I didn’t know about Wolmi Island during our first visit to Korea, or I would have dragged my fam there in an instant! It’s basically a BOARDWALK, you guys. WITH RIDES. It’s also a seafood lover’s Mecca, if that matters to you.

The only way to reach Wolmi from Chinatown in Incheon was either to walk (which Henry said would only be “like 20 minutes”), take a taxi, or take a bus. Now for some reason, I am still terrified of public buses. I don’t know why! Ok I do know why–it’s because I’m always worried my transit card won’t work when I tap it and unlike on the subway, you’re face to face with the bus driver and everyone on the bus is getting all huffy and surly because you’re holding everything up.

I write this like it’s from personal experience and it is NOT. I have only ridden the bus in Pittsburgh once in my whole life and that was in 1998 waaaay before the days of transit cards, and the times we rode a bus last year in Busan, we had zero problemo.

So Henry did his thing, found out which bus would take us there (um, nearly all of them) and we waited at the stop right across from Chinatown, then got on the EMPTY BUS with some old man and that was it! Success!

Also, after riding there on a bus, I can now tell you that it would have been one fucking bitch of a walk there through mostly industrial areas, so…dodged that bullet.

The bus ride was only about 10 minutes and not scary at all. It is still highly unlikely that I will ever willingly board a PAT bus in Pittsburgh though.

So here’s a nugget of history about Wolmi Island, which I only recently learned: “On September 10, 1950, the U.S. Army began five days of bombing Wolmido Island, which contained North Korean Army soldiers. Several hundred civilians were killed in the dropping of 93 napalm bombs. The battle was inspiration for the North Korean Propaganda Film Wolmi Island produced in 1982.”

Yikes. Thinking about that, and knowing I walked all over this place is goosebump-inducing.

And yet, now it’s a big tourist spot full of restaurants, bars, and amusement parks!

It had stopped raining by the time we made it to Wolmi, but the gray skies kept most people away. Wolmi Theme Park was open, and the ride operators were busily squeegee’ing the rides of puddles.

But were the only people strolling around, so it gave it a mildly sinister feel. Later though, some people were riding the pirate ship and hearing their screams made it less creepy, somehow.

The famous Tagada! Or, also known as Disco Pang Pang. So this ride is popular in various Asian countries but it’s not something you would ever see in the States, what with, you know, safety regulations and whatnot. But the ride operator essentially tries to catapult the riders off the ride. And there are no seatbelts or anything! So you have to grab on to the rails with all your might and give it to God, I guess.

(No one actually gets flung off but I have seen videos of people sliding around all over the place!)

Taemin and Key from SHINee were actually on  this ride during an episode of “We Got Married”! It’s the very beginning of the video, so just watch it:

I mean…I was attacked by our family’s pet rabbit Rudy when I was 15 so just glancing at this ride was enough for me.

Across from the entrance to Wolmi Theme Park is the Wolmido Lighthouse.

Yellow Sea.

It didn’t even feel like we were in Korea while we were here. It could have been some small town on the Jersey Shore, to be honest. It was nice to have a slower pace and hear all the seagulls squawking as people fed them squid snacks. Chooch and I got drinks from a little cafe run by the most adorable and pleasant older couple (Chooch was on a major bubble tea spree, and I mostly opted for iced Americanos everywhere we went).

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“Fun time,” as Chooch would call it.

A post shared by Erin Appledale (@ohhonestlyerin) on Jul 25, 2019 at 11:16pm PDT

We stumbled upon another little park that had not one but THREE pirate ships. They love their pirate ships in Korea!

I can definitely imagine this being a major hotspot during nicer days and it probably is a madhouse during summer nights.

Before we headed back to Seoul, I was adamant that we ride the ferris wheel, which cost us like $18 I think but it was worth it not because yay, family time, but because TAEMIN RODE THIS FERRIS WHEEL.

Also, Henry smiled once.

Chooch was tired of hearing me complain about my eye woes.

Eye drama and intermittent rain showers aside, this day trip was actually pretty great. However, the highlight for me when we were sitting on the subway on the way back to Seoul and Chooch created an Instagram account for Cheetah Girl – the imaginary stripper girlfriend we invented for Henry – and I was fucking laughing so hard that I thought my bum eye was going to shoot out, and Henry was like, “WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING” so Cheetah Girl sent him a friend request BUT HE DENIED IT.

