Heart and SEOUL

Hisashiburi readers!! Long time no see. Let's get right down to it:

Last year, I did a pretty good job of hitting most of Japan's hot spots. Almost every Japanese person I talk to now can't believe the list of places I've been in just a year, and admit to only having been to a fraction of them themselves (yet somehow it's a crime that I have never been to NYC). So this year, I wanted most of my travel destinations to be outside of Japan, and I am proud to say that less than two full months in, I have knocked one off the list.

Seoul, South Korea is geographically closer to Fukuoka than Tokyo, but a visit will still get you a passport stamp! For Jamie, it was her first (and possibly last?) stamp from a country other than Japan or the U.S. For me, it was my first stamp from a country where I didn't speak one word of the language (even coming to Japan for the first time, I knew konnichiwa and arigatou.) Thankfully, Koreans seem to take their English education more seriously than the Japanese do, and even the bus drivers and convenience store employees spoke in English to us.

When traveling throughout Japan, cities are very similar. The public transportation usually works in the same way and people conduct themselves pretty similarly. We had no idea what to expect in Seoul, and thankfully we ran into very few problems, but being used to the efficiency, politeness and cleanliness of Japan, we found Seoul to be a very different place indeed.

Welcome to modern Seoul. The Incheon Airport. Built on reclaimed swamp land about an hour from the heart of the city.

The road from the airport into the city was wide and recently paved. People drove American-sized cars on the American (right) side of the road. There were lots of converted motorcycle flatbed scooters to transport goods from one neighborhood to another. Each area seemed to specialize in two or three completely unrelated things. The neighborhood where we stayed was the packaging, lamp and sewing machine district. We walked through the stainless steel (ash trays, industrial kitchen counters etc) and tennis raquet neighborhood and passed the puppy and desk chair district on the bus. Really, there was something interesting to look at pretty much everywhere!

Seoul's central post office. Pretty cool building, eh?

After locating our hostel, we decided to forgo lunch (shock!) and have a light snack so we could eat a hearty dinner later on, and head to sight number one, Gyeongbokgung Palace. [Most Korean words, especially place names had too many letters and the money, the won, had way too many zeros. 1000 won was roughly $1 US when we went.] We saw three different palaces in Seoul, and but I can't really tell you the differences between them. They were built by different people I have never heard of, and are all pretty spectacular. Gyeonbokgung was quite extensive, and after walking around for over an hour, Jamie and I decided we should probably move on to palace #2, only to discover when we looked at the map that we had missed about 1/2 of it.

Main hall of Gyeongbokgung. Quite large, made of wood with every exposed surface, like the ceiling and the roof supports exquisitely painted in bright colors. I was awed by the fact that this was all done without the help of modern machinery. Quite the accomplishment.

Palace #2 was Deoksugung Palace. Much smaller but accompanied by two buildings that closely resemble the White House. They were built in the early 20th century and used to receive foriegn dignitaries. The traditional style buildings were also painted in the same fashion as palace #1.

The back cover shot for our short guide to Seoul. Tip #1: the shopping isn't as good as you were lead to believe (read on for more explanation).

The old receiving hall for foreigners. Today it is an art museum. The building above and the building below are right next to each other. Weird, huh?

A little palace-d out, and getting hungry, we set out towards one of Seoul's landmark department stores. On the way there, we saw lots of cool public art, as well as some signs from home.

A tower made of concrete and old headlights!

Subway art.


Sculpture above one of the subway station/shopping arcades. In person, you could see the activity below reflected in each of the silver spheres.

OMG! Krispy Kreme! No wonder Koreans are normal sized human beings!

After dinner and some light shopping, we called it a night and went back to the hostel to rest our weary feet and watch some high quality English television in the form of "The Girls Next Door."

Day 2 was set aside primarily for shopping, since most of the cultural landmarks were closed. We left our hotel and headed indirectly for the Dongdaemon market. We passed through an open market selling all sort of odd, supposedly edible treats. Quite a lot to take in first thing in the morning. Vats of spicy, homemade kimchi abounded, but weren't enough to mask the smell of fish. There was fresh fish and dried fish (chirimen jakko, one of my least favorite school lunch ingredients. They are served whole and impossible to remove from whatever they are mixed into, usually rice or salad) of every size imaginable!

Gross, gross, gross.

Following the detour through the open market, we found our way to a large building we thought looked like a mall, but when we entered quickly found ourselves to be the only people wandering about leisurely. The entire 7 or 8 story building, with wings A-E was full of people on a misson--designs and fabric swatches in hand. It was fabric and trimming wholesale warehouse, the likes of such I had never seen before. Slightly frustrated that we were wasting precious shopping time, we wound our way out, stopped to take a picture in front of an imposing gate (which will not post properly) and headed back across to the other side of the river where the pre-made clothes were for sale.

We were not much more successful on the pre-assembled clothing side of the river than we were in the fabric mecca. Minus my purchase of a t-shirt and a two knit hats, all we came across were hideous grandma clothes made out of synthetic fabrics. Yes, they were cheap, but who cares? We sat down to lunch tired of being on our feet and rather discouraged. Lunch--bim bim bap (hot rice bowl covered in veggies and a raw egg) was easily the best purchase of the day.

Hats, hats and more hats outside of the shop where I bought mine. Undoubtedly made in sweatshops somewhere in SW Asia.


