As you guys know on my channel, I'm usually more centered around like helpful videos, how to,
how to eat alone in Korea, how to travel throughout Korea, what I would pack, all that good stuff,
but today I just want to sit down and talk with you guys.
This is gonna obviously, probably be two parts
because there's a lot of wonderful things about Korea that I adore,
but there's some stuff that I just I don't get it...
I don't get it, all right. I don't understand.
Please, in the comment section, let me know what you guys think
and make sure you watch until the very end because I know a lot of these have not been stated in other videos
Let's get into it~
I think Korea does fall and spring so well!
It is literally stunning~
but what I don't like:
I have lived in a lot of places where I've said the weather's kind of bipolar.
I've been like, "Man it's so bipolar up in here... It goes from so hot to so cold-"
Korea wins.
It is so Katy Perry up in Korea, all right.
Korea goes like extreme hot and extreme cold
and the in between seasons go like that *snap*
Another thing I don't like:
You're dressing to survive in the summer. It is so freaking hot,
but then you get into a cafe,
and they have the AC at like the arctic.
"Do I need to bring my winter jacket to go to a cafe in the summer?"
Basically.
Every country, their water quality, what's in the water, like, what minerals are in the water it's going to be different.
When you get overseas to many foreign countries,
the water quality is different from what your body is used to
so it will break out, it might have a reaction...
A lot of people experience hair loss in Korea.
This is a quick tip, because you know I gotta throw in a quick tip,
If you are in Korea make sure that you buy a shower filter
you can buy them from Daiso, they're super cheap like $5,
(If you guys didn't see the vlog where I was struggling)
it's just it's another thing that I'm constantly worried about.
I'm constantly worried that my hair is gonna fall out (even more than it already does...)
So the whole water thing, shower thing,
I don't like it.
One of my favorite parts about Korea is their cafe culture.
I love that they go all out for these cafes!
The insides, aesthetics, when you actually get your food, very aesthetically pleasing
Cute; love it~
What I don't like is the coffee.
We either have two options:
we have pure coffee, on the rocks,
or we have a latte that is like 95% milk with a dash of coffee.
Why can't we have like a middle ground?
Milk isn't gonna keep me awake. I'm tired, I need to wake up...
When you live in Korea you'll come to realize:
Americanos are the cheapest, so if you want to go experience a cafe, or you want to cafe hop around,
a lot of people buy americanos because it is the cheapest drink.
I really want to be caffeinated, but I can't sip on pure like bitter coffee.
Can we even call it "cafe culture" anymore?
I feel like it's just "cow culture" because it's straight milk.
This might be like one of my top three things I dislike the most about Korea:
Why you gotta make it all sweet?
My Korean friend came up to me and was like, "Oh you're American so you really like sweet!"
and I'm like, "Oh? Yeah, I mean I like sweet, yeah."
When I'm in the mood for something sweet, I will buy said sweet thing.
But this is where it bothers me
My grilled cheese should not be sweet.
My bagel sandwich with bacon, cheese, and egg should not be sweet.
My garlic bread
should not be sweet.
but they put sugar in everything.
When I go to the convenience store and I pick up the bag of salty popcorn,
why does it have a sweet aftertaste!?
and the reason why it's like that is because Korean palettes, they like sweet
so you won't find a ton of dishes and be like, "Ooh that's really good and salty"
Let's keep moving along cause I think I could talk about the sweetness thing for a really long time.
The next thing is something that I kind of like love/hate.
People dress a lot nicer. There's just like an extreme obsession with what you look like.
Something that I don't like about this is then I am way more self-conscious about what I look like,
which means that like if I'm going out I can't really have those days where I want to just be lazy
and put on leggings and put on a hat and not care about what I look like.
And I will say that this is way more emphasized in Seoul.
Thankfully, with masks, it does help because you don't have to put on like the full face of makeup
but there's this like underlying feeling inside of you
that you shouldn't be leaving your house unless you look put together.
People are already staring at you when you go to Korea as a foreigner,
so you feel like you're even on display even more,
but I just want to have my lazy days. You know what I'm saying?
I just want to be lazy sometimes...
It's a love/hate though because I love it when guys dress well
and they look, like, put together and they have their hair done and just genuinely care about hygiene
and then in America we have like the (re)laxed gym wear
and you go to Walmart and you see someone in their pjs...
So it's a love/hate. I love that people try in Korea, but on my lazy days I just want to be lazy
and I just feel like I can't be and I usually end up staying inside
and I stay in my apartment on those days because I just don't want to be seen in public.
