first few days in seoul

wed-

I arrived at the airport early wed morning. It was huge and intimidating. I managed to get some won out of an international atm and purchase a bus ticket to station by Julies apartment. Julie was waiting for me at the bus station. It was great to see a friendly and familiar face after being away from home. After dropping my stuff of at Julies and taking a well deserved nap we went into town. our first destination was changdeokgung palace. it was the the emperors palace and it was awesome, except that we had no idea what the tour guide was saying because it was only in korean. on our way there we watched a protest rally. there were lots of riot police in case something happened, but it didn't so they were just sitting there. seoul is very much like new york city, which is a bit of a shock after spending a month in the developing world. The subway system is excellent, the cabs are safe and reliable, and there is shopping everywhere. I think all koreans do is shop. We went to a few "malls". They look like malls from the outside, but they have tons of little stalls selling clothes all right on top of each other. The clothes are all brightly colored and filled with crazy nonsensical english phrases. Koreans seem to be very fashionable. Everyone seems to either be well dressed or in some kind of trendy fashion. The street food here is also pretty wild. You can buy corn-dogs covered in french fries, deep-fried squid, and boiled silk worm beetles (which look disgusting and smell terrible) all at the same stand. The meals are pretty huge. The easiest vegetarian meal to order and find is called bimimbap. It is really good and they give you all kinds of cool side dishes of kimchi (which i love). our last stop was seoul tower, which is kinda of like the cn tower in toronto. we took a cable car to the top and the view was breathtaking. the city looks absolutely incredible at night. after julie gave me a city tour we tried to go walk by the river, but the cab driver was not able to understand where we wanted to go so we had to drive around for like a half an hour before we found our destination. we walked by the river for while and then tried to walk home but it was way too far so we had to get a cab. we ended up sitting on the roof until almost 5 in the morning. it was an awesome first day.

thur-

my second day was good, but not very productive. we ended up not getting up until like three in the afternoon. we wanted to go to a place called Dr. Fish where fish eat the dead skin off of your feet, but we couldn't find it. ten we decided to go bungie jumping, but when we got there the place was closed because it had rained. we ended up playing a river in the park with a bunch of kids who were catching little fish with nets. then we had pizza and made our way back into town. we watched a bunch of korean tv when we got back, which is hilarious. it is full of dancing and slapstick and goofy music. i had no idea what was going on, but i was laughing out loud the entire time.

hangdeokgung palace



protest


seoul tower






river at night


bundang