Seoul Day 6-8
So I fell down a little bit on the blogging! I'm going to break it all up a bit so this doesn't get huge and massively long. Anyway picking up where we left off--for my first real day alone... I decided to get my Zen on. After sleeping in late, a very zen inducing experience, I went to Bongeunsa temple. They have a temple life program for foreigners there every Thursday. The program includes a tour of the temple, lotus lantern making, a tea ceremony, and guided meditation. Since there were only four of us last Thursday we had an added bonus! Normally they don't take groups of foreigners into the actual ceremony, but since we were small we got to go! So we tromped into the main hall as respectfully as possible and bowed three times to the Buddha, as demonstrated by our guide. Then we pulled up a cushion and semi-chanted. Since none of us knew the chants, we just listened really, but it was pretty darn neat to actually be in a real ceremony. Then we were off the tea ceremony and lantern making. I think Layna and I have a new hobby, we trekked out to our local buddhist store later in the week to buy tissue paper to make more. It is seriously fun! As a souvenir they also gave us all Buddhist prayer beads after our meditation! Pity the only other American on the tour was your classic "ugly American". He fell asleep during meditation, which seriously ruined my zen. Anyways after the temple I went to the Coex Aquarium. The theme there seems to be putting fish in funny things. Like they had a bunch of fish swimming around in a toilet bowl! They also had these things called Dr. Fish which if you put your feel in a bowl of them, will chew off your callouses. I was pretty freaked out when I stuck my hand in and they all started chomping on my hands. The sign just said--put hand in here--it didn't warn me about the carniverous fish! So after that I headed up towards the City hall area for the theatre! I had tickets to Chongdong Theatre for a "Miso" perfomance. Miso means smile. Basically it was a traditional Korean drumming, singing, and dance performance. It was seriously cool.
Friday I went to the Korean National Museum and leaned about the various Korean dynasties and the unification of the continent... (Saturday was all about the de-unification of the continent). I also had a bulgolgi sandwhich, my sister has complained about the lack of food blogging, so I am trying to accomodate her request. ;-) Bulgogi is strips of beef covered in BBQ sauce, but not like our BBQ sauce, this is not thick and ketchup based. It's very sweet. Friday night David hung out with me while Layna finished work. Which was super nice! We went to the movie theatre and saw Inkheart. I always like going to the theatre in different countries because it is always slightly different even though most movies are of course in English. I like commercials, also I thought it was iteresting that all the seats were assigned. Then we went to dinner. I told David to order what ever he recommended. I wasn't dissapointed! Good thing I didn't ask what it was though.... He ordered special kimbap. Kimbap is rice and seaweed and usually has vegetables in it. This was just rice and seaweed and had something with a spicy sauce on the side. I assumed the something was a root vegetable because it had an odd-texture. It was super tasty, eventually David whipped out his translator and said oh it's "Octopus." Well that explains the texture, I don't dislike the flavor of Octopus--the texture always gets me. But since it was so tasty, I kept chowing down! Then we had two type Dybokgoge (I may have massacred that spelling). It's another spicey sauce with rice cake things that have the consistency of noodles. I AM HOOKED! The second one had a slightly less spicy sauce, ramen noodles in addition to the rice cakes and a random hard boiled egg.
Saturday morning Layna and I got up at like 5:45 to trekdown to Camp Kim for the USO tour to the Demilitarized Zone. As a political junkie, I was really looking forward to this. When we got to Samgakji station we noticed herds of Americans getting off the train too... in fact they seemed to be the only people around, which was sort of funny. As a westerner you stick out like a sour thumb in Seoul. Once on a subway ride, a little girl started tugging on her mom and pointing at us--I think we looked funny. I was sort of used to being the only Westerner around at this point, so herd of english-speaking Americans was kind of odd to see. Anyways, apparently there were 85 people on our tour, thus explaining the herd! We pretty much snoozed on the Bus up to the DMZ, which is only about an hour north of Seoul--with traffic. So really, the DMZ is scary close to Seoul. When we arrived at Camp Kim, a US solider came out to greet us and to serve as our tour guide. Photography was restricted in a lot of places, so I don't have as many pictures as I would like--but those that I got will be up on Facebook and in my gmail album soon. Anyway, they gave us a briefing on the history of the DMZ and North + South Korea. Then our solider guide took us around the Panmunjeon. A side note--our guide spoke possibly the worst English I have ever heard. I have never heard someone use the phrase "took'en away" before. My personal favorite was when he was talking about stepping on landmines and said "yeah that would be sucking." David had wanted to come because he had never been to the DMZ, but we decided it was a good thing he wasn't there or we would have had to translate the "English" into English. Anyways, we toured through the buildings where the UN holds its meetings with North Korea and we got our pictures taken in what is technically North Korea. We also got to take pictures of the North Korean guards watching us through binoculars. There were some funny stories our guide told us--like how when they rennovated their building, they added a floor. Then the North Koreans built their building so it would be taller. The Americans/ ROK (Republic of Korea AKA South Korea) side decided to leave it alone so they didn't get into a skyscraper war at the DMZ. He also mentioned that once the North Koreans had a big event where they invited all their media to watch doves be released at the DMZ. They had trained the doves so they would fly over to their side, the idea was that the doves were supposed to fly to the side of the truly free country. They didn't take into account that the ROK/US side has a big shiny pagoda. All the doves flew to the bright pagoda.
