by I knew very little things about Korea but that it shares one of the world’s most heavily militarised borders with North Korea. It was also my first time in Asia, making it an even more interesting trip!
At that time I was working for Scalr, a Cloud Management Platform. I arrived with its CEO from San Francisco. Right after, its CTO and another Engineer joined us from Ukraine.
Lodging
We rented the apartment on Airbnb and began the journey to move into the city. It took some time especially because our apartment was located near the historic center of Seoul. And it’s rather green and hilly as you can see in the picture taken a few meters away from our apartment. The rented apartment was really nice, we selected that one because it brought together all the typical elements of a Korean or Asian-inspired apartment. Room with tatami mats, wooden floors and sliding doors.
During the first days we visited the historical center of Seoul. Including the Presidential House (Blue House) and the Changdeokgung Palace.
Business work
The purpose of our trip was of course professional and it was time to get ready for about 3 days of presentation of our cloud platform. The show took place at Samsung headquarters, in front of an audience of about 20 engineers. The Samsung campus is a real city named Suwon, also known as Samsung city. Located 40 km south of Seoul, there are just over 40,000 employees.
The presentation went very well, despite the total absence of wifi, which is far from ideal for presenting a platform that manages servers in the cloud. But we quickly realised that security at Samsung is one of the top priorities: multiple scans, passport and ID verification, mobile phones and laptops allowed but under certain conditions: covering up camera lens and webcam with tape.
Korean food and drinks
Another aspect of this trip was the food. We ate Korean at every meal. How often do you go to Korea in your life? Korean cuisine is really varied, you always end up with tons of different things under your nose. Beef, chicken, pork, fish, vegetables, etc… Everything was really delicious, except perhaps the cold noodles (very simply cold pasta that bathes in broth, sometimes spicy).
As for alcohol, soju is the most common. It is a sweet potato alcohol with a very neutral flavour. That makes it a good accompaniment to Korean food. Its taste is comparable to vodka, but a little softer because of the added sugar in the manufacturing process. We had the chance to taste some excellent soju-based cocktails, but beware the soju’s alcohol level varies between 16% and 53% which is relatively strong!
Last but not least, I had my first experience of blowfish and it was delicious. Blowfish is famous for being able to poison you to death, but since we went to a well-known restaurant with a certified chef there was no reason to get worried!
Thank you Korea for welcoming us perfectly and making me want to go back to Asia!