Sticker Shock aka Grocery Shopping in Seoul

Today we went to CostCo. There are four CostCos around Seoul. Now, in Las Vegas, going to CostCo in Summerlin is easy business. You decide what you need, get in your car, drive to CostCo, park your car, walk to the store, show your card and then shop.  Leave the store, get in your car, drive home, unload your purchases (the things you needed and all the impulse buys you didn't). End of story, easy breezy.

In Seoul, when you're a westerner whom doesn't read or speak Korean, it's a little more difficult. Now before, I go on, I just want to warn you, this content may not be suitable for small children and those who are weak of heart, if you need, stop here, go get a drink, and then come on back to continue reading...

So, the first step is you have to figure out which CostCo is closest to you by looking closely at the english maps, thank goodness, provided on the Korean CostCo website. Now, if you are thinking, "well that doesn't so hard, what's Stephanie complaining about," hold on, it gets better.

The next step, after you've ascertained which CostCo is closest to you, you then need to figure out HOW TO GET THERE via the subway. So, now this is pretty easy because thank goodness the City of Seoul provides a website called Hi Korea which is an all english web site which has an interactive subway map. Now, I know I don't have any clout in these matters, but I think whomever thought this up, should be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize or some other very important international award. Using the interactive map, you plug in your departing station, the one closest to your house. (For us we need to take a bus two stops to get to our closest subway station.) Then, you plug in your arriving station. Because the people at CostCo are so customer service friendly we know which station that is because they listed it on the website. We also know it because we are exceptionally advanced westerners and have in a short period of time have figured out the differences between "gu" and "dong" i.e. a neighborhood and a district. We've plugged in our stations and the map plans our subway route and tells us where we will need to transfer from one line to the next to get to our final station. Before you begin to think me faint of heart and really don't think this is such a bad process, you have to understand by this point in time, we've already invested about 20 minutes of time into this process. In that time back home, we could be parking our car at CostCo. Here, we are still sitting in front of our computer wishing for a full fridge and cupboards.

The third step, is the trickiest and most crucial to avoid frustration and lots of unnecessary walking and potential profanity in front of the child. Pull up Google Earth and plug in the "street address" (Did I mention in Seoul they don't name many of their streets like we do in the US. In order to find your way around on side streets you need to use landmarks in the area. Which is all well in good, if you know where the hell you are and know about any landmarks in the area!) So, back to the business at hand, you've got Google Earth Maps pulled up and are narrowing it down to the street level. So, this all seems pretty seamless right? The problem is that when Google Earth pulls up the map, guess what, all the directions and descriptions are in... you guessed it KOREAN! Thankfully for the nice people at Google they have this neat little program called "Translate", which comes in mighty handy when you need to plug in an address.  We've now translated and have isolated the subway station nearest to the CostCo where we'll be exiting and we've pinpointed CostCo on the map because there are no named streets, it's necessary to orient yourself based on the skyscrapers that are near the subway station and count intersections to get to CostCo. To be extra safe, it is not a bad idea to make a map of this route, so that after the long subway ride you can REMEMBER which direction and how many intersections you are supposed to walk to get  to mecca. This whole process takes an enormous amount of critical thinking skills and I have to say I feel as proud as if I just wrote a master's thesis paper.

By this time, you've invested about 45 - 60 minutes in the process. Back in Las Vegas, I could have driven to the store and been half-way through my shopping. In Seoul, I'm folding up my subway map, pocketing my little hand drawn schematic and putting on the armor to prepare for battle! And don't kid yourself, every time you step out of your door - it is battle!

For today's mission, we arrived safe and sound at our arrival subway station because we are super fantastic city-dwellers and thank goodness for Mike's many years of Ranger training, he immediately oriented us as we came up into the sunlight from the subway station to get to our ultimate destination. (Leaving the subway station correctly is actually harder then riding and transferring subway lines.)

Walking through the hallowed doors of CostCo, I become a little teary eyed; it was like being rescued at your own embassy (not that I know what that feels like, but I can imagine.) There is a very cool invention the Koreans have thought up in their stores because many of them are multiple levels because of the need to build "up" not "out" due to space constraints, it is called the cart conveyer belt. It is a giant conveyer belt that you and the cart ride on. Once on board, the cart's wheels lock into the conveyer belt floor and it will not move so you can easily move with your precious purchases between floors.

So, now to the sticker shock. Paper products are very expensive in Korea. I'm not sure why, but I am going to be a semi-educated guess. For many years Korea was controlled by the Japanese. During WWII the Japanese deforested the entire country of it's hardwood trees. Napkins when you are eating out are cocktail size and in some restaurants you may not get any at all, but they will gladly give you a wet towelette at the end of your meal to wipe your face and hands. I love this practice because I am a very messy eater. Following are some prices of necessary paper goods needed around the house:

Please know that 1,000 won = $1.00 US (roughly - the exchange rate changes daily)

Napkins: 20,000 won
Paper towels: 20,000 won
TP: 22,000 won
Tissues: 9,760 won (a bargain)

PS: Can you spare a square, takes a new level of friendship here in Korea.

At this point in time, we haven't even gotten to the food level yet and we're already down 71,760 won (about $72.00 USD).

