London-Korea trip, November 2023

You know, I named the previous trip “Korea trip, May 2023” for a reason. Back then, I thought there would be a good chance that I could revisit in the same year. I thought it would be fun to have a May and later_month trip, both from the same year.

And almost half a year later, it finally happened. To be honest, I was uncertain of being able to go back for a second time. Travel was becoming a lower priority as big real life events began to happen. So when things worked out last minute, I booked my flight tickets very last minute as well. Literally; I bought tickets just 24 hours before departing.

As the title says, I visited two cities this time. All flights except the one to London had layovers, so I got to travel around the entire northern hemisphere. This was definitely my most ambitious trip so far. And while the title also says “November trip”, technically the journey started in late October.

Toronto to London

London

The London segment of my trip was short, just two nights. This was an unplanned visit (in an already unplanned trip), which is why I didn’t stay for long. I wish I stayed for longer, but two nights were enough to see the basics.

London is a dense metropolis. There’s people and stores everywhere, public transit is well developed, things are expensive, and space is precious.

Here’s some highlights from the trip:

• Ride the Underground and double decker buses for the first time
• Visit Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the Tower Bridge
• Visit the National Gallery
• Have afternoon tea

Cost of living in the UK seems very high. If I convert my raw expenses to Canadian dollars, eating at a restaurant seems almost unbearable. Even public transit is very expensive; I spent £20 on:

1. Buying an Oyster card (London public transit card)
2. Taking the Underground from Heathrow Airport to the city
3. Riding a bus once and the Underground again
4. Taking the Underground back to the airport

The true cost was slightly higher, my card ended up with a negative balance when I got off at the airport. Buying anything is pretty expensive; food and snacks, general goods. I won’t say anything about the afternoon tea…

Other than high prices though, it was a fun city to visit. London feels like a compact North American city, but with more soul and actual history. I would come back to see more if I can. While expensive, the food was pretty good too.

London weather was surprisingly cold. I heard that winters were warm, and that recent summers have been scorching Europe. So I must have naturally assumed it would be warm all year round. Instead, I ended up wearing a jacket constantly. Looking at the forecast now though, it’s true that London is warm in winter. Toronto and Seoul have dipped close to freezing, but London is still around 10 °C during the day.

London to Hong Kong to Incheon

Hong Kong

Thanks again for the detour, Russia.

This was my second time arriving at the Hong Kong airport. I’ve been here a few years ago, also for a layover. I don’t remember anything from that time though, so this was effectively my first time in the Hong Kong airport. I was a bit sad I couldn’t explore the island, I think that would have been awesome.

Why am I talking about a two hour layover at an airport? I don’t know. It was just fun to look around.

The airport was massive. You can take a bunch of walkways and it would still take over 10 minutes to travel across a terminal. There were stores that I’ve never seen before. The weather outside was foggy and cloudy, on an early morning. It gave the perfect vibe of a mysterious land that is waiting to be explored.

I got to try a McDonalds item that I think is exclusive to Hong Kong or maybe Asia: a mocha ice coffee. In hindsight, this is kind of like a foreshadowing of my encounters with coffee to come (more on this later). I thought the drink was pretty good for a McDonalds item.

Hong Kong seems like a killer place for travelling and exploring, I would love to properly visit the place if I have the chance.

Korea

I mostly repeated what I did during my May trip: spending most time with family, and wandering around during the little free time I had.

Despite being November, the weather was really warm for the first week. Climate change is definitely doing something. During the first week or so, daytime temperatures reached 15 °C or higher. That’s warm enough for me to wear a t-shirt, which made me stick out from the crowd; everyone else was wearing long sleeves or a light jacket. Maybe Canadian winters have done something to me.

This was also the first time I’ve travelled anywhere in November. Now that I’m out of school, I guess I can theoretically travel whenever I want. I’ll see if I can keep this up as I go through adult life.

Things I did:

• Had a lot of good food
  • Went to one really expensive (and good) buffet
• Saw stray cats at a park
• Visited a weeaboo’s paradise
• Drank a lot of coffee
• Visit Myungdong, Hongdae, and some other regions further south

Coffee?

Korea is a land full of coffee addicts, and a place where bubble tea cannot penetrate the market. You can walk for 5 minutes and unironically pass 10 cafes. My hotel was close to a big intersection in the middle of the city. There’s a lot of offices, office workers, and other people around there. I checked on a map; within a 1km radius, there’s close to 20 Starbucks stores.

