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)

Travelling: Singapore

Singapore

To kind of round off the large amount of travelling I'd done recently around Japan, when I was offered the chance for a couple of days in Singapore I accepted. I knew nothing of the country, and having never been to that area of the world I thought it would be an excellent experience. I was told accommodation would be ok as I could just sleep on the friend of a friend's sofa, and seeing as it turned out to be only 4 days I didn't need much if any luggage. A day-bus to Tokyo, then wacky confusion on the trains to get to Narita led to the first sprint for the gate in the airport I've ever had. I'd recommend it - much more interesting than the usual slow sitting around waiting rooms.

What I didn't bank on was the exact location of this friend of a friend's sofa. On a windowed corner of the 24th floor in the rich-housing district a small walk away from the town centre. Awesome.

The city itself was very pleasant. Interesting architecture, bustling with people, spotless streets, and plenty of signposts and maps everywhere so you don't get lost. This does have something to do with Singapore being a very strict police state - the taxi driver from the airport warned "All countries have laws, but only in Singapore are they enforced", citing the example of an American boy caned for vandalism, despite huge public condemnation of such punishment in the US. According to our hosts, the government is quick to clamp down on any civil disobedience, and although I couldn't see any policemen apparently the whole place is marked with CCTV in one way or other, linked to an automatic fining system for any infractions. Scary.

Was hugely dismayed at finding the all-evil Starbucks here as prevalent as ever. Is there anywhere that horrible company will leave alone? Any corporation that installs a franchise in the "Forbidden City" in the capital of one of the most ancient civilisations in the world (China) is due all the animosity people are willing to petrol-bomb it with. Grr. I'm starting to rank Starbucks Addiction up there along with cigarettes - feel free to do it by yourself but nowhere near me please.

Temple Fun

Singapore is an interesting place simply from the point of its culture - it's a large city with distinct cultural sections, and as such there is lots of cultural transfer and mixing. You can walk from India Town to Chinatown and then to the Colonial District, and marvel at the choice and variety of surroundings. Having not known a lot about the place before I left I read up on a couple of things on Wikipedia and made it my task to go and find them in the short time we had. One of them was find one of the multi-level statue-filled gateways that seem to be popular here, and there are photos of some below. For one I think it's brilliant how you have to take your shoes off - wondering barefoot around a foreign temple marvelling at the colours and statues but also feeling the hot stone floor as well is quite an experience.

Singapore's main temple is the red and white one pictured above (an excellent picture available here). The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum is quite a sight both from outside and inside, and is more lavishly decorated with icons and small statues than many European churches. The ground floor has the main chambers, where people are free to purchase small models of their required boddhisatva and attach it to the wall, and also a huge hall with an enormous gold statue of the Buddha (with a very Chinese-looking dragon behind it, interestingly). Upstairs was the Gold Tooth relic itself, a lump of gold which adding to is meant to be good luck. In my opinion one of the best things was the inclusiveness - real monks were wondering around and of course meditating nearby to the relic, but there were signs encouraging the passing tourists to sit in designated places and take part with some meditation or reflection of their own.

I would have loved to have joined in but time was pressing and so we headed to the Chinatown food court next door. An enormous covered area with more food shops than you could count, crammed full of people. Goodness knows how each made its money, especially as many seemed to be selling the same thing.

The Night Safari

One of the best parts about going to Singapore was managing to get to the Night Safari, a wildlife reserve, rainforest and safari park which only opens at around 7pm. Singapore's near constant temperature of around 28 degrees means that night is only really indicated by things getting dark than getting cold, so wandering around a dark rainforest in your t-shirt is a great experience. And it is wandering - there is a half-hour tour done on a silent electric car-train thing, or there are numerous paths that lead off into the dark leafyness for you to walk around by yourself. More attraction comes from the fact that you can't see the enclosures; whether they're hidden in the undergrowth or whether it's just too dark but it's a much better way of observing animals by finding them yourself other than being alerted by specific divisions between them.

