Seoul

When not closed for Lunar New Year, Seoul is actually a pretty great place to visit (but maybe not to live in from what I hear). Here are some must-do's and some good places to go for fellow waygooks that I have learned from my visits to Seoul so far.

~Foreign Restaurant (Itaewon): This is a pretty good place, especially if your a fellow waygook stuck in a small town or city without much western food. For 16,000 you can eat all you can at the buffet complete with Naan, lentil crackers, lamb curry, and french fries. The sodas are a bit expensive at 4,700 but otherwise it's really good if you just want to stuff yourself because you missed that kind of food.

Directions: If your back is to the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon (easily located via Taxi and the Itaewon subway stop), cross the street and turn left. Walk a few blocks until the next intersection and take a right. Walk up the hill and it will be on your left. If you've hit the Foreign food store or What The Book, you have one too far.

~Namaste: This is a really good Indian/Napali resteraunt, and it's right next to a subway exit. Everything is really good here. The only thing I haven't cared for too much is the Mango Lahssi. The best deal by far here is the 15,000 set. It gives you little bit of everything and is really tasty.

Directions: Take the subway line 6 to Dongmyo station. Leave via exit #5, with the stairs to your back, turn left and look up. It's on the second floor of the building right next to the subway exit.

~What The Book: A great little bookstore for anyone searching for English books in this country. Sometimes other bookstores will have some books in English, but the selection is quite small, and there will never be any magazines in English. What The Book has everything from literature, to language learning books, cook books, travel books, to English Magazines. They will also take your used books and give you store credit so you can get more to read.

Directions: See directions for the Foreign Restaurant.

~DMZ: This is a must-do in Seoul. There are many tours available, and sometimes, depending on the time of year and circumstances, there are tours into North Korea as well. Check into it well ahead of time and be warned, there are many rules you must follow (although the camera rules are sometimes allowed to be ignored).

Directions: Check out the internet for a goo-priced tour. Also, many tourist booths and hotels will have brochures for you, but it is best to plan ahead and schedule tours ahead of time, especially if you will only be there a day or two.

~Clothes for big-sized Waygooks: Itaewon is the best place to look for larger sized clothes if you are like most westerners and have curves or are larger than the average Korean.

Directions: If your are facing the Hamilton Hotel, turn left and walk straight. Keep an eye out for the "big-size" signs. Most of these are men's shops, however I do know of one on the side you would be walking on. It's a few blocks down from the Hamilton, and on the second story above a shoe shop. Just keep an eye out and you may get lucky. The shoe shop also has larger sized shoes, but it's a bit expensive as they claim everything in there was made in Italy.

~Palace: Another must-see for Seoul. Sostly just empty restored buildings, this provides many photo ops and is a good place to get really nice pictures of your surroundings. Don't be surprised to see many of the tourists carrying around their $1,000 cameras and tripods for all of the photo opportunities available.

Directions: In Insadong, walk to the end of the art street to where there is a statue of one of the giant brushes they use for paining. There are two roads to the left, one that angles back, and one less so, take the one that doesn't angle back the way you came do much. Walk down the street until you hit an intersection with an old-style building on an island in the road to your right. Take a right and head down that road, cross the street as soon as you can and you can see the entrance to the palace. You can't miss the tourists and food vendors milling around.

~Dr. Fish: If you've heard about the little fish from Turkey who will give you a natural pedicure, this one of the places to go in Seoul. For 2,000 won plus the cost of a drink (starting at 7,000 total), you gain the opportunity to sit with your feet in the fish tub for 22 minutes, and then relax, refreshed, with your drink and some fresh toast that you can make yourself. The fish are gentle and it feels like many tiny little pinches, but it doesn't hurt at all. You might have trouble if your very ticklish though. Also, the pool is only big enough for two, maybe three people at one time.

Directions: Go to Insadong via the Jongno 3 (san)-ga subway stop and leave at Exit 1. Walk straight down the sidewalk you are facing when you leave the stairs. Walk down to the 2nd intersection (If you look left you will see a big 24-hour Burger King, this is also the same street, if you go right here, you will be on Insadong art street). Cross toward the Burger King, and then cross again immediately on the right. There is a big brown banner outside the building that says Book Cafe and also Dr Fish. Head up to the 2nd floor of the building, but your drink and specify "Dr Fish" They will take you up one more floor, you wash your feet, and then head to the small tub with the fish. Afterward they will bring your drinks and you can toast some bread.

