Hi wow.
Very long time with no updates. To say work has been crazy would be an understatement. October and November were very full, both with work commitments and with our efforts to escape over the weekends to get away from the work vibe.
This update let's just try to cover October.
Forgive me my brevity, it has been two months since some of this stuff happened and I'm going by the photo descriptions I'm using on Flickr and the date stamp to orient when things happened.
We went to Seoul on the 11th of October, headed there straight from work on the Friday night and spent a bit under a week doing all kinds of touristy bits.
Seoul's a great city, lots to do, and easy to get around with little (make it no) Korean language ability. It was also the first place we'd had a good cup of coffee since we'd left Australia back at the beginning of 2012.
Here's a summary of the different parts of Seoul we visited between the 11th and 16th of October.
Insa-dong
Insa-dong is an area of Seoul with a mixture of history and modernity. Temples and shrines, along with traditional streets and shops are amidst modern boutiques and shops. It was kind of like a mixture of Ginza, Asakusa and Shibuya. We dug it.
Insa-dong also had a toy museum, with some items for sale. Our thought was that it started out as a toy shop, and then the owner got sick of tourists looking and not buying, so he started charging admission. The price of admission was something like 50 cents, but even so we heard three separate sets of tourists come up the stairs, realise there was admission, and go back down again. We saw some great stuff, lots of kitsch value.
Seodaemun prison
While in Seoul, we also made a trip out to Seodaemun prison, a prison that was used during the Japanese occupation of Korea for Korean political prisoners. It was a sobering place, full of horrible artefacts of a part of history Japan is keen to sweep under the rug and rarely mentions in any meaningful way.
The prison exterior:
A room dedicated to the political prisoners and their families who were imprisoned and tortured, both in this prison and elsewhere in Korea.
Rows of prison cells and the interior of a typical cell that housed several inmates.
Interior of a solitary confinement cell.
Confined area for inmates with leprosy, away from other prisoners.
It was a very sobering experience to visit the prison, and really highlighted a lot that I personally didn't know about Japan and Korea's history, something that I suspect would be true for a lot of people. It has changed the way I view the hostility Japan has for Korea, as it seems like something steeped in hypocrisy.
Lotte World
In complete contrast to the last lot of photos, we also visited Lotte World. It's billed as being about as worth a visit as Tokyo Disney, so we went. It was odd. Here's some photos.
Yeah. It's an indoor theme park where the target audience is kids aged 3-10, from what we could gather. We opted to get the tickets just for entry, not entry and rides as my back had started to play up again. Good thing we did because wow, lame. The best part of our visit to Lotte World was the fact that you could get a picture of your face taken and then superimposed onto computer generated porpoises that would then swim around and blow bubbles. See the photos above for how horrifying that was.
Gangnam
We went to Gangnam, we figured we had to. It felt like Ginza in a big way. Big brand shops, expensive boutiques and lots of wide streets with alleyways with slightly more interesting boutiques. We didn't see Psy, and no one sang Gangnam style at us, but we took a few photos.
Myeong-dong
The area we stayed in was called Myeong-dong, and it's a pretty lively shopping and market area. We were able to find a lot of good places to eat when we headed back to the hotel for the night, and it also is home Seoul's time capsule. Did you know Seoul has a time capsule? Neither did we!
Myeong-dong mascot #1 - Cool cat plays it cool and promotes...something...by doing a dance.
Myeong-dong mascot #2 - World's saddest Mario is down on his luck next to giant legs.
Downtown Myeong-dong shops and crowds.
Jason with our Korean barbecue feast. Delicious, and that heating element was ridiculously hot.
Myeong-dong during the day - Namsangol Hanok Village. This village and garden hosts the time capsule.
The time capsule itself.
So here's the background on the time capsule. It was put into place to celebrate Seoul being the capital of Korea on its 600th anniversary. It was buried in 1994, with the intention of being dug up 400 years later (in the year 2394!), on the 1000th anniversary of Seoul. Pretty ambitious project, and a pretty impressive monument to local and national pride. This was a nice thing to stumble across on our last day in Seoul.
More photos from Seoul are
HERE.
DMZ
Before I finish up the blog post, I have to, of course, talk about our trip to the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea.
We took a tour through a private company with permission to visit the restricted areas. The tour that we were on took place over the course of a full day.
The morning portion took us to the DMZ theatre and exhibition hall where we got some history about the division of North and South Korea, along with the formation of the demilitarised zone.
We also descended into a tunnel that had been drilled by North Korea into South Korea before it was discovered and blocked off by South Korea. Hard hats were necessary for the descent, and I nearly knocked mine off a few times.
The yellow painted sections indicate where dynamite was placed to blast out sections of the rock for the tunnel building process.
Following our tunnel descent, we paid a visit to Dorasan railway station, built in happier times when it looked like North and South Korea could reconcile. In 2007, the tracks were upgraded and freight trains began to travel between Dorasan and an industrial town in North Korea, but in 2008 North Korea closed the rail link, and it has remained closed since then. Photos!
Not long after this, the morning portion of the tour was done, and we stopped for lunch. Not everyone had signed up to go into the demilitarised zone, so those who had finished headed back to Seoul. It was time for us to get real serious.
We were escorted into the UN base in the demilitarised zone, where ROK soldiers were on guard both inside and outside the conference building. Toward the end of the tour we learned that the "rock soldiers" the US soldiers kept referring to were actually ROK (Republic of Korea) soldiers, which lessened the image that came to mind every time the phrase "rock soldiers" was used. "There are always two rock soldiers on guard in the conference centre" sounds much more interesting than its actual alternative.
These guys were like rocks, always on guard, and at attention and boy howdy intimidating.
The conference table these two are standing in front of falls directly over the border between North and South Korea. The line of microphones in the centre is spot on over the border. Standing where we were, we had crossed the border.
We were allowed to take pictures from the South Korean side of the DMZ looking into North Korea, but we were not allowed to take pictures looking in towards the South Korean side for security reasons. The US and South Korea don't want any information of their operations becoming available to the North Koreans. We were told that looking out at us from that building was a North Korean soldier with binoculars, monitoring our movements. We could see him in one of the top windows. Very interesting stuff.
We also saw the Flaming Lips play in Tokyo in October
Until next I have the mental space and time, goodbye!
Hope to get November's stuff up soon.
