Follow Me Around the World

I was wondering if Julia and Plum would make it to the airport on time to meet me and tell me how to get to my hostel.  But like clockwork they were there waiting for me as I cleared customs with smiles ear to ear.  We hugged briefly, I took out money from the ATM as usual, and then proceeded to the bus stop.  The bus was bus 602-1.  It would take me about 3 blocks from my hostel and take about 90 minutes to get there.  We chatted the whole way to the hostel, and they had already bought me a ticket and everything.  When we arrived at the hostel, Julia and Plum (those are their English names), had everything planned for the time I would spend in Seoul.  I threw down my stuff took a well deserved shower (I’m doing like 1 every 2-3 days, typical, but great excuse when traveling).  Julia and Plum were eager to start seeing things, and they had planned to take me to the Seoul Tower.  One of the tallest towers in the world.  We hopped in a cab, and we’re off!  The tower was lit up all the way with lights, changing colors and it was magnificent.  We had to take a bus up the mountain that the tower was on then walk quite a bit more up the hill where the bus could not go, till we reached the tower.
When we arrived we bought tickets and they told us we would have to wait about 30 minutes before our group of numbers would be called to get up to the top.  We decided to walk around, take a few photos of the tower and just relax.  Eventually we wondered to the entrance to the elevators and saw our group of numbers up and it was our turn to get to the top.  It was a little disappointing as most of these towers are, there was dirty glass separating us from the spectacular views of Seoul.  Pictures probably did not turn out so great, but nonetheless it was something they took me too, and I really enjoyed it.

After the Seoul tower we took a cab back to my hostel, I was pretty beat, and wanted to call it a night.  I checked in to my hostel before the Seoul tower and was informed that I would not be getting a single room as was promised and that I had paid to confirm a few months before.  I took the dorm room with the discount and just passed out.  Julia and Plum had surprised me with already booking a tour of the DMZ and the surrounding areas.

Day 2 – Seoul, It was to leave at 8am, so they came told me they would come to my hostel to pick me up to go to the meeting point of the tour at around 730am.  This meant that I would have to get up at the crack of dawn yet again, but it would be well worth it.  The tour was amazing.  We got to go down the 3rd tunnel.  The 3rd tunnel was the longest tunnel North Korea secretly built after the Korean way during the early to late 1970’s.  When the tunnel was completed it was only a mere 50+ kilometers from Seoul.  The tunnel was made to have 30,000 North Korean troops get to South Korea in under one hour.

The South Korean government found out about these tunnels by a North Korean defect civil engineer who had previously worked on the tunnels.  All in all there were 4 tunnels built crossing in to South Korea from the North, but the 3rd tunnel was the longest. On my way out of the tunnel I picked up a stone, which was awesome and typical of me.  I usually try and get rocks or stones from monumental places such as Masada, Ayers Rock, 3rd tunnel, etc…I quickly in stride picked one up and moved right along.  Didn’t want to get caught with that one.  At this point, I might as well tell my readers that since Singapore and trekking through the jungle I had a bad skin rash.  At first I thought it was bugs like mosquitoes or fire ants, but it turned to be something like poison ivy but much worse.  I really didn’t think much of it, but during this tour things got bad.  I was uncontrollably itching and the rash was spreading violently.  After the DMZ I told Julia and Plum and they agreed that I had to go to the hospital.  Don’t worry Aunt Betty I am alright, and they gave me medicine and cream and the swelling has subsided tremendously to the point where it is really fine!  After the hospital, I was fine and wanted to continue the day.  We headed for Isadong and the surrounding area, which is just a part of Seoul.  As it turned out it was the last day of the “Hi Seoul,” festival so when we got to the main road it was conveniently the beginning of the traditional parade.  It was really cool, I got plenty of pictures and it was really cool.  Julia and Plum were translating what the signs meant, basically the parade was an expression of different dynasties in Korean history, with dances, dresses and cool dressed up generals from each dynasty.

