At the start of February, my employer informed me that they were all going away so my schedule had been changed. I saw that I now had the second week off and, considering I don’t get any holiday days for the year, I figured I had to take the opportunity while it was here. Yes, planning a holiday in under a week isn’t ideal, especially when I decided I was going to do our first trip outside of the UK and Japan since before covid. On top of that, I decided to make it a country that speaks a totally different language, one I didn’t speak. It was also a place I’d never been to before, so to say I’d given myself a bit of a challenge was kind of an understatement. But I love to push myself, so I didn’t think twice about all that stuff, I booked our hotel, planned what we wanted to do whilst we were over there and then set to work figuring out where I could eat (because that’s always the trouble now, finding dairy and soy free foods that aren’t meat).
From the title, you can see that the place we chose to go was Seoul in South Korea. I have been wanting to go to South Korea since I was about 12 years old. The day I fell in love with the korean idol HyunA. Therefore, one of the first things to go on my to do list whilst in Seoul, was to go find the 4minute bear on k-star road. (We made it by the way, I will put the photo of me with said bear down below.) Gwanghwamun Square, the temple and palace, Myeong Dong night market, the Byeolmadang library in the COEX Mall, the war memorial and museum as well as shopping in Gangnam, were also among the list of places we wanted to go. Adding in a few little cafes and eateries here and there, and some viewpoints and park time, and basically that was our itinerary complete!
Less than a week later we were at Narita airport. I was still doing some last minute food googling on my phone, and Sammy was looking up cafes. We were working like a well-oiled machine up until boarding, then it was all in the hands of our planning. Upon arrival we had no cases to wait for as we traveled hand-luggage only with our new suitcases that we’d bought for the trip (another huge research rabbit hole I fell into in the run up to this holiday. If anyone ever needs to know whats the best hand-luggage suitcase to invest in, I’m your man). Then, we picked up our pocket WiFi (which ended up being much cheaper than sim cards given there was two of us) and headed for the train into the city. I had booked a hotel that was really conveniently located, so we could get from the airport, to the hotel, drop off our bags and get back out into Seoul, before the sun set. I wasn’t going to waste our first day. Basically, that day was just spent wandering through streets though, did some skincare and makeup shopping and we went out for food. The restaurant we were going to go to closed early though, as amongst all my research, I had neglected to google the national holidays in South Korea and we had ended up landing the day that Korean New Year started. This was both a blessing and a curse. When we made it to the palace entry was free for the Lunar New Year, and there was a parade of the guards and things going on. On top of that, many people had dressed up in Hanbok (traditional Korean attire) and there were market stalls and things happening for the festival. With regards to cafes and food though, 90% of what we had planned ended up being closed. Many places didn’t update their websites or social media or google to reflect this closure, so a lot of our time in Seoul was spent trekking to eateries and finding out they were shut for the New Year. Fortunately, this gave us a lot of opportunity to see different parts of the city though, and it made the food and cafes we did go to feel extra decadent, because we were tired and/or hungry when we arrived at them. I took pictures of some of the food and I will put them below, however it is to be noted that, of course everything was vegan and therefore dairy free, but if anyone else cannot eat soy, the donuts photographed ended up containing soy in the end.
Now I’ve come to it I’ll tell you the full story. We tried going to this vegan donut shop every day that we were in Seoul, but only on the last day, when we were least expecting it, was it open. The worker there was so unbelievably kind and the donuts were absolutely fabulous. Watching them be iced and glazed was so satisfying and the drinks we enjoyed in the meantime were equally as beautiful as they were tasty. I would like to recommend going for a non-sweet drink though, if you order a box of donuts because, if you dont, you will have a sugar rush as we did ha. I also felt unbelievably sick, but I was putting that down to the sweet drink-donut combo for the first ten minutes. Then, I started to heat up and I knew something wasn’t right. We had gone to teh donut place for breakfast, so it was still before check-out and luckily it was close to the hotel. We rushed back and I almost immediately started throwing up (luckily I made it to the bathroom.) I didn’t stop for the next few hours. At this point, Sammy had gone to ask for a late checkout (luckily at this hotel that meant we had until midday) and I was starting to worry about getting on a plane. I couldn’t move, writhing in agony with cold feverish sweats next to the toilet. I started to cry. We had eaten the seasonal strawberries and almond cream donut. It was one of the greatest things I had ever had, and I knew it was poison for my body. The donut batter must have contained soy without the woman knowing (as she was the decorator, her boss was the baker, I later found out) and now I was paying the price. There were still five more gorgeous looking donuts staring at me from the box and I was so heartbroken as I told Sammy he would have to enjoy them all to himself. I cried until it was time to leave, luckily my vomiting had stopped around 11.45 and the nauseous/dizzy feeling started to pass. My skin was still red and flushed, and I felt weak from the lack of food and now dehydration, but all I could do was gently sip water and hope for the best. I made it back to Tokyo in one piece, without bringing up my travel pills nor any more of the water I drank that day.
SIDENOTE: This was 1000% my fault, not the worker/businesses. She did tell me she wasn’t completely sure if the donuts had soy in, she thought they didn’t, but she didn’t want me to risk it. It was my responsibility to decline tasting them at all without confirmation, something I usually do and will always do from now on, but the donuts looked so good and it said almond milk not soy and a lot of things had been closed so it felt kind of like fate this place was open… but yeah… next time I will not be so stupid. If you can eat soy though and you find yourself in Seoul, highly HIGHLY recommend this business, even despite what happened to me. Yeah, definitely, definitely all my fault.
I’m writing all this up months after our trip and I cannot find the spreadsheet that I made with my research on, so that’s all I can really say about our trip to South Korea. I will put the photos down below of some of the things we got up to. We hope you like them! I will be posting quite a bit in the upcoming weeks, as I’m trying to get caught up with all the holidays we’ve had in 2024 so far. So, please keep your eyes peeled for them and, if you haven’t already, please bookmark my new URL! I changed the name of the site to reflect myself more. My friends now call me Ayjay most of the time, so it feels more friendly to allow you guys to associate that name with me too. Hope you like it and speak soon!
