Korea VLOG: Exploring Seoul, Seeing North Korea, Local Bites, 7-Eleven, & bein' silly

0:09 Going to Seattle before so long. There's my mom. Going to try and sleep a little bit more on this flight to see. All right. I'm working on my video and my mom made a contraption so she doesn't have to hold her phone. She asked the flight attendant. It feels like I'm all alone. Just got off that big bad boy. How we feeling? I hear it beep. 12 hour

0:56 flight. Not that bad. Went by faster than I expected. Sitting in the seat next to me. Didn't bother if I poked her or nothing. I didn't like it. And now we're driving to our airport. First meal. I know. They're all cold noodles. Huh. All right. Going here for dinner. I mean, not dinner. Dessert. Delirious. Dinner was interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I'm just not used to cold noodles. I wanted the authentic thing. And so, for that reason, I'm glad we got it. I just I eat a lot of ramen, so I'm used to hot, but it was it was tasty. It was dessert time, though. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see.

1:50 Good morning from soul. So, this was my first stop in Asia. I was there for about 2 weeks. And when I fly somewhere with such a radically different time zone, I usually end up taking advantage of jet lag to get some work done in those early A.M. hours before coffee shops open. This keeps happening to me. First, it was San Francisco and then Lisbon. First thing in the morning getting our blood flowing. You just can't tell on camera. You really can't. First stop of the day. Okay. So many people told me to come to 7-Eleven here because there's a lot of fun stuff. Dumplings to go. We

2:38 should get these tonight. Oh, I heard my mom say she found chocolate marshmallow. I picked this one up to get Oreo marshmallow. That's Hershey's. We're not getting that. I know. I like it cuz it's in a little tin. Also getting the milk bread cuz I got that recommended a lot. What do you have there? You're still carrying that thing for containers. There's so many fun things. Yes, especially when you don't know what you're buying. Yeah. Okay. This is one of the things that I was the most excited to do. Everyone told me to go to a 7-Eleven. And I've seen on the interwebs. You make your cup of ice, then choose your coffee bag. I'm probably like, I'm going to get this iced black coffee. Not that I know what these others are. This one says ice black coffee. Pour it in there. And that's our coffee for the morning. I'm excited and I'm getting marshmallows. All right, we are unpackaging the goods. So, we looked around for like a little

3:24 table to sit. There's nowhere. So, hopefully we don't get trouble. First and foremost, take off lips. I'm doing mine first and then my mom got a ball cuz she said it's fun. So, we can have ice ball bites later. I got the original iced black coffee. Yum. My mom to get try something different got the hazelnut. I was hoping you would do the honors with me. Perfect for Unbelievable. Gosh, I might even want a little milk in that based off the looks of it. Tastes like cold brew. It's really good. It's good. Yep. Hazelnut. Shake it first. It's like a shake weight. Oh, it smells really good.

4:12 Oh, that's I got the perfect amount, too. Can I go first? Yes. Sweet. But it is good. Well, that's good. Yumo. Next. I don't really know what these are, but I like apple. And they feel like they're gummies. A They're cute. They're very good. They're kind of wet on the inside. They explode a little bit, and they taste just like apple. We got the Oreo marshmallow. What I'm personally the most excited about. Wo. It's pretty good. Not as good as I expected. I thought it was just going to be like a regular marshmallow that I'm used to. Has kind of a different taste. And finally, the milk bread. Smells good. I feel like I know exactly what this is going to taste

4:57 like. You know what I mean? You can kind of tell. Oh, that's paper that you're definitely not supposed to eat. I ate so much paper. What an idiot. Well, that's the end of our home. Yeah. Catch you soon. Crazy. All right, mother. What do you think of the village? It's really nice. It's super cool. Yeah, we were just in that perfume store and they were so so sweet. I was filming and they said I could.