After that we went to an observation area where we were surronded by North Korea on three sides and could see Propaganda Village. We took our pictures again in front of North Korea. In "Freedom Village", so called because it is actually in the DMZ, there is a ROK flag. Well when they put that up, the North Koreans threw up an even bigger one in Propaganda Village. Apparently it weighs 600 pounds and takes 50-60 men to hoist up and down every day. In the afternoon we went to another observation area where we could look through binoculars and could see in to Kaesong and Propaganda village. It was amazing how there were just no people and no cars around. I saw one car moving around in the Kaesong industrial complex, which is a joint ROK/DPRK (North Korea) project. Then we hiked down into the third infiltration tunnel. The DPRK apparenly has dug a bunch of tunnels under the DMZ. They tried to cover up what they were doing by paintin the walls black and pretending they were abandoned coal mines. Four tunnels have been found but it is believed that around 20 exist. The closest one found is only 52km from Seoul and is capable of moving 30,000 troops through in an hour.
Post tour we went back to Seoul. We decided to visit Itaewon, because no trip to Seoul is quite complete with out visiting Itaewon. We were laughing because it seemed like most of our tour group ran over to Itaewon. Let me explain about Itaewon. You've heard of Little Italy and Chinatown of course... well Seoul has LITTLE AMERICA! I think it must be just about the only city with it's own Little America. Unlike the rest of the city, it is dirty, and English seems to be its first language. It was seriously free-range Americans. I think they might have even outnumbered the Koreans on Saturday afternoon. Most of the signs are English there too, so if you took a random picture, you would just assume it was a scene in New York. I bough crazy hats there and we had coffee. Itaewon is also part of the reason why a lot of Americans who come to Seoul, never learn to speak Korean. You just don't need it if you only hang out in Itaewon. I even saw some guy flip the bird--yep a little taste of home. After about an hour, we'd had enough Americans so we went left little America and met David back in Gangnam for Japanese food. Afterwards we went to the Noraebang! David seemed dissapointed with this one because they didn't give us unendying amounts of time like the usually do. But I think Layna and I still had a blast!
Friday I went to the Korean National Museum and leaned about the various Korean dynasties and the unification of the continent... (Saturday was all about the de-unification of the continent). I also had a bulgolgi sandwhich, my sister has complained about the lack of food blogging, so I am trying to accomodate her request. ;-) Bulgogi is strips of beef covered in BBQ sauce, but not like our BBQ sauce, this is not thick and ketchup based. It's very sweet. Friday night David hung out with me while Layna finished work. Which was super nice! We went to the movie theatre and saw Inkheart. I always like going to the theatre in different countries because it is always slightly different even though most movies are of course in English. I like commercials, also I thought it was iteresting that all the seats were assigned. Then we went to dinner. I told David to order what ever he recommended. I wasn't dissapointed! Good thing I didn't ask what it was though.... He ordered special kimbap. Kimbap is rice and seaweed and usually has vegetables in it. This was just rice and seaweed and had something with a spicy sauce on the side. I assumed the something was a root vegetable because it had an odd-texture. It was super tasty, eventually David whipped out his translator and said oh it's "Octopus." Well that explains the texture, I don't dislike the flavor of Octopus--the texture always gets me. But since it was so tasty, I kept chowing down! Then we had two type Dybokgoge (I may have massacred that spelling). It's another spicey sauce with rice cake things that have the consistency of noodles. I AM HOOKED! The second one had a slightly less spicy sauce, ramen noodles in addition to the rice cakes and a random hard boiled egg.
