Good Eating Vietnam!

It's pretty cold in Beijing these days so a conference trip to Hanoi was definitely welcome, and I reserved the weekends for exploring. The early December temperatures in northern Vietnam seemed to be around 20 degrees during the day, but a bit chilly for a t-shirt at night. Just like the Finnish summer weather really, only less rain, much shorter days and far more pollution. The conference people were nice enough to book a hotel, a tour to Halong Bay and even an airport pickup for us. The hotel in Hanoi was the Government Guest House, which at US$35 a night is rather expensive for Vietnam, but it was central and comfortable.

We started up by going to a tour of Halong Bay. It's a scenic seaside area about 170 km east from Hanoi, known in China as Guilin on water -- the readers outside China (Blogger is blocked in China so I suppose most readers would be elsewhere) may not know Guilin so I'll point you to the pictures I took there in 2005 for reference, here and here. The tour group consisted of me, one of my colleagues and two professors from Beijing, and our Vietnamese guide who spoke good English. Generally language skills seemed to be at a shortage in Vietnam, but people catering for a lot of tourists speak some English and most people in Halong Bay speak good Chinese, as it's pretty close to the border. Halong itself is a small city at the seaside and with the foggy weather that seems to be a common feature in the winter time the scenes weren't overly impressive, for the proper scenes you have to take a boat to see the thousands of islands.

The houses in Vietnam are quite interesting, they make relatively high and narrow buildings and paint the front... but not the sides that are a little less visible from the main street. In Hanoi these would be right next to one another, outside the city there's plenty of space between houses but they still make them quite narrow. We had a relaxing start for the tour, staying overnight in Halong before heading to see the islands. So we had dinner (food was rather similar to Chinese, and nothing extraordinary) and went to see the night market. It was quite lively, and prices are low. They also readily accepted the Chinese yuan in Halong, but not in Hanoi where they'd only take Vietnamese dong or US dollars... actually it bothered me quite a bit when people would tell me prices in US dollars when I don't have any and don't want any either! Vietnamese dong is one of those currencies that force you to learn even the big numbers in the local language and where you have to count the zeros in the bills to make sure you don't give them 100,000 rather than 10,000 dong. (1 CNY was a bit over 2,000 VND, therefore 1 EUR would be around 22,000 VND).

We got our own private boat, a big boat, to tour the islands. We started by seeing some limestone caves on one island, quite large caves although I've seen several bigger ones in China. Just like in China they were lighted with colourful lights to make them more impressive, but seemed to have less of a tendency of naming all the formations, or perhaps I just wasn't paying attention. Afterwards we continued on the boat to see quite a few islands pass by, the rock formations were indeed similar to the little mountains in Guilin, but perhaps due to the fog it didn't really look as impressive. Very nice nonetheless. The also made us a lunch on the boat, a pretty good one, too. The guide told us that Vietnam is one of these weird "socialist" countries just like China where people have to pay for the education, healthcare and so on. And they're actually really expensive, for example a year in the university (including living costs) apparently costs about 10,000 USD, and even in the highschool level it's around 1,000 USD a year! This is a lot of money in a country where the average salary in Hanoi is less than 250 USD per month, with a lot of people making a lot less. Apparently the government does offer free education to the poorest families though.

The three hour drive back to Hanoi was interrupted by a stopover at a place selling touristy things at very high prices, probably due to a deal with the tour company. But at least it was fun chatting with the staff who after my greeting thought I'd speak good Vietnamese, which, unfortunately, isn't the case. My Vietnamese seemed to be lacking at least as badly as my Korean, especially as people didn't seem to understand even my "Tôi là người ăn chay" (I'm vegetarian). I probably got my tones wrong, or then it's just so rare to be vegetarian that people look confused even if you do say it right.

