Mak's noodle

Noodle house!

Another food place worthy of commenting! We'd have to say, there really isn't a whole lot of authentic Chinese cuisines when it comes to being in Korea. This is really surprising, considering how close we are to China. Infact, North Korea is connected to China! The peninsula is only seperated by the Yellow Sea.

Regardless, we finally found a Chinese restaurant, kind of, worthy to say "GO AND EAT SOOOOME!"

This Chinese restaurant isn't your typical Chinese restaraunt, and it isn't serving Korean-ized Chinese food either! If you lived in Hong Kong or Guangzhou (Canton), you would have this stuff for breakfast/lunch/snack. It's fast, easy and incredibly delicious! This is something Ian ate almost everyday for breakfast when him and his brother went to China. And because it`s kind of a "fast food", it's not your typical restaurant.

What this is called, wonton soup. It's a soup served with egg noodles and these dumplings called wonton, a Cantonese word. But that`s not all they have. They have a few more selections of different dumplings, and braised beef in wonton soup. This is, afterall, a "wonton dim" (roughly translated would be: "wonton house"). You can order large or small portions, 8,500 and 5,500 Korean won, respectively for your straight up wonton noodle soup. That's about 8 or 5 USD. If you order the large portion, it could be a meal. The smaller portions are tie-overs to your next meal.

Little India Seoul

Shalla and his restaurant

You like Indian food? You'll love this place! Any party goers to Hongdae on a Friday and Saturday night will definetely recognize the first and lovable kebab stand guy. His name? Shalla. The friendliest lovable guy who works long hours and never seems to be angry (must be the kebabs - which are made with love!)

A little less known fact about him, he owns an Indian restaurant just off Itaewon Street near the Seoul Masjid (directions below). If  Halal Muslim Indian food is your thing, look no further! Not only are his kebabs astounding when you stumble out of the club at 5am, but his restaurant is even better.

Explorations went ahead and visited him at his restaurant, and then several more times later! We pretty much order the same dish, mainly because it's A LOT of food for a modest price. The one set we usually order comes with 2 different curries, loaded with naan bread, rice, samosa and tandoori chicken.

Western China dim sum

Dim Sum!

Considering Korea is so close to China, you'd expect it to have some amazing Chinese food. This is entirely not the case.

Since Ian arrived, he's been scouring the corners of Seoul to find a decent Chinese restaurant that serves dim sum. The most recent expedition brought Explorations to a place called Western China restaurant. It prided itself with dim sum and that's what sold us to try it out, finally.

We ordered a chicken dish that seemed Asiatic in flavour, a noodle dish, and four dim sum dishes.We should also note, this was dim sum a-la-carte; and we don't mean the usual push around carts that defined Ian's childhood of dim sum meal times.You had to order it from the menu.

We'll skip the other dishes as dim sum was the heart of the course for tonight. The dim sum dishes we had were Har Gaow, Siu Mao, Siu Long Bao, and Law Mai Fahn. Hovering at around 5,000 Korean won a piece or approximately 4.50(USD). Your usual dishes came with 3 pieces. Usually it's 4 pieces an order elsewhere.

Explorations is blogging?!

Moustache party!

We have a Facebook page but why the blog?

Well, first off Facebook is primarily our friends and family who, well, can use Facebook, in the sense that they have an account and look at it actively. But some of our older generation companions aren't exactly the most adept in social media. We would like to share our experiences through a more familiar medium, just plain ol' good ol' straight forward reading off a website and seeing a few pictures.

Of course we won't neglect the Facebook page, we'll be combining the powers of the internet to, hopefully, share to everyone.

Secondly, we don't really write on our Facebook page, mainly because it's not the best medium. So we figure it would be easier on this blog!

Third, we're no longer restricted by the confines of the social media that has now consumed our daily lives. It was pretty restrictive, lots of things had to be done through an actual computer before we can post things up. We're test running different ways to publish our adventures through soley our smartphones, for when we start moving around for real in India, Nepal and Africa, we might not have the luxury of a full on computer most times to update you guys.

When North and South meets in the East - Finally the plan revealed!

Here we go folks! To our friends and family, here is a brief summary of who we are (for those in South Africa and Canada who don't know us yet!). And finally, what we're doing! This is incredibly exciting for us to tell you!

Who we are

When Christa, the South African, from Kwazulu-Natal stepped off the plane into Korea for her second round in Korea and when Ian, the Canadian, from Ontario signed for his 2nd year teaching in Korea, they didn't know what the future had planned for them.

Deep intertwined with an almagamation of South African and Canadian Chinese culture, the two are pounding out and exploring each other's cultures in a completely different country; Korea. Adventure travellers at heart, they start with their host country, climbing some epic peaks!

Collectively, they have visited some of the most off-beaten track places shared experiences across numerous countries. The list includes downhill biking descents in Switzerland, biking 2,000 kilometers in Canada, sailing down the Atlantic coast of America, visiting North Korea, ascending peaks in South Korea, trekking up volcanic mountains in Indonesia, climbing in Vietnam, scuba diving in Indonesia, snorkelling with whale sharks in Phillipines, and skiing in the most Northern Japanese island... just to name a few adventures!

The plan!!

With their smiliar mindset and personality, the dynamic duo plans a 6 month long journey deep into India and Nepal and more! A rough itenerary includes:

• Exploring and volunteering in India
• Trekking and climbing the Himalayas
• Mountaineering expedition, a peak marked at 6,110 meters, higher than that of Everest Base Camp
• Ian exploring Christa's home in South Africa
• Safari expeditions
• Finally landing in the Middle East to continue the world's exploration

With this set out, they will document their trials and tribulations, review places and equipment, and of all - share their life changing experiences so we can all see more of our playground that is the world. Stay tuned!

Love you all!

Christa and Ian