In response to an invitation to speak at international schools across Asia, I set off on a long trip. My first stop is Seoul, South Korea.

As always, I set my watch for Seoul time right away as my plane departs. If it’s early morning when I arrive, I try to sleep, or at least doze, on the plane. If I get in late at night, I try to stay awake. And taking my No-Jetlag pills helps me to adapt to the time change quickly.

People all get put in boxes here, large unsightly concrete apartment blocks line the road from the airport. I catch a glimpse of the Yellow Sea and the Han river with many bridges over it. Everything looks very modern, not at all like ancient Asia.

I’m assigned my own little teachers’ apartment and love settling into a neighborhood rather than in a hotel. This area of Seoul is new since 1988. The city has grown rapidly. Just a few old buildings, temples and palaces are left but most of it is new and ultra modern.

“Seoul makes the US look like a third world country,” one teacher comments. There are no keys for front doors, just number pads. My apartment has floor heating, very unlike other Asian countries. We have dinner in a Japanese Korean restaurant: shabu-shabu. There are bbq coals in the center of the table, with a large pot for soup over it. Piles of vegetables, meat in a broth, then noodles are added. It’s not much to eat but very tasty. When we step outside, into the street with super modern shops, it starts to snow.

The next morning everything is white. Trees bent over under the weight of a blanket of snow. I have to walk in the middle of the road to get to school where I conduct writers workshops all day, followed by a parent/teacher workshop after school.

South Korea image from my book FAMILIES AROUND THE WORLD, art by Jessica Rae Gordon.

That night I go for Korean fast food: mandoo, rice stuffed dumplings, pancake squares, rice wrapped in an omelet. Kimchi is the national dish - very spicy pickled cabbage, finely shredded. Everyone here loves kimchi and eats it with everything. Me? No thanks.

My next school in Seoul has a large library. 50% of the students is Korean, the other 50% foreign. Just like other schools there are kids of famous movie stars, large company owners like Samsung, embassies, etc. But all students are lovely kids, well behaved and keen. None of them stand out as snobby but many kids get picked up by chauffeurs in limousines after school. I do presentations all day for many different grade levels.

After school the librarian and I walk for nearly two hours, along busy, wide roads, past many designer clothing stores, all very modern, but also visit some little shops with hanbok, the silk, traditional Korean outfits. They are still used for official events like weddings.

One night I walk to the home of the principal for a nice dinner and a gorgeous cake from the local bakery. The home is a traditional Korean house with teak ceilings. I walked first along busy streets, then through a maze of little back alleys, up stairs, down walkways in this lovely old neighbourhood. Children can walk all by themselves to go buy fruit or eggs in the little shops, even late at night. There’s virtually no crime, just busy traffic to watch for.

In Insadong, an old, busy street with artist shops we have traditional tea in a tiny old tea house with funky tables, some with fish swimming inside, birds fly around inside the room under the low ceiling, even the toilet had a fish bowl in the floor. I sip strong date tea with persimmon floating in it. We also eat a deep fried pancake on the street, with thick brown sugar syrup inside.

In a Korean BBQ restaurant, as soon as you sit down, they plonk a bowl with hot coals on your tables and bring out little dishes of coleslaw, shaved and pickled radish, a vegetable and some sauces. You order beef, pork, fish or chicken. Then they bring large slabs of meat which they cut up at your table and put the pieces on the coals. They constantly come to turn them over and add garlic. The meat is fabulous. You tear a large strip of lettuce from the bowl, add a dab of sticky rice, some sauce and things from bowls, put a piece of meat on top - all without dropping it on the table if you’re lucky - wrap the lettuce around it and stuff it in your mouth. I was exhausted after dinner. You need a lot of bites before you’re full but is very tasty. If you add kimchi, the national dish, it becomes spicy. The shiny stainless steel chopsticks they use here are slippery suckers compared to wooden ones.

One day, a teacher and I take a taxi to Gyeong Bok Gung, the ‘Palace Greatly Blessed by Heaven’, originally built in 1397. Unfortunately, not much was left after the bombings of the ‘80’s and so everything ‘old’ has been rebuild and is really a replica. The grounds are widespread with palaces for king, princes, families, concubines, eunuchs - thousands of people. The guards outside the palace are impressive and we watch the changing of the guards, with drumming, trumpets, and a parade with swords and flags. In the Korea National Museum we saw calligraphy, silks, old scrolls, clothing, tools and, something you won’t find in European musea: old stone jars holding the placentas of kings and princes.

I find Seoul an intriguing, and endearing, mix of ultra modern people in expensive high heels, and street vendors selling fish and chestnuts from an old truck bed. In spotless subway stations people teeter along on shiny high heeled shoes, in tight leather skirts, carrying designer bags. There are very few people who don’t wear the latest fashions or brand name clothing. I only saw one street woman sitting on a subway staircase. At school all the students whip cell phones out of their pockets to take selfies with me - I feel like a celebrity. But the funniest technology I encounter in South Korea are the toilets: they boast a keypad with many buttons, including ones for heat and flushing.

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