This is waaaaay more dramatic-sounding that it really was! You know how I do.

But my eye, you guys. My eyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

I thought I would be OK if we went back to the room so I could take my contact out, and then carry on with business.

I think this was in the City Hall subway station. All I remember is that it was the exit right next to some convenience store where Henry bought a cord for the wifi thingie. So, whatever subway station that is.

Weird family portrait in this mirror-y art installation thing.

Not even an eyeball hanging out of its socket could stop me from taking a picture of the adult shop by our guest house, which we pointed and snickered at EVERY SINGLE TIME and yelled, “IT’S HENRY’S STORE!” This was second only to a lingerie store elsewhere in Hongdae called Sexy Cookie, which I only just realized Friday on our walk home from Summer Breakfast Club that I never took a picture of it!! I tried one night to get Henry to stand in front of it for a picture after he was mouthing off about how things like this didn’t make him feel ashamed or bothered, yet he was super quick to snuff out any impending photo ops, so…

You tell me.

Went back to the room and peeled the contact off my eye.

THAT FELT GREAT.

I’m fucking kidding.

It felt goddamn awful, like several layers of my eyeball slipped off with the contact like fucking onion skin.

Holy fuck.

Now I was at the point where my eyelid was like, “Hey, I’m just gonna stay shut for the next 72 hours, cash me outside if you disagree.” But I kept fighting to keep it open and my eye actually looked like it was bleeding and then the whole fucking lid and area around it turned swollen, so I had to walk around THE FUCKING COOLEST AREA OF SEOUL with my hair flung over my right eye like a follicular curtain of shame. And it would sporadically well up with tears because, as Dr. Henry liked to remind me 87 times during this chapter of my life, “EYES ARE SELF-CLEANING.”

So then my other eye wanted to join the watering party and then it was also raining so my face was all oily with humidity and basically, I wasn’t bringing any Korean boys back with me at this juncture, is all I’m saying. Unless I could find some strange subgroup on the dark Internet of Korean men who like white American girls that look like freshly-punched glazed Easter hams. Then, swipe right boys!

Plus, I was shambling around with only one contact in, so my balance and depth perception were fragile.

Thank god this Taeyong birthday tribute was so gigantic or I might have missed it.

(It was painted over by the following week, in preparation for the next idol shrine to go up.)

It started pouring right when we were looking for a pizza place. (Chooch’s choice—I’ve learned the hard way that sometimes it’s easier to just let him have his way every now and then so that we’re all happy and it’s not, apparently, the Erin Show even though I AM THE REASON WE WERE EVEN THERE!)

My only requirement was that I wanted it to be a place that wasn’t super crowded so that people wouldn’t have to stare at the Mongoloid American. I considered getting an eye patch and pretending like I was healing from plastic surgery, which, in Seoul, no one would even think twice about.

We found a small little walk-up called Monster Pizza right by our room and it was perfect. We sat at a table outside and it was getting dark so my eye was less noticeable maybe.

We went back to the room to relax for a bit and I tried on my new pajamas that I bought in Hongdae after seeing this pattern EVERYWHERE, even in the shops in the subway stations. I was nervous because most shops like that are one-size (or free-size) which made me so nervous last time  to the point where I panicked and refused to buy anything, but this time, I took the (half) blind leap and bought it. AND IT FIT, WOO!!! So then I was just like, “BUY ALL THE SHIRTS!!” after that.

I wanted to see the Han River later that night so we had to take the subway to Yeouido and I thought Henry knew what he was doing but he had us walking for-fucking-ever on some trail which wasn’t actually all that bad because my eye was being a fucker still and it was nice to not have to be around crowds. Nearly ever person we passed on the trail was an old person which I thought was awesome – old people in Korea are so into fitness!  They’re an inspiration.

We saw this random BTS thing next a yacht club. I guess you’re supposed to write a letter to them and put it somewhere, I dunno. America’s oversaturation of them has kind of left a gummy taste in my mouth so I’m not as excited to see BTS stuff anymore. Interestingly, though, Korea doesn’t shove them down a person’s throat as much as you would think so it wasn’t BTS-overload for us at all.

