.




As you may guess, we were of course on a way to a new host to do some more couchsurfing. We had been invited to a Korean family for two nights and we were very excited. Luckily we were picked up at the airport by Seongyong Ha. This poster is the first thing we saw when we came out, and we had a good laugh :)

Our profilename on CS is Oddbjørn Sæther Nørbech. We have melted our names together since we have only one profile. And the natural name on our unit is Oddbjørn. So he assumed one of us was Oddbjørn and the other Nørbech :) Cute misunderstandings like this really make the day!





Seongyong Ha invited us for a Korean dinner the same evening. He turned to be a very generous host. We thought the plan was to surf his couch, but he told us that his apartment was too small. So then he booked a very nice hotelroom for us! Although we insisted to pay the fee, he insisted back. He paid it all for us..





The typical Korean food excists of many different sorts of vegetables that is usually served very spicy. On the table in front of you there is usually a pan, where you fry bacon and other sorts of meat. Very tasty and highly recommended!
Seongyong Ha also served us Korean beer and wine - not recommended....





Eating Korean lunch on the floor. The dishes were so many we couldn`t count them.
Very healthy, diverse and tasty.




Seoul has all new buildings and skysharpers made in the recent years except from Gyeongbokgung, which is one of few exceptions.

Seoul was almost entirely destroyed in the Korean War, but in the 1960s and 1970s good economic times helped to rebuild the city very rapidly. In the 1990s, some important historical buildings were restored, including Gyeongbokgung, one of the royal palaces of the Joseon dynasty.

We went there to see it. Impressive!











Seongyong Ha and one guy from the Hotel staff tried their very best to make the Internet work for us. Unfortunately they didn`t succeed, but anyway we were too busy to care. We were checking out the fancy toilet in the bathroom which had electrically warmed seat and plenty of cool lightening functions! Korea is hightech!




During our short stay, we experienced a whole lot! Two days! It felt like a week. Seongyong Ha took us out both days to eat dinner with him and we also went to his sportclub to play a badminton match! Before we went back to the Hotel one night, he took us to a karaoke-bar. We had a lot of fun!




I am buying ricecakes - a Korean speciality.