Now back to the story...
Cheosok supper had come and gone and it was time to climb on a train Deagu bound to catch our connection to Seoul using the SUPER FAST (i.e. 301km/hr max speed that I saw) KTX Bullet train. We were all “moer se” tired from our awesome dinner the night before but could take solace in the fact that we had 3 hours to sleep on the KTX. Saying goodbye to Dan and Courtney (who were headed back to Pohang for their own Choesok Adventures) Ashli, Colleen, Sam, Sandy and myself disappeared into the distance at not such a “rate of knots”. I enjoyed the trip for as long as my MP3 Battery lasted, but luckily Sandy in her awesome wisdom had seen fit to prep some Pb&J sandwiches and apples for the ride and I bought us some biscuits. Time flew as we eventually arrived in Seoul at about 11ish that morning.
1st task was to find our accommodation: Yellow Submarine Guest (INSERT URL FOR YOUTUBE LINK) house - cool right!!! Well after getting lost and getting a Nice Korean man to help us, we found the place only for a Swedish man to tell us we are at the wrong place. We need to find Heondea Guesthouse-Yellow Submarine Version 2.0. As it turns out we were right at our place once we got off the subway but we couldn’t figure out the directions :-P
Bags down and 20min well rested we set off to get lunch and found this awesome Korean BBQ place where we chowed on some Galbi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_barbeque ) Which BTW was amazing!!! Essential it is like a hot-rock but you have the grill in the middle of your table and cook the meat yourself until you are that hungry you just eat it even thought it may not be cooked as you like it :-P After lunch we headed to Iteawon (– The western suburb of Seoul. It has been turned into a very western site because there is a US army base very close by that has about 30 000 US Army personal working there.) Along the way I think we stopped at 2 coffee shops and numerous shiny, cuddly and clothing shops (see: Sisterhood of travelling...well...anywhere with anything really...). Since getting to Seoul I had been trying to get hold of a certain Lloyd “Mr President” Miekle – a friend of mine form Rhodes who has been in Korean since Feb. He stays in Incheon which is in the north west of Seoul. This task was made all the more difficult as I didn’t have a phone yet and thus used Sandy’s (until it’s battery ran out) and Sam’s. Eventually we got hold of each other and arranged a meeting time and place. Until that time though we still need to kill some of what was left... (i hope that makes sense-it sounds funny so I will not correct my Eng here).
*NOTE: Any pics shown from this point of the trip were taken by Sam/Colleen as I had forgotten my camera back at the motel. They both have a great eye for images so I am sure that my blog has been enhanced through the use of their pics*
We walk into more shops of varied stock-I buy a couple of things and we stop for Coffee one time in the afternoon. Actually we found a little side shop that stocked foreign groceries. I took a small advantage of this and bought Basil, oreganum, Curry powder, and a couple of other things. I didn’t have too much cash on my otherwise I would have bought Milo and Oros as well. Then it comes time for supper and we find this awesome little Irish pub (as we all craved food that we consider to be normal) I did not want to spend too much so I shared a honey and mustard, Cajun, chicken sandwich with Sandy. Colleen had Fish and Chips (tasted really good as well, and I think of Sam and Ashli one had nacho’s and one chicken strips (I THINK). This delectable meal was followed by our meeting up with Lloyd who had suggested going out and painting the city red as such, but none of us were all too keen so Lloyd was a very good sport about it all, so we had a drink at one pub...
and he then joined us on out night time trip up Namsan Tower (Much like Hillbrow tower just much prettier, cleaners, safer, well actually almost opposite to Hillbrow actually save for the fact that they are both towers). We wondered around at the tower and then Sam, Sandy, Lloyd and Ashli went up to the top while Colleen and I stayed and watched a lights and music show that took place instead. This portion of the trip is best shown in pictures.
After saying out good bye to Lloyd who somehow figured a way to get home, we slowly made our way back to our place. That said we did this over the course of about 1.5 hours and it was close to 2 am by the time we got there. We were all so ZONKED that we just fell on our beds and went to sleep.
Interlude: Michael Jackson Getting Older (I showed this to my students for my growing up lesson and laughed all 9 times I played the video)
Whose Line: Song Styles - MJ Getting older
Day 2 we took it very easy and had a nice slow morning with our breakfast (supposedly being supplied by the motel) of Cornflakes, an apple, coffee and a few other things.
Whose Line: Song Styles - MJ Getting older
Day 2 we took it very easy and had a nice slow morning with our breakfast (supposedly being supplied by the motel) of Cornflakes, an apple, coffee and a few other things.
