Eclectic, English, Elephants. Seoul Pt. 3

We had quite a few adventures while visiting in Seoul. We wanted the right amount of relax time versus exploring new city time.

We had sweet hostel arrangements through a friend, and landed ourselves in the Beewon Guesthouse, which ended up being a perfect location for us. The hostel was located not far from a subway station and right down the road from the most intact palace. We had some sweet food joints near us (as you may have read in the last blog) and the room was equipped with a television!

I found a sunflower!

If you know either of us, you know we aren’t big T.V. people. We love our jeopardy but we aren’t too attached to much else. It just so happens that while we were to be in Seoul, the 2012 Summer Olympics were to be starting up! I hadn’t realized it until we actually arrived in Seoul, but I was beyond psyched to see a television in our room once I had.

You may have noticed there is a carabiner attached to our wall with a rope that is leading down to a box. Inside the box is more rope... We are pretty sure this is how we are suppose to escape in case of a fire or some other debilitating emergency... I was highly amused by its presence.

We rolled into the Beewon mid afternoon after our trip to the spa. We managed to sleep the rest of the afternoon away in hopes of being refreshed enough for the party we had been invited to that evening.

After a good long long LONG nap we made ourselves semi presentable and made it back to the subway station. The subway was to be our main mode of transportation. Getting off the train from Jeonju left us at a train station, not our hostel. Taking a taxi in Seoul is not too popular or necessary if you are traveling before midnight (the subways close down at midnight). We were just becoming accustomed to taking taxis everywhere when we now had to figure out the subway. There’s certainly more English in Seoul but Seoul is still a far cry from being English friendly.

The subways were all very clean and very quiet. It was completely the opposite of New York's system and it surpassed D.C.'s system as well

We did manage to figure out how to buy a transport card (no thanks to the jerk ladies who didn’t speak English at the English help desk) and put some money on it (apparently you can only reload a card with cash, never with card -____-). We found a map that was written in the English written alphabet instead of Korean and followed the directions we’d been given to the hostel. When we awoke form our nap we followed the directions we’d been given to meet up with our new friend.

We met up with Lindsay (new friend) and a few of her friends in one of the university areas. We were due to go drink at a restaurant in particular but the reservations weren’t for a while so we stopped in at a different place. I tell you this seemingly small detail because as we entered the bar we heard Toby Keith over the speakers singing. It takes my mind a minute to register this but when I do I am ecstatic! I love country music, I love Toby Keith and I have been deprived of both for sometime now. It was quite the surprise to find it playing in this random Indie bar that looked more like it would have “the Books” or “Death Cab” playing in the background. The bar even offered us pretzels instead of seaweed when we ordered! I was impressed.

The party was great. We had a traditional drink that resembled milk but tasted like carbonated cider weirdness. The drink is pronounced Mac-key-ole-lee. We ate until we were stuffed and enjoyed ourselves. The company was great! Everyone spoke English and was super friendly! We sat next to a guy who informed us that there was indoor snowboarding located in Seoul… The mental note was made by both of us that we would most definitely try this out one day. A girl at the party who is actually from Korea was telling me how she was going to go to Jersey to live abroad for a while. A part of me longed to travel with her back to the States and everything that I was accustomed to. In truth the moment passed quickly. The night was good, and we went home to stay up until four in the morning watching the Olympics (which we did every night).

I’ll stop the story here to tell you that the Olympics did not really start getting broadcasted until almost midnight and the good stuff didn’t come on until after 2am. We struggled because we didn’t want to stay up so late but we were excited about the Olympics and for watching T.V. after weeks of not having any at all. I want to point out that watching the Olympics in Korea is very different from watching the Olympics at home. In Korea the Olympics are broadcasted in Korean, and no there are no available subtitles in English. Which is really stupid because they use NBC’s coverage so you know they could have English subtitles if they really wanted to…

