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Mon
27th November, 2006
The airport seemed eerily quiet when we landed,
not sure I've ever seen the main airport in a country so quiet,
although it was 8:30pm and we dont usually arrive so late.
We had completed the immigration form on the plane, only a small
form with the usual name, passport number and date of birth
boxes. No questions from the man in the immigration booth,
gave us 3 months tourist visa with no problems.
Once in the arrivals hall it was a little
busier. Our guide book said there might be a subway link
into the city by 2006, but they were obviously running behind
schedule as when we checked at the information desk, they said
the only options were bus or taxi. They had some great
information leaflets and booklets, in English, so it was worth
checking out. We had 20 minutes before the next bus,
good time to book a hotel maybe. Managed to buy a phone
card with little drama, but couldn't manage to actually make a
call with it, the problem being there were several sets of
instructions. We tried them all and still couldn't get
through to the Seoul Backpackers, and eventually ran out of
time. We'd just have to hope they were still open at around 11pm
when we got there.
It was quite chilly out in the open, everyone
was wearing warm coats and hats, so they were a little shocked
at my attire of shorts and t-shirt. I was quite warm
enough for the time being, I thought it was nice to be back in a
more temperate climate, and besides I knew the bus was going to
be heated so there was no point getting all wrapped up
now. Rita is a bit more susceptible to temperature
changes, particularly downwards, but she was prepared with her
fleece. We're planning on having to buy some cheap warmer
clothing while we're here, then we can dump it when we
leave.
It was quite hot on the bus, a little too hot
for comfort, so after an hour when the bus stopped out side
Angok subway station, we were quite glad to get out into the
fresh air. Finding addresses in Korea can be quite a task,
apparently. The address usually consists of a building
number in an area, followed by the name of a larger area or the
town name. The building numbers don't mean much, they are
assigned sequentially as buildings are built so there is no
logical sequence within an area, and to make matters worse, most
buildings don't have the number displayed on the outside! Even
the locals have a terrible time finding places, to the extent
that it is quite normal practice to phone the place you're
looking for and get them to send a fax, the main reason for the
growth of fax machines in Korea in the past. We were fortunate
enough to have our guide book which has fairly good maps, so we
were fairly easily able to navigate our way to the Seoul
Backpackers. We would have made it, too, if we hadn't come
across the Beewon Guest House on the way, a place Rita had read
about somewhere, so we popped in to check it out and decided it
would do, for a night or two at least.
Quite small rooms, but en-suite bathroom and
satellite TV and fridge, under-floor heating and air
conditioning, 37000 Won a night. The brochure said there
was a 10% discount if you stayed more than 3 nights, but the
receptionist explained that the brochure was an old one and they
no gave discounts. It was after 11pm by now, but we
thought we'd take a little wander around the neighbourhood, just
to see what was around. On our way from the bus stop we hadn't
seen much, but there were plenty of small shops and cafes, bars
and restaurants. This will do nicely.
Back
to Itinerary
Tue 28th November, 2006
Free breakfast! Well, toast and a Yacolt
(?) yoghurt, and a sachet of coffee. Nice little kitchen, even
got a stove and a big pan, might be able to do something with
that if we stay any length of time.
Spent the morning using the free internet,
catching up to date with our emails and website, and Rita
researched her voluntary teaching options. Ventured
out in the evening to look for alternative, hopefully cheaper,
accomodation, and for dinner. Checked out a few hotels,
motels and the Seoul Backpackers, but didn't find anywhere we
could feel at home for possibly several weeks. The
backpackers offered one free night for each six nights you stayed,
but the room was vary bare, even though it was quite
large. Decided to stay on at Beewon, the room was too
warm but otherwise it would do for now.