In Hanoi even crossing the street is an adventure. There's heavy traffic in Beijing also, and drivers don't care much of the rules, but it's a lot worse in Hanoi... well, a lot different at least. The main difference is that rather than cars, the streets of Hanoi are filled with motorbikes. Unlike cars the motorbikes can navigate around people crossing the street, assuming they don't change pace suddenly. So that's what you do, forget your fears and just walk at a steady pace and watch the traffic magically go all around you. Worked amazingly well. We went off for a walk on the market streets nearby, filled with little shops selling all sorts of tourist crap and tours and people walking and selling fruits and French bread and asking you if you want to go somewhere by motorbike and of course swarms of tourists... it's very crowded and loud. We went for dinner at the Tamarind Cafe, which is a vegetarian restaurant right in the middle of this area. It seems almost all of the clientèle are foreigners, even the prices are only listed in USD. The food was pretty good, but unfortunately the vegan options were few and not clearly marked. They had a marking for foods that contain egg but no markings of the dairy that seemed to be infested in most of the dishes here, unlike the regular Vietnamese cuisine.

The next few days went with the conference... but a mention of the food. They had arranged lunches and dinners at a restaurant near the conference venue, and had a vegetarian table for me, 3 Indian and 2 Taiwanese people. The first lunch looked quite scary, it seemed they were serving us chicken and who knows what. Around came a rumour that those were mock meats and not real ones, but we shied away from them nonetheless. As we pointed out that we'd feel more comfortable with "regular vegetables", we did get those on the following meals. Ah, and breakfasts were at the hotel, the only vegetarian option without egg was French bread with jam and butter, which I always asked without butter but they only did so on the first morning. The butter was separate though, and in a tiny jar that I didn't open so hopefully they gave that to the next person rather than throwing it away. They also brought a yogurt to everyone despite it not being mentioned in the menu but hopefully they also gave my unopened one to the next person.

The conference organisers had also arranged for us a city tour, funnily enough in the evening, but the Ho Chi Minh square was a very interesting sight even in the dark. It seemed like a smaller version of Tian'anmen, with similar texts and a mausoleum for Ho Chi Minh. The main part of the square were smaller patches of grass, 79 of them, to celebrate the 79 years that Ho Chi Minh lived. Seemed a popular place for locals to take the kids to play also, safe from the traffic. After that we went to see a Vietnamese water puppet show, which apparently is a local tradition over 1,000 years old. It was really cute, much recommended when you visit Vietnam.


Originally I was planning hiking at Sapa after the conference, but Christmas shopping is a pain that must be dealt with every year, and it made more sense to do that in Hanoi than Beijing. Actually the couple of days there wasn't enough to find gifts for everyone as I did want to see some of the sights in Hanoi also. And that meant I could test the other vegetarian restaurants! While the food in those was similar to the Chinese vegetarian, there were enough differences to make it feel exciting, and a great idea that the Chinese vegetarian places don't have is the menu idea where you can order a meal for one consisting of a little bit of several dishes, at a price only a little bit above that of one dish. The sharing idea that they have in China is great when you have several people, but if you eat alone it gets really dull and you don't get to taste many things. These Vietnamese ones had both as you could order either way. Perfect.

I used the list of restaurants from Happycow. Dakshin would supposedly have been the nearest one but I couldn't find it, either it's been replaced by a regular Vietnamese restaurant or I'm blind or stupid or the address is wrong. I didn't go to the faraway places at all but rather visited Nang Tam twice, it was good enough to justify that. Adida was very nice also, with very good service, which I'm not saying just because the waitress called me handsome, honestly! :-P And one thing to note is that it is quite possible and easy to get vegan food from the regular restaurants as well, ok, I'm not saying I'd know with absolute certainty they don't use animal oils but at least the food tasted good. And while these vegetarian places (with the possible exception of Tamarind Cafe) are very reasonably priced also, eating in random places costs next to nothing. During a long walk from shop to shop and sight to sight it's quite relaxing to just stop at a corner bar, sit outside on the terrace and have a couple of beers and perfectly good tofu for 23,000 dong or less than 1.5 USD.

Enough about food and on the the disturbing part of the country. One evening I was walking around the beautiful Sword Lake (Hoan Kiem Lake) when a student in his early 20s came to talk to me. He told me he gets some food and study money by helping tourists find what they're looking for. Sounds nice, until you hear what they tend to look for. That's ladies, or even more disturbingly, boys. This was reaffirmed a few days later alongside another lake (there are tons of lovely lakes in Hanoi!) when a group of boys with ages ranging from 12 to 28 came to talk to me, speaking barely understandable English. One of the older ones was asking if I liked boys, and pointing to the younger ones in the group. Sheesh! I just don't know what would be the best way of helping these kids, just giving some money to the few you happen to meet doesn't really seem that much. Ideas welcome.