Next the sports they focus on are different. America has a pretty wide variety of sports that they watch and are popularly broadcasted. Yes there are the sports we as Americans tend to excel at but nonetheless we have choices, variety. Here you can watch a handball match, a fencing match, or the same judo match on two different channels. In the beginning there was archery, until of course the Koreans men team got a bronze and then they quit showing it (sore losers, we missed the Americans vying for the gold). Occasionally there was shooting or Ping-Pong. One of the channels had a soccer match going on but the game being showed always had Korea in it or it was a rerun. I was frequently upset by what was and was not shown. I was glad that we caught some of the track and field but (as my students tell me) track and field is the Koreans’ least favorite sport because Koreans are not good at any of it and “we don’t like to watch black people”… o___O (mom this is another "face" not a secret word)

It was beyond strange to sit and watch sports I did not particularly care for, a country I was not normally cheering on, and all of this was being broadcasted in a fast-paced language I could not understand. It wasn’t all bad, but definitely it was different!

The next day sleeping in felt amazing! I hadn’t slept in for so long, not because I never have the chance to but because my body wouldn’t allow it. But for whatever reason I managed to sleep and sleep and sleep in Seoul, and it was great =] After sleeping in we found some food and headed off to the nearby awesome palace. 

There are a number of palaces littered across South Korea and seem to be congested in Seoul. As previously mentioned, we were very near to the palace that was least effected by time and war. We had quite the struggle communicating with the ticket sellers but managed to buy a couple tickets to get inside and get an English tour of the Secret Garden. The palace was beautiful but the day was hot. We had a chance to look around the part of the palace before we had to meet for the tour.

The palace and its grounds are not like what you see in the movies. These palaces are made up of many different sized open-air buildings and arches. There’s no towering spires or moats but there were some big walls closing the sprawled home into one area.

The secret garden was more a private forest. There was little flower gardening being done but rather loads of trees and nature. It was a beautiful walk that included quite a hike! The lady giving the tour tried numerous times to dissuade people from going all the way to the end. She said it would be too strenuous for some of us. (I think she was talking to some of the fatter people on the tour. I swear she kept giving them a doubtful look. I’ll have you know, everyone made it to the end.)

 There were a couple little ponds, a place for archery, and a few pavilions for thought/ reading. We met some people and it was enjoyable to go on a tour and have it be in English!

After the palace we went to Itaewon for dinner. We did this every night because Itaewon is the easiest place to find foreign food in Seoul. It is the foreign hub for many tourists and foreign residents.

Over the next few days we did so many things! And away we gooooooooo!!!

One afternoon we decided that we were going to visit Namsan Tower and go to the top. We had heard that you could place a lock on a metal fence up at the top to leave your mark of love as a couple… Of course I needed to do this. Namsan Tower also has a great view of Seoul, so off we went.

To get to the top is a bit of a tedious process. You could climb hundreds and hundreds of stairs after hiking from the nearest subway station. Or you could hike from the nearest subway station and wait in a long line, get squished onto a cable car, and then walk up maybe two hundred stairs. We were not wearing the right shoes for the climb up the stairs so we opted for the cable car.

The cable car was relatively cheap but packed. They were fitting as many people as they could manage onto each cable car. I am not sure if I have mentioned Koreans lack of respect for one’s personal space but now seems like a good time to do it. On the subway, on this cable car, on the train and bus, people are unphased about being so close to one another. I hadn’t realized I had a personal bubble until these people invaded it, weapons hot. I was not ok with it.

Sweet goatee

Getting the top was worth it! We climbed up to the base of the tower and rode the elevator to the top. We had to wait in long lines but what else is new? When we got to the top we went to the Teddy Bear Museum. We had bought tickets thinking the museum was going to be about Teddy Bears… It was not and it was a let down. The concept of the museum was pretty cool despite my disappointment. They used Teddy Bears to tell about Seoul’s history.

After the museum we went to look out at the view. It was so pretty. The sun was setting as we were on top. We could watch as all the lights turned on below us. The roads went from being moving cars to being two contrasting rivers, raging yellow and gold against one another (headlights and brake lights ***). We got plenty of pictures and headed back down to do what I had wanted to come for.