5:48 It's very very pretty and great weather too. We came to this observation deck area where we could see the village from a nice vantage point up there. Got a nice cup of hot tea. And what did it all come out to $4 each? Things here are way cheaper than I thought. I like it. Taking a swing. Uhhuh.

6:44 I also feel like I fit in pretty well with these guys. They're kind of like a cross between Squidward and I don't know, The Night Before Christmas and Bug's Life. That's how I feel. Okay, I know these are ancient and all, but they're so silly and fun. Those do look a little bit more wise. And the palace is over there. All right, here's my thought. See all this space? What would you do with it, Taylor? put a big gaga pit right here. Taylor made a gaga pit. Pretty cool. There's a moat around it. As you can see, the royals were able to enjoy boating around the moat. And this was used as an entertainment hub. Which begs the question, where's the main living quarters? Who's to say? Is it here? Is it over there? I think it's over there. That's pretty big. We're on a quest to figure it out. This is

7:29 expansive to say the least. Now we're going to a river walk. An urban river walk. Let's go. So, I keep getting hot and then cold and then hot. There's no perfect in between. Maybe just one arm. What do you think? Thank you. That is literally a mushroom.

8:17 A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Just a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I really like having a lot of small little flavor and some meat, which I think is ready. For post dinner, we need something sweet. So, we came to a gargantuan Korean candy store, but they have candy of all kinds. Take a look. Like, it's kind of overwhelming the amount of options that they have. And then it's a whole store. All right, Friday night and we're seeing some night life. There's a guy running. All right, now we have come into a a plushy store. and other look if he can dress them up. Oh my god. Tiny

9:02 overalls for these guys. That's so funny. Kind of looks like Willie. And what do we have here? If you know, you know. Hello there. In bed at the ripe hour of 9:43. One part that I really like about being jetlagged is just having no shame in going to bed super early. It's kind of nice. And you might think, Taylor, it's Friday night. I guess you didn't know that, but it is. Maybe go immerse yourself in the night life. Have some soju. No. No. In bed before 10:00. And we're waking up kind of early tomorrow for a tour of the demilitarized zone. I also admittedly don't have like I mean I know a bit about the history, but I'm

9:47 not super super knowledgeable on the topic. So I am excited to learn about that tomorrow. And obviously you're coming with duh. Without further ado, good night, Turtle Gang. Until tomorrow. Morning vlog. Headed to the pickup point to get on the bus to go see the DMZ, baby. Maybe I shouldn't say it like that. To go see the DMZ and observe and learn about the history. It's going to be awesome. KFC. It's a Kentucky Fried Chicken right there. I'm glad that our culture spans oceans. will go inside the interior. Okay, so this was the bridge where they exchanged prisoners of war. What was it built in 1952? 53, she said. Pretty cool. It's not safe to walk on now. It's old and

10:32 rickety, but pretty cool. 12,000 prisoners. This was one of the most memorable moments of our trip. You stare across this invisible line, expecting North Korea to somehow look visibly different. But it's just land. The same mountains, the same sky. What you of course can't see is the stark contrast in daily life on either side. Our South Korean guides hope for reunification in her lifetime was touching. Though learning that the village at the base of that enormous North Korean flag is actually totally uninhabited, built only for show, serves as a reminder of how complex that path

11:19 would be. It was truly humbling to witness a place where history is still being written, where families remain separated by an ideological divide that started decades before I was born. Okay, so unfortunately cannot film what I just did. But the third tunnel of the four that South Korea found that North Korea dug to get really really close to this border, we just went all the way through it. Not all the way, but you're allowed to go through about 300 m of it. And by the time I was at the end, I was what was it 130 m from the North Korean border. But the catch is it's 73 m underground. And so it's really really steep. 25 stories. 25 stories. And so you climb back up that and got my little workout in. Anything to

12:04 say? I washed out. Sorry. Okay, guys. Like, we're having fun and all, but I really I don't know what to make of this art. Um, hey there. Didn't see you. I was behind that pole. Welcome. Nice.