When you've had enough of looking at fairly happy (if slightly fat) animals, there's a complete tribal village with ongoing performances and enough gift shops to sink a battleship with plastic or stuffed tat. We were lucky in that, by the time we'd made it back there, we were just in time for the last animal show, in which the darkness was taken full advantage of by sending animals actually into the crowd, and having them run past openings. An enormous 15 foot boa constrictor slithering around people's feet causing plenty of screams and the presenters running around trying to catch it again, letting loose small mammals to try and find grapes hidden by the audience, it was a very engaging display with environmental message attached which I'm sure if you attempted in the UK it would be torn to pieces by the ridiculous health and safety people. No doubt some visitor would turn out to be allergic to snakes or oxygen or something.

The Battle Box

One thing that felt obvious while wandering Singapore was its English colonial history. Walking around the city at times felt like stepping back in time to the 1920s, and it was a very odd feeling seeing that particular old-fashioned style of architecture still there, being lived in and very much a part of the city. That mixed with the cultural diversity I mentioned before is a very interesting experience.

Singapore was also the last British bastion before it lost South East Asia to the Japanese in WWII. The bunker now turned museum at Fort Canning Park offers a great history lesson with animated wax models from Madam Tussauds London, charting out the timeline of the British surrender, and what the Japanese did with the bunker when they discovered it. And no, the guns weren't facing the wrong way, as we were often reminded - the guns were to deter any attack from the south by sea, which is exactly what they achieved, and a couple were also apparently turned around to fire upon the approaching land forces. You can catch a bus out to the coast for a bit of wandering-around-a-jungle action and also visiting one of the gun's bunkers for another quick museum experience.

Colonial City
On the evening of the last day we made it around the colonial district, home to Raffles Street, Raffles Hall, Raffles Hotel and everything to do with the chap who first decided Singapore was worth developing for the British. It was impressive, and made me wonder if there were still bearded people cradling shotguns sipping gin and tonics in there somewhere. If anywhere it would still exist here.

Of course around the place were very wealthy seeming hotels, restaurants and impressive government buildings. There was a large park which seemed out of bounds in front of one, which several groups of people had gathered around for some drinking, since apparently it's not possible anywhere else in public. Walking by the riverside was very nice however, and it would have been better to have stuck around for a bit longer but again time was against us. Eventually we arrived at Singapore's famous lion-fountain combo. As you can see in the first photo I posted at the top, it was covered in scaffolding (the vague blue tower in the background). Why? It had been struck by lightning the day or so before. Aww. But it was still interesting to walk around such buildings and take in some of the old colonial powered atmosphere.

I would recommend going to Singapore. It's clean, friendly and because it has a huge amount of different cultures, locales and tastes available you will always find something you like. It's a little more expensive than Japan, and especially getting there will probably eat up all of your budget. It doesn't seem to have a great deal to do aside from the evident tourist attractions, once you've seen it it does lose some value, but for the first time it is definitely worth going and witnessing a very unusual and anomaly in the "one country, one race" scenario.

The last thing I want to mention is this ghastly fruit. This is a durian. It is the smelliest thing I have found in the entire world - you can smell it as soon as you enter the supermarket, and actually like a hound dog follow the scent to where it's being sold. The smell is very pungent indeed, and even having brought one back home it proceeded to out-smell every other scent around. Singapore underground's "forbidden" signs actually went "No Eating, No Flammable Gases, No Durians". I suppose a good practical joke would be to hide one in the roof of your school or something. Upon daring to eat the thing, first you have the lovely job of ripping bits off it, releasing even more delightful smell, then you have to remove the stones. The first bite is horrible, since you're still smelling it as well as tasting it, but after that the smell disappears and it tastes like a mix between cheese and a banana. Not bad at all, but the effort to get to the second chew would have put me off a long time ago.