Second Trip, Third Trip: How My Priorities Changed

There's a thing that happens between your first and third trip to Seoul that nobody really warns you about. Your priorities shift. Not gradually — in a weirdly specific way. The list of things you swore you had to do shrinks. The list of things you didn't realize you'd want gets longer. By trip three you're not chasing the city anymore. You're just — being in it. Here's the honest map of what changed for me, trip by trip.

Trip one: I packed for a city I had only seen in dramas

My first packing list, looking back, is embarrassing. I brought four pairs of heels. Heels. To a city where I would walk an average of 18,000 steps a day and where the entire aesthetic, on the actual women I saw, leaned hard into white sneakers and chunky loafers. I brought outfits that matched the Pinterest board I had built for myself in October. I had a 'Sinsa cafe outfit' and a 'Bukchon traditional outfit' and I am being so sincere when I tell you I tried to dress for each one before I went out for the day. By trip three I was wearing the same New Balances every single day with whatever pants were on top of the suitcase. Korean women in my actual age bracket, in Gangnam, dress beautifully — but the secret is they don't dress for the day, they dress for the year. They have one good coat. One good bag. One good pair of shoes. Then they wear them constantly. I came home from trip three and gave away half my closet. I cannot overstate how much that has improved my life.

Trip two: I tried to fix everything I got wrong

This is the cringe trip and I think everyone has a version of it. I had spent eight months between trips on Korean YouTube and Korean travel blogs and I had a notebook — an actual notebook — of corrections. Restaurants I should have eaten at instead. Neighborhoods I should have stayed in. The 'real' Seoul I had failed to find on trip one. So trip two I overcorrected hard. I stayed in Seochon for the 'authentic' experience and spent half my mornings hauling my Ultherapy-puffy face on three subway transfers to my Apgujeong appointments. I went to a famous noodle place in Euljiro that had a 90-minute line. I dragged my friend up Naksan Park at sunrise. The food was good. The neighborhoods were nice. But I was performing the trip more than living it. Halfway through I broke down in a cafe in Insa-dong and ate a tuna sandwich from a chain that I could have gotten in Los Angeles. It was the best meal of the trip. That should have told me something.

Trip three: the list of must-dos shrank to about four things

By the third trip I had a list. The whole list. The naengmyeon place near Sinnonhyeon. One specific cafe on Garosu-gil with a window that gets afternoon light. A bathhouse near my hotel where the auntie remembers my towel locker number. The dosan park loop, ideally at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday. That's the trip. Everything else is bonus. I no longer feel guilty about not 'seeing more.' I have actively skipped the palace I have not yet visited on three separate occasions. I will get there. Or I won't. The point of trip three was that I stopped trying to maximize. I stopped Googling 'top 20 Seoul' anything. I started letting whole afternoons happen with no plan. One Wednesday last fall I walked from my hotel to a stationery store I'd seen on trip two, bought one notebook, sat in a cafe, drank one coffee, watched it rain for an hour and a half. That was the day. I look back on it as one of the best days I've ever had in any city. It cost me about $6.

What I stopped caring about, in order

Photos. I took roughly 1,400 photos on trip one. I took maybe 200 on trip three, and most of those were of food I ate alone, taken so I could text my mom. I stopped trying to capture the trip. I started trying to be in it. Outfits, as mentioned. Restaurant reservations more than two days in advance. Walking through entire neighborhoods I 'should' see. The pressure to make trip three meaningfully different from trip two. The idea that I had to leave Gangnam for any cultural reason. (Bukchon is genuinely beautiful. I will go back. I do not need to go every single trip.) Late-night drinks. I stopped drinking on these trips around trip two. The treatments I get on these trips ask me not to, and once I started actually following the no-alcohol-for-72-hours rule I realized I sleep better, recover faster, and feel like an entirely different person on day five. Wild.

What I started caring about, instead

Sleep. Genuinely my number-one trip priority now. I plan around it. Hotel quietness, blackout curtains, what time my body actually wakes up after a long flight. I now ask hotels for high-floor rooms specifically because the street noise on lower Gangnam-daero is no joke. Walking. Not 'sightseeing walks' — just walking. The 90-minute slow loop I do on day-after-treatment mornings has become the whole emotional center of these trips. I do it through the back streets behind Apgujeong, where the buildings are low and the trees are old and almost nobody is up before 8 a.m. except the bakery delivery guys. Eating things I cannot get in California. I stopped trying to eat fancy meals. I started eating very specific things — cold buckwheat noodles, the specific pork-bone soup at the place that's been there since 1979, the kind of strawberry milk you can only get in Korean convenience stores in winter. Fewer reservations. More 7-Eleven. Time alone. I now schedule explicitly solo days. No friend, no cousin, no plan. I sit. I read. I journal in coffee shops in Korean I can barely write. It's the closest I've come to a spiritual practice in years.

