Seoul, Korea

Oot and aboot

Well, surprise, surprise, I woke up early (why can't this happen normally,when I need it for say, work?). And since I am fiercely insecure, I had to repeatedly wake James up as well (bastard kept nodding off again) to keep me company. Bothering your host while he tries to sleep quickly becomes tiresome, in case you haven't tried it before, so I opted to go for a walk around the area, despite James' adamant warnings that I'd get lost.

Sure, I was sleep-deprived and had absolutely no way of communicating with the locals. And sure, the streets all looked the same and appeared to have been drawn by a crossed-eyed urban planner, sketching a plate of spaghetti, but I'd hear nothing of it. On vacation, I like to throw caution and common sense to the wind and let random circumstance bestow my fate upon me.

Of course, almost immediately after stepping out of James' residence, I was completely and utterly disoriented. And as many other explorers before me, who never make it back from the wild, this mild disorientation soon became full-blown, rock solid loss of way. I knew that James lived about half way down a hill and that uphill was north. What I didn't count on was there being more than one hill.

To make a long story short, after one and a half hours of wandering around in a total panic, I decided that suicide would be the best solution to getting myself out of the damned labyrinth. As I was scrounging about for bits of broken glass to slit my wrists, I inadvertently stumbled my way out to a major street that I recognised and re-oriented myself. I found James' building, hugged one of the pillars in front of the place for a few minutes and strolled casually back into James' apartment just as he was waking up.

James: How was your walk? Did you get lost?

Me: Nope.

One of the things that really bothered me about my time in Korea was that I didn't get to play with the phones they have here. The one I rented was locked down and everything's CDMA, so I couldn't even buy one to take home.

I learned to count from 0 to 9 in Korean from this phone (which I promptly forgot a day later). All North American phones do is give you brain cancer.

Shit farmers, subway terror attacks and the Palace

James decided that we should go visit the palace today. Having only been here a month himself, there were still a lot of places that he hadn't had a chance to see. This was a good for me because I would get to see all the touristy stuff, without boring James to tears.

It's rather interesting, coming to places with a lot of history. Being from Canada, which has been around only since 1867, I don't get too many castles or the like around (well, there's Casa Loma, but that wasn't built for royalty).

But in Asia and Europe, there are always romantic little reminders of the past scattered about the city. You take it for granted when you're visiting one of these places, but when you stop to think about it, if you were around when someone was actually occupying the palace or castle, there would have been a good chance that you'd be covered in shit and farming for his profit.

Not too romantic when you think of it that way.

Saw this on the subway platform on our way to the palace. Gas masks - these things are everywhere. Very considerate of the city to put these here. One thing I noticed was that there were never actually enough for everyone on the platform. Maybe only 10% coverage.

During a gas attack, I'm not quite sure how quickly I'd be able to throw on that orange hood with broken glass everywhere, while trying to stop the other 90% from tearing it out of my hands.

So here we were. The palace looked exactly as I expected it to look. Not that this place wasn't spectacular, but it's just that I'd been to the major cities in China and lived in Tokyo for a bit, so seeing yet another palace was rather anticlimactic. Still, made for some decent snapshots. And really, that's all I was looking for.

One pleasant surprise was coming to Korea smack in the middle of Chusok, which meant lots of people out in their hanbok, having their photos taken. There were also some totem pole-like monuments sticking out of the ground. James told me that shamanism was one of the ancient Korean religions and that when the land bridge connecting Asia and North America was still around, the same shamanism was brought to the native people and incorporated into their belief systems.

After walking around for a few hours, we started to get hungry and made for the exit. As we were halfway there, James got a call from his friend John, from Delaware who was on his way to meet us. No food yet. John showed up in about a half hour and we did the walk around again. Stomachs growling, we hurried the poor guy past all the sites and out the exit in less than a half hour.

I can't feel my legs and I don't care

You know how back home, you always hem and hah about where to eat? Doesn't happen here. Most places serve fantastic food and all you need to do is pick the closest one to where ever you happen to be. I had a hankering for kam ja tang (pork bone soup), so off we went.

The place in which we ended up had no chairs. I would find later that this is very common in Seoul... problem is, I wasn't used to sitting on the ground at all and my legs soon went numb, with no amount of repositioning allowing the blood to flow. Never got used to this the entire time I was there. It put a little damper on meal times, but or course, the food more than made up for it.

Night markets

John had to get going after the meal, which was unfortunate because he was rather interesting to talk to. Originally from Seoul, moved to Delaware (of all places) at a young age and is now back here to connect with the motherland. It was a story that I'd hear more than once during my visit. James seemed to have picked out all the overseas Koreans to make friends with here.

We decided to hit the night markets at Dong Dae Mon and Nam Dae Mon to kill some time before heading out for karaoke tonight. Off topic, but it was surprising how much Chinese was in use here. Not really in everyday life, but on the tourist attractions and the names of the subway stops. All in Chinese as well as Hangul.

Not much to say about the night markets. We got there early, before most of the stands were even set up, so we just walked in circles until we got the call to hit the karaoke bar.

You're not supposed to sit in these seats, even when there are no crippled, elderly nor pregnant people about. Clearly, James is a rebel. And a jerk.

Noreabang

Ok, I don't sing and I can't drink very much. There are few people out there who are more ill-fitting in a noreabang (karaoke bar) than I am. And yet, there I was. Met some other friends of James' (who, incidentally, was saying that he wants to start an off-line social networking experiment called "Friend of James." It's actually a pretty good idea, but I am sworn to secrecy, lest one of you riff-raff steal his idea. Just remember you heard it from me first when it makes it big) - a few of whom were actually fully Korean! Imagine that, being in Korea and all.

One of the guys (Jason) snuck a few bottles of soju into the room. We started doing shots of soju and unfortunately, I don't have too many details about the evening. I remember belting out some Elvis songs at one point and then spilling out on the the street for some food and more drinking. Something with some random Korean girls at a restaurant and finally Chris forcing blue Powerade down my throat.

Check out this clip, it has a tambourine in it.