Ding Dong

Night Walk in the Rain

Augie explored the area last night looking for diet coke and found street after street of restaurants. We decided to check it out tonight, and of course it had to rain. Out came the umbrellas and off we went. This is the building which our hotel is part of, the rest, about 9 stories with basements and subbasements, is a super-mall. Every high end store you can name has a full blown all the bells and whistles store here. Name a designer, he/she is here. This is the largest mall in Seoul, which is really saying something -- Seoul is a town made up of malls connected by a few houses and a subway. This one has its own subway station.

Despite the rain, the crowds are out. Each sign in the picture is a different restaurant. There are no English menues, this is the local eating hangout. There are several hundred restaurants in about a 6 block area. The local specialty is a small barbecue at your table, cook your own meat.

In addition to the restaurants, there are stalls lining the main streets. Dozens and dozens of them, all selling "something on a stick." If you can jam it on a stick, coat it in batter and deep fry it, it's probably for sale here.

Since we already had had dinner, we passed on a few of the local specialties. Catch and cook your own is the motto at many restaurants.

Friday in Seoul

Today we made the rounds and saw everything we wanted to see in the city. We walked a million miles and rode every subway line. When we got back to our hotel this evening, the mall next door was hosting the premier of Tom Cruise's new Mission Impossible flick. So we got in on the action and snapped a few pics of him. He spent a lot of time talking to people and signing autographs. A lot of ooohing and aaahhhing was going on. No one swooned and no paramedics were needed, but it was touch and go. Apparently there's a fan base here.

Christmas decorations are already up all over the city. Since there's a little bit o'Irish in each of us, the holidays sometimes get confused in the translation.

We toured the Deoksu Palace. The biggest and most famous palace, the Changdeokgung Palace, we didn't get to see because they only give guided tours and the English tour was not until 2:30 and we were there at 1:00. It was too cold to stand around and wait, and there was too much to see. So we moved on.

McDonald's delivers!

We toured the Namdeaemum Market, street after street of everything you can think of. They say if you can't find it here, it probably doesn't exist. We tried lots of interesting street foods.

We also toured the Namsangol Hanok Village, where we saw how the Korean people lived. We wanted to hang around downtown and take the night bus tour, but it doesn't start until 8 pm, and we were finished with our touring at 5:30. After all the street food, we weren't hungry enough to go hang out at a restaurant for 2 1/2 hours, so we headed back to our hotel. Augie discovered a really cool area near our hotel last night, so we may go out again later.

Tomorrow we plan to take a long train ride to the Sawon Fortress and another Korean Folk Village.

Back to Seoul

When we arrived back in Seoul, the driver dropped us off downtown near the Deoksugung Palace and we just happened to catch the changing of the guard. It was quite a pagent.

We were hungry and decided to go have lunch before checking out the inside of the palace and the museum. Augie found a recommendation from a fellow geocacher for a restaurant nearby called the Taco Place. We're in Korea, so why not eat Mexican?

After lunch, we checked in with the local tourist information office to get some suggestions about what to see and do in the next couple of days. Since we have a beautiful, rainless day today, we decided to try to do as much as we could. They suggested that we see the Gyeongbokgung Palace first, since it closes at 5 pm. It was already 3:30. They have a folklore museum on the palace grounds.
Augie and I were both born in the year of the Ox. They had all the animals represented.

This was an exhibit on how to create Korean syllables.

Statue of one of the most famous and beloved kings. He is in the center of a big square, which had police barracades all around it, and bus loads of police lined one side of the street. We thought there must be some famous dignitary coming to visit, but we found that there was going to be a protest later today.
It turned out that there were a lot more police than protesters.

We stayed in the Palace and museum until closing time, then walked back to the subway to return home. It's just too cold to walk around after dark, and I only have a sweat shirt. So when we got back to the shopping mall under Times Square, I broke down and bought a nice, warm, lined, hooded jacket. I hope we have another rainless day tomorrow, because now with my warm jacket and gloves, there will be no stopping me.

DMZ

The trip this morning to the DMZ was very interesting. The South Koreans are certainly capitalizing on the area by making it a tourist attraction. The North Koreans have tried to dig tunnels under the DMZ to try to invade the south, and so far they have discovered 4 of them. We got to tour Tunnel 3.
Donning hard hats, we trekked down a 350 meter tunnel, descending about 73 meters deep. It was so steep, it was difficult to keep from running. When we got to the original part of the tunnel, it was easy to see why we needed hard hats. We had to walk hunched over, and still managed to bump our heads every now and then.
Here we are at the end of the tunnel, where the South Koreans had dropped a grenade down to seal off the tunnel. Now comes the hard part ---- walking back up the 350 meters, a very steep incline.