Had a nice meal at a restaurant in a small
shopping centre in the Insa-dong area. Went for the safe
option of a tofu soup/stew, served with a dozen small dishes of
various types of kimchi, basically pickled vegetables (although
I'm sure there's a lot more to there preparation). Kimchi is
the national dish of Korea, and no meal is complete without
it. We also had a bottle of the national drink, while we
were at it, soju, a clear distilled spirit, mostly made from
sweet potatoes these days, but with an alcohol content of only 20
- 25%.
Wednesday 29th
Another lazy start to the day, investigated some
more accommodation options, settling on the Emerald Motel.
At a discounted 35,000 Won it was only slightly cheaper than the
Beewon, but the room was bigger and had better facilities, i.e. a
computer with broadband connection a huge TV and dvd player, a
fridge and a hot and cold filtered water machine. That'll do
nicely. We were already committed to another night at the
Beewon,
(Rita's news to be inserted here when she writes
it!)
Evening meal at a friendly little restaurant down
the alley from the Beewon, We both had the fish dish, cooked this
time, tasted a bit like a smoked kipper to me but don't know what
it was. Like last nights meal, it was served with a range of
small kimchi dishes, and we had a bottle of soju to wash it down.
Thursday 30th November onwards
(Rita's news coming soon. She's not being
very forthcoming about writing something, so I guess she doesn't
want you to know!)
It's a strange thing, but when you have more time
on your hands, you seem to get a lot less done. We're in
Seoul for some time, probably 3 or 4 weeks, so we've taken our
time, but now almost 2 weeks have passed since we arrived, we're
wondering where the time has gone.
We've not been totally lazy, we've been out and
about and seen some things. Here's some of what we've been
up to:
Yongsan Electronics market - the biggest
electronics market in Asia, so they say. It's more a large
area of various size buildings, with shops ranging from small
carts on the side of the road to the 7 story Etland building,
complete with cinema and food court. It all sounds quite
impressive, but there are an awful lot of shops selling the same
thing as their neighbours, whole lines of stalls selling mobile
phones, digital camera's and electronic language translators.
That covers about 70% of all the shops in the area, another 10%
covers laptop sales, another 10% for desktop computers and
components, and the rest is made up of ceiling fans, lighting and
other domestic goods. The surprising things, for all their high
tech exports, they dont seem to have much in the way of latest
high tech gadgets, just like we found in Japan. Of course,
perhaps we just looking in the wrong places, but I must have
walked several miles of stalls and nothing really caught my eye.
The Imperial Palace - Gwanghwamun.
Originally built in the 14th century, this palace has had a
chequered history, lying in ruins for 300 years before being
rebuilt in the 1800's, then most of the buildings were demolished
by the Japanese when they took over the country in the early
1900's. Since the WWII, the palace has been gradually
restored, and is now an impressive place to wander around.
We thought it was similar to the Forbidden City in Beijing, but on
a smaller scale.
The National Folk Museum In the
grounds of the Gwanghwamun Palace, this is one of the most
interesting folk museums I've been to for ages. I've
developed a short attention span for museums, particularly when
they only offer rows of old bits of pottery with labels I cant
read, but this place is a lot more informative. There were
several 3D models of various scenes, such as village life and
important battles, and many informative displays of important
daily items such as how ginseng is grown and produced and the
process of making kimchi.
We were lucky with the timing of our visit, as just when we were
about to leave we found out there was a free performance of Korean
dance about to start in the attached theatre. We managed to get
good seats and enjoyed the performance, staring CHA Myeonghee and
the UHA dance society. It was an all women performance, with
a lot of drum playing, dancing and some singing. The drum
playing was particularly impressive, with at one time about twenty
drummers keeping perfect coordination for a 10 minute performance,
and the beat was changing all the time so it was not a mean
feat.
