The DMZ

Alright, back to cranking out some posts! Remember when my family came to Korea to visit after New Years Day this year? Well this is from then.

One highlight of the time my family spent together in Korea was our trip to the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ between North and South Korea. I think most people are somewhat familiar with the Korean war where the country was split in two, possibly from watching MASH or something. Anyway, now they are the somewhat volatile neighbors to the North of us. Luckily, we have this barrier called the DMZ which is heavily guarded by both sides so that no one will go through.

We went on a Saturday, and had to wake up bright and early to get on a subway and ride to the USO in Seoul. From the USO it was another bus ride since the DMZ is North of Seoul. Once we arrived at the DMZ we got a tour guide who was a US soldier stationed in Korea. He was pretty funny but one time he forgot to tell us when it was OK to take pictures so we missed some photo opportunities.

The photo taking was somewhat limited, there were only a few areas we could photograph without having our cameras confiscated. One of those was the room where they showed us a nice informational powerpoint presentation. I made the most of it, I guess. Here is a picture of our tour guide and another guy:

So this one shows a map of the actual demilitarized zone, as you can see located a little bit above and a little bit below the 38th parallel.

We were told some pretty good stories about incidents that happened around the DMZ that I don't remember so clearly anymore. I think there was a story about the south side chopping down a tree which somehow provoked a firefight between both sides. Sorry I don't remember much of the details. My favorite part was talking about how the both sides are determined to build a flagpole taller than the other side, no matter how ridiculous it gets. This one shows the South Korean flag is reaching 109 meters, while the North Korean flag is nearly twice as high:

Next was a pretty cool part where they brought us to this building where outside is a little trailer where the North and South hold meetings, if there are any. We had to wait inside of the building and some cool looking South Korean soldiers strolled by:

So then we walked outside and saw the North Korean side. I took this picture of their side, and you can see a real North Korean solder over there:

Some of the rules we had to follow were strange. For one thing we couldn't turn around and take a picture of the side of the building facing North Korea. I don't really know why. We also couldn't make any kind of hand gesture or pointing toward the North Korean side or it might provoke them or else they will monitor it and use it as propoganda for their side about how stupid Americans are or something. I accidentally pointed at the other side without thinking when I was talking to my Mom and was quickly scolded by the tour guide.

Here are some South Korean soldiers. I like these uniforms because they all have cool helmets, sunglasses, and these thick jackets to make them look really ripped. As you can see, there is a solder standing half-behind the blue building. Apparently this is to protect his heart if they were to take a shot at them:

This is inside of the board room. This table in front of the Korean soldier is on the exact border between the North and South, so when I took this picture I was technically in North Korea. Hurray!

From inside I spotted these North Korean solders with some kind of a device they were looking through. Possibly a camera or something, but its obvious that they were up to no good:

After that building there was a stop where we got to look at some land that is on the border, which wasn't too exciting. The next stop was lunch, and then we got to see a tunnel. The North Koreans had some really long tunnels that were all headed into South Korea for the purpose of invasion or spying or something. The Southies found four of them so far, and we got to go visit one and go inside of it and everything. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed.

The tunnels were really cool, though, although very damp and murky. Also they were very short. The ramp down was long, somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 meters down, which wasn't so bad on the way down. To walk to the barrier that blocked us, we had to go under a really short ceiling most of the way. It's not good for your back if you are really tall, and it probably hurt your back even if you are about 5'7" or so. I definitely couldn't imagine carrying my battle supplies all the way through that tunnel.

We did get to take some photos of the outside area of the tunnels. Here's a nice photo of a family trying to push these giant half-spheres together as a symbol of the North and South reuniting.

After departing the tunnel, our last stop was a train station. It's the North most train station in South Korea, put right near the border. If North Korea's borders were open, then South Korea's train system could potentially connect all the way through into China, Russia, and then all of the European rail systems. Unfortunately, North Korea will not have this. I though it was cool how this is a gate to Pyeongyang, although not functional:

I liked the train station for one because they had a stamp that said North Korea on it that I stamped into my passport. Not exactly legal, but it's really cool looking. They also sold North Korean beer and soju there. One strange thing is the beer and soju from North Korea is far superior to anything in the South. In South Korea both the beer and soju just taste really mass produced and horrible, while the North Korean beer is German style and good and the soju has a real flavor to it.

