What I Brought Home From Korea

Yes, all THAT is what I brought home from Korea. I went on a little bit of a shopping spree at E-Mart, spending about $30 on Korean vegan ramyun (ramen, maMA, whatever you may call it!), gochujang (red pepper paste), ssamjang (a soybean based dipping sauce), and gim (sheets of dried and salted seaweed). You can see the bulk of the stash is five 4-packs of Korean ramyun - 순라면.  This is the only vegan brand of ramyun I know of in Korea.  There is some vegan "maMA" as it's called here in Thailand, but I just had to stock up on the Korean brand while I was there!  Anyway, 5 times 4 is 20, so let's see... if I stay in Thailand for 12 months before I get another chance to go back to Korea, that means I can have a dinner of my favorite ramyun about... once every 18 days. Hmm...

Well, I've already gone through two packs! Couldn't help it... when you have one of those evenings, or one of those weekend afternoons, when you really just want a quick and easy meal to satisfy your salty/spicy/scrumptious cravings, ramyun is pretty much perfect! The first pack I whipped up just normal style, minimal effort. Hot and spicy, salty, soooo satisfying.

For the next pack, I got the idea to add some edamame. I had bought a big bag at Chiang Mai's Walking Street for about 50 Baht ($1.75). I love snacking on these, but wasn't sure how they'd taste with ramyun.

Turns out, they make a pretty good pair!
I shelled the edamame and popped them straight into my bowl of steaming noodles. I decided not to add them into the pot while the ramyun was cooking so that they'd stay a bit chewy and crunchy. The combination of hot and slurpy ramyun with cold and chewy beans was really nice.

The edamame also made a good pair with the ramyun by balancing out the salty, greasy "goodness" with a huge punch of nutrients.  Not kidding. Check out edamame's ridiculously high levels of fiber, protein, iron, calcium, folate, thiamin, riboflavin, and vitamins B6, C, and K (click here).

I haven't gotten a chance to use the gochujang and ssamjang yet. But the Gim will be making a blog appearance soon...

In addition to a bunch of packaged food, I did bring home something completely not mass produced.

A loaf of Mipa's homemade carrot cake!  Mipa surprised me with this farewell gift as I was packing my bags to leave her apartment.  I rationed it over the next few breakfasts back in my apartment.

One morning I had a few slices with some Thai fruit that I think is called langsat. It's similar to longan (ลำไย - "lamyay"), but the main difference is that it has sections; longan is just one round piece. Langsat is juicy, sweet and a little sour; nice and refreshing in the morning.

It grows on a bunch, like this. It's not too hard to peel, but the skin is extremely sticky. Even after I wash my hands and the knife, there's still a tacky residue!  Ugly yellow skin, almost as bad as super glue.. but still a very tasty fruit!

I have to say, eating Korean ramyun in Thailand is kinda fun. Whenever I have a chance to merge my worlds, even just in a small way, it makes me really happy. Kinda like this picture:

You can't see exactly what I'm smiling about, so I'll tell you.  This was somewhere around Hongdae area of Seoul.  Lots of Korean restaurants and cafes obviously, such as the one on the left in the background.  Then I saw the big yellow sign in Spanish: el Avion. Ooh, two languages I know!  And THEN, I saw that the orange-signed restaurant was Thai!  Ahh!  Tic-tac-toe three in a row!  My worlds combine! haha!