Monday, February 19, 2018

Pyeongchang? Pyeongnot!

So for Korean Lunar New Year this past Thursday though Sunday (Year of the Dog!) I went up to Seoul.  My plan was to travel to the Pyeongchang Olympics for two days, Friday and Saturday, then come home Sunday.

Well, I bought my event tickets in advance (a hockey game and aerial skiing, which were on the cheaper end of the price spectrum) with no problems.  But I waited on booking train or bus tickets.

Huge, awful mistake.

There was very little available to get me to Pyeongchang in the early afternoon (which, on a good day, is a three hour car-ride from Seoul).  Forget about getting there in the morning, i.e., on time for my tickets.  And there was literally nothing guaranteed to get me back from Pyeongchang.

So at best I could take a standing-only train ticket or a bus ticket, miss my event anyways, then worry about whether or not I could get back to Seoul.

Of course, I should have just coughed up the money for a hotel room in Pyeongchang itself but I didn't think it would be such a saga getting to and from Seoul.  And I figured spending a little time in the city I used to live in might be worth it as well.

Alas, I hanged out in Itaewon eating lots of non-Korean food and reading and taking the Seoul subway I used to ride nearly every day when I first came here.

I was truly disappointed at first, but then decided to just roll with it.  At night I went to shitty foreigner bars and watched the Olympics on TV.

I won the gold medal for rolling with it.  And I admit, I miss Seoul sometimes, especially when it comes to food options.

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