Anyway, it was a great day and I recommend the USO DMZ tour if you are ever in Korea.

Vietnam: Leftover Photos

So this final post on Vietman is not too exciting, but I wanted to add some more pictures that didn't fit in with the other posts.

Come to think of it, there is one story I meant to tell which I forgot:

While in Hanoi on our second night, Kelsey and I were heading back to the hotel. It's easy to find, but we would occasionally walk right by it because there is just so many other things to look at. That night, we walked right by it, but for good reason. A gate was pulled down over the front door. This presented a problem, that we couldn't get to our hotel room, and we had a flight the next morning. We searched all around the building for another entry and tried to pull up on the gate, but to no avail. This is one problem that we could not have possibly forseen. How can you plan for your hotel to disappear? You can't.

So we walked looking for other people, hoping that someone out there could help us. We walked to a cafe where a few people were eating, and finally a waiter at a restaurant was willing to talk to us. We communicated through a series of gestures, pointing, and noises that the gate was locked at our hotel. The guy, very polite says "oh, just knock on the gate!" Well he didn't actually say this, but he communicated it with gestures anyway. We went back to the hotel, knocked on the gate, and sure enough, it opened. We walked into the darkened hotel to find two sleeping mats where hotel employees were sleeping. I am guessing that this is fairly common in Vietnam.

I'll get to the photos anyway, now. This one is is a potato chip logo that I enjoyed. The man, Mister Potato, is very similar to another American tube contained potato chip mascot, but with a hat:

I have a few more photos of Halong Bay. It was a bit overcast so the colors aren't as vivid as I had hoped, but it's still pretty cool:

And another ship and mountain:

This is the houseboat where we went kayaking. On this boat lived both a cat and a dog. I'm wondering what the life of a houseboat cat is like:

Just the back of a hat that I liked on one of the bus rides:

A great sign, "Say no with smoking for your health!":

Riding in a taxi in Danang on the way to Hoi An:

This is a Vietnamese crosswalk sign. They were all blue and white, but every single one was a little bit different from the other ones. I'm not sure if each one is hand made, or what:

A chicken in a park we went to in Hanoi:

This is just a giant worm, nothing more:

I'll blog again shortly!

A Few Shots from the Train

Riding the trains in Vietnam was a great experience. I really like the train as a form of travel across countries, or across continents as I hope to do some day. I discussed train travel with a French man and he much prefers it to traveling by plane because it imparts the feeling of traveling a great distance. While riding the train you get to see everything pass by out the window, and it gives you more time to think about what your next destination will be like.

Kelsey and I met some more cool people on the trip from Danang to Hanoi. An old man who was our cabin mate intently watched Kelsey while she was writing in a journal. She knew he was watching so she started drawing pictures to clue him into what she was writing about. When she pulled out tape to attach some tickets stubs to her book, he immediately went to his bag and got scissors to help her cut the tape. During her process of attaching the stubs, he sat there and watched and sliced the tape anytime she needed it.

We also met a French couple were actors in Paris, the man who I mentioned above. I had a nice talk with the girl, Roxanne. I mentioned about how in Korea people are always running into me and not looking where they were going. She went on a rant about how angry she gets and yells at people when they bump into her in Paris and don't say they are sorry. She translated what she normally says to people into English, and then I had her say it to me in French. It was very entertaining.

This ride started during the day, so I was able to capture some photos out the train window. It's a really nice ride through Vietnam because of the great jungle, mountain, and seaside landscapes. Here is a beach:

I stuck my camera out the side of the train and snapped this one:

And the sun set:

That Time at The Saigon Train Station

That was an interesting choice for a tile, wasn't it? Well a more accurate title for this post would be 'That LONG Time at the Saigon Train Station'. It started when Kelsey and I came back from the Cu Chi Tunnels and needed to catch a train. We didn't have any experience with trains in Vietnam, so our concierge tried to call for us. She probably tried to call three times and always got a busy signal.

