Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

We had a rather slow start to our first full day in Ulsan. I think the days of travel and hours of jet lag finally caught up with Mads and she started the day in rough shape. Luckily a bit of gravol and a nap were enough to cure her and we still got to make the most of the day.

Our first order of business was heading back to nammok where Jacob and I used to live. I was so excited to go back and show the kids all of our favourite spots. Unfortunately for us we may have waited a bit too long to come back as they recently changed all the bus routes and our trusty 401 doesn’t exist anymore. They’ve significantly improved all of the signage, bus stops and amount of English though so it was still relatively easy to get there. There are also smart phones now which definitely doesn’t hurt.

We hopped on the 711 which follows the old 133 route (the fast one!) and pulled into nammok, and the mind games began. Everything is laid out (obviously) how it was before but everything looks slightly different. Jacob and I got turned around when we could t even find “the alley”. This is a street we walked at least once a day for an entire year and we could no longer find it. Probably because this is what it looks like now, compared to 2009:

We found the building where I used to teach, it’s now a billiards hall. The restaurant that fed us 70% of our meals is still there but has changed ownership (or at least as far as we can tell) the market is now covered, there’s not a sock shop to be found (or a stationary store) and there’s a Paris baguette in the middle of our apartment complex.

But a lot is still the same – Tous Les Jours still sits on the corner, we found our favourite bbq place (we will be back to eat), the Chinese restaurant, pizza etang and bingo. The people are also still awesome. We had to go to the washroom when we were at tous les jours – the woman working there gave us a key and through many hand gestures tried to tell us where the bathroom was. We set out and couldn’t find it so she literally ran out of the store, leaving it unattended, to show us where it was. The kimchi croquettes are as good as I remember them too.

We hopped on a bus back to Samson-dong and decided to explore the area where beat bar used to be. It is completely different. There are water features running down the street. Apparently the stationary stores and sock vendors have been replaced with mini claw arcades and photo booths. Neither of which have any staff and are just monitored by cctv. The kids had a blast trying them out. We wrapped the night shooting air soft rifles for $4/35 shots because apparently that’s a thing now too.