The Folks Came to Korea

As I mentioned last time, this is the first of my series of posts where I describe when my parents and little sister came to Korea, and then we all went and met my older sister and her husband in Japan. I figure I'll wipe out all of the Korea stuff in one post so I can get to the Japan posts quickly. It was actually a really good time spent in Korea, though.

My parents and sister, Kelsey, ended up leaving the states on Christmas eve, and then flew for about 12 hours while experiencing a time change of 13 hours. This meant that they basically flew for the entire time it was Christmas. How nice of them.

It was just a simple matter of hailing a semi-shady taxi to my town from the airport in Incheon, well known for shady taxis. This guy seemed like he didn't like silence and kept talking about the long bridges he was going over. Except by talking about, I mean that the only words he know about long bridges were 'long bridge,' so he just said that over and over. After paying a fair price, we arrived safe and sound at my somewhat tiny apartment where we all were staying and celebrated Christmas with the help of my 12" Christmas tree I bought for about $8. It was nice.

The next day was a full day to spend in my town of Seosan, Korea, so I tried to make it worth while. The morning included a small tour of the town around where my school was and to a nearby temple. It's a really beautiful temple, called Sogwang-sa, and I'm planning to write a post about it sometime soon. See picture:

We had a nice lunch of sushi, and then toured the market nearby my home which has a pretty impressive amount of sea food. That night was definitely the most exciting one in Korea, and one of my favorites of the time that I spent with my family. For dinner we had what is called Korean barbecue, where meat is cooked on a grill at the center of the table and wrapped in a lettuce leaf along with toppings, as I had mentioned before. The dinner was complete with some soju and a few beers bought by the guy at the table next to us. We then went to norebang (singing room) and cranked out two hours of well sung favorites. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I don't have any photos of this part. That was nearly the end of a great day, which was eventually capped off with Dok Bokki (what my sister calls Korean fire noodles) and some ice cream.

The next day was off to Seoul by bus. We left late morning and had a small hangup at the Bus terminal in Seoul where the taxi drivers didn't know where the hotel was and also didn't want to take us because it was in a really close neighborhood. We eventually got a taxi to take us to a nearby hotel where a desk worker called our hotel to bring the manager to walk over and get us. No problem. This hotel ended up being top-notch for what the price was, so If you are ever in Seoul looking for a cheap stay look no further than the Cello Hotel. The manager speaks great English and will go to great lengths to make the stay enjoyable.

This is a photo walking back to the hotel that night.

That day, Sunday, was spend eating Thai food at my favorite Thai place outside of Thailand, called Thai Orchid, located in Itaewon. They pretty much lived up to my promises of great food so I was happy. We spent the rest of the day exploring a part of Seoul called Insadong which is in some ways like a giant souvenier store. There are just dozens of shops, museums, and souvenier stores for virtually any Korea related gift. I also saw this robot:

A few stands had this traditional Korean candy made from stretching sugar strings into hundreds of strands and wrapping them around assorted nuts all while doing this chant about how great the candy is. It was definitely worth a photo and the candy ended up tasting OK.

An outdoor mall building had this directory of stores, and my dad noticed something interesting top-center:

Yeah, so no comment on that one. That capped off what I thought was a really enjoyable experience in Korea. I think Kelsey and my parents had a favorable impression of the country, even if the amount of snow we got on Sunday in Seoul made things a little difficult. Actually there was only one restaurant open when we were trying to get food delivered to the hotel, but the manager there was excellent enough to find it and order us some delicious chicken. See you tomorrow for a Japan post!

Gyeong Bok Gung Palace

This weekend, I decided on the spur of the moment to go to Seoul. When I say spur of the moment, I mean I decided on Friday night and then planned the trip on Saturday before I left. Doesn't get a lot more spur of the moment than that. My hasty plans for the day were to see a large palace called Gyeong Bok Gung Palace, and then go to Itaewon, which is essentially "Little America," and do some random shopping/American food eating.

The bus ride was interesting, I sat next to a Korean man who was a teacher. He informed me that there were some important differences between American kids and Korean kids. For one thing, in Korean schools they are never taught to raise their hands, but basically to just shout their questions, etc. And I thought all of my students were just loud jerks. Hmmm.

This was also my first time navigating the Seoul subways without being shepherded around. It was pretty tricky at first actually. I basically asked a lot of people where I needed to go at first. Later I figured out how to do it, and it's just a matter of finding your stop on the map, figuring out what train line it is, somehow figuring out which direction to go, and then remembering the number of your destination. Actually, I think its a little better organized than the NYC subway system because there are just 9 or so different lines on that many tracks. In NYC it's too many different train lines traveling on a few tracks and its all a mess of numbers and letters and express trains. At least it's in English there.

So I arrived at the Gyeong Bok Gung Palace with almost no trouble, and I paid for my ticket with a 100,00 Won bank note. To my surprise and delight, they handed me back a 50,000 Won bill. These bills are new, and this is my first time I have ever possessed one. If these bills were in circulation more it would be a huge relief on wallet size because the next highest bill is 10,000 Won which is basically $10. That means if you want to carry around about $100 it takes at least ten bills.

The original founding of Gyeong Bok Gung Palace actually happened back in 1395. Korea has had a tough time, though, in preserving it's landmarks and monuments. In 1592 this place was destroyed by fire during an invasion by Japan. It took them then until 1868 to reconstruct.

The entrance to the palace complex

The palace complex is pretty much a giant walled in fortress with these different giant pagoda buildings which were once used to different purposes during times when the king was in power.

A long walkway

One of the things I like most about the palace is the fact that the palace is surrounded by mountains on one side and skyscrapers and cityscape on the other. This makes for strange sets of pictures juxtaposing palace buildings and mountains, as well as palace buildings and skyscrapers, as seen below:

Geongjeongjoen (the thrown room) and a mountain

Geongjeongjeon and the city

I went on a day where there was some kind of celebration for the elders, and there was some kind of traditional dancing and music show going on. I didn't watch for long because it was pretty boring.

The performance

A pavilion with a surrounding body of water

I think this building is part of the Korea Folk museum

So the palace was nice, but it was ridiculously hot and sunny the whole time so I couldn't tolerate much more than an hour and a half of walking around it.

My next stop was Itaweon, aka Americatown. I did a few much needed things: I ate a large, delicious hamburger, and bought a pair of cargo shorts from a store under the McDonald's called "The Brooklyn Connection." Another important thing I did was went to a book store with foreign books. I was like 'Oh I'm just swimming in English books.' You can tell that I don't see them often in Seosan. I bought a book called "Outliers." After that I was pretty pooped so I just hit the subway to the bus station and got out of there. It was definitely a good day, though.