With no other options, we headed to the station to pick up some tickets for that night. As I remember, we got to the station at about 5:30. There was no line at the ticket counter, so we walked up there and finally figured out that we needed to get a numbered ticket. The current call up was at number 630. We pressed the button and received ticket number 801. Duh Duh Duh.

What followed was an absolutely agonizing wait for tickets that took over two hours. There were only two clerks working and sometimes a group of people would spend over 10 minutes with a clerk. I cannot imagine what they could have possibly been doing for THAT long.

We did finally get our tickets, though, for the 11:00 sleeper train. That left us with another three or four hours to kill before the train. Our obvious first choice was to get some sandwiches and some beer. See Vietnam has these little French bread sandwiches called Bahn My, or something really close to that, and they are extremely delicious. They are one of my favorite parts, these sandwiches, because they are awesome and cost about 50 cents American. They look like this, by the way:

The sandwiches are loaded with vegetables, meat, and sauce. Although the meat sometimes looks like dog food, they are always delicious. Here's a closer look at the inside:

I also got a coconut milk that a small waitress hacked open with a butcher knife:

So we managed to kill another hour or so drinking and eating, and I caught this nice photo opportunity:

With a few hours left to kill, we decided to go inside the station again and use the free internet for a while. Unfortunately, two kids were using the two computers to play games on one, and use Microsoft Paint on the other. Kelsey and I then went and got some snacks. When Kelsey offered the boys these small bear shaped chocolate filled cookies, they surrendered one of the computers.

Another effect of giving up the cookie was that we made instant friends with one of the kids. We tested whether this kid knew rock-scissors-paper, and he did. The boys father, knowing that he had some free babysitters now, left for the canteen never to be seen by us again. We came up with new ways to play rock-scissors-paper, here he is up on a ledge playing against Kelsey:

I learned this kids name at one point, but I couldn't pronounce it and I quickly forgot it anyway. we tried to teach him a little English, but he refused to and just made some noises while we played games with him. We also played high five where he had to jump as high as he could, and then I tried to teach him the game Tetris on a cheap flash version of the game on the computer. We ended up spending over an hour with the kid, and he was pretty awesome:

So now it was almost time to board the train. We got the soft-sleeper class, which was really nice. There were four bunks in each room, so Kelsey and I shared with a Vietnamese couple who slept the whole time. The train ride was a great time because we played cards for a while, and then got to hang out with two Russian couples and two sons from a family of diplomats. So, you know, your average train ride.

I Went to Busan in August

So most readers here know that I didn't blog most of August and September, so there's a bit of a backlog. Upcoming series include my trip back to the U.S.A. and some events from recent weekends. Right now, though, I am going to describe the trip I took to Busan, a large Korean city on the southern shore.

Busan's population is about 3.6 mil according to Wikipedia, so it's a pretty big city. I chose it for the beaches pretty much, as the first week of August is a great time to sit on a beach all day in Korea. It turned out they also have a really great temple located on a mountain, a modern art museum, and a lot of cool mascots. Look for posts on these soon.

The trip to Busan involves Korea's high speed train system, the KTX. This was one of the most exciting parts of the trip for me to be able to finally take the train. I travelled with my friend Daniel, and he insisted that we ride first class. It was only a few dollars more, and the seats were very spacious and offered all the water you can drink. To get to the KTX line I had to take a one and a half hour trip to Daejeon, followed by about two hours aboard the KTX.

From the KTX it was an easy transfer to the subway in Busan, and then quickly to the beach. There was some interesting scenery on the way:

The beach we spent most of the time at was called Gwangali Beach. From what I understand there are two main beaches in Busan, Gwangali and Haeundae. From my friend Daniel's experience Haeundae is a bit overcrowded, so we spent most of the time at Gwangali. Here is a picture of scenic Gwagnali beach. It's basically the beach on the right with a line of hotels, restaurants, and bars on the left. Really nice.