We bought a pair of locks and a plastic heart. We each wrote to the other on the heart (I got one side and he got the other) and we locked our locks together with the heart in the middle. We positioned it so our symbol of love would have a great view over the city. We also wanted it to be connected with the old rusty locks that had withstood so much time. It was a nice romantic moment =] 

What he wrote for me...

What I wrote for him...

Just a small portion of the thousands of locks there

We opted to hike down the stairs (soooooo many!!!!!!) rather than wait in a miserably long line for a cable car. Again we ended the night with a foreign food dinner and some late night Olympics.

Two of the days we were in town we spent our time wandering through the giant markets. There are two large market areas, one inside and the other outside, that can be easily accessed by the subway. The inside market was decidedly a nicer experience because the place was sort of air-conditioned and had tons of fans blowing everywhere you walked. But it had an abundance of custom clothing shops (literally three floors of them across three city blocks) which was a let down because that wasn’t something we were interested in at all.

The markets did have traditional clothing, tons of wedding dresses, fabrics, and everyday clothes. They also had hats, scarves, shoes, accessories, etc. out the wazoo! I ended up getting a pretty sweet hat that matches my shoes AND is my favorite color.

This was almost bought...

We took this time to pick up some trinkets for our family and friends, as well as souvenirs for us. We had been practicing our numbers in hopes of haggling with the locals but that didn’t work out for us because nobody wanted to haggle with us! Hmph, I was a little upset by that… I wanted to do some haggling!

My awesome, new, sweet hat!

I do have to say that it was truly amazing that both of these massive locations were up and running all day almost everyday, and they were still in business.

One evening we walked with our coworker and her friend passed the “blue house” which is the Korean equivalent to America’s White House. There were a bunch of secret service guys patrolling the area but it wasn’t as secured as I would have thought.

Me with the Blue House

Being from America, if you can throw a rock at a building it is not well guarded. Most government buildings you aren’t really allowed to go near, and if you do, you can’t bring rocks with you.  The security only showed itself once when we were told we couldn’t take pictures with one of the buildings… We could with the Blue House but not with this unknown one. Anyways I got a shot in before they told us we couldn’t have pictures.

We decided that we would like to visit the Korean National Museum. It is apparently one of the largest museums in Asia, it has A/C, and it’s free! So the real question is “Why not go?”

We ended up going on the last day, which meant we were lugging all of our belongings with us… I was a very unhappy camper. I do not know who’s idea this was but it was terrible! (it was definitely mine by the way…) 

I now am a proud fan owner

The museum was indeed huge but it was air-conditioned and plenty of benches to set our belongings down and admire all the art. We saw quite a bit but unfortunately we quickly tired and, needed to find a place to just camp out and hang out.

Before we decided to stop looking we stopped by the gift shop and picked up a few things. I bought myself a really cheap yo-yo and for all those who think this purchase was a waste, it has already been a great language barrier destroyer between my students and I (they are all very impressed with my cat’s cradle). We also bought two paper maps. One of which is of the Koreas and the other is of the world. 

When we sat down to relax we marked the maps of where we’ve traveled so far. We even highlighted a few places we want to travel to! They are now hanging up as wall decorations in the one room called home.

One of the more exciting outings we had was to the Seoul zoo! I love animals. I love going to really good zoos and admiring the magnificence of animals (especially the giant ones that can eat me… which are most of them).

I have been deprived of any animal love since I got here to Korea. I have to settle for Skype dates with my deaf dogs who also seem to be partially blind. These dates traumatize me more than them. They try and figure out why they are being placed in front of a small black wall as I calmly try and get their attention by making loud obnoxious noises, waving my arms around and attempting not to burst out in to sobs as I practically shriek their names. I don’t always freak out but I’d have to say more times than not there is a definite internal struggle on my part to not completely fall to pieces as I say my short hellos to my furry family.

Well… Back to the zoo story. We had slept in like usual and managed to make it out to the zoo around 2:30pm. We took the subway out to it and had another ridiculously long walk up to what we believed was the entrance to the zoo. We had been misled. We needed to purchase tickets to ride this ski lift up to the top of the zoo. Apparently the zoo was just this big.