Anyway, we were out by the Han for what felt like hours. The air was so soupy and thick with humidity and my eye felt like it had been removed and replaced with a shrunken Pinhead. I was in PAIN, y’all. However, when Henry suggested that we get our first bingsu of the trip before heading back to the room, I didn’t put up much an argument (although I did whine a lot about the pain I was in, just in case either of my healthy-eyeballed companions forgot).

It felt SO GOOD to be back in Korea’s underground again! Chooch and I developed a really weird attachment to Seoul’s subway system last year and when we first heard the “train is approaching” jingle this time around, I felt my heart skip a beat.

Also, I can’t remember if it was like this last year, but I noticed this time that the jingle for the airport train was a REMIX of the standard subway tune!

Subway art on point, Seoul.

The streets of Hongdae <3

I kept asking Henry if my eye looked OK and he would say yes without hardly looking, so then I would ask Chooch and he would do this sharp intake of breath and then say, “……well…..” with his face molded into a strong YIKES! expression, so if you ever want to know the truth, ask Chooch not Henry.

We went to Sulbing, which is a popular bingsu chain in Korea. Bingsu is a traditional Korean shaved ice dessert, but that description does NOT do it justice. It’s not like that coarse, watery snocone bullshit. This is a soft, velvety, fluffy concoction of what we believe is more of a milk-ice. There are all kinds of seasonal flavors, but the most original, I think, is the patbingsu – red bean. I prefer the green tea varieties, which also usually include a layer of soft, sweet red bean paste (don’t knock it, man—it’s a fucking crime that we don’t use this ingredient in American desserts) and an additional cup of green tea-infused condensed milk to pour over the whole thing.

It is our absolute favorite dessert in Korea! There’s a Korean bakery in Pittsburgh that makes it but they use regular ice and, well, that ain’t it.

Chooch got the tiramisu one, and Korean’s obsession with tiramisu never ceases to amuse me! I thought maybe it was a trend that would have died out by the time we came back, but no—you can find tiramisu-flavored treats in nearly every bakery and dessert cafe.

I always make Henry share a bingsu with me even though I’m sure I could easily clean a bowl on my own, and he gets so annoyed because I always order without consulting him and he dislikes green tea which is my favorite and I ask you, blog, for the 8087986th time, why are we still together?!

I was so miserable up until the bingsu was placed in front of me, but not even the invisible sword impaling my right eyeball could take my bingsu joy away from me. It was the best way to end the day, that’s for sure.

We walked back to the room after this and I went to bed hoping that my eye would be back to normal the next day.

Please look forward to my next post about Incheon’s Chinatown, but in the meantime, you can read about the next morning when Henry and Chooch abandoned me.

Keeping with tradition, we started our first full day off with a nutritious (lol) breakfast from CU. CU is one of several major convenience stores in South Korea and there was one a block away from where we were staying. There was also a 7-Eleven across the street, and a GS25 nearby too. The Big Trifecta!

Chooch always gets some kind of sickeningly sweet breadstuffs, preferably ones that come with stickers.

And mostly every day I would have a soft-boiled egg and a samgak kimbap, which is similar to the Japanese onigiri. I never took any pictures of them, but here’s one that I got from the Internet:

You can tell that’s not my picture because I haven’t had bare nails in probably 10 years. 

They are SO SATISFYING. It was also provided as one of the snack options on the flight home and I cried a little, knowing that it would be my last one for God only knows how long!

And I usually would have banana milk or some type of cold coffee drink. This one is a special BTS Cold Brew and that’s supposed to look like J-Hope but doesn’t really.

Oh, and Henry always had the exact same red bean and cream bun.

Every single morning.

I can’t remember if I mentioned this already, but for this trip, we were based in my favorite neighborhood of Hongdae. We opted for a guesthouse this time, and it was basically an apartment that a college student would use and it was perfect for our needs because it had a kitchenette and a washing machine which came in handy because it was a billion degrees and humid nearly every day so it was nice to be able to wash our clothes after a long day of trekking around town.

Waiting for Henry outside of the hotel. My eye was hurting that morning but I still put a contact in because I’m an asshole and it would start to be REALLY FUCKED later that afternoon, so good job, Erin.