Overall Vietnam was a positive experience though, it's a beautiful country with very friendly people and plenty of historical sights, as well as good food. Next up, Shaolin and then Finland... Happy travelling to everyone! The pictures (a lot of them since they include photos taken by a colleague) are here.

Luckily enough I arrived in Beijing just in time to witness the first snowfall of the year the first morning here! Don't know how much of it there will be later either, it's a very dry climate, but it did bring a nice contrast to the summer weather (well, Finnish summer weather :-P) of Vietnam.

Vegan Feasts and Meetups

We're at the time of the year where I have to stop procrastinating and actually work for a month or two to finish my projects, therefore few updates here. There are some interesting things going on though, and a few have to do with websites.

1. HospitalityClub is a site where travellers can search for accommodation and those who have extra room can post their profiles so these travellers can stay on the couch or wherever. I just joined in recently and had my first visitors, a fun vegetarian couple of globetrotters, really great people.
2. VeganSocialClub of Beijing!!! My most recent finding, it appears there's 10 or so people gathering every week for a vegan meal, so this Thursday there shall be one more! Yay!

And since people say this blog is all about food, I shall have to post some pictures of our recent vegan feast where the veg. couple are present and so are some of my local vegetarian friends. The cooking was done mainly by one of these local friends, I made some too, including this tofu thing I just invented and was quite happy with, but maybe I'll try some further improvements before posting a recipe. Now I'm thinking I should've taken pictures of the food. Hmh.

Top 50 Restauraunts

Travelhacker has collected a list of the Top 50 Vegetarian and Vegan Restaurants, certainly worth checking out. The familiar ones on the list certainly are excellent, like Millenium in San Francisco, Susie's in Edinburgh and Sanchon in Seoul to pick a trio. Most of the other places I haven't been to, must keep them in mind when going to those areas. But I want to point out a few that in my mind definitely should've made it to the list though. Btw, they have a list of places for Green Travellers as well!

North America:
Possibly the best restaurant I've ever been to, the completely vegan Caravan of Dreams in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, NYC, definitely shouldn't be missed on a trip to the Big Apple. The atmosphere is like one of a cosy café, and the menu, also containing enough for an amazing feast for the raw vegans, is sure to delight. The excellent service tops it off as a place almost worth a trip to New York for!

On the north side of the border, Le Commensal, a chain of vegetarian buffet restaurants in Canada are definitely winners. Their ginger tofu is among the best I've tried. Vegan dishes at Commensal are clearly marked, and you pay by the weight of the plate you collect. They're around the eastern parts of Canada, I've tried a few in Montréal, Quebec.

Back to the south, Herbivore in San Francisco left an undying memory with their amazing creations for breakfast. Also completely vegan, there are several Herbivore restaurants in this city spoiled with vegetarian fares.

Asia:
There's a bunch of awesome vegetarian restaurants right here in Beijing, but as I've written about them before, I'll just leave it at that.

In Indonesia you shouldn't miss Milas in Yogyakarta, it's simply so gorgeous that you want to dine in a place like that every day! The food is good enough to justify that, even though I think it would get boring for a vegan in the long run, the vegan options aren't that many. It's also a non-profit, which just makes you feel that much nicer about frequenting the place.

And I must once again point out to Jeombongsan Mountain Vegetable Village in Sokcho, South Korea. They create amazing dishes flavoured with the local herbs creating a truly unique experience. And the service is second to none.

Europe:
Nothing is mentioned from Finland, and there is a newly opened fully vegan restaurant that just opened in my hometown of Tampere. The place is Veganissimo, and the foods are totally amazing and absolutely world class. I have some pictures linked from when I mention my visit there.

Isänpäivä / Father's Day

It's Father's Day in Finland, and given that we're Finns the rest of this is in Finnish, sorry...