As we were going to buy the tickets we found out that there were two lifts. We could walk up past the first ski lift and take the longer one to where we needed to be cheaper. We like cheap. We continued our hike up hill (both ways ;) )in sweltering weather. Somewhere along the ride on the subway the Seoul had turned into a giant brick oven, and we were getting baked like small little French fries. Even in the shade it must have been about a bagillion degrees (and yes that number is in Celsius so it’s even hotter than you originally thought!).

Half our pictures seem to have come out with us blinking against the evilness of the sun, as our faces bake in its glory

We finally made it to the lift and bought our tickets. The ride was cool and we had obtained an English map so we spent the ride scouring it to scope out what we wanted to see. There was a list of shows that occurred throughout the day but many of them overlapped, we had to choose wisely and given the fact that I had a great day I’d say we didn’t do to badly for ourselves.

I want to make a little note that getting off a ski lift is much easier in skiis or on a snowboard. The chair kept moving as we attempted to disembark and we had to do a little jog to not get run over… I can only imagine the difficulties people with babies or who are in general just slow would have with this form of transportation.

So we got off the lift (successfully) and needed to run over to the dolphin tanks for our first show of the day that was starting within five minutes. On the run there we passed by a wild sheep feeding that I couldn’t help but stop and participate in. It wasn’t anything big, more a glorified petting zoo only available at the specific time.

Animal Love!

We made it in time to catch most of the dolphin show, and although the dolphin arena area was not air-conditioned it was cooler than being outside. The show was pretty good. I am a spoiled American who’s been to Sea World numerous times so I was trying to enjoy the little show without being too critical. The trainers seemed to put on a good show… We couldn’t tell you, it was all in Korean!

After the dolphin show we had a couple minutes before our next show so we stopped to use the bathroom. After we finished we took a bath in the sink. I would like to thank my mother for teaching me how to shamelessly cool myself down. I was literally dumping water over my head, splashing my face, and filling our hats to the brim with water before we put them on. We wet paper towels and put them behind our necks, and we even bought a frozen water bottle to use to put on our necks and faces.

As another side note the zoo is incredibly well designed for the people who visit. There are plenty of shade trees, plenty of accessible bathrooms, and lots of little shops selling souvenirs.

After bathing publicly for the second time in Seoul we proceeded to the Bird of Prey Show. When we arrived it took us a little while to find the right place for where the feeding would be but that was because the only people that showed up for the feeding were us and two others! The heat must have swayed people to stay indoors… I would like to personally thank Sea Base for preparing me for days like this, working there made me appreciate what it was to be truly hot and then how to suck it up and move on with life with some of my dignity intact.

Hello Shurcan's cronies, don't think I've forgotten about the movie

The man who came to do the feeding had chosen to feed the vultures. I’m familiar with vultures, or at least I thought I was. I have been around so many black turkey vultures in Florida that it was a complete surprise to approach an enclosure with vultures that stood higher than my waist and were bald. No kidding, these birds came straight from Disney’s “The Jungle Book”, I could hear them asking one another “What you wanna do?” “I dunno, what you wanna do?”.   

This “watch the Feeding” show quickly became a “You Get to Feed” show. The guy had a tray full of raw strips of meat and a pair of tongs. He demonstrated how we were supposed to feed the birds and then he passed along the tongs to each member of his small audience. This feeding is just one example of the differences between an American zoo and a Korean zoo. In America this would have never happened. At least not until we had signed away the rights to each one of our fingers during the feeding!

We were thrilled to be given the chance to hand feed these birds! The birds took the food greedily and scampered off to fight over it. The experience was cool, especially because it was so unexpected. But I do have to say we may have just been excited because this had been the closest we’d gotten to so much beef meat!!!

After the vulture feeding we were feeling pretty good. We had to move relatively quickly in the direction of the elephants because they were going to be fed soon. We didn’t expect the elephants to put on an exciting feeding frenzy but we had nothing to do during that time so we figured why not.

We made it over to the elephants’ area just as other people were showing up. The enclosure was relatively large and we weren’t exactly sure where we needed to be but turns out we ended up in the absolute most perfect spot!

