Korea - The 'great' walk to Myeongdong

This post is a continuation of an earlier post Asiana: World's 5-star Airline...

Stephen Wright once said, “Anywhere is walking distance, if you’ve got the time”. Well guess what? I totally agree with this American stand-up comedian. Because that was exactly what I had on my mind when I did this...

I walked. With Kenji and Hazuki. In the rain. To Myeongdong.


The story goes like this:

Kenji, Hazuki and I arrived in Incheon after a good two-hour flight from Nagoya. The weather in Incheon was mild and air was oddly foggy then. At the airport, we were picked up by some local people Kenji knew from work, and then we were brought to Central Seoul where 'our' apartment was. After checking in, we were left on our own. And so with all the time to ourselves, that night, I ‘dragged’ Kenji and Hazuki on my first ever attempt to reach Myeongdong.

It was raining heavily with lightning and thunderstorms when we set out, still we went to the shopping district by foot. Crazy I know. But what was crazier was that we weren’t prepared with many things including a map, some Korean language and even umbrella, and so getting to Myeongdong that night was quite a gamble I must say.

Myeongdong, if you don’t know it yet, is a shopping district that features not only mid to high priced retail stores but also brand-name clothing outlets and world class shopping malls you are most likely not to miss if you are there. It is also said that Myeongdong consists of cafes, restaurants and cineplexes – features which have made the district even more appealing to the general public than it ever did apparently.

By definition, Myeongdong sounds like one exciting place to many I’m sure. But unfortunately it was not quite appealing to me somehow. Not very sure why though but I guess it’s probably because I live and grow up in a city with similar attributes as that in Myeongdong all my life and so am perhaps not too easily fascinated by places like that anymore I guess.

Having said that however, I didn’t and still don’t know why I was very keen on checking Myeongdong out when I was in Seoul. I suppose, it must have been for a couple of reasons, which I don’t remember what they are exactly by now. But one reason that I could think of however is the description of Myeongdong on travel books (how ironic I know), which had perhaps reminded me very much of Nanjing Lu and Huaihai Lu in Shanghai that I felt it was a must to go and see the place.

So on my first day in Seoul, I went to check out Myeongdong with my husband and 6 month old daughter by foot despite the rain. We started out our journey at Jung-gu, where ‘our’ apartment was, but stopped at a nearby bus stop a few minutes after that as rainfall got heavier and I thought we probably needed shelter temporarily. But very soon after that though we moved to a building with a convenience store on its first floor as Kenji had very much wanted to buy us an umbrella there.

Yeah, it was very sweet of Kenji I know, but only after buying the umbrella we found out that it wasn’t big enough to fit us three, and so I ended up walking in the rain pretty much after that. How unfortunate! But I didn’t really care though, not sheltered from the rain was just some trivial umbrella issues not worthy of arguing I know and so we kept walking and saw many things/shops we could have missed if we had gone by other means. So it was good that we had chosen to walk, really.

Walking with the loved ones on a cold winter evening was certainly fun. But as we walked, we came across plenty of buildings and places that seemed to have little to do with the purpose of our journey, for example hospitals, museums, and convenience stores. So I got a little anxious and thought of getting to Myeongdong via the subway instead. We went past several subway stations along our way and I’d wanted to check them out each time we came across a station, but I didn’t somehow (probably because Kenji didn’t want to) and so we carried on walking.

As we walked further, we saw more and more eateries lining some well lit major roads and shops of only low to medium wealth in clusters. I was actually expecting to see a district that looked something like Orchard Road back home in Singapore; a district filled with department stores and high-rise shopping malls, busy roads, brand name fashion outlets, a fast paced society and an expensive shopping, in fact just the way Myeongdong had been described on travel books the entire time. But we didn’t see them all unfortunately.

So, considering the description of Myeongdong on travel books, plus the distance we’ve walked that evening, we thought we knew we weren’t getting anywhere close to Myeongdong at all.

As a result, Kenji and I decided it was probably time we should head back to our accommodation. But right after that however rain started pouring. For a while we wondered what to do but we knew we didn’t have much choice but to go back. And so Kenji, Hazuki and I made the rounds, figured out just about any how to get back and finally returned to the apartment, drenched and very cold.

At the apartment however, I remember Kenji getting me a cup of cappuccino from The Coffee Bean downstairs (the apartment we were staying at has got my favourite cafe attached to its lobby) – woohoo! Later on, with the cup of cappuccino in hand, I hung out for a bit in the lounge and then got myself changed before going off to bed. And just like that however I ended my very first day of travels in the capital city of Korea.

That night though I know I may have failed reaching Myeongdong but I was happy nevertheless cos’ despite the rain and all, I still went ahead with my plans and saw some other parts of Seoul I probably wouldn’t have if I had chosen to stay in or gone to Myeongdong via the subway! :D



Above is a picture of a map, extracted off Lonely Planet’s Seoul City Guide (probably the only map I came across that is in English language and that is the closest to what I could illustrate here for better understanding of my story).

The bottom white area of the picture is added and drawn by me to show readers of the complete route we had taken in our walk that night.

*Route is marked by a red line, whereas the black mark at the bottom of the pic (that looked like an arrow/a house) was where our accommodation was. Grey coloured lines were sprayed to create a continuation of the major roads*

Click on the map, and you will get a larger view of it. You will also probably get to see that Myeongdong (not on map but located far east) wasn’t even anywhere close to where we were staying ;p

So my conclusion of this is that it may seem as though we had walked very far but actually,

we hadn’t even walked enough!!

~ to be continued...


Map Reference:

Robinson M. & Zahorchak J. (2009) Strolling Around Deoksugung, Seoul City Guide, Lonely Planet, Lonely Planet Publications, Singapore, pp. 46.

Bibliography:

Robinson, M., Bartlett, R., Whyte, R. (2007). Lonely Planet: Korea. 7th ed. Singapore: Lonely Planet Publications. 79-138.

Robinson M. & Zahorchak J. (2009). Lonely Planet: Seoul City Guide. 6th ed. Singapore: Lonely Planet Publication. 85.

Seoul Metropolitan Government (2008). Seoul's best 100. Seoul: Tourism Promotion Division. 22-23.