Elikkä hauskaa isänpäivää! Laitanpa tähän kuvan siitä kun viimeksi tavattiin, isä ja osa lapsikatrasta Kiinanmuurilla. Näytänpä olevan ainoa joka ei yritä olla incognito. Ainahan isä on tärkeä, mutta nyt kun sitä kuulee kaikista hulluuksista Suomessakin niin täytyy yrittää tuoda esille kuinka tärkeä tällainen erinomainen isä on. Isä joka aina tukee ja välittää, vaikkei sitä tuputtaen esille tuokaan. Isä joka opettaa tärkeitä arvoja elämässä, ja joka johtaa esimerkillään niiden noudattamiseen. Isä joka ei aseta hassuja sääntöjä sääntöjen itsensä vuoksi vaan elää nykypäivää ja sallii lastensa kasvaa itsenäisesti omiksi persoonikseen. Kun katsoo miten erilaisiksi ja kunnollisiksi olemme kaikki kasvaneet, on helppo nähdä kuinka hyvin olet tässä onnistunut. Itse olen tänä isänpäivänä kovin kaukana, mutta toivottavasti toiset sisarukset muistavat henkilökohtaisemmin kuin vain näin netin välityksellä. Oikein mukavaa isänpäivää, ja kiitokset kaikesta isukille!

World Vegan Day

Today is World Vegan Day, but how to celebrate the occasion? I haven't really set up any kind of a tradition for it yet. This year I decided to adopt a bunch of animals for conservation, in the wild of course, I'm not in favour of zoos. There are a lot of organizations doing that, a friend has told me bad things about WWF, warranted or not I don't know, but it made me decide against them. Instead I went to some UK based charities, including CWI and tigertrust (since I happen to love tigers). Adopting animals in the names of family and friends seemed fun and rewarding for a vegan day activity. I'm also inviting some people for dinner at a nice vegetarian restaurant here, but really should've planned that in advance as not that many have time at such short notice. How about you, what's your way of celebrating Vegan Day?

Dancing to a new vegetarian restaurant

Last night I visited a rather new vegetarian restaurant that wasn't in the list when I wrote my review of vegetarian Beijing earlier. It's another one of the Lily vegetarian restaurant (百合素餐厅) chain, this one located in a traditional hutong house near the crossroads of Dongzhimenneidajie (东直门内大街) and Dongzhimenneibeixiaojie (东直门内北小街), south from Xiaojie bridge (小街桥) or west from Dongzhimen metro station. The fact that it is built in a hutong and retains the traditional hutong feel about it makes this place more interesting especially to travellers, and indeed it seemed many foreigners had found their way there. The menus were bilingual in Chinese and English and included some pictures of the foods. The menu seemed largely the same as the other Lily restaurants, which means a lot of mock meat and especially mock fish dishes. I tried the "lychee flavoured vegetarian fish", "curry vegetarian chicken with potato" and "mushroom hotpot with vegetarian satay", and some dumplings to go with it. The portions were quite large, and the food wasn't bad, but I wasn't really impressed with them either. Therefore I give the restaurants three smiley faces in my very own restaurant criteria as seen in the earlier review. Prices were similar to the other places in relatively central Beijing.

Otherwise, I've been biding my time dancing tango as we have a teacher visiting from Germany, the dance is great, much recommended to everyone. It's very creative, communicative, beautiful, and most of all, fun! I'm also just starting up salsa now, must keep dancing as the temperatures go low!

Contact details for the above mentioned Lily vegetarian / 百合素餐厅(香草园店):
东城区东直门内北小街香草园胡同23号(四合院内), 64052082.
From Dongzhimen metro station, take exit A to Dongshimennei and turn around as the exit faces north and you should head to the road going west. Then head straight on along Dongzhimenneidajie until you reach Dongzhimenneibeixiaojie. Cross that street and walk north, the Xiangcaoyuan hutong is the first or second little street on the left. The road sign is quite small so be on the lookout.