20. Within a 1 km radius. And they aren’t just regular Starbucks either. Some are multi-storied stores, and a few are Reserve stores (fancier stores with exclusive menu items). In Toronto, I need to look at a 5 km radius to get that many stores. The only Reserve I know of in the city closed down a while ago. The “coffee store density” is 25 times denser in Seoul than in Toronto. It’s genuinely ridiculous.

Because there was so much coffee around me, I decided to embrace it for once. And it honestly wasn’t bad. With so many stores, there’s bound to be competition, so every store has something decent. I ended up going to a Starbucks almost every day. If I didn’t, I got a coffee from some smaller store. Cold brew-based coffee quickly became my favourite. All of this coffee buying was lighter on the wallet than you’d think, because things are generally cheaper in Korea than in Canada.

This is a collection of coffee pictures I took over two weeks. If you think that’s a lot of coffee, you’re absolutely correct and I fully admit that I probably drank way too much. But this is probably only half of what I actually had. The point is, Korea has too many coffee stores. My hotel is in a really hilarious location, you could find a Starbucks if you do any of the following:

• Cross the street at an intersection
• Cross the other intersecting street
• Cross both streets
• Don’t cross any street and just walk in one direction for 3 minutes
• Or walk in the other 3 directions for 3 minutes
• Avoid the intersecting streets and enter the smaller paths in between

You literally cannot avoid finding a Starbucks. It’s so ridiculous that I can’t convey the feeling in words. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if I find a Starbucks inside the hotel the next time I visit.

Weeaboo’s (miniature) holy land

During my last day, I visited Hongdae. I’ve actually never visited this place, or I did but I have no memories. Either way, I kind of got why this place was popular. It’s like a small town on its own, and there’s tons of young people.

Among one of the stores I found was Animate, as the name implies, they sell goods related to anime and manga. It was decently big, but the merchandise was very vanilla. It got me thinking:

are there big anime stores in Korea?

Surely it had to exist; Japan is less than two hours away by flight and weebs exist in Korea. After a bit of researching, I found a place: the 9th floor of a building called the “National Electronics Center”. And while the first 8 floors are definitely related to electronics, the 9th floor was… quite something.

As a North American pleb, seeing all of the merchandise was genuinely overwhelming. I didn’t expect anything like it. There were stores with skyscrapers made by stacked figure boxes. I spent several hours just walking around, being so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things. I thought I was going to whale on a lot of things, and the amount of goods on sale gave me choice paralysis.

Eventually I was able to buy one figure after a few hours of just walking around. That’s the story of the “be picky when buying anime figures” post¹. My conclusion from this experience to a holy land was that I need to go to Japan one day. I can’t imagine what I’d find in the motherland.

Incheon to Los Angeles to Toronto

Los Angeles

I got to ride on the 2nd floor of the A380 for the first time while flying to LAX. It wasn’t significantly different from the 1st floor. It might have been a bad thing instead, because I was surrounded by coughing people on my left and right. Luckily I didn’t get sick.

Landing the in the US gave me a kind of culture shock because of how everything felt different. The people, natural environment, climate, and the buildings were all so different from London, Hong Kong, Korea, and even Toronto.

The average height of everyone suddenly increased by at least 5 cm. Suddenly I was hearing at least 5 languages instead of 1. The price of food jumped significantly from Asia, and the types of food changed too (as expected of burgerland). Everyone dressed differently and had wildly different styles, versus the monotony in Asia. There were palm trees outside and half the people I saw were wearing shorts.

Home

I realized this after returning from my May trip, but I felt it again.

Toronto is really dim and not densely populated. It’s the most populous city in Canada, yet it seems like some midtown area of London or Seoul.

I took the Union Pearson Express to get home, a light rail route between the airport and one of the busiest subway stations in downtown. Throughout the ride, it was completely dark outside. The train was almost always above ground, but there just weren’t any lights. The skyscraper density in downtown is underwhelming. The lights illuminating streets and highways is very dim. Everyone drives instead of walking.

Conclusion

Like in May, I had a lot of fun. Seeing a foreign country is an adventure, and I’m glad I was able to add London and Hong Kong (kind of) to my route. It’s a little sad that the trip ended already, I can still freshly remember waiting to board my flight to London. I hope I can go flying again in the not too distant future.

Bonus picture

This was from some popup shop (I think). The pink character is Loopy, from a children’s TV series called Pororo². She became a meme (“Zanmang” Loopy) and it blew up, hence the shop’s raison d’être and name. I thought of making this my newest profile picture but ultimately didn’t go with it.

I have a pet peeve with this meme: the name. The original name is 잔망 루피 (Janmang Loopy), but someone decided to localize it as “Zanmang”, despite the /z/ phoneme not existing in modern Korean.