City Rating: Seoul
Population: 9,770,000
Date of visit: June 2019
Attractions & sights: 4/5
Nightlife: 4/5
Safety: 5/5
Infrastructure: 4/5
Low budget factor: 3/5
Total: ๐๐๐/5 * (read below)
The city in a nutshell:
Seoul is one of the largest cities in the world. The mega city is the heart of South Korea and offers the visitor a variety of attractions at fair prices. In addition, Seoul can score with shopping, nightlife and the food scene. Nevertheless, Seoul also has some disadvantages, such as the enormous distances between the sights or the absence of Google Maps. Seoul is a gigantic city that can get exhausting. Nevertheless, as a globetrotter one should certainly have seen this city once.
Seoul is a unique city and not comparable to other Asian mega cities like Tokyo or Beijing. This holds both good and bad…
Where to stay:
The Internet usually recommends the same four districts to travelers: Itaewon, Insadong, Myeongdong or Hongdae.
If the sights are the first choice, then it is worth staying overnight in Insadong. For shopping you should rather choose the Myeongdong quarter. And if you want to stay in the Expat quarter with a lot of nightlife, then in Itaewon. Hongdae is the student quarter and therefore perhaps exciting for younger travelers or K-Pop fans.
Another district that might be interesting for nightlife fans is Gangnam. But that’s a bit away from the other quarters and the sights.
The Good:
In general, Seoul offers basically everything you need for a city trip: sights, good restaurants, shopping, nightlife and a top infrastructure.
In a city the size of Seoul, you have to cluster the sights a little if you want to visit them efficiently. So it makes sense to visit the Bukchon Hanok Village with Gyeongbokgung Palace, the Jogyesa Temple, Insadong and the Changdeokhung Palace in one day in this order. These sights were also my personal highlight in Seoul together with the Lotte World Tower.
The city’s infrastructure is world-class, as Seoul has a highly efficient and also cheap subway. Taxis or Uber are also affordable, but during the day there is probably no time advantage compared to the subway.
Seoul is a good base for day trips. I highly recommend a trip to the Demilitarized Zone, the border to North Korea. In addition, excursions to Seoraksan National Park, Nami Island or to Hwaseong Fortress are other options.
The Bad & The Ugly:
* Although Seoul is objectively a great city, it didn’t excite me as much as I had imagined. That’s why I give it an overall rating of 3/5, although objectively it would certainly be a 4/5.
There are many things that bothered me in the South Korean capital:
First of all, Seoul is terribly smoggy! I’ve seen such a level of smog in China and India, but I didn’t expect it in an industrialized nation such as South Korea. Out of five days I was in Seoul, the sky was only blue once. On the other days the smog prevented a clear view.
Besides, the districts in Seoul are in my opinion not as interesting as in other big Asian cities. In many cases, there is only one main street and some minor side streets worth seeing in them. In any case, it is not a city where you can get lost for hours in the neighborhoods and always discover new things.
Seoul is also exhausting. The distances in the city are huge and it often takes 45-60 minutes to get from one place to another by subway. You are not necessarily faster by car in the congested streets, but you pay twenty times more than by subway.
Google Maps, a quite important app for traveling, doesn’t work in South Korea by the way. This can sometimes cause frustration. Alternatives are CityMapper (okay, but not as good as Google Maps) and Naver Map (not tested).
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