Next, we visited a rail terminal, where George Bush visited and signed his name. He wrote, "May this railroad unite Korean families." When North and South Korea are finally reunited, it will be possible to take the train across the Korean Peninsula, join with the Trans Siberian and Trans China Railroads, and travel into Europe.

A map of Tunnel 3.

Pictures with the South Korean guards.

Seoul

They eat things here like live octopus

We miss Vietnam already. In Vietnam, we were warm, with temperatures in the 80's and 90's. Here we're freezing, with temperatures during the day in the 30's. When we arrived yesterday, it was pouring down rain. We took a bus from the airport to the Times Square area of Seoul, where our Courtyard Marriott Hotel is located. We have more luggage now than when we began, so manoevering around in the rain was very difficult. Augie waited under an overhang while I went around trying to figure out where our hotel was. I discovered that there is an underground shopping center under this entire area, so I led Augie down an escalator and we were able to drag our suitcases through a huge mall towards our hotel. A man came up and asked if he could help, and he carried one of our suitcases for us and led us to our hotel.

We quickly found that if you stand around with a lost puppy look on your face, someone will come up and ask if they can help.

In Vietnam, we were accustomed to paying $5 - $10 for an entire meal with drinks. Here, not even our breakfast is included and a drink is at least $5 and a single item on any menu is about $8. Luckily, there's a MacDonald's across the street from our hotel, so that's where we had lunch.

Since it was still raining after lunch, we decided to stay out of it as much as possible. So we took the subway to the downtown area and bought tickets for the hop on/hop off bus. It takes at least two hours to make the entire circuit. During the trip, Augie and I were both so exhausted from last night's red eye flight that we kept falling asleep during the ride in the nicely heated bus. So we got off after one circuit, bought tickets for tomorrow to tour the DMZ, and took the subway back to our hotel.

Changing of the Guard Deoksugung Palace

Final thoughts on Vietnam

A motorcyclist riding on the sidewalk.

The Continental Saigon Hotel.

Fanny's Ice Cream Parlor. The Temple Club is upstairs.

A typical day of traffic. When we were here in 2000, it was almost all motorcycles, bicycles, and pedicabs. Now there all lots of cars and taxis in the mix. If you are interested in traveling to Vietnam, I would do it soon. If progress continues and more people are able to afford cars, the traffic will come to a standstill. The plans that they have for the Danang Beaches is going to turn the place into Orlando. I'm so afraid that Vietnam will lose most of it's charm and innocence.
Augie waiting for his food at the Temple Club.

Cu Chi Tunnels

Making friends with the VC.

We climbed at a crouch (Augie on his hands and knees) through about 100 meters of the tunnels.

The Cu Chi Tunnels are greatly changed from 2000. They only have a small section where you can choose to climb through. In 2000, we crawled through a long section which led into meeting rooms, a hospital, and dining room, etc. Now they just have a small section which only makes a couple of turns and goes up and down one level. The hospital, dining room, etc. and all how open and are covered with a grass shack roof so they are easily accessible to tourists. And the place was crawling with tourists, unlike 11 years ago.
This is looking down into one of the entrances. There's a statue of a worker down there, depicting how they dug them with a small hand tool and lifted the dirt out pail by pail.

This is what the entrances originally looked like. They were easily hidden by leaves and are small enough for the VC to get in and out, but too small for Americans.

Well, not all Americans. Although Augie couldn't get his check through the hole. I got all the way down, but then my knees wouldn't straighten back out again and they had to lift me out of it.

Augie and Uncle Ho.

Augie making friends with the VC.

After our tour, we were taken to a center where people disabled by agent orange design pictures and art objects using mother of pearl, crushed egg shells, and laquer. We tried to buy something but their credit card machine didn't work. Oh, well....we tried to do our part.

We were back in Saigon by 2:30. We walked down to the War Remnants Museum, which was just being put together when we were here in 2000, but is now a three story building. It was interesting, but a very one sided interpretation of what the war was all about. And we found the Continental Hotel, but when we came out of the museum, it was pouring rain, so we were pretty soaked by the time we made it back to our hotel.

We checked out of the hotel at 6pm and left our bags there and went to dinner at the Temple Club, where Brad and Angelina had dinner. If it's good enough for them.... It was very good, although the most expensive dinner we've had on this trip. Still, it was only $30 for a shared appetizer, two entrees, two drinks, and an ice tea. And it also included the 10% gratuity they add on. After dinner, we went downstairs to indulge in some ice cream at Fanny's, which has to be the best ice cream in all of Vietnam.

Our driver picked us up at 9 pm for our midnight flight to Seoul.