On Korean Food and why we should emulate them.

I just realised after being back for a week or so that we actually eat pretty unhealthily over here. I mean lets see what we have available for snacks, easily accessible kind I mean: nasi katok, deep fried stuff, fried noodles and whatnot, BBQ smoked chicken wings/fish etc. I'm talking about cheap, daily available and not those 'once in a blue occasion' kind of snacks. Thats kind of unhealthy. Consider that over in Korea, at 11pm, we were able to sit down at a roadside stall and order stewed rice cakes in spicy sauce, with soup. Or the fact that snacks for them means a 1000won (Approx B$1.70) bar of sushi (I mean huge roll, not like Excapade miniscule type of sushi roll).

Or take drinks. They sell fruit drinks and water mostly. I simply could not see any Coke, 7-up anywhere. Why? Because they were promoting their own drinks such as pine bud drink, energiser drinks, fruit sodas, chilled teas equivalent to Season's Cincau drink. They even sell milk in 350mL cartons in quantities that we in Brunei stock on Coke and Pepsi. Talk about a health conscious society.

You understand where I'm getting at. No wonder they are mostly lithe and slim. There is one downside. In an 8 day tour, by the 5th day we had eaten most of the national dishes, the ones you simply have not arrived in Korea if you have not eaten them. Korean bbq, bimimbap, steamboat, etc. Bland, mostly. Except the BBQ. That was really great.

Thats why I found myself, at 11 30pm, at Sinchon shopping area, looking at a 24hr Mc D's. Sad you might think, but for all those who have only eaten McD's in Singapore, Brunei or Malaysia, even Australia, you should really try the beef in Korea. OMG, it tastes SO much better!!! A bacon deluxe double cheeseburger, with fries and a Coke Zero. For 5500KRW, it was well worth it. Apparently the beef in Japan is better yet. I can't wait to try. And that's where I found myself at the airport, craving for a Bacon deluxe cheeseburger but no Mc D's. So what to do, go 2nd best and wallop Burger King. Problem number two was that I had run out of Korean Cash.

I can say it right now, I have never enjoyed a bacon deluxe double cheeseburger so much, especially when it was paid for using a VISACARD. Desperation knows no boundaries.