I was rather underwhelmed by the experience really. For what we were paying we could have had more on offer. A subway ride (Where sandy impersonated the chick from “The Ring”
and funnily enough some locals too :-P) on a beautifully clear and sunny day took us to Changdeokgung Palace where we walked around viewing the Architecture and just taking awesome very arty Pics (see BELOW).
Leaving the palace we found this wicked little rice cake cafe and had... NO YOU’RE WRONG!!! We didn’t have coffee, HA! POX ON YOU!. We actually had some herbal tea. Being that it was such a lovely day we made our way to the stream that runs directly through the centre of Seoul, so as to clean up the image and environment a bit (apparently), and walked along there until that got boring and we made our way to Namdeamun Market – The 2nd Biggest market in South Korea. (The biggest is Dongdeamun Market, also found in Seoul). Again much eyeing of clothing and shiney was done and I even bought 2 things. MAN THIS PLACE IS WORSE THAT THE ORRIENTAL PLAZA ON A SATURDAY. (People who do not know JHB I apologise for the exclusion). It was packed with anything and everything you could think of!
One was parked at the lights with another behind it and a 3rd one got it all wrong and smashed into the 2nd one that then went onto the 1st one (presumably because they were not using any hand break). They were not going too fast so everyone was ok. That said – in SA there would have been remonstrating and swearing and cops and and and. Here it was all rather cordial. They got out there cars and the guys who were hit went to check that the bad driver was ok. Then I just they just called tow-trucks and exchanged information. Very cordial affair.
A night cruise on the Han river was next on the agenda and this is where my poor planning came to bite me. I got so so cold – I had summer stuff on and it was suddenly really cold. I took Sandy’s black bin bag of newly purchased floor pillows and used those to break up some of the wind and try keep my body heat. There was this old lady on the boat who was just going off at this one guy – we all guessed she was a mother in law of the guy and she was tearing him a new one and we couldn’t figure out why. Eventually another gentleman who was with that group got up and escorted the old lady inside and calmed her down. We didn’t see her for the rest of the trip though so she must have been kept below deck :-P
and funnily enough some locals too :-P) on a beautifully clear and sunny day took us to Changdeokgung Palace where we walked around viewing the Architecture and just taking awesome very arty Pics (see BELOW).
Leaving the palace we found this wicked little rice cake cafe and had... NO YOU’RE WRONG!!! We didn’t have coffee, HA! POX ON YOU!. We actually had some herbal tea. Being that it was such a lovely day we made our way to the stream that runs directly through the centre of Seoul, so as to clean up the image and environment a bit (apparently), and walked along there until that got boring and we made our way to Namdeamun Market – The 2nd Biggest market in South Korea. (The biggest is Dongdeamun Market, also found in Seoul). Again much eyeing of clothing and shiney was done and I even bought 2 things. MAN THIS PLACE IS WORSE THAT THE ORRIENTAL PLAZA ON A SATURDAY. (People who do not know JHB I apologise for the exclusion). It was packed with anything and everything you could think of!
We got so tired that we eventually left having eaten some delicious watermelon, and made our way to Holly’s Coffee shop (Yes we were back in old habits, sigh). We did need to recuperate a bit though, so while the girls all bought coffees of varied natures I resisted and just enjoyed the company. At my behest we traversed several different subway line to make our way to Olympic Park. That said it was not as exciting as I had hoped, though I did get to see my 1st Korean road accident (A bumper bashing involving 3 cars).
 |
| This was not the accidetn in question just BTW |
One was parked at the lights with another behind it and a 3rd one got it all wrong and smashed into the 2nd one that then went onto the 1st one (presumably because they were not using any hand break). They were not going too fast so everyone was ok. That said – in SA there would have been remonstrating and swearing and cops and and and. Here it was all rather cordial. They got out there cars and the guys who were hit went to check that the bad driver was ok. Then I just they just called tow-trucks and exchanged information. Very cordial affair.
A night cruise on the Han river was next on the agenda and this is where my poor planning came to bite me. I got so so cold – I had summer stuff on and it was suddenly really cold. I took Sandy’s black bin bag of newly purchased floor pillows and used those to break up some of the wind and try keep my body heat. There was this old lady on the boat who was just going off at this one guy – we all guessed she was a mother in law of the guy and she was tearing him a new one and we couldn’t figure out why. Eventually another gentleman who was with that group got up and escorted the old lady inside and calmed her down. We didn’t see her for the rest of the trip though so she must have been kept below deck :-P
Some well earned sleep was had by all and the next morning we did MORE window shopping (by this point I am bored so just sit outside taking pics of arb things while the girls looked around) and had breakfast at Dunkin Doughnuts before heading back to the train station to catch our train home.
We were all exhausted but it was well worth it! VIVA SEOUL VIVA!!!
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