First thing’s first – gotta get a TMoney card for the subway! The subway is always a cause of contention between Henry and Chooch because Henry naturally wants to take the lead but Chooch Knows Everything and wants to argue about the routes Henry chooses. I just go along with whatever line they tell me we’re taking and pray that we’re going to get there. And to be fair to both of them, we spent way less time spinning in circles on  the streets of Seoul, trying to get our directional bearings. Henry said that Google maps got a lot better to use in South Korea so thank  you for saving our vacation (and family), Google.

Last year, we didn’t get to pick our cards because when we were at the machine in Seoul Station, trying to figure it out, there were these two German guys who had just taken the subway one last time before headed  to the airport, so they gave us their cards (you have to pay for the card itself, so it was really nice of them but then I was stuck using an ugly card all last time! THESE THINGS MATTER TO ME!). I conned Henry into getting couples cards with me, lol. Poor Chooch got stuck with some ugly yellow card with a weird heart, because it was the only youth option. You can even go to various convenience stores and have even more design options, like Kpop groups or whatever, but I figured it would just be like, BTS and Blackpink so I was fine with the Line Friends choice.

(Even though I REALLY wanted a Kakao one but that machine wasn’t in the station where we got the cards that morning, ugh forever. I focus on these little things!)

OMG it felt so amazing to be inside Seoul’s subway stations again! I swear, you could build an itinerary solely around exploring all of their subway stations, they’re amazing and quirky and you can do a lot of shopping in some of them too! Chooch grabbed breakfast in one of them at some point because he didn’t like the thing Henry chose for him at CU one morning.

My itinerary for the first day changed numerous times. Originally, we were going to go back to Changdeokgung Palace because last year, we didn’t do the optional garden tour. But when we got there at 9am, it said that the tours of the garden were guided, and the earliest one didn’t start until 10:30.

But we stayed long enough for Henry to take a horrible, tilted picture of us.

The next plan was to revisit Bukchon Hanok Village because it was pretty crowded last year and they were doing construction on one of the hanok on  the main, most photographable street. However! On the way there, we ran smack into Onion, a cafe I wanted to try and it was such a good call!

The cafe is built into a hanok, so you get a real traditional Korean vibe being there. And the staff was so nice!

Their bread selection was top tier. I wanted Henry to get one of those giant dusted pencil looking things but Chooch made him get some chocolate thing instead because Chooch does this thing where we all have to share our treats with him but then he doesn’t share his with us so I have no idea how delicious his strawberry thing was but I can guess that it probably landed somewhere on the scale between VERY and MOST AMAZING.

I mostly just got an iced Americano at every cafe because it was hot and humid as fuck everyday and I wasn’t craving all the sugary drinks I had last time around.

I chose to sit outside on one of the pillowed steps and Henry was so annoyed because it was really only meant to be a two-seater so he had to alternate between standing and crouching, hahaha. Chooch already has chocolate on his mouth in this picture because he reached straight for Henry’s chocolate roll thing before even tasting his own selection!

I got this masterful thing that had a large smear of red bean on top of a veritable slab of butter. Holy shit, it was delicious but Henry the trash compactor ended up having to finish it for me, with pleasure I’m sure.

There were two ladies sitting next to us who asked me to  take their picture, and then in return, one of them wanted to take ours too so we had to pretend like we liked each other even though Henry was still griping about where I chose to sit and I was like SORRY THAT I WANTED TO HAVE A MORE TRADITIONAL EXPERIENCE, HANK, WE CAN SIT AT A TABLE AT THE NEXT ONE. God.

Then we burned off all those calories by walking around Bukchon Hanok Village, which we found immediately this time around instead of wandering around a maze of twisted streets and alleys last year like a bunch of asshole tourists looking up at the sky, but that will be a story for another day. Like, tomorrow maybe. Or maybe later today. I’ve been up since 4am so we’ll see where the day takes me.

We made it to Ildong today around 11:00am and took a taxi to Pocheon Art Valley for some super sweltering hot fun times before it was time to check in to Dolce Bita (G-Dragon’s pension), all of which I will post about later because right now I’m sitting in the VIP room of G-Dragon’s pension, eating a strawberry sandwich & drinking banana milk with Running Man on TV – exactly where I belong! Korea is my favorite forever.

Family portrait in the mirror of the VIP room’s foyer!