DMZ - The De-Militarized Zone, the border area
between North and South Korea. We did a half day tour with a
tour company, you're not allowed to go there and
do-it-yourself. It was very interesting and our guide was
very knowledgeable about the Korean war and everything that has
happened since. Once inside the DMZ we were tightly
controlled, one reason being the large areas of land-mines around
the place, and we were also very restricted about where we could
take photos. We visited the "3rd tunnel", dug by
the North Koreans under the DMZ to use as an invasion route, one
way around the landmines I suppose. It was a steep walk down
the access tunnel to the tunnel dug by the North Koreans, and we
were allowed to walk along to the point where it had been walled
up to stop the North Koreans trying to use it. The funny
thing was the black paint they had put on the granite walls,
apparently to make it look like coal, and thereby say it was an
old mine shaft and not an invasion route. Back at the surface, the
view from the lookout at Dorasan, from where we could see over the
valley where the actual border lies, and Panmunjeom village which
lies on the border and is where the two sides meet for
talks. Photography was limited at the observatory platform,
we had to stand behind a yellow line 10 feet behind the platform
edge, so we couldn't really photograph
anything.
Insadong - the artists and antiques area,
one of the older parts of town, the back streets are small and
winding, with many small Korean restaurants.
Itaewon: Itaewon is near some of the
US army bases, so is a focus of shops that cater for foreigners,
although the bases are being moved to outside Seoul, so I dont
know if that will change the nature of Itaewon. There are
several German bars, and an English bar run by a German, not
sure what that's about.
Dongdaemon Market. A huge wholesale and retail
shopping area, lots of stalls on the streets and a busy, lively
atmosphere, when we visited on a Sunday, anyway. There
are also four huge high rise shopping malls, open until 5am for
shopaholics, but we didn't get around to going into any of
them. Maybe later
Skiing. Yes, they have lots of ski resorts here,
and its certainly cold enough for snow! We went to the
Yongji Pine Resort on a day trip from Seoul, and we liked it so
much we went back on another day trip. The resort is about
an hours drive out of Seoul, and when we first arrived we were a
little concerned about the lack of snow on the surrounding hills,
but it turned out they have some excellent snow machines and there
were three slopes open. We were a bit disappointed
that the 70,000 Won price of the trip didn't include the lift
pass, but it did include transport and equipment hire, so the
extra 35,000 for the pass wasn't too much, taking the cost for the
whole day to around £60 all in. We started on the
beginners slope, a nice gentle incline with its own ski
lift. I've only skied twice before, 18 months ago in Chile,
and that's the only time Rita has skied in the last 12 years, so
we were both a little cautious at first. After a couple of hours
or so, we'd both gained a bit more confidence, so we progressed to
the next slope, longer and at least twice the incline of the
beginners slope. It was a big leap in required skills to
negotiate, and was quite busy with skiers and snowboarders, and
was also fairly icy, so after a few descents we were getting
tired with the effort of trying to stay upright and avoid
collisions, and went back to the beginners slope for some more
practice.
Our second day at Yongji was fabulous. It had snowed over
the previous 2 days so the slopes were well covered with fresh,
natural snow, and we had brilliant blue skies and sunshine all
day. Started off on the beginners slop again to gain some
confidence, but were soon on the intermediate slope and this time
stayed on for several hours. I even managed to upright the
whole day, although I did have a couple of dodgy moments, and Rita
only fell over when someone collided with her. Still got a
long way to go before I'd say I was a competant skier, but what a
fantastic day. Olympic Park. The Seoul Olympics of
1988 were obviously a huge event for the city, there's a large
park area known as Olympic Park where a lot of the main buildings
used during the games are situated, but, strangely, the Olympic
Stadium itself is situated a mile or so away in another sports
complex, along with the baseball stadium and one of the four
Olympic swimming pools. Lotte World. One of the many
department stores in Seoul, this one also has a lot of
entertainment options, from a Disney World style indoor amusement
park to swimming pools, bowling and ice skating. The department
store itself was crammed full of big designer names, or so I was
told by Rita, I'm not very well up on that front. Seoul Tower
Perched on top of the Southern Mountain, as its called, but is
actually now in central Seoul thanks to the rapid expansion of the
city, this tower is the highest point above sea level you can get
to in Seoul. It's probably a bit sad to say this, but one of
the most amazing experiences was using the urinals in the gents
toilet on the observation deck, they were up against the window so
you stood facing out to the world while you did your
business. It wasn't the same in the ladies toilets, so I
explained to Rita in graphic detail the experience to be had in
the gents. SHe didn't say a lot, but I could tell she was
quietly impressed. Research, Planning and Booking On
the days we weren't doing the stuff above, we weren't totally
idol, although from outward appearance you might sometimes have
thought so. We managed to negotiate tourist visas for India
and Mayanmar, which took lots of form filling and 8 days between
them, and booked several flights, including our christmas flights
to Jejudo and our Bangkok-Yangon-Bangkok flights. I'd looked
into flying back to Chiang Mai in Thailand instead of going
straight back to Bangkok, having heard of flights betweend Chiang
Mai and Mandalay, but after much furrowed brows and internet
reasearch, I finally found out they only fly from Chiang Mai to
Mandalay, and not in the reverse direction. That's crazy, if
that's the case they must have loads of planes parked up at
Mandalay by now!