Going to Seoul for Chinese New Year

So to anyone who may read this blog and may do it in the future (or to remind myself to never do it again). Do not try to spend Chinese New Year in Seoul. To be honest, it sucks. You would think that the largest city in South Korea, with by far the largest ammount of foreigners, would have everything open on a day when government workers are going on holiday. Nope, it turns out next to nothing is open.

Cody, Fallon, and I came down to Soeul to plan on shopping for a few more Korea Soveniers and just do some things, like visiting a Dr. Fish Cafe for a pedicure done by tiny fish. We couldn't find the fish and most of the shops we were interested in were closed.

We started in Insadong, and since there was nothing there, we made out way to Itaewon, the foreigner district, hoping for more since all the foreigners would be off work looking for something to do... nope, next to nothing. We spent most of the day walking among the few shops open, just walking looking for stuff to do, eating indian food when we found the couple of open resteraunts (Foreign Resteraunt and Namaste), and riding the subway a lot. Although, we did visit What The Book and I picked up a Martha Stewart wedding magazine so that I could get some ideas.

Fallon's leaving for Thailand tomorrow morning, but Cody and I will be here a little bit longer tomorrow, and we are really hoping more stuff is open...at least in Insadong because then we can get something out of our trip. If not, I guess we'll just have to go home early and not really have done anything, but have gotten out of Mokpo for a couple of days.

I realize I complain lot in these blogs, so I will say... I guess we should have expected it because the first day or so of Chinese New Year is all about staying home with the family and cleaning for a new start to the year, so i guess we should have expected that the majority of the Population would be at home doing that.

I think I need to start some actual reviews of the places we've been though...that would keep me from complaining too much...

Tickets to China

January 7, 2009

We bought our tickets to China today and it was so awesome! We had set aside 700,000 won for the tickets and visa, as per the original pricing the travel agent told us about. She had told us though to wait until after the New Year because taxes were expected to go down on flights (along with fuel fees). We went in today to inquire about tickets and visas, and it took the agent a little while to understand who we were, because she spoke little English, but she understood that Jason and Abby, good customers who had already paid, sent us. After a little bit of back and forth over what we wanted and such, and a lot of paperwork, she had our priced for us. Instead of almost 700,000 each, it turned out that it was only going to be 370,000 including visas and taxes. Cody and I are so excited, because we were very broke and on a budget, and now we’re feeling a little less strain. I’m very happy and really looking forward to our trip, even thought I know absolutely no Chinese.

Being Sick in Korea

January 5, 2009

Being sick in Korea both sucks and is the most awesome thing ever. It’s pretty awesome because it’s really cheap to go to the doctor here, It sucks because if you have a cold they just give you a bunch of vitamins and Tylenol. No cough syrup, nothing, just vitamins. I went to the doctors the other day because I had been really sick for a couple of days. I have every symptom from not being able to breathe through my nose much, to coughing all the time, to being able to taste absolutely nothing. So, I go to the doctor because I was afraid I was really sick. The doctor asks for all my symptoms and he goes on to tell me that I am seriously sick and I would not have gotten better without medicine. He then tells me I have nasopharyngitis, which at the time made me freak out and go, oh, I must be REALLY sick! I went home to take my medicines and see what kind of illness I had. I was almost shocked to see that all I had was a severe common cold. It really shouldn’t surprise me though, even Koreans who are really good at speaking English tend to use the wrong words or use the more complicated words a lot.

New Years Eve

January 1, 2009

New Years Eve was pretty great this year. It was so exciting to know that I was spending the change over in years in a foreign country. We decided to take a bus out to Gwangju and stay the night in The Windmill (as usual) and spend the night partying with some friends. It was pretty fun. We ate some Burger King, which was cool because we don’t have a Burger King anywhere in Mokpo. We then spent a couple hours partying with some Soju and Orange Juice in one of the Hotel Suites we were staying in for the night. About an hour before midnight, we decided to head out to some clubs to experience Gwangju at midnight. Some of us headed out to the Germany Bar, but after one pitcher, and about 20 minutes before midnight, we decided to join a large group of our friends at Vanilla Club, just a little bit down the street.

I had a moment of annoyance because the club was charging a 15,000 cover charge, but I soon got over it when I learned they were providing everyone with unlimited free beer (which was the really cheap kind, cut still, it was free). The countdown to midnight was really anti-climatic because the bar didn’t do one and a lot of our friends didn’t notice the time, but Cody and I had our own private countdown and kissed at midnight. We stayed another two hours, but left around 2 am because we had been drinking awhile and decided we wanted to make our way back to the hotel. I would like to say we made our way back easily and went to bed and woke up hangover free, but unfortunately I would be lying.