After the parade it was on to Isadong which is a place where there is lots of markets, stalls and cheap things to buy.  We were all hungry so Plum and Julia found this really off the beaten path traditional Korean restaurant where we ate like Kings and Queens.  Korean cuisine consists of lots of small plates and dishes of food with soups, rice and meat if applicable.  Julia for some reason picked up the bill to the lunch when I insisted that I would like to pay some.  That was the theme of the weekend as Plum and Julia were paying for everything.  I could barely get a 1000 won (little over a dollar) in to the mix.  After the incredible lunch we headed to the markets.  At this point after spending such little money in Korea so far, I decided to start buying stuff to bring home.  When it was all said and done I bought a mask, a fake wooded sword, I won 2 sugar candies playing a version of Roulette on the street which was really cool, as well as some other small chatchkas.  After Isadong Plum had informed Julia and I that her parents wanted us to spend dinner at there place.  We happily accepted, I was personally ecstatic myself to spend dinner with Plum’s family in a traditional Korean household, can’t get more culture than that.  I think Plum had informed them that I don’t eat pork or shellfish as most of the dishes were vegetable and beef.  Her father had a bottle of Soju (kind of like Korean Vodka, really cheap less than 1 dollar and about 40 proof for a good sized bottle).  The meal was excellent and Plum’s apartment was incredible.  It was above a huge department store on the 41st floor, overlooking the entire city!  We got better views from her apartment than we did from the Seoul Tower.  She was so modest telling us her apartment was small yada, yada, but little did we know how pimp it really was.  It was easily a 5-7 mil apartment in the city.  @ bedrooms a living room, full kitchen and amazing views 360 all around, and even has room for washer dryer!

After dinner Plum, Julia and I went to see Spiderman 3 on my treat.  I had to pay for something and I really wanted to see S3, so since the store she lives on top of has a sick movie theater I decided it would be a nice way to spend the evening, relaxing and watching the movie.  I was so tired from the medicine that the hospital gave me, at one point or at several points I drifted off the sleep but tried feverishly to wake myself up.  I will have to watch the movie again some time in the future to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

Also I brought Plum’s parents a really nice cream strawberry cake.  Apparently cake and fruit are really nice gestures when going in to a home to meet people for the first time.  Fruit is really expensive in Korea, especially strawberries, so like the mench I am I bought a really nice cake from the bakery below her apartment, Julia took Plum for a walk and I got the job done.

The movie was good, theater was nice, and it was great to just sit and relax and watch a movie, instead of bustling around for hours and hours and hours like usual.  But I was really tired after the movie so after I picked up my belongings from Plum’s sick apartment, I took a cab home, which Plum paid for, jesus Plum let me pay for something! When I got back I happily enjoyed my private room and free wireless internet.

Day 3- Seoul

Today I slept the latest of my whole trip 1030AM!  I had to meet Plum at the entrance to this famous palace at 1PM so it gave me plenty of time to walk around the university near me and the palace.  The university was started in 1398 and has been going strong ever since.  We don’t have that stuff in America with our relatively limited history, so it is always really cool to see things like a 600+ year old university.

It is currently 1253am on Tuesday, I have to wake up at like 5am to catch a bus to the airport which takes about 80-90 minutes even in the early morning.  I will try and catch up when I get to Taipei.  One of my closest friends Grossman, his girlfriend Liz, her mother is going to be in Taipei the same time as me, so I am staying with her in her apartment and she is even sending a limo taxi to pick me up and take me to her apartment!  That will be excellent considering this is one of the places I do not know anyone.

Just to backtrack the rest of my day was nice.  Plum and I walked around Seoul for hours and hours, shopping, window shopping and going to several nice sites.  We saw the Southgate, which used to be part of the guarding wall that surrounded Seoul many hundreds of years ago.  At around 530 we met Julia up near here school and basically ate and drank beer and Soju till around 11PM when I said I had to get home to try and get to sleep.  I then gathered up my laundry that the hostel did for free.  Unfortunately a lot of the clothing is still wet and is forcing me to hang it up around my room.  Hopefully I won’t forget any of it.

My rash is getting a lot better.  It still itches, I refrain from scratching them as much as possible as I am trying to reduce the number of scars I get from this horrible rash.  When we finally ended up at our last bar, there was this older Korean woman who we attracted (well basically I did by being loud and telling her to come say hi).  It turned out that this woman was 34 (looked 27) and was learning english at a famous institute in Seoul.  English is crazy here, everyone wants to learn it and will do whatever it costs.  Plum my friend is going to London for 9 months to learn english.  She is putting university on hold to study english because of how important it is in Korea,  We had a nice chat with her, drank more beers and then I headed up like I said above.

Well I think I have caught everyone up to where I sit on my bed writing this blog from.

Just wanted to say thanks for everyone who sticks through my rather long blog entries about my time in Asia.  It makes me feel nice inside knowing family; aunts, uncles, cousins, immediate family reads this blog along with others who click on the like from facebook.com or through bootsnall.com.  Thanks to you all!

Tomorrow I heading to Taipei and will try and update soon next day or so, adios

Josh

Today was the latest

This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.