Unlike my earlier trip to Hong Kong where I did a little reading on the country, I visited Seoul with zero expectations of it, except for my already-booked tour to the DMZ.
Besides the confusing names, arriving in about an hour late at around 6:45pm, it was dark, and after a flight where I barely got sleep, it felt like it was 11pm.
Even after the US, I was unused to it getting dark at 5pm and my body instinctively wound down early for the day. I found myself wanting dinner earlier, wanting to sleep earlier and surprised, very surprised to have eaten, cleaned up and ready for bed at…. what’s the time now? 7:30pm?????
After dragging our already overweight luggage into the Ibis Myeongdong, thankfully only 20 steps from the Airport Limo bus stop, we walked out the hotel onto Myeongdong-gil (pronounced “kil” and means “road”) lined with brightly lit shops on both sides and equally brightly lit stalls in the middle of the road. It was bustling with activity.
But I was hungry and though I had my crash course on shopping in the US, I was in no mood to look at anything. We stepped off the main road into a darker, smaller lane with small eating shops. Everything to me was foreign. Even the photos of food looked foreign.
Then there was fried chicken. Apparently, Koreans love fried chicken – although I did not see a KFC anywhere.
With that, we had some seafood omelette, but I think all it had were puny pieces of oysters and mostly spring onions. It was like Or Luak only less oily and less starchy and with a lot more spring onions.
Later in the night, I discovered the Doughnut Plant was right outside the hotel. It was too good to be true.
When I visited New York four years ago, I stayed with friends who lived right next to the original Doughnut Plant. Every morning, I would buy a doughnut from the fat and rude guy manning the store before setting out to walk the whole of New York. Each night, on return, I’d watch as the dough was made for the next day. But not for long. I didn’t really feel safe.
What an overpriced doughnut – it was something like S$4 for a doughnut. And it was a massive disappointment eating one.
The doughnut was cakey rather than chewy as the original I remember. Worse still, it was badly strained, so oil soaked in to the bottom 10mm of the doughnut.
Didn’t matter that the doughnut came with napkin AND wet wipe.
It was to be my last Doughnut Plant doughnut in Korea.