From CNN's new Seoul Travel page: 50 reasons why Seoul is the world's greatest city
Below are the ones I found most accurate/amusing/thought-provoking or, alternately, the ones that most make me miss last summer:
49. More side dishes than main dishes
A typical Korean meal comes with seven or eight separate side dishes. And free refills. There’s more color on a Korean table than at Lotte World on Children’s Day.
47. Best airport in the world
For five years running, Incheon International Airport, which services Seoul and other nearby Korean cities, has been ranked the best airport in the world by Airports Council International. The sprawling, über-efficient facility is equipped with a golf course, skating rink, Museum of Korean Culture, casino, high-end spa and restaurants serving just about any kind of pre-flight meal you’d want.
44. Booking
Financiers and consultants fly to Seoul from all over Asia on weekends for the booking experience at Seoul nightclubs. A unique form of speed dating in which waiters escort girls into rooms rented by groups of guys, booking can be both awkward, ego crushing and ruthlessly efficient. If the girl doesn’t like what she sees, she leaves with minimal singing, drinking or fake-number-exchanging involved.
36. Groupon is so yesterday
With the massive popularity of Coupang and Ticketmonster, social commerce sites are springing up in Seoul at the rate of one per day.
31. Smart homes
Smart phones and robot vacuum cleaners—yawn. Apartments in Seoul can now be controlled from cell phones and central keypads. Samsung Electronics reps say that facial-recognition will soon be introduced as an addition to bio-recognition security systems.
28. Excellence in flight
After flying Korean or Asiana Air, it’s a rude shock (literally, visually) to fly any other airline. Sorry, P.C. disciples, but the epic hotness of KAL flight attendants sets the modern standard in the sky. R.I.P. Singapore Girl.
25. Most art openings per square mile
Earning the attention of art aficionados worldwide, internationally renowned artists fly into Seoul almost every week for new exhibitions or collaborations. Local artists are also rising to acclaim with increasingly strange and arresting multimedia works. In Cheongdam-dong, a single building called Nature Poem—itself a work of art—houses 18 galleries.
19. No question left unanswered
Need to know the best transgender club in Itaewon? The number of the closest fried chicken shop for delivery? Which public transportation to use from the airport to the nearest sauna? Perky operators at the 120 Dasan Center provide answers to any question you might have for free, 24 hours a day, in Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Mongolian. Call 02-120 from a cell phone or 120 from a landline.
5. Bright happy jjimjilbangs of fun
Korean saunas (jjimjilbangs) draw on an age-old tradition of thermotherapy to help you sweat out stress. The best jjimjilbangs—like famed Dragon Hill Spa—feature multi-stories of whirlpool baths, mineral rooms, massage parlors, nail salons, TV rooms, manga cafés and restaurants where you can relax before and after soaking, scrubbing and steaming your way to rejuvenation.
