ME :)

Mon 13/07/2009

 

11 hours of sleep were plentiful and quite adequate for todays adventures. The plan was to go to Seoul Station and just wander around until my legs were tired.

 

Morning rush hour is crazy in the underground train stations, guys in suits & women in their heels running from platform to platform, they can’t all be late for work? perhaps it is morning exercise, who knows. The trains are awesome, air conditioned, almost twice the size of an underground tube train so it is quite spacious. So the race begins for everyone once those doors open, they first need to run up about 50 steps, then race along the horizontal escalators and finally wait in queue in lines on the next platform interchange. The winner probably gets a bowl of Kim Chi from the train operator or their boss! I’m surprised those heels don’t get stuck between each escalator platform.

 

Ok the signs are a bit hard to read so if you end up walking or running with everyone to one platform and then realising you’re on the wrong one you have to drag your ass back the way you came and then look at the map. I did this throughout the day, clearly I am an experienced traveller. Seoul Station didn’t seem all that special but that was because I came out at some weird exit, walked another 30 minutes and realised I went in the wrong direction. If peak hour traffic is going in one direction then you know they are heading towards the city (where I wanted to be). If you are walking in the opposite direction and hoping to reach the city center then you are a fool.

 

It wasn’t all a lost cause for this fool to walk these uncharted roads as I managed to pass a Women’s only university and walked along the sides of the roads with an elderly citizens brigade going for a walk with tongs in their hand cleaning up the streets. No wonder the streets are spotless. I’m sure if you drop any sort of rubbish in front of them and before it even touches the ground, they’d Twakaendo your ass then clean up the mess and also your lifeless body after a severe beating.

 

Outside of Seoul Station there are herds of elderly people sitting around, sleeping around or fighting with each other. I saw two old guys pushing each other after one of them threw the other’s hat into the puddle. The police officer also got involved and before I could see a round of Street Fighter take place outside of Seoul Station, it just became verbal stoush.

 

I came upon a Market called Namdaemun with rows and rows of stalls selling clothes, to food and various other oddities. From that market I ended up at the main shopping district wandering from street to street. I couldn’t decide where to eat for lunch but I just had to make sure they had an English menu. I ended up at some restaurant where they cook for you on your table. I had some charcoal chicken fried with vegies, rice and a spicy sauce. Thankfully it wasn’t flaming hot.

 

At first I didn’t know how to eat it, like was I suppose to eat from the plate they cooked on or was I missing cutlery? how would I ask? I found the cutlery on the chair but i couldn’t find a plate so I ate from the pan. I looked at everyone else and they weren’t eating off a pan but instead some sort of bowl/plate.

 

My cup was first stacked on this bowl/plate, so I thought it was for the cup but in actual fact it doubled up as a plate/bowl? way to go doushe-bag. Despite that embarrassing problem, the food was delicious even though it was a tad spicy! I don’t know how to say “mild only please” (”mild” probably doesn’t exist – they’ll probably be thinking, don’t be a pansy!!).

 

Cheonggyecheon Stream runs through the city, it appears to be man made but it’s a nice place to relax especially under the bridges away from the heat. It’s definitely popular place with the locals and in this heat, it is a cool retreat especially if you tip your toes into the water which you can do.

 

Despite being a cloudy day, the sun was still making the walking trip quite unpleasant. The humidity is something like 96%, I don’t know what the percentage means on my thermometer its ridiculously hot! I was sweating buckets and my face was constantly leaking from its pores and keeping it constantly wet. So it wasn’t smart then taking a tour of the Gyeongbokgung Palace walking around in the sun but it beats the rain!

 

Gyeongbokgung is such a huge palace, I took a 1 hour guided tour but I got bored of it so I wandered around the kingdom myself. The only bad thing about this walk was that my pants kept sticking too my legs due to the sweat and they kept slipping down, seriously they’re meant to fit around my waist without a belt.

 

I might be naive but I can’t see any South Korean citizens steal or pickpocket like how it is so common in England or many Europeans country for that matter. I’ve seen delivery guys on motorcycles leave their helmets on the handle bars when performing the deliveries. Shit, I’ve also saw LCD’s on the back of bikes on the footpath while someone does a delivery. If this was in London, Bucharest or Rome, they’ll probably be on EBAY in minutes including the motorcycle.

 

I was done after the Palace, after 6 hours of walking I’d had enough and ended up going back to the hotel to shower and rest my legs. Before I took a shower, the hotel reception called me and asked if I could change rooms. I said I’ll only move if I get a bigger room and with the same view so they agreed. I drank 2 cans of coke and 2 bottles of water from the mini-fridge, do I still declare them in my new room? They can give me those for free due to this inconvenience.

 

I didn’t rest for long as I headed back to Cheonggyecheon Stream for some night photography. Even though it started to rain, I was hoping it would stop by the time I got there. The weather gods did as I asked and I had an hour of photography time down there before it started to bucket down again.

 

FFS PLEASE STOP RAINING!

smiles

Mon 13/07/2009

 

I couldn’t sleep on this flight, I had an aisle seat and despite trying a few times to get to sleep, I just couldn’t do it. Instead I watched a movie marathon consisting of 5 movies and they are in no particular order, Quantum of Solace, Monsters vs Alians, Slumdog Millionaire, Yes Man and Madagascar 2. By the time I finished all these movies, I had arrived at Seoul rather sleep deprived. Now I hope the same movies are not shown on the flight back, please show different ones!

 

I have been on nearly 100 flights but I hadn’t seen what I had seen mid-flight on this plane ever. There was a “self-service” of food and beverages during mid flight, I have never seen so many passengers queue up for some pot noodles. The queues were snaking down the aisle, this must be a stereotype thing so I’d join in on the fun and queued up to see what the fuss was all about. I got my pot noodle fix, together with some chocolate Hergan Dans ice cream.

 

Arriving in Seoul 1hr late, I met up with J at the airport. The airport was like a ghost-town, there was hardly anyone there. Was it because it was Sunday? or no one was flying anywhere that day? This is supposed to be the worlds #1 airport. I the criteria for being #1 doesn’t mean it has to be the busiest but rather the cleanliness, spacious and uber array of gadgets and electronics. Once we boarded the train into the city, it was bucketing down. This was no ordinary rain, it was like monsoonal rain and it didn’t look like it was going to stop at all today.

 

We arrived at J’s sister’s place shortly after and it’s a nice cosy 3 bedroom apartment next to a market. Morning brunch was interesting with an abundance of small dishes of vegies, kim chi and various other delicacies I couldn’t recognise. I just kept eating the Kim Chi and the omlette with seaweed in between which I thought was an interesting twist but very tasty!

 

With the heavy downpour, I couldn’t do much but watch UFC 100 on TV and hanging out with J’s Nephew who drew a cool picture of me on paper. This will now be my new profile photo on facebook. The plan was to get some sleep and then make my way to the hotel and then dinner with J’s Australian friend at the Korean BBQ restaurant near the hotel. J got some sleep but I wanted to power through and not sleep at all or else I will succumb to further jet lag.

 

Korean BBQ was pretty much the same at home but the only difference I see is that the waiter cooks everything for you from preparing it to the food being ready. I thought that from the menu, we only ordered the pork and we didn’t get any sides. But it turns out they trolley came past not only with the marinated pork, but about 20 other side dishes ranging from salads, kim chi to seaweed and even corn and macaroni, wtf? That must be an american adaptation or something.

 

After dinner I just went straight to sleep. I couldn’t handle staying up for any longer, it has been almost 32 hours so I just crashed.

 

smiles