It had been snowing that night, and while walking down the steps of Vanilla Club, I slipped down the last four steps because unfortunately Koreans make their steps out of granite, and the steps were covered in a film of water. As soon as I fell, a very well-intentioned, but drunk guy behind me, decided to try yanking on my arm that I had just fallen on, to help me up of course. Luckily Cody convinced him to let go, because he was really making my arm hurt worse. Cody then helped guide me home because I had been drinking, and now I was crying because I was hurt and now dreadfully afraid of falling down on the very packed snow.

I made it another few blocks, almost back to the hotel, but unfortunately I slipped again, this time on the down slope of a sidewalk, and this time bringing Cody down with me. Of course I also fell on the side I had just bashed on the stairs. By this point I was very sore, but luckily for me, we made it back to the hotel without any further events happening to me, and I slept very well and woke up hangover-free, but very sore.

It was a very fun night, but also a very bad one for my poor body.

Christmas

December 26, 2008

Since we had no plans for Christmas other than hang out at home, Abby and Jason invited us to their house for presents and Christmas dinner. We headed over at around 1:00 to assist with the dinner prep, but we didn’t get underway (except for the turkey) until 3:00 because we decided to watch South Park Christmas episodes, plus some miscellaneous other Christmas things. When we finally got under way at 3, we put together a group effort to get dinner ready, because Abby was suffering from some pretty major morning sickness pains. We paused around halfway through, around 6:00, for some presents. Abby got us a really nice Christmas/engagement present consisting of candy, candles, massage oil, champagne flutes, and champagne. We spent the rest of the night hanging out, finishing up dinner, and eating until we burst. None of us stuck around long after dinner because Abby was really feeling sick, but all in all, it was a pretty good Christmas for not being at home.

Christmas Eve with Fallon

December 25, 2008

After we finished with the gift giving at the orphanage last night, we went over to Fallon and Wim’s place to have a nice quiet laid back Christmas Eve. We watched the old animated How the Grinch stole Christmas, we also listened to Wim recite “The Littlest Angel.” For some non-traditional Christmas Eve fun, we played some drinking Jenga. This involved writing some rules on various blocks, and if you drew a block with a rule, you had to do what it said.

Orphan Christmas

December 25, 2008

For the past couple of months I have been volunteering at the local orphanages in and near Mokpo. For awhile I went to teach the teenagers at the Elo Orphanage, about 20 minutes outside of Mokpo. The girls were very sweet, but I came to realize that I was really not a best fit teacher for them at all, as I am a bit more comfortable with young children. I then started teaching the Kindergarteners at the more local Mokpo Orphanages. They are very sweet children, although some of them do have some emotional and behavioral problems, for understandable reasons of course.

Some of us spent Halloween and since trying to create a great Christmas for the Orphans, from raising money, to buying presents, to wrapping and presenting them. Abby put in a lot of the administrative work, but it took a lot of money and many of the volunteers to make everything work out as planned.

With all of the contributions to our effort, we were able to provide all of the orphans with some sort of Christmas present and everyone had a wonderful time. It was definitely a good experience as a volunteer as well, and if we stay for a second year, I would definitely look forward to doing it again.

Shinsook Leaving

December 24, 2008

So, I was told today, with no warning, that I will most likely never see Shinsook again because she might be getting married this spring, and if she does, she’ll be moving away. Unfortunately Koreans tend to do this a lot. They think because they get married or have children, they must always quit their jobs for a year or so, or they move to serve their husbands or children. Koreans also tend to think that they don’t have to tell the native teachers anything until the last minute. The strange thing is, Shinsook was usually good about telling me things a head of time, and this time she didn’t. I will miss working with her, because she was legitimately a good teacher.

Fake Guns in School

December 24, 2008

I as I walked into the school yard today, one of my students pointed what I thought was a gun at me, I almost has a heart attack. It turned out that he was just playing with an empty Airsoft gun. Lucky for me. Unfortunately, Airsoft guns in this country don’t have the orange plastic on them that proclaim them fake. All I could do was push the gun forcibly away and try to admonish the student never to point guns at people, ever. I’m sure he didn’t understand me, and there were no co-teachers around to complain too, but back home, the kid would have been expelled for less!