Back
to Itinerary
Fri 22nd December, 2006
Early start from the Emerald Motel, caught the subway train
on line 5 out to Gimpol airport in plenty of time for our
11:15am flight out to Jejudo. Had a slight problem at the
security check, there seemed to be something coming up on the
scanning screen that they were very interested in finding in my
laptop/camera bag. They scanned it 3 times and emptied all
the contents, a bit worrying at times as it kept on disappearing
out of sight. In the end they gave up, they wouldn't tell
me what they had seen, but that bag and its contents have been
through about 10 times in the last 3 months and nobody else
objected. A short flight of about an hour
and we arrived at Jeju-do, the "Tropical Holiday Island"
of South Korea. Or so the adverts say. I must admit I
had been a little sceptical about this claim, especially in
winter, and although there are palm trees here, of sorts, it's
certainly not warm enough to be considered tropical, in winter
time anyway. They have an excellent limousine bus service
(just a normal coach with a posh name) with services taking you
all over the island. We caught the 100 service to the long
distance bus station, near where we had sussed out some cheap
accommodation for the night. The Ruby Motel turned out to be
a little run down, but we had a good sized room, the landlady was
charming, and it was only for one night. Rita also managed
to barter the room rate down to 25,000, which also helped.
On studying the guide to Jejudo City (actually, its split
into the old and new parts, which are called Gujeju and Sijeju,
but that gets too complicated) we found there actually
wasn't a lot to see. We set off walking to the Folk
museum, a mile or so away from our motel. When we were in
the area but couldn't find the entrance, we were helped out by a
friendly old local, who spoke very limited English, but showed
us along several pathways to a sort of 3 bar gate, one of the
traditional features of the island. The bars are supported
at either end by a granite pillar with three holes bored
through, and the setting of the bars indicates whether you are
prepared to accept visitors. If all three bars are up,
then no visitors are wanted, if two bars are up and the top bar
is only raised at one end, it means you're temporarily
unavailable but come back soon, and if all three bars are down,
everybody is welcome. Interesting system, perhaps we
should have something similar in England! Anyway,
I divers. Our guide pointed at the building behind the gate,
and left us. Inside the museum we walked around the three
halls, which had a variety of exhibits describing the folk history
of the island, with English descriptions as well, but I didn't
find it quite as good as the Folk museum in Seoul, seemed to be
missing something. Just my opinion though. Outside in
the courtyard were some harubangs, "grandfather
stones", somewhat similar to the moai of Easter Island.
