We left Friday afternoon, and boarded the KTX without any trouble. The KTX itself was a beautiful work of engineering, sleek and powerful looking. During the trip to Seoul we reached speeds of 260km/h, which is over 170 mph. Needless to say, we made it to Seoul in under two hours. The atmosphere inside the train was really nice, and our seats were family style seating, which means that two of us (Kayla and Philip) rode in the forward facing direction and the other two (me and Adam) in the rearwards facing direction. It was on the KTX that I started to make some videos, and for the first time, I had working microphones. They work really well, and help to cancel out a lot of the noise in the environment.
We got to Seoul at around 4 and headed out to the hostel. It would have been much easier to find if I hadn't forgot to write down the directions. I fully intended on it, I just forgot. Anyways, basically just finding the hotel turned into a hilarious hodge podge of looking for a PC room so that I could look up the directions, then not getting good enough directions apparently, then having to find yet another PC room and getting on the right track. Seoul is such a massively giant city, every street looks the same because of all the restaurants, clothes stores, and other shoppy whatnot.
The hostel was called The Windflower Guest House, and was actually pretty nice. The guys working the desk spoke Korean, but didn't look like your average Korean person. They also spoke a little English, which made everything easier. The room itself was nice, and was an 8 room suite thing which we shared with a varying group of people (Germans, Turkish, Americans, etc.). The hostel was just what we wanted, a nice secure place to sleep at night and leave your stuff during the day. I would definitely recommend The Windflower Guest House to anyone staying in Seoul.
Anyways, the first night we were looking for stuff to do so we headed out to Insadong and to dinner. Insadong is a market which specializes in uniquely Korean stuff. Lots of souvenirs and lots of Korean treasures. The street itself is really nice, and while we were there the riot police were definitely there in force. I don't know exactly what they were doing there, but apparently there was the risk of protest all around the city, so the riot police were just making an appearance and looking strong basically.
We looked around and enjoyed the atmosphere awhile, and then went to dinner. We ate in this rally nice traditional restaurant which offered delicious and very Korean cuisine. Along with dinner we had the privilege of enjoying Korean wines as well. We had plum (delicious) and raspberry (also delicious) wines, which were well worth it. After leaving, I decided to take everyone to city hall and the area I was familiar with from the trip last year, especially since we had to be there at 8 the next morning for the DMZ tour. We ended up finding the place really easily (via taxi) and also went to an old stomping ground called Texas which had a fantastic selection of beverages. We stayed there a little while and left, so that we could get some rest.
Saturday started out slow, but we easily got where we needed to be and headed out to the DMZ via our reserved tour. On the tour there were some people from Thailand, America and Brazil. the American was a girl and the Brazilian a man and were both from China. The gentleman was evidently a diplomat and the lady worked for an environmental advocacy company, both in Beijing. This meeting with other foreigners definitely went along well with my past experiences, as the two were definitely quirky and unique. The Brazilian guy always questioned every statement made, like when our guide was explaining where the DMZ actually was, he continually restated the statement in the form of a question. Like this:
Guide: This is the start of the DMZ, where (specific number) of people died.
Guy: THIS is the DMZ?
Guide: Yes, this is the area where the armistice stated (blahblahblah)
Guy: THIS is the area (blahblahblah)
It was repetitive and still kind of funny every time it happened. It was also kind of dumbfounding, though, too, because this guy was a diplomat. Granted, he wasn't necessarily a full fledged ambassador or anything, but I definitely wasn't impressed with his manner or his intellect. I know how that might sound, but this guy is a diplomat from an up and coming country (Brazil) to one of the most powerful nations in the world (China).
The girl was pretty unique too, in that it seemed as if she had a lot more going for her than the guy did. She explained what she was doing, and it sounded like she was a kind of lobbyist. She worked on getting environmental measures through to China, and knew enough for me to kind of believe her story about coming from Beijing. It doesn't really matter, I guess, I just really read a lot into what people tell me when I'm overseas because a lot of foreigners are a little different than they originally present themselves to be. I'm going to stop with the whole foreigner deal, though, because it's not really a big deal.
The DMZ went pretty well, though, and seeing it again for the second time was neat. I definitely got more out of it, and the tunnel seemed much less back breaking this time. It was actually a lot of fun going again, because I got to see a lot of different things than what I did last time.
After the DMZ, we were pretty tired. We were looking for a way to relax, so we decided to go to the Korean cultural staple, the Sauna (pronounced Sah-OOh-Nah).
Many, many Americans have probably never been to (much less heard about) a sauna, nor would many of them ever fathom of going. A ton of things contribute to the opinion I have that saunas are basically a collection of facets which American culture tells us isn't correct or is scary.