Pilgrimage to the Vegan Bakery

Last year on the Chinese national day holiday (everyone gets 7 days off from Oct 1st -- apparently a hundred million people goes through the railway stations of Beijing during the week, so it tends to be a good time to escape from the country) I was in Washington DC and over there visited Sticky Fingers, a vegan bakery. So great their goodies were that I thought I might make it an annual thing. DC is far away, but they have another branch in Seoul, South Korea. Besides, I've never been to Korea so it made an interesting trip. And it got me to see how totally I've forgotten my Korean -- I studied it for a year and a half back in the university but apart from the writing system and a few phrases, everything seems to have escaped my mind. :-(

"Welcome to Korea, we've been waiting for you for 5 thousand years" say the wonderful placates as you arrive in the country. It seems 5,000 years isn't enough time to learn my language, but then, with over 100,000,000 forms for every verb in Finnish that can't be too surprising. They didn't speak much English either over there though, nor Chinese. Actually it was quite sad that for sudden snacks I'd have to revert to Pringles despite products called SoyBars and so on as they only had the ingredient listing in Korean and there would be tons of things I don't understand then. Anyway, Seoul is a bustling metropolis and possibly the third biggest urban concentration of people in the world after Ciudad de Mexico and Tokyo, which makes it a bit odd destination to escape the Chinese crowds, but at least the public transport was not only frequent, extensive and modern, but also not overly crowded.

I arrived late in the day and decided on a dinner in a restaurant that seemed to be in the same part of town as one of the branches of the bakery, namely Country Life Health Restaurant near the Shinsa station. They had a rather tasty vegetarian buffet with the spicy Korean kimchi and other dishes, at very reasonable prices. Then I took off to look for the bakery randomly in the area, and tried asking people, none of whom spoke any English. One was kind enough to call the number of the bakery and explain in a way that even I could understand that it's really far away. Fine, I just spent the evening walking the streets of Seoul then, quite a nice city it is. I stayed in a fine budget hotel near the city centre called Yim's House, warmly recommended, definitely worth the budget price and the owner who works really long hours speaks excellent English and is extremely friendly and nice.

Yim's House is right next to the Changdeokgung palace, so I decided to visit that in the morning, but as you have to go on a guided tour and the English one only started at 11:30, I decided to go to the bakery for breakfast first. For in the evening I had found a web page that seemed to have very precise information on how to find them. (Wireless internet hotspots were all over the place in Seoul, including free ones.) I decided on trying the Shinchon branch, followed the instructions on the page and walked up and down the street finding nothing. Deciding they might mean some other intersection I tried all that seemed plausible but still found no trace of Sticky Fingers. Then it was time for the tour of the palace, so I went back. They only show certain sections of the palace grounds but nonetheless the tour was certainly worth it and it was very interesting to hear how the heating system worked for example. The Korean palaces have a certain resemblance to the Chinese ones, but they're not exactly the same, the colour scheme is a bit different and the architecture, ornaments and even basic design have certain differences.

After the tour I decided I really want to find the bakery and the branch in Shinsegae department store seemed easiest. The department store was easy to find, but had no store map, and it has 14 stories, if I remember correctly. However, the Sticky Fingers stand is at the level where you enter from the metro tunnel, even though I didn't notice it at my first round as I didn't cover the whole floor. So, finally, the vegan goodies! I bought some samples although I was rather disappointed to see pretty much only sweet things, I would rather have seen something savoury, especially as I hadn't eaten all day. But the confectionery was definitely mouth-watering and totally palatable.

Cheered up after finding what I had been looking for I set out to touring more of the palaces of Seoul, and beautiful they were. There are five main palaces in the city, all quite distinct. I also figured a celebratory dinner was in order and headed off to a famous restaurant that's been voted as one of the best in Asia, the Sanchon Mountain Village. The restaurant was opened by a former monk who liked the mountain food the monks ate so much that he wanted to bring it to a wider audience. They have a set course which contains more than 20 dishes, so there's certainly enough to eat, and they keep you entertained by having a nightly performance of music and dance. The setting is traditional Korean, you sit on a pillow on the floor, and all food is brought in little bowls. Much of it is really tasty, some a bit too spicy for my taste. It's a little expensive though, 35,200 won.

