Good evening Singapore and welcome to episode number 14 of Sleepless in Singapore. Today is Sunday the 21st of April 2024. And coincidentally this is also exactly to the day seven years after we left for our big trip, Philipp and I. It was April the 21st of 2017 when we boarded the bus and went to Mannheim. And I guess you know the story, because I told you about it a couple episodes ago. Seven years ago today, still some of it feels like yesterday.

Then again, while we're at the topic, it also turns out that I'm forgetting a lot of interesting things and that I'm sometimes getting things wrong. And that usually comes clear pretty quickly after recording or after publishing the podcast episode, because then I talked to Philipp or then I talked to someone else who was involved. And they tell me, oh, yeah, also, do you remember this and that? And I'm like, yes, of course, I remember. I can't believe I forgot that for the podcast. That was like the best moment. That was so much fun. That was, I don't know, so impressive. How could I forget? But sadly, that's how at least my brain works. Not very well, apparently, forgetting a lot. And so for me, that is even more reason to record this podcast and try to conserve these memories for when I'm even older and even more forgetful.

Anyway, so today I am going to take you from Mongolia to that next spot I did not want to talk about, or the spot I did not want to give away last time. And I think we'll keep it there for this episode, and then in the next episode we'll be moving on to Southeast Asia and what happened there. So please make yourself comfortable, lie down, get in a relaxing position, and let my voice be your guide to a restful night.

Now, I'm sure you remember how complicated I told you it was to acquire a Chinese visa because of some Silk Road quarrels that were going on back in 2017 and how I almost got into trouble for using my phone at the Chinese embassy in Ulaanbaatar. And I think I also already told you that in the end Philipp and I were not able to obtain our visa to be allowed to immigrate to China. And that made us very sad because the whole almost purpose of the trip, almost purpose of the trip or maybe not the purpose of the trip but a big goal of the trip was to make it from our little hometown close to manheim germany all the way to beijing china without using anything else but trains. Specifically without using planes because you know the plane part is the easy part. You can board a plane in Frankfurt and be in Beijing I think 11 hours later. Everyone can do that. So we wanted to go all the way to Beijing by public transport, by trains, buses, and so on. And we couldn't do that anymore. And for a second, we thought like, oh no, our plan failed. And then we realized it's not about getting to Beijing. Like I said, you can do that in a plane. It's about the journey. It's about being together. It's about experiencing everything.

So we sat down, Philipp and I, and we were thinking what to do. And like I said before, we also didn't have a limitless budget. So part of thinking what to do meant we were just sitting there using Google Flights or Skyscanner or whatever we used back then. China was out of the question. Anywhere westwards would kind of defy our idea of going from the west to the east. And so I think there were a couple of options, but one option was Korea. And Korea, which now I think is very stupid, but back then Korea was a country we didn't know anything about. And you know, here in Singapore and also here in 2024, I feel there is a lot of Korean influence. Of course, there are tons of Korean restaurants, there is K-pop and K-drama and and I there's a lot Korean that I never noticed it is and back then seven years ago in Germany never having been or actually never having lived in Asia before, you don't hear a lot about Korea. You know there are some Korean car brands, but I even had a hard time to list them back then. And there's usually, in every bigger city city there's one Korean restaurant which is totally not like a Korean restaurant in Singapore or anywhere in Asia. Maybe it is now, back then it wasn't. And then of course you do know as a German, you do know about there is a North Korea and there is a South Korea and one is democracy and the other one is not. But I think that's pretty much it. That sums it up. That was my knowledge about Korea back in 2017.

And so when we were sitting there, Philipp and I, going through the flights and trying to figure out what to do, we were looking at our future route and we had a piece of Japan in there. I think after China. I think our initial plan... I'd have to get out that old Excel sheet with our planning for the first 90 days or so we almost had a day by day plan not booked everything but almost day by day we had planned out where we wanted to be and that failed in Mongolia with not being able to go to China and so we were looking at that plan and I believe in China, we wanted to see Beijing and Shanghai and Xi'an and Hong Kong, we wanted to go to Hong Kong. And I think after Hong Kong, we had planned Japan. And so when we were doing our research, we thought Korea probably is a reasonable place to go. It wasn't on our list before. Today I cannot tell you how we could have skipped Korea in our planning. But back then it wasn't in the initial list. And only in Korea we put it on the list and we decided to skip all of China and go to Korea by plane. That was the only option. And then from Korea take a ferry to Japan.