The Jejudo version has more shape and detail than the Easter
Island ones, but there is more than a passing similarity. I
must look into the history of them sometime. Walking
out of the front gate we noticed the ticket office, where we
apparently should have bought our entrance tickets. Oh well,
maybe next time we'll pay. We walked down the steep
roads towards the sea front, following the granite boulder lined
ravines, devoid of water at this time, but testament to the
non-porous nature of the island and the fast run off of
rainwater. Down in the town it seemed fairly quiet, I
suppose this is not a busy time of year, it not being quite as
tropical as we had been led to believe. Nice town though,
lots of shops and restaurants. Saturday 23rd Caught
the bus the long way around the island to the southern side, not
quite as easy as you might think. We wanted to go the long
way around because we would see more of the island than if we went
straight across the middle, even though it was 90 minutes longer
and more expensive. The problem was finding the right bus to
get on, we were told we should get on the bus at stand 11, but
when we tried and showed the driver our tickets, he told us to go
to stand 9. The driver of the bus at stand 9 studied our
tickets and said no, we needed the bus at stand 11, the one that
had just left without us. It was only twenty minutes until
the next one, but the driver on that one tried to send us to stand
9 again, until we explained we wanted to go the long way around
the island. I was exhausted already, and we'd only gone 200
yards from our motel. The island is famous for its
tangerines and persimmons. December is the harvesting time,
so there were still trees bearing fruit. Out of the town,
the houses were single story and had roofs of different colours,
some, red, some light blue, and some green. We saw only a
few of the traditional thatched roofs, fairly shallow and held
down with a sort of rope net affair. All of the flat land we
could see was cultivated or covered in fruit trees, and high above
us was the extinct volcano that created the island millions of
years ago. The road was excellent, mostly two lanes and a
good hard shoulder with a cycle path. We had originally
planned to cycle around the island, but I had come down with a
throat infection and a cold, so decided it wasn't a good idea. The
bus route ended at the Seogwipo World Cup stadium, build
especially for the Korean and Japan 2002 World cup, quite an
impressive stadium with what looks like a big wing or a sail for
its roof. From there we got a taxi to the Jejudo
Hiking hostel that we had already booked for the christmas
weekend, and a good job we did as they said they were otherwise
full. The room was a little small, and on the fifth floor
with no lift. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea, especially as I
was feeling under the weather. The manager said we could
have a larger room in the morning, he had nothing else available
at the moment. After checking out the kitchen
facilities, which consisted of a couple of gas camping stoves, and
electric kettle and a microwave, we decided it was probably the
best we were going to find, especially at only 20,000 won a
night. So we stayed. Once we located it, the
town centre was quite busy, one main street with the posher shops
on, and lots of lesser streets with lesser shops and bars, clubs
and restaurants. There was also a large covered market with
sections for veggies, meat, fish, a huge section for kimchi, and
various other stalls. All very colourful and interesting for
a wander around. We stocked up with fresh veggies for our
christmas dinner, as welll as the other meals we planned to
eat. We had decided we'd cook all our own meals while we
were here, we're missing our steamed veg and potatoes!!! Sunday
24th, Christmas Eve. I'm feeling worse, cough has
got worse despite copious amounts of medicine. Time to try
the old remedy, whisky! Ah, that's a lot better. We
both did a spot of last minute christmas shopping and Rita prepped
up some of our christmas dinner. Quiet day, really. Monday
15th December, Christmas Day. Happy Christmas
everyone! After a slow start to the day, we walked out along
the coast to the Jeongbang Waterfall, a mile or so from our
hotel. The waterfall is 23metres high, and is, allegedly,
the only waterfall in Asia that falls directly into the sea,
although apparently some people dispute this. We also had a
good view of the mountain in the centre of the island, normally
covered in clouds but quite clear this morning. Actually, it
was quite a pleasant, sunny morning, around 12C. Back
at base we rustled up our Christmas dinner, which went quite well
except I burnt the sautéed potatoes, which we were having in
place of the usual roast potatoes because we didn't have an
oven. Never mind, the meal was great and the pan cleaned up
eventually. Tuesday 26th Had planned
to go along to the Jungmun coast, 10 miles to the west of us, to
have a look at the black basalt cliffs, formed into hexagonal
pillars by the rapid cooling in water (or something like that) and
very similar to the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland.