This is a piece of artwork that I enjoyed at the beach:

A restaurant that I visited no less that three times was called Breeze Burns. It had really great hamburgers, decently cheap beer, and some chili cheese fries that destroyed my digestive system one night:

Here's a picture of the other beach, Haeundae. This place was absolutely packed but we spent one night hanging out there drinking beers on the beach.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was travelling back from Haeundae beach to our motel, where we entered the taxi of one of craziest guys ever. This man knew his way around Busan, and would travel about 145 km/hr over bridges and swerve around the slower cars. This guy was awesome.

Our nights were spent at a motel called the Seoul Motel, recommended to us by some random guy we met in Busan. It was a trip down the subway line, but worth the trip because it costs only 30,000 Won (about 25 American) a night.

My last night there was spent at Gwangali again so that I could snap a picture of this beautifully lit bridge at night. It was cool, too, because it looks like the end of the world at the top of the reflection of the lights:

So Busan really was a great trip, I enjoyed my 5 days there. I feel a little bad that I didn't write about it sooner so that I could remember more about it. If I was to come back to Korea, I would definitely look into Busan.

The Mount Fuji

Here we are at Japan, day 2. Since we are of course an adventurous family, we wanted to explore one of the most famous mountains in the world and a huge tourist destination, Mount Fuji. This trip didn't involve any actual climbing since they only allow that a few months out of the year. It did involve a train ride, a cable car ride, a gondola ride, a boat ride, and a bus ride.

Of course I started my Mount Fuji day off, as everyone should, by drinking fire. This fire tasted a lot like iced coffee.

We started by riding the JR to the train that would take us out to Mount Fuji. In a bit of a rush to catch the next train, we ended up boarding a train called the romance car. I don't know exactly why it's called the romance car, but the seats were really nice. When the guy came to check our tickets and found out we had cheaper ones we had to shell out a bunch more money. I did something unromantic to their bathroom toilet at least.

The train did offer some nice views of Mount Fuji along the way. I'm going to level with you, this is the best photo I was able to get due to the amount of fog that day. There's an electrical pole in the way but it's still my best.

Along the way, we stopped in a town called Odawara to view a castle. It was a charming little town with some nice New Year's decorations up.

The castle was quite impressive, it had been converted into a museum about the history of the castle and with a lot of information on Samurais. I couldn't take any photos inside, unfortunately. Here's a view of the front of the castle, though:

This is a gate they were proud of for being the biggest one in the castle. It's pretty big, I guess.

From there it was another short train ride to Owakudani, where we could ride a cable car and then a gondola up a nearby mountain for a better view of Fuji. The gondola ride was one of my favorite parts because these ropes were so long dangling us over the valley.

And, in case you are wondering, this gondola does hold the Guiness world record for busiest gondola lift. It may also hold the record for smells most like eggs also, but they didn't have a sign about that.

The egg smell was because there is a lot of sulfur in this valley and a lot of sulfur mines, as seen below:

So we got to the next stop near these sulfur mines where they offer a small nature hike. We didn't feel up to it because it was ridiculously windy. So, we rode the gondala down the next leg to form of transportation number 4, this pirate looking ship. We were on one of the lower floors, and we couldn't see much from the boat. Luckily, Kelsey and I were sitting next to this little girl who challenged us to a face making competition, so we were entertained. I'm pretty sure Kelsey and I won.
The boat took us across Lake Ashi where we rode a bus, form of transportation number 5. The bus took us to another train station, another one of my highlights of the day. I liked this train because it operated in both directions, but only had one track. The way this worked was that the trains from both directions had to stop at a station at the same time because the track separated for only a little bit at the station.
Well, that was about the end of the day. We went out to eat and made it back to the hotel and were pretty pooped. We had to rest up for the next day, which you will be able to read about tomorrow.

P.S. go Packers!