So one of these days, I think, must have been some time end of May, we boarded a train in Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar. I forgot what airline, I only remember that that was the day that at the airport kind of out of the blue I started collecting playing cards you know how people always bring home stuff from traveling like little souvenirs and, I don't know, random posters and all that. All these things you have at home then and you never used. I decided the thing I'm going to have at home and never use from the bigger cities or from the more interesting places will be decks of playing cards. And I kind of started that there in Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar at the airport because I found this very nice looking deck of playing cards. I still have it here right now. It's got like these Mongolian horse riders and warriors as the drawings on the cards and it's got a golden package and also a golden like the rims of the cards they were golden which looked cool but was pretty uncool when I opened the pack because the gold was all sticking to my fingers and it was just a big mess, so I put it back in there and ever since it's been in there. Sitting next to now at least 50 other decks of cards I collected over the last couple of years.

Okay, you probably don't want to hear about the cards but about Korea. So we board the plane to Korea and we land in Korea at Incheon Airport and we get out of the plane and both of us, Philipp and I, are immediately impressed. It's an amazing airport. It's clean. It's efficient. Immigration was pretty much no wait time. The airport is all green. I think one of the first things we saw, we got out of the plane and there's this big green wall made from leaves or moss or I don't know, something pretty green, natural. And it says, welcome to Incheon. And for whatever reason in our heads, Korea was not on top of the list of modern countries. And then when we arrived there, we immediately knew this is how we imagined Tokyo or other big cities that we think we knew well would be.

So we're at the airport and we go there, we get cash and another thing I remember in Korea for the very first time, I saw an ATM that is not built by whatever the company is that builds all the ATMs in Europe or the US or anywhere except for Korea and Japan. They have very different ATMs there. They look very different. The usage is very different. They work flawlessly. Everything is great. It's just, I don't know why I remember that. I think it was the very first time that I saw that the whole international technology is somewhat different from Korean and then later on also Japanese technology. engines where the Koreans don't use Google but Naver that goes for navigation. Korea Google Maps kind of doesn't really work you gotta use Kakao Maps or Naver Maps. They have their own messenger nobody's using WhatsApp everyone is using Kakao in Korea or Line in Japan. And it goes on like that. It's a very independent, like technologically independent country. And I've never really seen that before. All I ever knew was Europe and Northern America, and we pretty much all used the same stuff. So we were very impressed by that and then we moved to the city center.

Actually we picked a little hostel in Hongdae in Seoul and we took a train, airport train, which was very fast and very convenient. And we arrived there at our hostel. And we looked around the city and again we realized just how modern that is. And then I think you know us by now. The first thing we did is we went out again after checking into the hostel. We went out again and we were trying to look for food. And I do not remember the exact order of events here but I do know we had a nice Vietnamese Pho and then we went to some Korean place, not a barbecue, a Korean restaurant and they had spicy octopus in a red sauce which now I believe is some kind of gochujang or maybe not, who knows. It was a red sauce and it was octopus and Philipp and I shared the dish and Philipp ate a little more than I did, but we both could not stand the heat. It was the spiciest thing I ever had in my life until then. Every single bite hurt. But also back then being good backpackers we didn't just want to come to a country, order a dish, have one bite and then return it. We were trying to eat as much as we can. Like I said, Philipp was a little tougher. He ate a little bit more. But we were both crying. Believe me, it burned more than once.

Then in Seoul we did some sightseeing. One day we signed up for a border tour because we couldn't figure out if you can do that by yourself or how to do it by ourselves. So we signed up for, you know, one of these tours and i don't want to say we got scammed but we kind of hated it it was super interesting we got picked up we took a bus with a lot of other people and we went to the border to the dmc like the demilitarized zone between South Korea and North Korea. And that was interesting-ish. We could look over to North Korea, which back then was something very special because North Korea was that country everyone was like and then we went to some museum where I feel we got a lot of propaganda like honestly I it's hard to say which parts of what we saw there were actually true and which ones were not. But the whole way it was designed, especially being German, knowing German museums and knowing how Germans handle history and trying to be very calm and objective. I don't know. We went to that museum at the South Korean border part in the DMZ. And the videos they showed us, they just looked like propaganda videos. And the tunnels they showed us, they said there were so many tunnels, the North Koreans already had a duck to come over to South Korea, to attack South Korea. We were in one of these tunnels, and then the guide was all like, oh yeah, this is the tunnel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then in the end I was reading up on it, and it wasn't the tunnel, it wasn't even a tunnel, it was just a little hole in the ground, tunnel it was just a little hole in the ground and they just built it for museum purposes but anyway it was a so far a good day and we saw a lot very different culture and then why initially I said I don't know if it was a scam or not, on the way back, we actually had to leave quickly. I was standing there taking a picture and the guide was already, come quick, quick, come, everyone is waiting, blah, blah, blah. We have to rush because we have to get back. So I'm like, okay, I guess I won't take a lot of pictures and I went to the bus and then the bus didn't take us back the bus took us to some ginseng museum that was not part of the official agenda and the ginseng museum was boring as hell and even worse it was the museum shop was bigger than the whole museum. So we had to be there. And they were trying very hard to push ginseng stuff on us because it's good for health and for manhood and I don't know what. So lesson learned. Be careful with the tours you book. We would have loved to spend a little more than the short time at the border. And we hated having to spend a lot of time at this ginseng museum, which was really a lot of time. Philipp and I and two or three other people, they were really annoyed by this, so we ended up just going out.