Next we hop on the handy conveyer belt and enjoy the lovely ride to the food level. Here there are of our familiar foods with lots of asian influences. Of course, if we were asian and wanted to buy rice cracker snacks, we'd pay about 8,000 won for a big old family size bag, but because we are spoiled Americans and want our tortilla and potato chips, we'll pay about 12,000 won per bag. Not quite double the price, but pretty damn close. Wheat bread is very hard to find in Korea because asians eat rice more often for their starch then bread, the most common bread is white. Now the white bread tastes like heaven, but as we know is not really good for our overall long term health. What I did manage to find was a black bean paste bread that had some wheat and rye flour in it. We'll see how it goes over with the kidlet for breakfast in the morning. One of the reasons breakfast food (i.e. cereal) is so expensive here is because Koreans don't eat a traditional breakfast like we westerners consume every morning. They will usually have left-overs from the prior night or have it made it to a fantastic dish called bimibap which is rice, egg, meat, and veges all served in a very hot stone bowl. It is delicious. I don't have the kitchen skills or tools to make bimibap for my family so we're sticking to our traditonal favorites.

Cheese and dairy is also crazy expensive and some produce is outrageous. I did however, succumb and buy more of those delicious apple mangoes. When I die, I'd like those served to me by the angles. Hopefully God will be able to afford them.

Here is a brief list of things you will find at CostCo in Seoul that you will probably not find at your local CostCo:

1. Fresh Octopous - in every form
2. Sea Cucumber
3. Fresh Snails
4. Fresh sushi and sashimi platters being made in front of you
5. Some sort of smallish silver fish - dead and on ice
6. Fresh Fluke or Flatfish swimming in a tank looking at you with both of their beady eyes on the same side of their head - love fluke, just don't really know how to prepare it wonderfully
7. Pickled Radish - very, very good
8. Peeled chestnuts in bulk
9. And an array of vegetables and herbs that I am still trying to figure out
and last but not least,
10. Every cut of bulgogi you can imagine - you know there are 32 different cuts of bulgogi (That is a fantastic dinner party bit of trivia) You can thank me later.


Here I need to make a brief segaway to tell a really cute story: This little Korean boy about Michaela's age, waves at Michaela and she waves back. He then comes right up to her with a big smile on his face and starts talking with her in Korean. Of course, she smiles politely and out of the side of her mouth says to me, "I don't know what he's saying." He then points to himself and says, "Jung". Clearly he's telling her his name. She says, "I'm Micheala." and I then say to him "We don't speak Korean." "Do you speak English?" He continues rapidly speaking in Korean - so obviously not, but he had something really important he wanted to tell Michaela. He then began pulling on his Auntie or Grandma (not sure, but older lady) and smiling and pointing at Michaela. These sweet old ladies then approach me with big smiles on their faces and start talking to me rapidly in Korean. I smile very nicely, bow, because they are my elders and I need to show respect and pull out the big guns of my burgeoning Korean and say "gham sa hamnida" (Good Morning). And then tell them, "I don't speak Korean." (Note to self need to learn how to say, "I don't speak Korean," in Korean). Then the little boy, puts his hand up to his head and makes the sign of a telephone to Michaela and starts giving her his telephone number! It was so cute and precious! After he walked away still smiling at her and smiling like a sick little puppy, she asked me, "Mom could we call every number in the phone book to try to get a hold of him.!" Ahh, young love.

After all that, I still needed unbleached white flour to make cookies, pancakes, muffins, and waffles, all of which are my specialty. I'm not boasting, but my family will tell you I do good baked stuff.

Now, we've just dropped about 650,000 won at CostCo. Yes, you read right, I typed 650,000 won we have two carts full and need to get back home. Of course, even though we are now bonafide city dwellers, we are not stupid, we can not take all of this crap on the subway. So, thankfully, Mike calls his office and gets a cab to come pick us up. We had so much stuff, that we filled the cabbie's trunk and had stuff in his front passenger seat and Michaela got to sit with a collapsable hamper in her lap. A good time was had by all.

So, I mentioned I still needed flour. The next stop, Haddon Supermarket, which is a well known ExPat market just up the street from our home (3 stops on the 110 B bus). Now, I use the word "supermarket" here loosely and really only say it because that's the name of the place on their sign and if you ever come to Seoul and need pepperoni you'll know exactly where to go. But when you go to Haddon Supermarket, you'd better visit your local branch of KEB bank and get some serious amounts of KRW (won) before stepping through their doors. I finally found my flour and it only cost... (drum roll)... 9,000 won. Yep, you read right, about $9.00 for flour. My family better savor every bite of each pancake I make with that flour and by God there better not be any morsels going into the trash! Six items and 34,000 won lighter, I had completed my purchases. The nice thing about the Haddon Supermarket is that they will deliver your groceries for you for free. I figure for those prices, they should deliver it and cook my meal - maybe even clean the dishes afterwards.

So, after today's little excursion, I've decided the street vendors selling beautiful produce in and around my neighborhood will become my new best friends and we'll be making frequent trips to CostCo, but only after pay day. I've also decided that when Mike heads back to the States in August, he's bringing an extra suitcase that we can fill up with flour and paper products!

Now, I hope you've finished your glass of wine, beer, vodka, gin - whatever your liquor of choice is and have had some good chuckles at this blog. It's time for me to go drink...  (heavily)

Peace,
Stephanie