Seoul Train!

Hey, this is Chris here, giving this blog thing a try.    I don’t plan on this being a long one, but who knows. 

Anyway, we got back from Seoul today, where we were for 4 days.   Overall, I was impressed with the city.   Very large (something like 20+ million when you get to the surrounding areas involved) but it was manageable and not too crazy.   Of course, we went during the traditional summer slowdown, when I think most of the city gets a couple days off and heads to the beaches.    Actually, we were thinking about heading to the beaches ourselves, but then heard they would be packed with people from the city, so we figured to head the other way.   All in all, it worked out well.

BTW, pictures are posted at the link above.    I still haven’t figured out how to do this whole posting pictures on the blog site itself.    I suppose I should read some explanation, but this is much simpler for me.    Maybe next time.

Getting there, we took the KTX, which is the high-speed rail line.   It’s very smooth and nice and hits a top speed of 300 kph (186mph)    Looking out the window, it does look like someone hit the 2x button on the VCR.    Anyway, very nice, fairly cheap (about $15 one way) and very convenient.   After all, the station takes you straight from downtown to downtown, which is nice to get around from there.    I kinda wonder why high speed rail hasn’t caught on in the US.   Perhaps because the distances between the cities are too far to justify the infrastructure.    But wouldn’t it be nice to have a train you could take from Detroit to Chicago or Toronto that took a little over an hour, cost around $20 and get you into downtown?   You can’t get there faster by air and you can’t beat the cost regardless.

Getting back on subject though, we basically traveled all over the city for the four days.    Places we saw:

 -Two palaces:   Amazing, amazing stuff.   Huge and very impressive.   Also impressive in that they both seemed to have been destroyed several times, and rebuilt each time.   When the Japanese occupied Korea, they tore down half the main palace and built a great big administration center on it.    When the Koreans reclaimed their country, they tore down the admin building and built their ancient palace right back again.    The Koreans are nothing if not perseverant.

-the Korea Historical Museum, the National Folk Museum:   Both very cool for showing a lot of history in a very interesting way.

-the Seoul Tower via the cable car:   Very nice views that showcase the city.   It goes forever and that’s in every direction.    There’s another folk museum in the basement which was free to foreigners.   We gave it a look and it was… well strange.   Imagine the garage of someone who’s been around the world about 40 times and you have an idea of this museum was about.   In fact, picture they are still on another trip and haven’t had a chance to sort anything and you have a slightly better idea.   Stuff from everywhere stacked up with a little name card, without any regard to theme, organization, or category.   It was certainly the strangest museum I’ve been in a long time.

-Markets, Markets, and Markets – We were in several of the major open-air markets.   Stuff everywhere.   People everywhere.   Most anything you could hope to buy.   Clothing, pottery, luggage, leather products, toys going very cheap.   Other things, mostly average prices, I would say.   But interesting nonetheless.

-Malls:  We did do a quick swing through two malls, mainly to find out what was available and find a place to eat.   Needless to say, they are gi-mungous.   One has a huge aquarium built in, while the other has both an indoor and an outdoor amusement park attached as well as a skating rink, bowling alley and shooting range.   Yes, shooting range.   Actually, I could see that as a big draw in the US as well.   Can you imagine the popularity of a shooting range at the mall, especially around Christmastime?    Certainly a lot of pent-up frustrations getting released after fighting your way to get the latest Tiny-Beenie-Tickle-me-Whatever.    I’m just jealous the Koreans thought of it first.

-Shows:   We did catch a cool show called Cookin’, which was very muck a kitchen version of Stomp.   Personally, I liked Stomp better, but it was amusing and a nice cool place to be for a while, which was very important.

-Korean War Memorial:   Another good museum, showcasing the evolution of warfare and then of course a very large layout of the Korean War in general.    Interesting stuff, very well presented.   

Anyway, overall, a very fun city.   I was expecting it to be more expensive as well, but really it wasn’t too bad.    The hotel room was reasonable; the subway system was cheap as were all the attractions.    About the only place we got zinged was the food and that was only because we were eating a lot of Western places.    We figured Seoul was the place to stock up again on some non-Korean stuff, so we ate Western most every meal.  

That and the fact we were constantly buying liquids because it was crazy hot the whole time.   This whole week was 95 degrees F and humid, plus the fact we were walking something like 10+ hours a day, we were constantly drinking whatever we could find cold.     I could understand why everyone hits the beach this time of year.

I’m glad we went, but after that much walking, I’m glad to be back.    Tomorrow’s adventure:  pickup up our alien cards and trying to open a bank account.    Hopefully they won’t arrest us for being international money launderers.   Actually, I’m just hoping someone at the bank speaks English or the whole thing will be opsieo.  (not available)