But we had to wait a long time for the whole rest. And then in the evening of that day, we met some people from couchsurfing and we were meandering through the little roads of Hongdae. There's like a big food market and everything is super bustling, very very different from anywhere we have been so far. I mean, obviously, Europe is Europe, like we know it. And then Russia and Mongolia are both gigantic countries with not that many people living there. And then you come to the center of Seoul and there are so many people and everything is flashy and there are so many neon signs it's you're being catapulted in a completely different world I think it was also for the first time where we couldn't read anything, because, well, me in Korea, of course, most of the written stuff is Korean, and Korean characters back then looked very, very different and very strange to me.

But we had a great time. We were going to some heavy metal bar, some Korean heavy metal bar, and we had some drinks, and it was super cool. I really enjoyed it. And the next day, with a little hangover, Philipp wanted to hike, because he read about hiking being the national sport of the Koreans. And he did some research and he found this little mountain or big hill right outside of Seoul. So we took a bus, which again was interesting because even the buses there work very differently you enter in the back you leave in the front and you pay when you leave and not when you enter and it just was like a whole new and different experience for us again. And then we went for that hike all the way up the mountains and we had a look over Seoul. And there were these big border walls, not to North Korea, just walls to defend the city that seemed to be still half intact and half used. There were quite a lot of military stations. Yeah, we took quite nice pictures there and we had a good day. And in the evening, back in our hostel, we met Frederik.

So Frederik, very special person. We had like a dorm room. There were, I think, six beds. And when we arrived, it was only Philipp and I. But when we came back that day, there was a new guy just checking in, big guy. And he was just sorting his passports. And when I say sorting his passports, that is exactly what he did he had a like a little folder and he had like four or five different passports in there and i thought like huh that is very shady and of course i asked him because i'm a i want to know i'm a very curious person and turns out he's German of course and he initially did not want to talk about his passport so I'll also keep that for later but we got to talk a bit and he seemed like a fun guy so we asked him if he wants to go out with us and he had the most interesting stories to tell so apparently frederick back then was working for something called obc an onboard courier which i had never heard of before but he's one of the people or he was one of the people back then who as a logistics company who has to deliver something very urgently can call and then he will say yes or no. And then he will go somewhere and pick up something. know and then he will go somewhere and pick up something usually it's some some machine parts or something other important and he's picking that up and he's going to be at the airport like an hour later or two hours later however fast it is possible boarding the next plane that it's available the logistics company is paying him well to do that and of course is also paying the plane or the tickets or of course the client is paying for the tickets but he told us like they just need it as fast as possible if, for example, in that case in Seoul, there's a machine or a factory using German robots and there is a part that is spoiled and the whole factory is standing still the loss is in the thousands or many many thousands every hour so it really doesn't matter how much it costs to get the part there so they just buy him a business or first class ticket whatever is available on the next flight, whatever it costs. And he's going there with usually the same clothes he's wearing because there is literally no time to prepare. And then he's going to that country, he's delivering that part or that document or whatever is so important. And then he's flying back and that was Frederick and that's what he was doing in Seoul that night so he told us that story and we already thought that's like super cool he literally came from Germany from Frankfurt to Seoul with nothing he didn't have a change of clothes he didn't have anything but like his little folder with his many passports and a toothbrush and that's pretty much it.

So we took him out and we went to a Korean barbecue. And I think that was the very first time I had a proper Korean barbecue with the barbecue in the center of the table. And I know to you people in singapore that might sound very boring because you've had korean barbecue a million times but back then it was the first time for me and i was super excited the meat was extremely well prepared and high quality. You know Korean beef is different from Western beef. It's more like what you might know from Japanese beef. It's more marbled, the fat is more inside instead of one piece outside. Yeah you can tell I'm getting hungry by just looking at these pictures.

So we had this barbecue with Frederick and eventually after a couple of soju shots, which also we had for the very first time that night in Korea, he Korea. He lifted the mystery of the many passports. So it turns out his dad is a diplomat. I don't want to give away all the details because I don't know if he wants that or not. But basically his dad is a diplomat and he's born in one country. His dad is from another country, his mom is yet from another country. And so he ended up with a passport, a German diplomat's passport, because I guess until a certain age you still get a diplomat's passport if your parents are diplomats, a German regular passport and a US passport and I think a French passport. I think those are the four. And that was also one of the reasons why he is such a popular onboard career for the companies because with these four very powerful passports and a diplomat's passport there are very few countries where he cannot go and also he can always go very quickly because you see that at most airports there is like a separate lane for diplomats where there is never a queue or anything. So that was very beneficial for his side job back then.