How my treatment scheduling changed too

On trip one I booked everything for day two. I had no idea what I was doing. I was puffy and exhausted and trying to eat Korean BBQ on the same day I'd had work done. By trip three I had a system. I land Friday. I do nothing Saturday except walk and sleep and drink water. I have my appointment Monday morning, when the clinic is quiet and I am no longer jet-lagged. I keep Tuesday open. I do not schedule anything social until Wednesday at the earliest. I leave Sunday after breakfast. That's an 8-night trip with one treatment day, and it works because I stopped trying to make every day count. The first trip I tried to fit two treatments and a Busan day-trip into seven nights. I came home crying. By trip three I had figured out: one big thing per trip, two if I'm feeling loose. Everything else is recovery. If you're planning your first trip, I keep notes on this in my <a href="/what-to-pack-seoul-clinic-trip/">clinic-trip packing list</a> and my <a href="/where-i-stay-in-gangnam-treatment-trip/">where-I-stay rundown</a>. Both are basically the corrections I wish someone had given me before trip one.

What I think the next trip will be

Trip five is booked for October. I'm fairly sure I will do almost exactly the same things I did on trip four, which were mostly the things I did on trip three with marginal improvements. Same hotel. Same noodle place. Same morning loop. I might finally make it to Seonjeongneung — the royal tombs near my hotel that I have walked past, no exaggeration, on every single trip and never gone into. Probably I will take a half-day to Bukchon because my friend is coming with me this time and she has not been. But honestly? I think the trip I want most is the one where I do less than the trip before. Not because I'm bored. Because I finally learned that the joy of a fourth or fifth trip somewhere is that you don't have to prove you were there. You can just be there. That's the whole upgrade. Nothing on the itinerary. Everything in the body.

“The first trip is a checklist. The second is a correction. The third is when you finally stop performing the trip and just take it.”

Rachel Bennett

Frequently asked questions

Is it normal for second-trip plans to feel like overcorrection?

Yes. Almost everyone I've talked to who returns to a city does this. The first trip is wide and shallow, the second is a reaction to the first. The third is usually when people land somewhere genuinely settled. If you're on trip two and feeling exhausted by your own ambitious plan, that's a sign — not a failure.

How long should each Seoul trip be once you're past the first one?

I've landed on 7-8 nights as the sweet spot for a treatment trip. Less than 6 nights and the jet lag eats too much of the time. More than 10 and I start getting stir-crazy and missing my apartment. Your math may differ if you're combining other Asian destinations or working remotely while you're there.

Should I stay in the same neighborhood every trip?

I do, and I recommend it for repeat visitors who are coming for treatments. The familiarity adds up. You stop wasting brain space on logistics and start having actual relationships with the cafe down the street and the bathhouse staff. It's a small thing but it's the thing that makes trip three feel completely different from trip one.

Do I need to learn more Korean between trips?

Honestly the difference for me wasn't vocabulary, it was confidence. Between trip one and trip three I didn't learn that many new words — I just stopped being scared of the words I already knew. Re-watch some K-dramas in the off months, listen to the cadence, and don't sweat the formal-vs-casual stuff. Most service workers in Gangnam are kind to imperfect Korean.

What's the most overrated 'must-do' for repeat visitors?

For me, the palace tours. They're beautiful, I'm not knocking them, but they are designed for first-timers and the wow factor doesn't repeat. Same with Namsan Tower at night — fine once, never again. The thing that gets richer the more times you do it is just walking around a familiar neighborhood at a familiar time of day. Nobody markets that and yet that's the whole point.

What should I track between trips so I keep getting better at this?

I keep a single Google Doc per trip — what I packed and didn't use, what I bought that I regretted, what restaurants disappointed, what surprised me. I read it on the plane at the start of the next trip. It is the single most useful thing I've ever done for travel. The Korea Tourism Organization also publishes seasonal travel updates on their <a href="https://english.visitkorea.or.kr/svc/main/index.do" rel="dofollow">official site</a> that are worth a skim before each trip — visa rules and event calendars do shift.