We took the train down to Busan this afternoon and spent the rainy evening indoors at Spa Land, which is the biggest Korean spa in all of Korea. My only experience with a Korean spa before this was at Spa Castle in Queens when my Korean-obsessed friend wanted us to check it out. Korean spas are unique to other spas in that in the bath area, everyone strips down nude and doesn’t wear even bathing suits. This makes a lot of Westerners uneasy, so many don’t try these when visiting Korea. This spa has multiple baths at different temperatures, as well as a variety of different saunas at different temperatures, gaming room, individual treatment rooms, a cafe, and restaurant. It’s all paid for via a little “key” scanner that is attached to a bracelet you wear while going through.

The one treatment I was interested in getting was the full body scrub — someone of your same sex will bring you into a room and hand scrub you down with exfoliator pads for a time ranging from ten to forty minutes. In previous reviews, I’ve read that it’s like getting a full layer or two of skin removed from your body; this is how obsessed Koreans are with cleanliness. So why not try it out while I am here?

The experience was one of the strangest ones I’ve had. After indicating that I wanted the 20-minute full body scrub with facial mask treatment, I was guided into a room (by a middle-aged Korean woman wearing only a lacy black bra and underwear) with what looked like six beds wrapped in plastic, making them waterproof. On beds were fully naked women of all sizes, lying on their backs or stomachs getting scrubbed. The naked women lying on their backs had dark green and cucumber mixed masks on their faces, and buckets and buckets of warm water were being thrown on them everywhere. The entire room was wet, wet, wet! It really looked like an autopsy room at a hospital, yet instead of corpses lying on the stretchers, these were all breathing women hoping to be scrubbed squeaky clean and treated to a bath done by someone other than themselves and their mothers. It seemed almost machine like, the work these “ajummas” as they call them were doing.

The ajumma working on me had a gentle touch on my face as she gently massaged my pressure points and spread the cucumber mask all over my face. But, when it came to scrubbing, she was not gentle at all. She scrubbed everything, everywhere — all over my breasts and chest, my legs, my butt, the heels of my foot, and — wow — even around my crotch and between my butt cheeks. This is one of those “only in Korea” experiences because I’m not sure what other country would provide a bath for you like this. Even when I did a Turkish bath and pretty much got body slammed on the waterproof bed I was on — the guy cleaning me did not get anywhere near my crotch. At the end of my 20 minutes, she held my hand and led me off the bed, and she lightly bowed her head and said thank you in Korean. I responded and said thank you to her, too, and bowed my head… and I suddenly realized this was the only time in my entire life I’d ever thanked anyone in person while completely naked.

Afterwards, I relaxed in one of the hot baths surrounded by many other Korean women, all either socializing with friends or on their own, probably after work, hoping to unwind from a long day at the office. I thought about how strange it would be to be naked in a hot bath with my female colleagues back at home if this were part of our culture. I could never imagine that happening, ever.

Then, I rejoined Chris in the meeting room to prepare for the saunas, which are for both sexes. He appeared relaxed and clean and had a stunned look on his face. “I don’t think I’ve ever been bathed by anyone since I was a child — and that was by my dad! He even scrubbed around my penis!”

On our first full day in Seoul, we walked over 44,000 steps and saw a huge chunk of the sights on the travel list I made for us, including the Seoul City Gate, where we expended a lot of energy and a great number of those steps, and where Chris drenched his entire shirt in sweat.

Everywhere we went, we were running into Tous Les Jours and Paris Baguette bakeries, both Korean chains that are found in New York City (Paris Baguette has expanded so much to the point where it has at least four locations just in Manhattan now). We popped into one or two of them just to see if they were any different from the ones back home, and they were pretty much the same — except the prices were about 1/4 or 1/5 of what we are expected to pay in New York. I was surprised to see the pastries priced at 1,000 won (that’s less than $1 USD); it was like being in a Chinese bakery in Manhattan Chinatown. While in New York, we may think of these pastries as “fancy,” here, they are just everyday pastries for everyday people, and people aren’t paying an arm and a leg for their sweet potato bun or their milk bread.

I considered buying a milk bread loaf and bringing it back to the U.S. just to be able to bring back the same product for cheaper. Chris says he won’t allow it. Oh well.

After waiting in the longest immigration line I’ve ever had to queue up in entering another country, we took the airport express into Seoul, dropped our bags off at our hotel, and set out to enjoy our first evening in Korea.