Discouraged by the shopping, Jamie and I decided to head to Seoul Tower. We made a brief stop at a traditional Korean Village, but there weren't any nifty craft demonstrations as advertised in the brochure. We did take a nice little kyukei on a big rock to plan our next move. We could see Seoul Tower from the village, and read in Lonely Planet that we could walk from the Seoul Tower exit of one the major subway stations. So it was back on the subway, and immediately outside of the exit, the up hill climb began. We went up two smaller hills before takings two massive sets of stairs and were completely exhausted. From the Lonely Planet, we determined that we were less than 1/2 way there, so we started to evaluate our options. 1) Keep walking, being bitten by mosquitos and getting sweaty; 2) Give up; 3) Try one of the other methods of getting to the tower, a yellow bus or a taxi. As luck would have it, we sat down right across the street from the bus stop and a yellow bus pulled up within minutes. The driver was very nice as he literally drove us back to where we had come from (the village), around the hill where the tower was located, and finally up the hill. We climbed the hill for a good 10 minutes in the bus and passed several crazy people walking up. When the bus finally let us off in the parking lot, we still had about 400 yards of steep up hill road to follow to the top. It was pretty rediculous. And I don't think Lonely Planet did a sufficent job warning the reader about the severity/distance of the incline. Or maybe it was in metric, which even after a year of living in a metric country, I am not good at judging.

Anyway, the tower. We finally made it...on probably one of the most overcast days Seoul would see all month. So we decided to save the $8 or whatever it cost to go up and just look out from the outdoor observation deck at the bottom of the tower.


The tower from the approach. Probably more magestic against a blue sky.

The chain link fence around the observation deck at the bottom of the tower. Apparently, when things start to get serious among young Korean couples, they come up here and afix a lock with their names on it to the fence. This is maybe 1/10th of the fence, not even. The yellow sign says "Don't throw your key away," whatever that means in the midst of a couple thousand locks.

The "view." How much was weather and how much was smog was difficult to determine. Despite the gray, the hundreds and hundreds of massive apartment blocks and several huge huge TVs for advertising were visible.

We ventured toward the gift shop, where we bought some cute postcards. Cute postcards of a tower, you ask? Yes. There were maybe 3 awful photographic ones, and the rest of the rack was adorable cartoon versions of the tower with big smile, surrounded by cute forest animals or local elementary school student's wobbly looking crayon renderings. Adorable. We located the snack bar and spent $10, (yes, $10) on a large shaved ice, ice cream, fruit and condensed milk concoction that came in a bowl better suited for taco salad. It was huge and delicious! I don't know if I should ever spend $10 on some thing that is basically frozen water ever again, but it makes for a good story.

Preparing to indulge.

Don't remember anything too remarkable about night two. We looked for dinner and ended up back on the street we explored the first night, where Jamie bought ballet flats and some scarves. Overall though, we completely over budgeted for the trip...I returned to Japan with about $300 in won. Bad plan. The selling rate in Japan is awful. I was lucky to "give" some to Vanessa, but still have about $100 in won that would turn into about $70 if I were to exchange it here. Not sure what I will do with it.

Day 3. Morning came and we dragged our tired bodies out of the hostel. While in Seoul, we relied heavily on the subway to get us around, and it worked beautifully. It was pretty clean and safe (not quite up to Japan standards, but acceptable to anyone else's) the trains ran frequently, and cost us about $1 every time we got on and off, which seemed like such a bargain compared to Japanese public transportation (I spent $10 today getting to and from school using the train and the bus). However, taking the subway, or more specifically getting to and from the subway via stairs definitely took its toll on us. I swear we climbed millions of stairs in the short time that we were there, and were moving noticably slower on the last day there than we were on the first day.

Day 3's agenda really only had one stop, the last of the big palaces. This one you needed to be on a guided tour to gain admittance. So we showed up and bought our tickets for the English tour and hung out in the back of the group. If I had been a member of the Korean ruling class, Changdeokgung Palace would definitely be were I would have wanted to live. The main halls looked quite similar to the other palaces, but the grounds were extensive and woodsy. My favorite part though was the romatic looking library perched above a lily-pad covered pond. Beautiful. The picture below is the last picture I took in Korea, and I think it's pretty fitting.

Goofing around under a veranda.
The library.

While we were standing near the library, a muffled thundering came from the direction we had come from. We turned around to see a huge group of Korean school children barrelling towards us. Our group started moving again, but not fast enough and for the last 20 minutes of the tour we were in the middle of a sea of 6th graders. While not exactly ideal, it was a telling experience. The group was completely unorganized. The teacher in the front was jabbering away on a cell phone, kids trailed behind and beside him in groups of 3 or 4, bumping into people on our tour, playing with their Nintendo DS, and listening to their iPods. On a school trip?!?! It looked like a lot of chaos to me, and made me appreciate all of the organization and rules of Japan.

Several hours later, after a flight where Jamie's herritage thouroughly confused all the flight attendents (she was spoken to in Japanese, Korean, and what we thought was Mandarin. Dang, those Korean Air flight attendants are a smart bunch!) and mine was as clear as day (English, English and more English) we arrived safely back in the jutaku. An excellent way to spend a long weekend, but now that I've been, I can put Seoul on my been there, done that list.