Which really sucks...
Korean food in Korea - so cheap, so inexpensive,
but on the flip side of it, if you want anything other than Korean,
you have to pay a lot of money
if you want to get like a burrito - that thing can cost like 20,000원
Beef? Super, super expensive.
Fruit? In Korea I'm paying like two to four dollars per avocado,
whereas like in America for four bucks I can get a bag of avocados.
But I get it, you're gonna have to raise the price on those things
because they're not as common in Korea,
but sometimes I want to splurge and just have foreign food
and every time I do that, my bank account's crying...
but when you're in Korea and you really want it...
you do what you got to do, you know what I'm saying?
Something that is a bit frustrating:
they make it impossible to do so many things unless you have an ARC.
An ARC is an Alien Registration Card.
You can only obtain an ARC if you are on a long-term visa.
You can't even get the card quickly when you enter Korea, you have to wait a while.
If you're going to Korea on a long-term visa and you're quarantining in an airbnb,
the only way that you're going to be able to get food delivered to you
is if you have a friend that's willing to let you...
let them-
wait...
If you have a friend who already has an ARC, or someone that is Korean, they let you use their account.
If you're coming as a tourist there is no way for you to get an ARC
which means you can't use food delivery apps, you can't use Coupang and like order online,
as of right now because it's sickness times,
you can't get the COOV app which verifies that you are vaccinated
so that you can just go out and scan your QR code to check-in,
instead you have to get this piece of paper.
So it's just very frustrating that everything is connected to this ARC card
and only food delivery app that works without an ARC is the app I'll link down below called "Shuttle".
So you'll need to use that,
but Shuttle is a bit newer and it's only in select areas that you can use Shuttle.
So it's just very frustrating that you need this ARC and there's so much that you can't do without it.
Make sure you check out the video that I made about how to eat by yourself,
but the reason I had to make that video is because:
Couples culture.
Couples culture is so intense,
so many restaurants - their menu will be like altered to couples rather than single individual portions.
So I don't like the couples culture in the sense that I look funny to be alone.
Sometimes, sadly, people don't choose to be alone and that's when my heart breaks,
and that's when you need to find ways to make friends,
but when you just want to be alone: I want to go out to the movies by myself,
or I want to go out to eat by myself, or I want to go to a cafe by myself,
when you see everybody in couples
you start to feel weird for being single and suddenly you want a boyfriend and you don't even know why.
It's because everywhere you look, everybody is dating,
and if they're not dating it looks like they're probably on the way home to their husband or wife,
and it feels like the pressure to be in a relationship is so high in Korea.
And then last but not least, and this is by far the thing I dislike most of all,
people are always telling me,
"Go down into the subway, go shopping down there, Korea has such great clothes!"
Yes - there are a lot of really cute clothes.
I'm going to H&M all the time, but I'm going to H&M and I'm not going to the subway - why?
Free size.
Free size is literally a like "free size fits all"
It's saying that all Korean women are supposed to fit into these clothing pieces,
that are quite literally a small - extra small (US size 0-2).
And the reason why this upsets me so much
is I had numerous Korean friends that would barely eat anything when we would go out to eat,
and that was just like normal.
I had a friend that would say, "Oh this is my one meal of the day,"
because to be tiny, to be so skinny, is the norm.
And it shows in their clothing.
The fact that everybody is supposed to fit into these tiny shirts, tiny shorts,
It really breaks my heart because it's like,
it's okay for you to be NOT a size zero.
There are women who wish they could gain weight
and usually koreans have quite fast metabolisms, from what I could see,
so they are able to eat a lot or they tend to be very small,
but for the friends who maybe don't have the very fast metabolisms,
they feel so fat. They're not fat at all but they feel so fat
and they will verbally tell you, "Oh my gosh, I feel so fat/I feel so disgusting..."
and I look at them and they're like a third of the size of me,
so then I'm like, "If you're fat then i'm a hippopotamus."
Korea cares so much about the outside, your appearance, what you look like,
what you wear, how small you are,
the obsession is so strong that if you live in Korea for any period of time,
that obsession will bleed-off onto you, it will sink into your paranoia
and you'll start to be obsessed with parts of your body that you never even realized were there until you came to Korea.
And so that's something that breaks my heart is just the obsession with the outer part of you
but again, like I said before, I love living in Korea,
and whenever I make the video of things I love (about Korea) I will link that here!
Bye~