But, we weren't feeling up to it today, might go
tomorrow. Instead we took a walk down to some more
waterfalls, Cheonjiyeon, closer to the town and set it a nice
little park. Nice. We had the same problem here as at
the other waterfall, finding out where to buy the entrance
tickets. It's only when you get to the entrance that they
tell you that you've got to buy a ticket back at the office.
What office, I didn't see one. Retraced our steps and
eventually spotted a small sign saying "Tickets" and a
hole in the wall with some guy smiling behind it. I suppose
the mass of Korean writing might have been more informative, but
of course we couldn't read that. It was only when
we got back to our hotel and the manager informed us we had to pay
for another night if we wanted to stay that we realised are flight
back to Seoul was tomorrow, and we didn't have another whole day
here tomorrow as we had thought. Doh! Oh well, we've
seen the Giants Causeway anyway, how different can it
be.
Back
to Itinerary
Wed 27th December, 2006
Very efficient and regular buses here, only what I
would expect in Korea though. Caught the 600 bus across the
island to the airport. 5000 Won If your every here, remember
that when you get off the bus, you have to give your ticket
back. I couldn't find mine when we arrived at the airport,
but luckily they said it didn't matter. Why do they collect them
back in again then? Had a slight altercation with
the security staff at the hand luggage scanning point, they
decided my little pair of folding scissors were not allowed on the
flight, even though they are far smaller than the 5cm blade length
that the sign outside said was permissible for scissors. I
tried explaining that they had checked them when we flew out of
Seoul a few days ago and they said they were ok, but my Korean
wasn't up to it, so I lost my scissors. Other than that,
nice easy one hour flight Back in Seoul, noticed it
was a lot colder, only a few degrees above freezing I'd say.
Caught the subway line 5 back to Jongno3 and back to our old
hotel, the Emerald Motel.. They tried to charge us the standard
rate for the same room as we had last week, but they soon relented
and let us have it for 35,000 Won. How kind. In
the afternoon we took a walk up to Dongdaemon market for the last
time, just in case we saw something we might like to send back
home, but in the end decided we'd already got enough to send
back. Found a nice little bar snuggles between a couple of
the huge department stores up there, and then faced a chill walk
home. Thursday 28th Packed
up all our warm clothes and a few items we'd bought to send back
home, then took them down to the post office. The post offices are
great here, they sell the packing boxes of various sizes for very
reasonable prices, and they also provide work table, packing tape and
even scissors. That's lucky, did I mention I'd had mine
confiscated yesterday? I'm still a little annoyed by
that. It's a really cold day today, below freezing,
and I've just packed all my warm things up and sent them off in a
parcel. We wont be doing much outside today, I can assure
you. Friday 29th Up at
the crack of dawn... actually, sometime before dawn, to get the
subway out to Gimpol Airport, then the connecting bus to Incheon
airport for our 10:20am flight. Slightly convoluted route,
but it was cheaper, and, as we didn't have much in the way of cold
weather gear, the entrance to the subway was only 100 yards from
our hotel and the airport bus was half a mile away, so which would
you have chosen. To help you decide, the temperature outside
was still below freezing. At the airport there was
a long queue at the Cathay check in desks, the first queue we'd
had for many flights. There didn't appear to be a quick check in
option, which we probably couldn't have used anyway as I wanted to
check a bag in this time, as I had a couple of sharp items.
Only took 20 minutes of patient waiting to get processed, then we
were soon through security and passport control, buying our
traditional last beer in the country. A tad early for some,
maybe, but my view is that it's opening time somewhere in the
world, wherever you are. Bye bye South Korea, we've
had a great time here, very friendly and helpfull people, and
probably one of the safest countries in the world, as far as
personal safety goes, we'd say. |