Going into the building, there were 3 guys and Kayla, the only girl. We all paid our money (only like 3 bucks for unlimited time) and headed to the locker room. We put our shoes up and grabbed the key to our locker.
The first thing about a sauna which is very different than what, as Americans, we are used to, you MUST be naked to go into the entrance. Before I continue, I feel like I should mention that guys and girls are completely separate and no co-nakedness is had. Anyways, you MUST be naked to enter the actual sauna, and it can be quite a shock at first to walk into a room with a bunch of naked people in it.
Surprisingly though, walking into a room full of naked people when you're already naked isn't nearly as bad as walking in when you're clothed (odd, right?). I was Incredibly nervous about going into the actual sauna, because everything I have ever been taught about my body as an American has only been about shame and about not being naked in front of lots of other people. Luckily, I didn't have a panic attack or anything like that and made it into the actual sauna with no real problems.
How did I willingly walk into a room with 40-50 naked men and actually enjoy the experience? Well, as soon as I walked in to the room that had all the showers, hot tubs and steam room entrances I had two options. Either I could freak out, be awkward and weird about my body in front of the group of men ranging in age from 8-80, or I could just enter a state of mind where I became comfortable in my own vulnerability and just look without seeing really anything. I can basically liken the experience to just imagining the people as just entities, and not bodies or people. I noticed there were other people there, but I tuned them out and just focused on relaxing.
After about an hour and a half of going from hot tub to cold tub to steam room to hot tub I finished my sauna time, and I was INCREDIBLY relaxed. It was really nice, actually. Afterwards, we wanted to find a Korean oddity we had heard about, called Dr. Fish.
Dr. Fish is a neat service some coffee shop places in Seoul offer, where you can get your feet "treated" by lots and lots of tiny little fishes. We were so excited about finding this place, we headed off in its direction immediately after leaving the sauna. However, just like finding the hostel, we didn't have concrete directions, so whenever we got to the area we knew the cafe was located in, Gangnam, we had to find a PC room.
We got directions, but most to our sadness, couldn't find the place for a long, long time. The time walking on the tough Korean streets was footbreaking, and by the time we got to the cafe we were wore out physically and emotionally.
This is a good time to just reiterate how funny Seoul is. It's a giant, sprawling, multilevel metropolis with a myriad upon myriad of things to do, but, the incredible amount of enterprise there makes it incredibly difficult to find most things. There are signs EVERYWHERE, and people pretty much always crowd the streets, to boot. During dinner time every single restaurant is busy, all the fun ideas are already thought a hundred times over, and to top it all off, Seoul is a very hilly city. So, as a friendly public service announcement, I suggest getting detailed directions to the front doorstep of anywhere you want to go in Seoul.
Anyways, we eventually made it to Dr. Fish cafe place and had some coffee and bread while we waited on a spot with the fish to open up. We got the ok, and made our way up to the fish tank. I don't really know how to explain the feeling of these little fish gnawing at you, but I'm going to do my best.
Personally, I am the most ticklish person in the universe, especially when it comes to my feet. Every single nip by the fish was possibly the most tickling sensation I can ever think of going through, and there were definitely dozens of little nips going on every second. I was basically trapped in a never ending tickling torturous nightmare for 20 minutes. I don't think I have ever laughed that much, that loud, or for that long, especially in a public place. I definitely made a scene in that place, and probably proved every loud American stereotype every even thought of. It's not like I could help it, though, because in my mind, I was literally being tickled to death by dozens of tiny fish. Our time expired eventually and I took my feet out of the tank.
The feeling which followed is something I will never forget. I have never, ever, felt so good in my life. I think the feet might by the center of all happiness, because it was really like I had gotten a thousand massages and was definitely willing to run a couple marathons at least. I feel like if long distance runners would get the Fishy treatment every day they would be refreshed and ready for a harder run the next day. I'm not even exaggerating. My feet have never felt so good.
After Dr. Fish and the Sauna we were definitely in a great state of mind, so we decided to go back to Texas. There we met a big group of Air Force guys who were on vacation. They were good one night friends and it was definitely an experience seeing how soldiers from foreign deployments felt first hand.
They seemed like they didn't enjoy their given job very much at all, and basically used the little vacation given to them by the weekend to let off a LOT of steam. They ranged from 20-23 and all kind of wondered how they ended up in the air force and in Korea. They were loud and basically your average college crowd, but I have to say it was fun just hanging out again with American type people. This weekend has been especially what I needed, especially as all the classes kick into gear and as all the required things I have start to run together.
Afterwards, we left for the hostel and day three.