The next day I decided to head to Seoraksan national park, and as the main branch of Sticky Fingers was supposed to be at a station rather near the express bus station, I thought I'd go there to pick some snacks for the road. Again I followed the instructions in the page mentioned above to the letter and then twisting the letter, walking over an hour through the streets and still finding nothing. I was tired of this and as I had the address even in Korean from the Sticky Fingers website, I stopped a taxi and asked the driver to take me there. He looked at the address for a while and said sorry but he had no idea where it is (or something of the sort, my Korean is very limited). Disappointed I walked on but decided to try another taxi driver still. He also didn't know the address but he had a GPS device to which he could type the address and get instructions how to get there. To his utter surprise the place was just two blocks away. He didn't even turn the meter on for such a short trip, just charged me 1,000 won for taking me there, and indeed there was the Sticky Fingers logo... but a much bigger "RENT" sign over the whole thing. It was closed. For good. As I walked back to the metro station I still couldn't fathom how could one possibly end up there with the instructions from the website, but as it was closed it hardly matters.

Next I boarded a bus to Sokcho, a small city near the Seoraksan national park. The Korean express buses are really comfortable with huge seats and not too many people and they do drive on schedule. I went to the motel recommended at Yim's House, and the place was quite good again and the staff friendly. They even had coffee that tasted good! I don't know how they do that, generally I don't like coffee but that stuff was great. The Vegetarian Korea page knows a vegetarian restaurant in Sokcho so I headed off there... first I tried to find it but eventually reverted to a taxi. I was presented with a menu in Korean only and no pictures, and I just said "vegetarian" in Korean to the waitress and she asked me if one item on the list would be ok. It was a pibimbab, costing 6,000 won, so I said yes and expected a simple meal, for as far as I knew pibimbab is rice with some veggies and possibly egg but not in this place then. I was in total awe then when I saw what they brought before me: more than a dozen bowls of totally amazing foods, coupled with rice and Korean pancakes. This place is famous for herbs, they collect local herbs and sell them over there, and you could taste that in the food. I can honestly say I've never tasted anything like it before, it was totally delightful. And the service was top notch, the son of the owner speaks decent English and he came to explain to me how to eat the foods and best of all, even drove me to town after the dinner as the place is quite far away. At no extra charge, just the measly 6,000 won. I can't praise this place enough, if you ever end up around Sokcho, do look it up!

The next day I went off to Seoraksan national park. It was a rainy day, and hence the idea of hiking for possibly even 11 hours to the top of the mountain to see nothing but cloud didn't really excite me, so I decided on the option of hiking to the 873 m high rock that's been compared to the Ayers Rock in Australia. I can't really say how fair a comparison it is since it was misty and I couldn't see far and hence couldn't get a proper look at the rock but nonetheless. At Seoraksan there's also a huge Buddha statue, the biggest I've ever seen, right near the entrance. Made of bronze. The actual hike was fun regardless of the wet weather, and got gradually harder as the path became steeper. In the end it was climbing seemingly endless stairs along the rock. I'm in a pretty good shape but I still had to pause for breath a couple of times, the thing that amazes me is that some people actually managed and saw it worthwhile to build these stairs over there, all my respect to their hard labour!

The hike was shorter than I thought though, so I also decided to take the short path to the waterfalls. I almost turned back disappointed before reaching the end of the path as it seemed there were some waterfalls but nothing really fancy. However the waterfall in the end was pretty nice, not huge but quite pretty, and the pond below was so inviting I had to fight the urge of taking my clothes off and jumping in for a swim!

I took the bus back to the motel where I had left my bag and then changed off my wet shirt before heading off to the bus station and the next destination, but in my silliness I didn't even ask about buses to Busan from Sokcho but just figured I'd go to Seoul, pick up some snacks and head on to Busan from there in a night bus so I'd arrive in the morning. Well, I made it to Seoul but the department store and hence Sticky Fingers was closed already, and I spent much of the evening waiting for a train in Seoul station as I decided I didn't want to leave too early as I'd arrive near midnight then and would have to find a place to sleep in Busan. I was quite decided that I'd sleep on the train, even though the last train of the evening, leaving Seoul at 23:00, arrived in Busan already at 4:19 AM. And I seemed to get a seat, don't know if they had sleepers. They didn't even dim the lights, the train kept stopping several times, always with loud announcements, and overall I got no sleep at all.

