Seoul Trip

The past week has flown by.  I went up to Seoul to watch the South Korea vs. Argentina game with my buddy Luke Lee from Dartmouth.  We hung out with his brother and a few of his English-speaking Korean friends (all of us decked out in red South Korean apparel).  As the excitement of the game built up and our pints emptied, I found myself a bit lost in the mixture of Korean cheering swearing that began to take place.  Luckily for me, "going nuts" when South Korean scored right before halftime is a universal language, and I had no problem contributing to the celebration.



The rest of my trip to Seoul consisted of a lot of temples, shrines, palaces, museums, markets and other touristy attractions.  Rather than talk about everything I did, I'm just going to put up a bunch of pictures with a little blurb about each.  I would recommend clicking on each picture to see the full-size versions rather than just the thumbnails.  Enjoy.






I stayed at some nice little hostels while I was in Seoul.  They were some of the most fun places I've ever stayed.  I met some really interesting people at them.  One of the hostels actually offered me a  BBQ dinner and night of clubbing for free.  This one (see right) had a really interesting bathroom where the shower head was just on the wall right between the sink and toilet.  There is nothing separating the shower from the rest of the bathroom, so everything just got soaked when I used it.







Seoul is famous for its palaces.  The picture below is at Gyeongbokgung palace, the largest palace.  The second is Gyeongbokgung's sister palace, Changdokgung.  As you can see, they're not much different.

More palace Scenery

                     

I walked around a traditional village called Bukchon Hanok village.  I felt a little uncomfortable taking pictures of the people and village, so I stopped where some men were lifting heavy bags of cement, grabbed a bag, and carried to where they were stacking them (see pic).  They got a real kick out of this and started rooting me on.  It made me feel a little better about being such a tourist.

Changing of the Guards at Gyeongbokgung Palace

Myeong-dong market (right)

This was a really fun place where tons and tons of street vendors sell all sorts of stuff.  It's usually really crowded, but there's music playing, and it's a really fun scene.

On our way into a Buddhist temple, we happened to come across this little festival just outside.  The whole place was filled with those colorful lanterns.  The next two are shots from inside the temple.

On my last day in Seoul, I went up to the DMZ (demilitarized zone).  It's a buffer region spanning 2 km on either side of the border with North Korea.  You have to go up as part of a tour since it's heavily monitored and there are tons of restrictions on what goes on up there.  We had to suit up in helmets and bullet proof vests for the trip.  We also had to practice to drop and cover on command.  jk, we didn't have to do any of that.  I was surprised however, at how much military patrolling and blockage/invasion defense equipment was active in the area.  They're not taking any chances.  As part of the tour, we got to go into one of the tunnels that North Korea had tried to dig to invade the South.  There are currently four of these tunnels that have been discovered before the North could make use of them.  There is constant surveillance of ground vibrations because the South believes that the North is still building these tunnels.  I wasn't allowed to take pictures of much, but I did manage to get a few.


The tunnel we went into was actually right under a mine field...not kidding this time.  Here (right) is a picture of the barbed wire with "Mine" signs on it.  The entrance to the tunnel was directly below.  In the tunnel, we were allowed to go 150 from the actual border.  At that point, there is a huge blockade in the tunnel with constant video surveillance.  We were told that there was an underground mine field just on the other side of the wall we were facing.

COEX Aquarium

They had some really weird tanks at this place.  Yes, that fish is in a toilet.

Piranha

Rare Two-Headed Turtle

Everland

Beth and I went to Korea's largest amusement park (Everland) for a day.  We wanted to get a full day in, so we planned to arrive at 9:30 in the morning when the park opened.  It was forcasted to rain, so we agreed that rather than worry about getting wet, we would just plan to get drenched and just suck it up for the day.  That part went as planned, and we got pretty wet.  Unfortunately we didn't realize that the park is practically closed in the rain.  There were about two rides open, and they were all the little indoor rides that are designed for 5-year olds.  It was a pretty sad scene...we ended up playing in a little kids arena with foam balls.  It was soo upsetting.  We finally found a decent river tube ride that we went on a few times.  We couldn't stop making fun of the waterproof blankets they offered to wrap us in during the ride.  They also had space heaters and fans for drying off after the afterward...needless to say, we avoided all of these.  As we wandered around the deserted park, we began to realize that there was quite a bit more to do than we originally expected.  They had some really cool zoo-like buildings, 4D moives, and an amazing safari tour bus ride that took us through an area with all sorts of wild animals.  Finally around 2:30, the sun began to come out.  Rides suddenly started going.  We got so excited that we began sprinting around the park from one ride to the next.  The greatest part was that there were no lines, since everyone had been smarter than us and had avoided the park on a rainy day .  We got to ride everything in the park as many times as we wanted.  We ended up being at Everland for 11.5  hours and probably got to see and do way more than we would have if it was a clear day and the park was crowded.

Our favorite ride was the the T-Express (right background).  Amazing wooden roller coaster.  Its first drop is 77 degrees and pulls 4.5 g's.  It's ranked #1 most thrilling roller coaster in the world.  All in all, it was a really impressive ride.  We rode it 8 times.

Tiger from the Safari Tour

Hey There Teddy. (Coming over to check out our bus)

-OAO