There’s this guy staying in one of the rooms below ours who was laying out earlier and he was SO NICE LOOKING so I was calling him my boyfriend. Later, Chooch was like OH YOUR BF IS ON THE MOVE! I SAW HIM AND ALL OF HIS MUSCLES WALKING AROUND and he told me to look, so I did and he called me a creep?! HE WAS THE ONE WHO WAS LOOKING!!!

We’re supposed to be “relaxing” today since we’ve been so go-go-go for this entire trip and that seemed like a great idea until I got here, in the Middle Of Nowhere, Korea, and remembered that I do not have the ability to relax, ever.

Oh and for anyone who thinks G-Dragon isn’t popular anymore because of BTS, this joint is all booked up.

I brought a book with me so I guess I could try and be a lazy oaf like Henry and read that for a while but it’s not that great – It’s called Baby Teeth and I didn’t know it at the time I checked it out of the library, but it’s written by some broad who lives in Pittsburgh so its super Pittsburghy right down to some stupid comment about how the main character had travel ALL THE WAY TO THE SOUTH HILLS for a doctors appointment, like go fuck yourself, really. All of the characters are insufferable. It’s about a 7-year-old girl who won’t speak and hates her mom and starts doing terrible things to her when the dad isn’t around, and the dad doesn’t believe the mom, who has Crohn’s and every fucking chapter talks in gory detail about various Crohns-related surgeries she’s had and fistulas and packing wounds and I can’t even feel bad for her because I hate her and I hate the daughter and just wish she would die and the dad is such a fucking Swedish creepball, I hate the whole damn family and want a meteor to hit their stupid Hygge house in Shadyside.

I think that’s Danish.

So, yuppie IKEA house in Shadyside.

Meanwhile, Chooch has read two books since we’ve been here (in Korea) and loved both.

Speaking of Chooch, he was straight stalking a Corgi at Pocheon Art Valley today. First, the dog ran up to him barking but his owners called him back and Chooch was like HE WASNT GOING TO ATTACK ME, CORGIS LOVE ME. So then suddenly the Art Valley was super interesting to him and he was determined to pet the dog, to the point where he google translated “can I pet your dog” in Korean.

Here he is at the bottom of a hill, hot on the corgi’s trail. When I caught up to him, he was searching Instagram for the Corgi because according to him, it looked like the owners were doing a photo shoot with him and, like, “all corgis have an Instagram.”

I pointed out that Spencer, the local Corgi, doesn’t have one so now Chooch is going to suggest to his owner Bob that he start one and let Chooch be Spencer’s social media manager.

Anyway, tomorrow is our last day here and I’m panicking about it. We did so much more this time but it still feels like NOT ENOUGH.

Oh well. I will have a full report on the pension, and the Ildong and Pocheon area once I get home and get my thoughts together, but this place is definitely idyllic, especially if you’re the type of person who enjoys vegging out with beautiful nature and pictures of G-Dragon around you!

Ok, Henry just brought out the soju so maybe relaxation won’t be so hard to achieve after all.

UPDATE: GD’s dad is here!!

He was sitting outside when we went out for a walk and very cordially said hello to us but I did NOT have the nerve to ask for a photo, I’m a failure.

Also, some black dog left his owners who were hanging outside of a neighboring pension and decided to tag along with us and it was super awkward bc we were like “go home doggie” but he opted to go down and chill alone by the lake.

Meanwhile, a group of drunk disorderlies stumbled past us and I was like “oh god please don’t be American, you’re going to make everyone here hate us” but one of them screamed, “WE’RE RUSSIAN” to the dog owner who was walking with us in an attempt to get his dog back and I was like THANK GOD and also once they were close to us it was obviously they were Russian because they all looked like hockey players. I stereotype.

Anyway we walked to this cute cafe for an evening iced latte (me), a strawberry smoothie (Chooch) and a Hoegaarten (Henry the Hoe) and it was one of those times where being able to read Korean cane in handy because the whole menu was in Hanguel. A really sweet young girl waited on us and she seemed happy to help us bumbling foreigners. It’s tough the farther you get outside of Seoul because English is rare but it really says something to be on the other side every now and again. Americans take so much for granted!

Now we’re sitting on our patio, Chooch is in the pool, and we’re listening to the people below us talk while barbecuing and maybe slowing down for a night isn’t so bad after all.