So in the morning in Busan station, sleepy and my legs aching from the hike of the previous day I decided to go to the beach to see the sunrise, given that I was up early enough. I went to the metro station and waited for the first train of the morning, leaving at 5:33 AM, and got to the beach an hour later to see that the sun was pretty much up already. I took some pictures anyway and decided I needed some relaxation and hot springs sounded just the thing. I went off to this thing they claim to be the biggest spa in Asia, I don't know if it is but it wasn't huge and the Chinese ones I've been to certainly don't seem much smaller at all. Anyhow, there were hot springs, in much the same style as in China, meaning that they flavour the waters to have some health effects. I couldn't understand the Korean signs to know what effect they were supposed to have but there were cherry, citron, and grapefruit flavoured pools at least. No, that doesn't mean you drink the water, you just soak in it. But it had the colour and smell of those fruits. They had a small swimming pool also, and saunas. The sauna was in Finnish sauna temperatures, 84°C, but they only had a bench to sit on at ground level, so it didn't feel like a hot and proper Finnish sauna. I also went down on the sun chairs that were by the pools to relax for a moment and ended up falling asleep for a bit.

The sad part about Busan, a city of over 4 million people, is that there's only one vegetarian restaurant, the Wellbeing vegetable buffet. It's a pretty good one, but definitely not enough for such a big city, and it wasn't even big or crowded. Maybe a dozen people or so dining on Friday night, a few more at lunchtime. It's a family business, and seemed to be quite a nice vegetarian family, even if the language skills were limited. There was also a nice temple in Busan, but I took off back to Seoul the next morning nonetheless.

Back in Seoul I decided I will definitely find the missing Sticky Fingers bakery, whatever the cost. I went off to a tourist information centre and asked the staff to call the bakery number and ask where is it. They did that very nicely and I got instructions how to get there, despite being told that they wouldn't have much more selection than the department store stand and the place was quite far away. Never mind, I went all the way to Korea for the bakery, I wouldn't mind sitting another hour in the metro to reach it. Despite the instructions I did end up taking the wrong way from the metro station and ended up in a wrong place that still somehow seemed to match the description, so I used my superb Korean skills to chat with an old man there and after five minutes managed to understand that I was supposed to go to the other direction from the station. Well, I walked back and searched for a bit and there it was! The vegan bakery. It was true their selection wasn't much wider than that of the department store though. I bought a bunch of things and happily headed back to the city centre.

There was still time for dinner and I had read of a restaurant offering a nice vegetarian fare, including tofu ice cream, so I took off to find it in the artsy district. Surprise surprise, after walking back and forth where it was supposed to be for an hour or two I didn't find a trace of it. But I did see a restaurant that had its name written in Chinese characters and the name started with 素, which means vegetarian or plain. So I checked their menu, it wasn't a vegetarian restaurant but they did have a vegetarian special also, so I went in and tested my Korean in explaining the whole "no fish, no egg, no dairy" thing to them while pointing to the vegetarian special in the menu. Another waitress came back a moment later to verify the no egg part, so I guess it had an effect. The food was good and at least seemed completely vegan.

The last day I checked out the main palace, Gyeongbokgung, and the Korean folk museum that's adjacent to it. A beautiful palace and an interesting museum. After which I headed off to the Sticky Fingers at the department store and bought the stand empty to bring back tons of stuff to offer to everyone, thinking I'd host a vegan confectionery party in the weekend. Later I realised there's a tango workshop during the weekend so the party might not take place. Don't know. Anyway, Korea overall seemed a very nice country largely worthy of its name ("korea" in Finnish means pretty, sometimes suggesting overly decorated). Well worth a visit, with or without a vegan bakery, but especially with one. The rest of the pictures are in flickr.

Sticky Fingers bakery branches in Seoul:
- Shinsegae department store branch: Take metro line 4 to Hoehyeon (회현) station, go to Shinsegae department store by exit 7 and search the level to which you arrive, probably B1, it's in the sweet foods court.
- Garak market branch: Take metro line 8 to Garak market (가락시장) station, take exit 3 or 4 (one was closed as I was there) towards Olympic Family Apartments (올림픽훼밀리아파트), note a big GS25 Mart and make sure it's on your right hand side as you walk on. If you don't see it, turn around. Turn right immediately after the fence of the GS25 on a small walkway and walk across over to the place straight ahead with several small shops. Sticky Fingers is a bit towards the left, on the side where you'll arrive from.