Travelling: Korea II

Seoul
This was my second time in Korea, for about the same duration (10 days-ish), a trip mostly just to get to see Lianne again, but this time we also decided we would try travelling around to see more of the country. Lianne didn't have a great deal of time off work so the travel would be slightly rushed, but it ended up being very worthwhile and we got to see a lot of the country that I didn't see much of the first time.

Firstly was off to the captial of South Korea, Seoul. Having talked a lot with the Korean students in Nagoya, asking them for their ideas of what to see/where to go etc, one of the students (who had ambitions to work for the Seoul tourist industry) supplied me with a very comprehensive list of things to see and do in Seoul, including her favourite chicken soup restaurant. Which is where we went first.

It was very tasty - a whole chicken floating in soup stuffed with rice and ginger. Perfect for the slightly chilly and rainy day we were exploring the streets.

Nearby was the National Museum, and a palace. The museum was no-photos, but contained a lot of ancient Korean relics, mostly from its various royal families, along with various traditional possessions and robes still used during various festivals and ceremonies.

The palace was only one part of a large complex, but one which apparently had been destroyed and rebuilt more times than was really fair. It was still able to accept tourists though, so we went in for a look.

The thing that struck me was the colours of it - a lot of work had gone into keeping the colours vibrant in the wood. Just a shame that the weather was a bit grey.

After the castle we wondered up the road to a nearby shopping street, full of clothes and trinkets. Here we discovered the only Starbucks in the world that is forced to write its horrible trademark name in the local alphabet. On the way we also passed by the remains of the Namdaemun, or the usually enormous Great South Gate, which had burnt down about a year and a half ago. Rebuilding work was underway though.

It was on this street that I managed to get myself a hanko (personal stamp) made. My new translation job required one to stamp off the time that I had worked so they could calculate my pay, and most Japanese people use a hanko in place of a signature, so I figured that it would be a good purchase. The trouble would be finding out how to represent my name in Japanese characters - the vast majority are impossible to convert ("Johnson" would have to be "Jon-son", and the characters don't exist in Japanese). I settled eventually for 砦門 (sai-mon), meaning "fort gate". People I've showed it to say that it's a good choice, with a slightly Chinese/old fashioned feel.

Moving from the shopping street, we began exploring the immediate city. In Seoul there's a very well decorated but small river running through some of the busier areas. It makes for good walks and almost separates you from the metropolis that towers above you, and which was a good place to explore. Further up the river there were some fantastic paper lanterns. The bridges were lined with a fair few police though.

It was around this time that we began to actually recognise the fact that there really were a lot of policemen around. I'd heard from the Korean students in Nagoya that all South Korean youths of 18 or over have to partake in some form of military service, and seeing as most don't want to join the army they instead serve in the police or fire service. Still I'd never seen so many concentrated in one place before, and the light and unworried atmosphere in the city didn't seem to warrant their presence. At any rate, there were plenty around, either lining the streets, marching out of subway entrances or forming ranks on bridges. Small worry that some form of martial law was silently being introduced. But no worry, back to touristing. The worst we were getting from the police was the odd blank stare.

From the end of the river (blocked by more rows of police - now noticably sporting riot gear) I spotted a spotlight, and thinking there might be some sort of festival I tried to get to the source to find out what was going on. All the direct streets were blocked by more rows of riot police, so going around the long way we were faced with this.

It's alright when they're just lining up to block passage, but not so much when they start marching in the streets shouting and banging their shields. I wondered if some sort of war had broken out, but at any rate it would probably be better to head back to a hotel than hang around. We later found out that earlier that day there was a parade, and that the police were expecting demonstrations due to the upcoming Labour day, but the show of force was well above what would have been required. I suppose it shocked people enough not to even try.

The next day we left the motel and in the street immediately adjacent to ours was a full blown parade.

Parade over, we set off to try and find one of Seoul's famous temples, close to the business district. There were some musical fountains around which Lianne managed to get a video of.

The temple was famous for having the largest statue of a Boddhisatva called Kannon, and when we found it it was also full of red lanterns.

That evening we thought we'd try for the Seoul tower, to see what we might see. There was terrible queuing though - about 45 mins just to get into the cable car to take us to the base of the thing, and even when we got up to that point, we had to buy a separate ticket just to enter the tower itself. It seemed some clever lock-maker had made up something about couples locking themselves together on the tower dias and made a mint.

When we eventually got into the tower, we then had about an hour and a half wait to even get into the queue for the elevator up. At the top, the windows were pretty thick with dust/grimy-ness and we didn't wait long to find out why - three small Korean girls burst out of the tower and immediately threw themselves at the glass. Wonder if they caught anything.

The view of Seoul was not particularly worth the wait - it was nice, but not two hours worth nice. Especially when there was another three quarters of an hour to get back out of the viewing gallery. Eesh.

By that point it was getting late, and we decided it would be easier travel-wise if we simply caught the night bus to our next destination rather than looked for a hotel for the night.

Busan
Busan is the "other" Korean city - in the same way that most foreigners to Britain have only really heard of London and Manchester. It's less touristy than Seoul, but contains (at least from what I saw) a lot more foreigners.

Arriving at 6am was not so great, but sitting on a beach in early morning having not slept so well was a new experience. It was more a question of finding some way of passing the time before we could even try and get a seat somewhere for breakfast to try and wake up a bit. We eventually managed to find a cafe called "Paris Baguette" (bonus points for originality) to grab some hot chocolate and bread, and as if by some sort of cultural magnet within half an hour there was a french couple chatting merrily behind us. Sort of makes me wonder why my pub or fish and chip shop detector wasn't working.

When we'd managed that, we made off for a large temple on the coast. This too was full of colourful lanterns, and was just a beautiful location to sit in the sun, slightly sleepy, but still taking in a foreign country.

Still sleepy, we decided to find a hotel and hit the sack for a few hours, before heading out that evening for the sea front for dinner and a couple of drinks. The beach itself had a strange laser show and a wonderfully lit bridge, all of which my camera refused to take pictures of. You'll have to put up with one I took the next day.

After those two days, we headed back to Ulsan. Lianne's short holiday was over, and I spend the rest of the time doing odd chores around the apartment and trying to be helpful where I could while she was working.

When I got back to Nagoya I was quarantined... (see next post)