On day three (Sunday) we lost a traveling companion, Adam. He went back to Daegu, and then there were three. On sunday we decided to go to Itaewon. It's basically where all the foreigners go for shopping and other stuff, which is only exacerbated by its close proximity to the largest armed forces base in Korea. We had a light lunch and then made our way to the Olympic park. I have to say, I really, thoroughly enjoyed the park, but was pretty disappointed as to how they kept up the facilities. The only arena I could tell was kept up well at all was the tennis stadium, which was more or less immaculate.
The park itself was incredibly beautiful, though, and was full of people enjoying themselves, as well as beautiful sculptures and landscapes. The world peace gat especially was incredible, and the street leading to it beautiful as well. It was exactly what I wish an olympic park was, basically, and am looking forward to taking advantage of visiting other olympic parks as I find them.
The most disappointing part of the park was the fact that one of the gymnastics arenas had been made into a cheap clothing market. I was expecting to go and see an arena with state of the art equipment and young athletes participating in training, but instead was greeted with cheaply made clothes and shoes. Not that that stuff isn't nice and all, it's just that I would really like to be inspired by world class athletes instead of by low low prices of brand name textiles.
But I digress.
The olympic park was very close to another very korean attraction, Lotte Department store and Lotte World. Lotte World is basically an indoor parody of Disney World. Not saying that the Koreans for sure copied them (they may be owned by them) but they definitely had two cartoon characters as their "mascots" who were very similar to the Disney Mice, their logo was VERY similar to the Disney logo, and I'm pretty sure I heard a Korean version of "It's a Small World" as well. The park was nice, though, and was definitely interesting.
Who couldn't have fun riding a roller coaster called The French Revolution? We rode balloons all around the park, rode a fun egypt themed adventure ride, and experienced very fun Korean theme park activities. I thought it was very fitting that the park was indoors, because Koreans, as far as I can tell, are all about convenience. The chance of a park being rained out is daunting, but move the park inside of a very popular department store, which is pretty much comparable to the mall of America in variety of activities, and you have something very enticing to Koreans. We saw a light show there, rode all the rides we could, and tried to ice skate in the rink there, but it was too expensive for the half hour we could have skated. I plan on going back to ice skate, and I hope it works out.
Later that night we tried to go back to Texas again, but there was no other fun people there and we were very tired, so we left for the Hostel again.
The next day Phillip left for Daegu, so we were short another traveler again. However, we still managed to have a lot of fun. We started our day off by going to Insadong and getting some fun looking around and shopping done.
We got done with that in enough time to head up to Seoul Tower and see the city turn from daytime to night. The trek up the mountain was a ton of fun, and definitely tough. On the way up we found all manners of little parks, and even an archery range.
At the archery range we got a lesson from a Korean traditional archer, who showed me the fundamentals to shooting a Korean recurve bow. I even got to pull it back and feel the tension of an important historical weapon. I wanted to try and shoot at the range, but the guy told me it would take at least two months of daily training to become familiar enough with the sport to at least not be dangerous to other people. It was fun while it lasted, though, and the men firing the arrows seemed absolutely mechanical about their accurate work.
After the range work we witnessed, we headed the rest of the way up to the tower. It was a long, arduous trek, but fun nonetheless. We got to the top of the tower, about 900 or more feet about Seoul, and prepared ourselves to watch the sun go down over the skyline. The observation deck was incredibly loud, and its evident on the video as well. The sun went down within the hour, and we got to see all the lights come on in the city.
Soon thereafter it was decided that we try and go to Dongdaemun, which is a very traditional market here in Korea that's supposed to be the best at night. We made it all the way there, via taxi, only to find that it was in fact closed. Sad face. Wasn't really a big deal though, considering we were pretty tired anyways. We decided to see if we could meet any foreigners in Texas, only to find it devoid of any western life. So we left, naturally.
What occurred afterwards is pretty frustrating and pretty funny really. I don't know how this all happened exactly, but somehow we became blacklisted by every single regular taxi in Seoul. We tried to hail at least 10 empty taxis, only to be simultaneously rejected by all of them. Some sped by and others slowed down only to speed away once they got a good look at who we were.
We walked for what seemed like forever somehow got into a premium taxi. They cost over four times a regular taxi, but the subways and buses stopped running, as far as I know, and we had no other option, considering the other taxis were not picking us up. Upon arriving back at the hostel, we collapsed onto our respective lodgings, and thankfully didn't catch whatever illness it was one of the other guests had (I was really hoping it wasn't swine flu).
Today we woke up super late, thank goodness, and headed back home. It's literally consumed all of my day today to get caught back up again with everything and to post pictures, do this blog, and get the process of getting videos up started. I guess tomorrow I am going to do my homework, because it's definitely midnight already and I'm just now at equilibrium with the stuff I need to do and the stuff I have gotten done.
How did I get this written?
Until next time,
Aron Huckaba International Vagabond
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