An Old Tea House in Insadong

Almost 15 months after stepping foot into South Korea I think I may have found my favorite spot. It is humble and quiet and tucked away down a narrow alleyway off a main street. It is a beautiful traditional Korean tea house.

Now that it is official, I am leaving Korea in less than 2 months, I am trying to squeeze in all the things I want to do before I go. Saturday's itinerary was to spend some more time exploring Insadong. I am hunting for the perfect 'Korea' piece to bring home with me and I thought Insadong would inspire me. After a few hours of walking and browsing and generally enjoying the day we needed a break. Starbucks was a hop, skip and a jump away but I held out and went in search of a tea house. What I found was exactly what I was looking for.

At the very, very end of a quiet little offshoot alley lined with pots and plants, I found Shin Old Tea House. What a gem. As soon as you enter inside, there is an open, light, indoor greenhouse type of room. There is green foliage everywhere, from trees to plants, to roots and stems poking in every direction. With our shoes kicked off here, we were guided by the only ajumma who was working, to a table.

As soon as we walked into the next room where we were seated, the lights were much dimmer, and the ambiance much different. Instead of exuding light and life, it now reeked of history and tradition. All the seats were on the floor, no chairs in sight. Each table had beautifully coloured cushions to sit on. The small, low tables were made in a dark wood matching both the interior and exterior of the building. This style of traditional Korean building is called hanok. The walls were covered in framed art work and traditional tapestries, so everywhere your eye turned, there was something to soak in.

The clientele added so much to the environment too. There was one table with 2 young ladies who had their heads poured over some very important looking work. They rarely spoke and looked so focused on the task at hand. Beside them, a little further away were 2 business men, conducting their business over tea and a laptop computer. A little closer was a table of 4 middle aged women, sipping their tea, and incessantly chattering like teenaged girls. The last table was barely bigger than our tiny 2 person table, but there were up to 8 people huddled around it at one point. One family spanning over 3 generations. Grandmother was there, her kids and their spouses and a small little boy no older than 2. Everyone was there, nestled closely on the floor enjoying their tea. To me, this place was the greatest part of my day, an amazing discovery but to everyone else, it was just an ordinary place, on an ordinary day.

The menu was as simple as the tea house. There were maybe 6 different choices. Green tea, jujube, ginger, and a few others, nothing too fancy. I ordered green tea and Garry ordered ginger. Mine was the better choice because it came with a small one person tea pot, and an even smaller traditional tea glass, and then a thermos full of hot water so I could steep my tea, pour it myself, and refill at my leisure. Garry's ginger tea was tasty, but much less involved than mine- just a mug, the tea and a few floating pine nuts. I recommend the green tea. With the tea came some deok (rice cakes), and another traditional Korean snack.

The whole experience was beautiful. I could've spent the rest of my afternoon in that old tea house and every afternoon there after. As I sit drinking green tea on my apartment floor, I am imagining myself to be back at the old tea house. It really did feel like a part of Korea's history. I only have a short time left in Korea but I will make sure to return to this place. After travelling to all different corners of South Korea, it may very well be my most favorite spot yet.

Here are some pictures to try and do it justice.

At the end of this alley, is the old tea house.

Just outside of the tea house. 

The entrance way.

The front room entrance, before we got seated. 

Our tiny little table inside. 

The 2 girls, heads down, very focused on their work. 

Korean snacks. 

Tea time.

Part of the decor.

More beautiful decorations.

My happy place. 

Happy 2012!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

After another Christmas in South Korea, comes another New Year.  Happy 2012. Like most people on NYE, our plans were back and forth and up in the air until pretty much the day before the big night out. Since most of our old friends are in Osan, we weren't sure who was coming into Seoul, or whether we could even muster up the energy to face the crowds. Our best option was to head to City Hall and watch the ball drop there. Last year I spent New Year's in Hongdae (the centre of Seoul's night life) so I didn't really need to relive that experience. As for spending it in a club or a bar, spending a fortune, and waiting an eternity for drinks and tables and then eventually taxis, neither Garry nor I were that bothered by all the fuss.