Standing near the railing next to some steps that led down into the enclosure, we waited for whatever show to begin. In a couple short minutes a man climbed the stairs leading p from the pen, he was carrying a little basket. The basket had these small wooden tokens, and the tokens were numbered. Behind him on the floor of the enclosure we could see another man positioning little baskets full of carrots… It suddenly hit me that we needed one of those tokens.

Well we got one! We were standing quite literally right in front of where the steps came up. Not only did we get a token, we got token number one =D

We understood that we were to proceed down the steps after being chosen to go first when the two men began waving and gesturing towards the baskets with carrots. Sean and I split a basket, and we got to feed elephants! I got dirt and slime on my hands from their trunks, I was ecstatic! 

This was awesome!

The pictures we took were rushed because everyone else wanted their turn with the elephants but just the mere seconds we were so close to this creatures was breath taking. This was arguably my favorite moment in Seoul (although I did find Mac and Cheese here so…).

Just call me "Professional Elephant Feeder"

We managed to visit almost every animal at the zoo periodically taking “sink baths” in any bathrooms we passed. As always, I had a battling war of emotions inside me as I had the privilege to lay eyes on some of the world’s greatest creatures but my heart went out to them at having to be contained in captivity. I won’t get into the debate here but I would like to acknowledge my internal turmoil with this topic.

At the monkey enclosure is where the sadness became prominent. The zoo’s chimps and other primates seemed to be suffering from huge boils on their bare bottoms. The growths could be seen on every animal and was not a pleasant sight. The monkeys’ enclosures also seemed abnormally small but ridiculously guarded. The monkeys were surrounded on all sides by rows of electrified wire. We seemed surprised by how much wire they used. Why don’t they just build the walls taller or rather keep the humans a bit further away?

On that note, human visitors were allowed pretty close to all the animals but the animal that made me back away slowly was the hippo. The hippopotamus is one of the top human killers in Africa, not the crocodiles…

Hippos can be extremely territorial and have been known to completely trample and stampede people who have tread to close to their space. The last animals we saw were the hippos and we got to view one of them up close. 

Look at my teeth...

We were leaning against the little wooden barrier between the hippos’ pond and us when we realized that maybe a mere 12 feet away (3 and a half meters for those who are not American) was a hippo… A big one. I swear the thing looked me right in the eye before it opened its cavernous maw in an enormous yawn. As it bared its tusks in our direction we back away in shock and awe. How could the chimps be guarded so thoroughly when this guy is laughing himself to sleep about the joke we call a fence keeps him contained.

Now admire how big my mouth is! Buahahahahaha!

All around the zoo was awesome though! We saw and did more things than we thought we would have. I know we will definitely be back and hopefully the day we return the sun won’t be in such a roasting mood.

We hung out talking with this guy for a little while, he spoke some English =]

I want to end this blog with a reflection upon a visit to something I took very much for granted in the States. One of our nights spent having dinner in Itaewon took us past a bookstore. You’re thinking “So what? A bookstore, who cares?” Well it wasn’t just any bookstore but it was a used bookstore and IT WAS AN ENGLISH BOOKSTORE. 

I let myself get caught up in the place.

The place wasn’t too big but it was jammed packed with tons of English books. We spent quite some time loitering in this place, in fact we stayed until the guy running the place literally threw us out. It was great to simply glance around the store and understand so many labels, easily comprehend which section I was currently browsing. I was loving it! I ended up picking up a “Feng Shui for Dummies” book which I have since then actually kind of read. I will be keeping you up-to-date on how we (and by we I mean me) are Feng shui-ing the one room.

On the train ride back to Jeonju, Sean spotted a figure in the sky! It was surreal how blatant this cloud was pretending to be a dragon.

Besides the dragon cloud the ride home was uneventful, and only mildly entertaining.

I've obviously matured a lot...

This blog concludes our visit to Seoul, should I have forgotten anything here I will of course include it in future blogs. The next entry will be up by the end of the weekend and include more on our adventures we partake in right in Jeonju. Until next time =]

 Ooops almost forgot to mention. We may or may not have obtained a small television to watch the remainder of the Olympics on...