Saturday morning Layna and I got up at like 5:45 to trekdown to Camp Kim for the USO tour to the Demilitarized Zone. As a political junkie, I was really looking forward to this. When we got to Samgakji station we noticed herds of Americans getting off the train too... in fact they seemed to be the only people around, which was sort of funny. As a westerner you stick out like a sour thumb in Seoul. Once on a subway ride, a little girl started tugging on her mom and pointing at us--I think we looked funny. I was sort of used to being the only Westerner around at this point, so herd of english-speaking Americans was kind of odd to see. Anyways, apparently there were 85 people on our tour, thus explaining the herd! We pretty much snoozed on the Bus up to the DMZ, which is only about an hour north of Seoul--with traffic. So really, the DMZ is scary close to Seoul. When we arrived at Camp Kim, a US solider came out to greet us and to serve as our tour guide. Photography was restricted in a lot of places, so I don't have as many pictures as I would like--but those that I got will be up on Facebook and in my gmail album soon. Anyway, they gave us a briefing on the history of the DMZ and North + South Korea. Then our solider guide took us around the Panmunjeon. A side note--our guide spoke possibly the worst English I have ever heard. I have never heard someone use the phrase "took'en away" before. My personal favorite was when he was talking about stepping on landmines and said "yeah that would be sucking." David had wanted to come because he had never been to the DMZ, but we decided it was a good thing he wasn't there or we would have had to translate the "English" into English. Anyways, we toured through the buildings where the UN holds its meetings with North Korea and we got our pictures taken in what is technically North Korea. We also got to take pictures of the North Korean guards watching us through binoculars. There were some funny stories our guide told us--like how when they rennovated their building, they added a floor. Then the North Koreans built their building so it would be taller. The Americans/ ROK (Republic of Korea AKA South Korea) side decided to leave it alone so they didn't get into a skyscraper war at the DMZ. He also mentioned that once the North Koreans had a big event where they invited all their media to watch doves be released at the DMZ. They had trained the doves so they would fly over to their side, the idea was that the doves were supposed to fly to the side of the truly free country. They didn't take into account that the ROK/US side has a big shiny pagoda. All the doves flew to the bright pagoda.
After that we went to an observation area where we were surronded by North Korea on three sides and could see Propaganda Village. We took our pictures again in front of North Korea. In "Freedom Village", so called because it is actually in the DMZ, there is a ROK flag. Well when they put that up, the North Koreans threw up an even bigger one in Propaganda Village. Apparently it weighs 600 pounds and takes 50-60 men to hoist up and down every day. In the afternoon we went to another observation area where we could look through binoculars and could see in to Kaesong and Propaganda village. It was amazing how there were just no people and no cars around. I saw one car moving around in the Kaesong industrial complex, which is a joint ROK/DPRK (North Korea) project. Then we hiked down into the third infiltration tunnel. The DPRK apparenly has dug a bunch of tunnels under the DMZ. They tried to cover up what they were doing by paintin the walls black and pretending they were abandoned coal mines. Four tunnels have been found but it is believed that around 20 exist. The closest one found is only 52km from Seoul and is capable of moving 30,000 troops through in an hour.
Post tour we went back to Seoul. We decided to visit Itaewon, because no trip to Seoul is quite complete with out visiting Itaewon. We were laughing because it seemed like most of our tour group ran over to Itaewon. Let me explain about Itaewon. You've heard of Little Italy and Chinatown of course... well Seoul has LITTLE AMERICA! I think it must be just about the only city with it's own Little America. Unlike the rest of the city, it is dirty, and English seems to be its first language. It was seriously free-range Americans. I think they might have even outnumbered the Koreans on Saturday afternoon. Most of the signs are English there too, so if you took a random picture, you would just assume it was a scene in New York. I bough crazy hats there and we had coffee. Itaewon is also part of the reason why a lot of Americans who come to Seoul, never learn to speak Korean. You just don't need it if you only hang out in Itaewon. I even saw some guy flip the bird--yep a little taste of home. After about an hour, we'd had enough Americans so we went left little America and met David back in Gangnam for Japanese food. Afterwards we went to the Noraebang! David seemed dissapointed with this one because they didn't give us unendying amounts of time like the usually do. But I think Layna and I still had a blast!