Last minute, we ended up joining our Osan friends and taking a big gamble on a jazz bar in Itaewon where no one had even been before. I was a little skeptical but couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised. Garry and I had a quiet drink and a quick bite together at a pub he had been eyeing up that was under construction the last time we passed it in Itaewon. After our meal, we couldn't resist the special, a plate of 7 oysters for 6000won, and when we got it, they were gigantic oysters! Almost too big for my liking, but delicious none the less. Then we were off to the next destination. We met up with everyone else at the perfect table, in the perfect location. My pet peeve with live music venues is they are so loud, and it's not just cause I am in my 30's now. It's always driven me crazy to have to yell at the people you're with to try and have a regular conversation. And I just don't have the lung power to do it and end up horse half way through the night. So anyways, the bar we went to was called All That Jazz. It had tons of space and a second floor where we were seated. Our table looked over the band and all the other tables, with a beautiful bird's eye view. We got the benefit of a great perspective of what was happening in the bar, the perfect decibel of music, and awesome conversations all night around the table.

We managed to avoid almost all of the chaos of a typical New Year's. The subway extended it's hours till 2 am so we could get home no problem, (well, almost no problem), we found a place that could accommodate us all, and everyone was happy with the music. Another big downer on most NYE's is the unavoidable fact you are guaranteed to drop a lot of cash. Yup, we even avoided that. After the boys going in on a bottle of whisky and some decently priced glasses of wine, the balcony started to fill up, and our bill was still low. Somehow, there was only one server covering all the tables and we was pretty run off his feet. We asked for water like 3 times before Garry just popped out to grab a few big bottles from the store. Along with that though I think he managed to grab top ups on everyones booze, and there you have it, Bob's your uncle. We paid convenience store prices for the rest of our drinks that night. And honestly, we weren't even being that sneaky. Korea is so 'laxed about bringing in food and drinks from outside into an establishment, that even if the waiter did notice, he probably wouldn't have cared. So all, in all, it was a successful evening. I am happy Garry and I made it out and celebrated the New Year in Seoul, with soul, and in style.

My camera settings were off and the more drinks I had in me, the less I was paying attention to it. But here is an occasionally blurry selection of what our night shaped up to be.

NYE pub dinner at the Rose & Crown, Itaewon.

Dinner for 2, to start the evening.

Mammoth oysters.

Next stop was....

One of the bands. 

The bird's eye view from our table.

(Sorry about the flash ladies!)

And these last few are a selection from what looks to be a photo shoot on our subway journey home. There were about 30 of these on my camera. Looked like fun!

Cutie photo bomb!

Strike a pose!

And that's a wrap. Happy 2012!

Feel Good Korea

After spending 14 months living in Korea, I have found that recently, and all too often, I am letting the little things get to me. From dodging vomit piles everyday on my way to work, to getting bombarded at a busy subway stop by passengers getting on the train before letting passengers get off,  to the total diregard for line ups in any way, shape or form  (don't even get me started on this one), these small things tend to set me off really easily nowadays. Luckily, as fate would have it, the majority of the time when the things that make my blood boil happen, almost always, something heart warming comes next, just to balance the scales.

This is not my story but I felt I had to blog about it because it encompasses something so very Korean. My boyfriend came home the other day (and for the record he too comes home many a night with tales of woe from his daily Korean adventures), and he was just beaming. He said to me, "Alex. Today was a good Korea day". He was in the area of Gyeongbukgung, Seoul's most historic palace, also an area teeming with tourists. It is in the downtown core and there are many high rise business buildings here. He was lost, completely and utterly lost. Technically he knew where he was, but according to the directions he was following to get somewhere, he was left dazed and confused. After spending quite some time trying to make sense of it all he finally gave up to seek help. (On a side note and in his defense, the directions ended up being utterly useless).

The cloeset thing to him at this point was a tall office building with someone sitting at a large security/reception desk in the main hall. He popped in, with hopes of asking the location of a certain building on his map- just so he could gauge where he was and which way to head. After a bit of sign language and confusion, the woman behind the desk spoke no english and couldn't register anything on his map, she made a phonecall. Within minutes a polite, english speaking Korean business man came off the elevator and offered his services to Garry. Garry felt guilty for disturbing this man but explained to him he was in search of a little jazz bar he read a review on and had printed the directions. He showed the piece of paper hoping to be pointed in the right direction. On a day when the mercury was teetering at way below zero, this young man led Garry outside and walked him the 10 - 15 minutes it took, door to door, to this tiny little jazz bar. Wearing nothing but a suit jacket I might add. Amazing. He interupted his work day to help out some lost waygookin (foreigner), for no other reason than to be helpful.