Anyway, amazing guy, Frederick. If you're listening, hi, Frederick. We had very great times together and we've met a couple of times after and I'm 100% sure we will meet again someday somewhere. It was one of those nights where you meet someone and you know, oh yeah, this is going to be a a longer term friendship. Then what else did we do in Korea? In Seoul we went for a lot more food. I can see here breakfasts, I can see here burgers. I remember going to that little burger bar where after our trip, when I came back to Korea, I went a couple more times. What was that burger bar called? Give me one second. That was the Brooklyn Pig Burger Cafe. It was a Korean guy who lived in the US for a long time. In Brooklyn, apparently. And then he brought his burger recipes to Seoul. And it was a great burger. It was a very crazy guy. burger. He was a very crazy guy. And then sadly after Covid, when the first time I went back to Seoul, the place was gone. Something else there, I don't even know what. But sadly he is gone. But yeah, we had a good time with a burger and we had a good time in the evenings. And I remember we did all the local stuff. We went to Corner Pub and Mike's Cabin and Zen Bar and all these student places that there are in Hongdae. And honestly, I don't really remember if we got, except for the hiking and the day tour, if we got out of Hongdae a lot. I think one day we definitely tried to saw the palace. One day we definitely tried to see the palace. But other than that, we spent a lot of time there.

And then I'm mixing up a lot of Seoul stuff because I've been to Seoul so many times. In the beginning when I didn't want to give away what the next surprise destination was and when I said that kind of changed my life a little it's true Korea never was on my radar but then both Philipp and I, we really liked Korea a lot. We liked everything on our trip so far. Moscow was great and Mongolia was great. But Korea just was not on our radar at all. And then we went there and we were so amazed by how modern it is and how easy everything is working and how amazing the food is and so it turns out that i came back to korea many many times i'm sure more than 10 times ever since in the last seven years and i made friends there and i went for trips and I was bringing my friends. Actually, Korea was the very first destination after the big trip ended, after our world trip with Philipp ended. Korea was the first place I went back to with Christian, my best friend, because I really wanted to show him how it is.

And yeah, because of that, because of these many many Korea trips, I might be mixing up some memories. But what is definitely a fact is that after Seoul we took a train, like some high speed train to Busan. And Busan was just as amazing as Seoul. We had so much seafood there and we went to these little markets and I'm looking at the pictures again right now. Again, we had such a good time there. It was, there was the Sandcastle Festival or I don't know what it's called but there were these like really big sand castles and also all kinds of other 3D images. Like people just build out of sand. I don't know how you call that, like sculptures or... Anyway, there was that down at the beach and that was very pretty.

And then we went for, again with some couchsurfing people, we went down to the harbor and we had a seafood barbecue and we were grilling oysters and clams. And also something I will never forget it was the first time I had live octopus. Live baby octopus and of course for all you PETA, PETA, I don't know I did not eat live animals if you kill the octopus to eat it like everyone is doing with the octopus before they eat it the nerve endings are still functioning it's basically just electricity so when you put something acidic, like the soy sauce and the vinegar, whatever they put on there, they start to move again a little. It's not alive, it's cut up in small pieces, it cannot be alive. It's just moving and the little suckers, how do you call that? These little things that octopuses use to suck themselves against the surfaces. They still work. So you eat them and not only is it moving in your mouth, but they are also sucking to the inside of your cheeks. And not only does it taste very good, it feels very good. It's very weird in the beginning, but I really like it. I haven't done it a ton of times. I did it that night for the first time. We filmed it and we washed it down with soju and it was like a whole event. It was very entertaining for us. And then I had it maybe two or three more times. But I did enjoy it a lot.

Also that night or that afternoon was the first time I was using Instagram. I know that because I can see that in my picture library which I'm going through right now. It was the first time not using Instagram. I have used Instagram before and I've posted pictures before but back then Instagram stories were relatively new and on our trip it was the first time I tried Instagram stories and I also remember that because I had a short discussion with Philipp about using it or not. And back then, I decided I want to give it a try, so I started using it. And today I'm very happy, because from now on, it's a little bit easier for me to put things into perspective and to have a little bit of a, well, a story to remember and to talk about. Finally, one of my very first Instagram stories was about why Fanta both in Korea but also in the US tastes so much better than in Germany. It's sweeter, it's more orange, it's more chemical and somehow it's just better than this like light orange weird Fanta they have in Europe or in Germany.

Okay, so we had a very good time in Busan too. We went to nice restaurants, hostels, or at one nice hostel. And then, finally, and that was on the last day of May, May 31 even more amazing, at least in a different way, very amazing and very impressive as well. And that part I will probably tell you next time. I will probably tell you next time.