COVID travel
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A Private Tour Of Changdeokgung Palace and VIP Dining
When we arrived for our tour of the Changdeokgung Palace’s Secret Garden, we were welcomed by this sign: We had booked our tickets in advance after reading that it can be very difficult to get a tour, especially if you want the English-language version. Well, just prior to Seoul’s COVID shutdown our tour looked like this: Don’t get us wrong – we do not wish a COVID outbreak on any country for any reason. However, in the ‘making lemonade out of lemons’ category, the current situation here has meant that anything open is also empty. If we can see it outdoors in relative safety, we’re going while we can. For…
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What’s happening with COVID-19 in South Korea? Buckle up if you really want to know.
We pause our fun travel stories for a moment to let you know about COVID concerns here. When we arrived in South Korea (ROK) on July 31, the count of new COVID cases for the day was 36. On August 14, our first day out of quarantine, that number was 103. On August 27, it was 441, the highest total since the pandemic spiked here in March. Cases have spread to all 17 regions of the ROK rather than being localized to one area, which was the case with previous outbreaks. Despite this all starting as we finished quarantine, we’re pretty sure we didn’t cause the new outbreak, but here…
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For better AND for worse: What’s the price of peace in Ihwa Mural Village?
One of my favorite sites in Seoul is Ihwa Mural Village. This neighborhood of tiny steep streets adjacent to Naksan Park is decorated with lots of amusing and imaginative street art. Add to that the area’s 180 degree views of the city, and you have a tourist attraction that I will run to see. With Seoul being entirely devoid of short-term visitors, we had the place basically to ourselves. We wound our way up the tiny streets and took our time posing for silly photos. In 2010 a Korean reality-TV show was filmed in the village and created the “wings mural.” It and subsequent versions of it have attracted many…
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Seoul from the middle ages to the space age
On August 15, Gwanghwamun Square was the site of a political rally estimated to have included 20,000 participants or more. Discussing all the politics connected to that event would take a separate post, so suffice it to say it was a very controversial gathering, particularly in the context of coronavirus concerns. Any gathering of over 100 people currently is banned in Seoul and the surrounding areas, so the city seems to have been very unhappy about the rally. By Monday – August 17 – Gwanghwamun was back to being deserted, and all we saw were some of the remnants of Saturday’s political action. We walked through the (extremely large) square…
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Where in the World is Yongsan-gu?
South Korea, you say? Quarantine for two weeks, you say? In a very small apartment, you say? We say – why not? We have felt really lucky that were are able to quarantine in our Airbnb apartment. It was a little tricky getting all our luggage up the narrow stairs when we arrived from the airport, but we’re happy for the view of the street that a small second-floor patio has given us. Plus, there have been flooding monsoon rains falling basically since we arrived, so at least we have no flood concerns on the second floor! We have a living area, two small bedrooms, and a galley kitchen that…
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Amazing! Two Phones in One!
It’s a T-Mobile phone with a U.S. phone number! It’s a KT phone with a Korean phone number! Stop! You’re both right! It’s two, two, two phones in one! We knew that when we landed in Seoul we needed cell phones with a data plan that worked in Korea, so we could install the required COVID monitoring app at the airport. Luckily we already had T-Mobile (Magenta plan), which by default includes unlimited data (2G) and texting in most international countries including South Korea. Calls are $0.25/min, but there are easy ways for us to avoid this charge (see below). It was quite nice to turn the phone on once…
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Quarantine: It’s day 8 of 15, but who’s counting?
It never occurred to me to start a blog at any other point my life. A few weeks ago, I joked with some colleagues in Philadelphia that I had no hobbies I could do while sitting still. That’s true at least if you don’t count reading, and even I, a voracious reader, was not excited about the prospect of sitting and reading for 2 full weeks of self-isolation. I know to some that might sound like the best thing ever, but the thought of that much stillness honestly sent me into a panic! Knowing that I would need to quarantine when we arrived in Seoul gave me a strong desire…
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Adventure #2: How we traveled 6,700 miles for COVID tests (Part 2)
Part 1 of this post described our unsuccessful attempt to get tested for COVID-19 before leaving Philadelphia. What we found in Seoul is a completely different response system and a different set of priorities for managing the pandemic crisis. Here is the rest of our testing story, preceded by some background information I had fun researching. According to Business Insider, in early March the U.S. “had done fewer COVID-19 tests per capita than many other countries with large coronavirus outbreaks.” Conversely, by February 28, just a few weeks after identifying the first case of COVID-19 in South Korea, that country was able to conduct up to 15,000 tests per day.…
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Adventure #2: How we traveled 6,700 miles for COVID tests (Part 1)
When we entered this year, heading to Seoul in the midst of a global pandemic was not on our list of things to do. Multiple times over the past several months, Peter and I looked at each other and said, “we’re crazy, right?” And we probably are. However, it’s not necessarily because we chose to live in South Korea during these COVID times. According to Worldometer, as of August 3, the United States is reporting 4,813,647 total cases of the novel coronavirus, about 26% of the cases in the world. By contrast, South Korea on this date is reporting 14,389 confirmed cases, about .0008% of cases worldwide. This despite the…
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Adventure #1: Arriving at Incheon Airport
After preparing for months for this move, it was surreal to be in the airport and ready to go! It was undeniably strange to travel through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International airport, where the international departures board was almost empty, and most businesses in the terminal were closed. Stranger yet was traveling with fewer than 100 people on the plane to Seoul (Incheon Airport). We could each have had multiple rows to ourselves on the 15-hour flight, although thanks to the adrenaline rush of traveling we basically didn’t sleep anyway! When we landed in Incheon after an uneventful flight, we were ready to face the hurdles of COVID screening awaiting international visitors…