Even I got all warm and fuzzy inside hearing this story. It sounded like the only thing nicer than his gestures were his words. Garry tried to tell him not to bother walking him all the way there, but this man said Garry was obviously a guest to his country (yeah, a guest of almost a year), so it was his duty to guide his way. Could you imagine this happening in Toronto? Or New York? Nope, never. But in Korea it does.

A nice ending to the story is after saying a heartful thank you and parting ways, Garry was in and out of his final destination in less than 2 minutes flat (We were considering it a potential place to spend NYE with friends but with a quick glance he realized it was too small a venue, and a little fancier than what we were looking for). So he bolted back the way he came and finally tracked this man down and insisted on buying him a quick coffee to say thanks, on his way back to the office building. Surprised by Garry's comeback, and after some convincing, the man agreed. They had a few more minutes of pleasant back and forth banter. Kicker? After Garry ordered the two coffees to takeway, he had to fight this man to pay for them, again the Korean business man was saying Garry was a guest in his country, and it should be his treat. How beautiful.

Honestly, this happens everytime. I will curse Korea when I am treated poorly or I witness some other small injustice and then by day's end, a random act of kindness sets me straight, and I fall back in love with my home away from home. And to be honest, back home in Canada, I am sure these small injustices are a dime a dozen (maybe just of a different nature), but for some reason I am quicker to judge here. Korea, like every other country in this world, is not perfect. It is very different from where I come from and with the those differences come things I don't always like or accept. So when those bad things strike I must constantly remind myself that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

My 2nd Christmas in Korea

MERRY CHRISTMAS!          매리크리스마스! 

I cannot believe this is already the second Christmas I have celebrated in Korea. Time sure flies when you're having fun. Without sounding too horribly cheesy, there was a world of difference between this Christmas and the last one, and it mostly boils down to one thing (and by thing, I mean person). Garry (insert ooohs & awwws here). Last Christmas I had just arrived in Korea and had just started making friends. I had a great group of people to spend Christmas Eve with, I just didn't know them very well at the time. And Christmas day was spent skiing, mostly just trying to forget that I was missing my friends and family at home a lot. Christmas with my family is a really fun time of year, and being the spoiled baby of the family, I missed all the craziness and excitement and hubbub of Christmas day.

Fast forward to Christmas 2011. Garry and I kept ourselves so busy all weekend, so even though I was still missing family and friends, we had a really great time together. Friday evening we had tickets to go see a theatre production called Legend of the Flower. It was playing at the Walkerhill Theatre, inside the Sheraton/Westin hotel complex in Seoul. I had never been to this area, and wow, it was classy. The hotel complex was massive. It had a skating rink, casino, restaurants, bars, duty free shopping mall and obviously the theatre, amongst other things. It was so impressive. The production itself was nothing to write home about. Nice costumes, lots of dancing, but it was all sprinkled with a healthy dose of tackiness in my opinion. None the less, it was a good excuse to dress up and be out for the night. We stopped in the bar at the Westin for a drink before we left and oh my word!!! There was not a drink on the menu for under 30,000 won! High end was an understatement.

The rest of the weekend pretty much revolved around food and over indulgence in general. I woke up on Saturday morning to Garry cooking up a version of his Dad's Christmas breakfast. It was a yummy fry up with eggs and toast and sautéed  onions, tomatoes and mushrooms. Yum yum pop! Garry also added a really nice touch of super cheesiness with heart shaped eggs and toast :)

Heart! Heart! Heart!

With full stomachs we slowly made our way out of the apartment to complete the only major task of the day, a trip to Noryangjin Fish Market.We had a seafood meal planned for dinner and wanted nothing but the freshest catch of the day so we headed to Seoul's major market. After walking around and a little bit of bargaining we finally decided on what we wanted. We left with a small plate of fresh sashimi (which Garry polished off as soon as we got home), 2 hearty sized lobsters, and a bag full of jumbo shrimps.

Noryangjin Fish Market, Seoul.

Our sashimi getting chopped up.

Stall, after stall, after stall of seafood.

The rest of the afternoon was spent preparing food. The menu consisted of a green salad with homemade candied pecans, red onions and pomegranate, shrimps wrapped in bacon, veggies and giant lobsters. The funniest part of the preparation process was when we took the lobster out just before they plunged to their death, we checked out what was printed on the thick elastics keeping their claws together. Guess what was written? IMPORTED FROM CANADA. We got a good chuckle out of that one, massive FAIL. Oh well, we got a taste of home on the holidays without even intending to.