“What do you want to eat tonight — barbecue or fried chicken?” Chris asked.

Fried chicken. Yum.

We went to Han Chu, supposedly one of the best Korean fried chicken restaurants in the city, which is in the Garou-sil area (“tree-lined street) south of the river. There was English on the menu, but I wasn’t sure whether to get the “fried” chicken or the “seasoned” chicken. Fearing the chicken labeled only “fried” wouldn’t be seasoned that well, I got us the seasoned chicken and a bottle of soju. The soju bottle, enough for the both of us, only cost 5,000 won. No wonder Korea has a crazy drinking culture; the alcohol is so cheap!

When the chicken came to the table, it was piping hot and obviously freshly fried. It was coated in a dark, sticky, and thick red sauce topped with white sesame seeds. The batter was thicker than the Korean fried chicken I’d had back in New York, and the batter was seasoned more heavily, as well, with a darker brown color as opposed to the golden color I was so used to seeing.

I was curious about the fried chicken styles and found out after some quick research that there’s no real “Korean fried chicken style” — different places have different recipes and thickness of the batter. Some are heavier the way Southern fried chicken back home is (especially the ones being sold by street vendors I’ve seen in Myeongdong), while others are lighter like the Bonchon and Unidentified Flying Chicken Korean chicken I’d had in New York. The Bonchon or Kyochon style Korean fried chicken is the type that’s made it to the U.S. But this made me realize that what I consider to be Korean fried chicken isn’t the same fried chicken that Koreans in Korea consider their own fried chicken — these are the things you learn when you travel.

At a team lunch this week, I told my team mates that Chris and I would be leaving for South Korea late next week, and they all seemed to have this semi-puzzled look on their face, and they asked, “What are you going to be doing there?”

The funny thing about this question is that this never gets asked if you are going to some place like France, Italy, London, L.A., or some place that Westerners consider a hot spot. Even last year when we went to Japan, no one asked me what I’d be doing there; it was just assumed that I’d have an amazing time given Japan’s global reputation.

Why are we going to Korea? Because we like Korean food, want to explore Korean culture, and simply because we just like exploring new cities and countries around the world. I told my friend about my thoughts around this, and he said he got a similar reaction when he told friends and colleagues he was going to India the two times he went. He said everyone just assumed it was for work because why else would he want to visit a country like India?

Maybe I really am a culture snob, but I really just don’t like questions like that when they are aimed at certain places in the world.

I’ve spent the last 24 hours here in Fort Lauderdale for an all-day client meeting that happened today. Truthfully and as spoiled as this sounds, I rarely look forward to my work trips down to Fort Lauderdale because they are always for meetings that I know will rarely have concrete next steps. They are those froufrou meetings that end up being more about “putting a face to a name” and have nothing actionable that comes out of them. However, there are three things I like about these trips: 1) waking up for the sunrise on the east coast, since Fort Lauderdale is on the east side of Florida, 2) getting my trusty Publix sub sandwich at some point during my Florida stay, and 3) getting more American Airlines miles…. Mmmm, miles.

This afternoon during our Uber ride from the client’s office to Publix and finally to the airport, my colleague said to me, “I feel bad saying this… and this may just be me, but does everything in Florida really just look the same?” I’ve only been down here to see Fort Lauderdale and Tampa for work, plus Orlando for fun about six years ago…. but I realized… what she is saying is partially true. Florida feels like a lot of white people, boats, beaches, strip malls, and way too many chain restaurants and stores. Is it just us?

Then, I sat on a plane in first class with a Republican who is originally from Boston but relocated to Fort Lauderdale with his wife and is now raising three children, and he actually said this to me himself. “Everything here looks the same. If you want your children to have culture and be aware of the world, make sure you travel if you live here and don’t just have them stay here. They will be so sheltered and world-stupid.” Hmmmmm.

I’m back on a plane today headed down to Fort Lauderdale for a client meeting, and I was lucky enough to get upgraded again on both legs to first class. As I sat down in my aisle seat on my first leg, the man sitting next to me in the window seat takes out a bunch of antibacterial wipes and begins wiping down the arm rests, the fold out cup holders, and tables. Then, he neatly wraps the wipes into a tiny little square and sets it on his arm rest. Just a little bit of a germaphobe, hm? When he got his two bags of apple chips during snack service, he ate each bag and folded both bags into the teeniest, tiniest little squares. It was like he was doing origami with them.

