Seoul - Day 9 and afterthoughts

We did not go anywhere on the last day of Seoul; spent it packing up and preparing to leave for the airport. Therefore, nothing much to show.


Our last brunch in Seoul. This was supposed to be a meal for one person, but we ordered wrongly haha.


Supplemented the brunch with this popcorn chicken like thing. Has chicken, hash browns and rice cakes with various sources.

Ended off our last moments in the room with a can of Tiger beer, much like waiting for the end of the world to come haha.

Thereafter, it was an almost two hour subway ride to the airport, resulting in me checking in only an hour before the plane took off. It turned out that planes bound for the United States were subjected to additional manual bag checks, so there was a long queue of people waiting to board and I wasn't late at all.

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Even up till a month before I flew, I still wasn't sure if I was going to Korea. Before I have went to Korea, my impression of it was that it was another Singapore, much like Hong Kong, and maybe there weren't many things to see.

However, after my trip to Korea, I have come to like the place. While Seoul is very much a modern city now, embedded deep within the people and the place are strong traditional Korean values that set them very much apart from any other metropolitan city.

After the Korean War, South Korea was in a worse state than Singapore, and despite having at most a 10 year headstart compared to Singapore, they are everything that we are trying to achieve today. Examples include a comprehensive subway system, recycling bins and facilities for the physically disabled. Not to say that they are still constantly under threat from North Korea.


Everywhere we go, tiles for the visually disabled can be found.

Also I have learnt that Korea is much more closer to China than I previously know. The Chinese history that I have learnt in secondary school only told us the Chinese part of the history; turns out there were plenty of exchanges [ physical and cultural ] between Korea, China and Japan.

I have new found admiration and respect for Korea; for their fierce preservation of their own culture, for their ability to balance modernization and traditions, and their general resilience and adaptions towards world trends. I will like to visit Korea again in future.