Making strawberry cheesecake.

Dinner is in the works.

Bacon wrapped jumbo shrimps.

"IMPORTED FROM CANADA"

Mmmmmm!

Garry downloaded some application for his computer, which was a fireplace burning, crackling sounds and all  (check it out here- Fire HD for Macs) . We had it on almost all weekend and I think it may be my new favorite thing. I love sitting by a real fireplace and just having the crackling noise and flickering lights gave a new mood to the apartment. After a few glasses of wine while cooking I took a compulsory quick nap by the fire before dinner. We didn't end up eating till almost 9:00, but it was just the 2 of us and we weren't on any time schedule so it suited us just fine.

Compulsory Christmas Eve nap by the fire.

Home Sweet Home.

Dinner was amazing. Garry and I make a really good team in the kitchen. We pick up where the other one leaves off and considering our kitchen is about the size of a postage stamp, we did well. Garry boiled the lobsters in a mirepoix (made of sauteed veggies, spices, wine and water ) as opposed to just plain water and it gives the lobster so much more flavour. With the leftover shells he even made a lobster soup for us later in the evening. I caught me a good one (boyfriend, not lobster).

Christmas Eve spread.

Bon Apetit!

Dessert was not as epic as dinner was, sorry Garry (and Ann & Lindsay if you get around to reading this). His parents sent us some Scottish Christmas pudding and custard and um, yeah. The custard wasn't really sweet, I think maybe Garry messed up on making it and the actual cake part was fruity Christmas cake, not my cuppa tea. I missed all my mom's Christmas cookies and cakes. A lot.

Scottish Christmas pudding.

My first cheesecake, the final product.

On the dessert front we spent part of the afternoon making dessert for Christmas day and that was a huge success. I love cooking but I am not really into making desserts, so this was a first. We made a strawberry cheesecake that looked gorgeous and ended up thankfully tasting even better.

Night caps.

So we ended up finishing off Christmas Eve curled up with Bailey's watching The Christmas Story.

Everything was just right.

CHRISTMAS DAY

We were up so late on Christmas Eve that I actually slept in on Christmas Day. I NEVER SLEEP IN ON CHRISTMAS DAY (refer to early sentence about being the spoiled baby of the family). But it was late morning by the time I rolled out of bed. My Mom's brunch on Christmas morning at home is amazing. I did my very best to recreate bits and pieces of it and it turned out really well. I made my Mom's brie souffle with blueberry sauce for the first time and it didn't match hers but I loved it (and ate leftovers of it all week). We had some leftover shrimps and a lobster tail, fresh bread, fruits,  eggs and champagne. Spoiled to perfection.

The Christmas Day breakfast spread.

Lobster tail leftovers.

After breakfast we opened presents from each other and a bunch sent from home. My Mom, as always went out of her way to make me happy on Christmas. We had a small Ferrero Rocher Christmas tree and our whole countertop was littered with goodies.

We were invited to have Christmas dinner with Natalia and Denis, our Russian friends down in Osan (who are immigrating to CANADA!), a welcome relief from cooking all weekend. Natalia is a fantastic cook so we knew we'd be in for a treat. We arrived at their place just after 5 and shortly after sat down to a huge feast. Natalia cooked a duck and an Uzbekistan pork and rice pilaf for dinner and then a huge assortment of side dishes. There were eggplants stuffed with mince meat and veggies, tuna and cheese wraps, egg salad tarts, mushrooms prepared a la Russsian way, and some other delicious crab rolls. Seriously, it was out of this world.  So. Much. Food. All of this with intermittent shots of vodka, beer for the boys and wine for the girls. What a feast. And then there was dessert. I was so full, but I can pretty much always make a little room for dessert. My cheesecake made its debut and I am so proud to say it tasted amazing!

Natalia, duck and I.

Some of the side dishes.

Egg salad tarts
(even the pastry shell was homemade).

Part of the Christmas Day spread.

Cooked Duck.

Natalia and my Godson, Anthony.

Natalia and Denis are a wonderful couple, we don't see them very often but when we do it's always a good time. I couldn't think of a nicer way to spend a Christmas away from home.

Happy Holidays!