In three of the last four flights I’ve been on, I’ve sat next to a drunkard or soda addict. During my leg from JFK to DFW en route to Salt Lake City in first class, the man sitting next to me drank at least seven diet Cokes during a 4.5-hour-long flight (I really don’t think they’d give you that many sodas in economy). After the fourth one, he kept insisting each time that “this will really be the last one!” to the flight attendant, who simply smiled and said, “No problem!” each time. Another man showed his enjoyment of whiskey cokes by ordering four in a short flight. And today during a two-hour-long flight from Charlotte to Fort Lauderdale, the woman next to me drank four vodka sodas. They either use alcohol to cope with flying, or they are just drunkards.

What are the strange things I do on flights? I always wrap my leg up in blankets, even if I am wearing pants. Chris thinks this is really weird. I just always like to be warmer, especially when most airplanes will blast the air. If I am on a flight where I know I am getting back to my destination late, I will take my face wash, floss, and toothbrush and toothpaste into the airplane bathroom and wash my face, floss, and brush my teeth. Or if I have lounge access when Chris is with me, I will take care of all those things there before boarding the flight. This way when I get home, I can just drop all my stuff (well, more realistically, empty out all my bags because I am anal like that), sleep, and not worry about cleaning myself up for bed.

When we first talked about this Utah trip, we knew that we were coming here mainly to see the national parks and enjoy nature. Food would not be a priority at all, much to my great disappointment. After doing some cursory research on foods that Utah is known for, particularly around the southern portion of the state where we’d spend the majority of our time, we decided that this would probably be the only trip we will have ever taken where we weren’t going to get excited about the food at all.

I looked up Utah’s “famous foods,” and these were some of the items that came up on the list: “funeral potatoes,” or creamy potato, canned soup, cheese, and crushed corn flake casserole, which Mormon wives typically serve during post-funeral grieving (yum!), Jell-O, particularly the green colored kind (what the hell kind of state gets excited about eating Jell-O, especially the GREEN COLORED ONE?!), pastrami burgers (Chris’s response: “I can sh*t out better food than that”), and “Utah scones,” which are not your typical British scones… they are simply huge fried pieces of dough covered in honey and sugar. This list was enough to make me decide that we were pretty much going to eat cheap fast food and eat just to live, not eat to enjoy.

Our first meal in Kanab where we’d be spending two nights, we ate at the worst “Mexican” restaurant I’d ever been to. We had generic enchiladas and a burrito that had no flavor; in fact, they both tasted pretty much the same – bland, boring, and probably mostly of canned and non-fresh ingredients. The wait staff moved at the rate of snails, and their enthusiasm was nonexistent. The only redeeming quality was that the food came out extremely hot. That’s a sad redeeming quality.

For dinner our first night after hiking Zion the first day, we ate… McDonald’s. Chris had chicken McNuggets while I had my guilty pleasure sausage egg McMuffin with a hash brown (one interesting tidbit is that in the evenings, McDonald’s, at least at this location, makes all the breakfast items to order. I actually had to wait about 15 minutes for my sausage egg McMuffin and my hash brown, which has never, ever happened before). At Bryce, we had a decent turkey burger and salmon burger at their lodge. The place was reasonably priced and of decent quality. I’m sure the patties were pre-formed, but it’s not like we were expecting gourmet food. That evening, we had generic pizza from a random spot a block away from our hotel. It was sausage and mushroom, so it couldn’t have been that bad – at least there were no surprises. Finally, our last full day, we ate at a reasonable Mexican spot in Springdale just outside of Zion and had dinner at the Copper Onion, an up and coming restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City. The Copper Onion meal was the most notable, with house-made tortellini and fettuccine and a wagyu beef bone marrow. One funny thing was that the menu noted every item that used Maldon salt, the famous and high quality British salt I often read about. Maldon salt came with the bone marrow, which was a pretty and tasty touch, but there was no jam or gelee to cut the richness of the marrow, which was a bit of a fail. The food at both places was not the best and was pretty good, but we’ve certainly had better quality food in many other cities. We ended the trip with a last lunch at In’N’Out – probably our favorite meal of the entire trip. Too bad there wasn’t an In’N’Out in the town of Kanab.