Seoul: Day Eight

Being from a city with a tower of its own, I had to see how the N Seoul Tower stacked up. I’ve seen it pretty much every day I’ve been here, and figured that at the very least I could walk to the cable car that takes people up to the tower base.

Well, I managed to do it but the entire 20-minute hike was up an extremely steep hill, and though I appreciated the exercise by the time I got there I was dripping with sweat. To make matters worse there was no time for me to towel off — as soon as I bought my cable car ticket one had just arrived, and they squeezed me in to the dismay of the other passengers. If any of them are reading this, my apologies.

A bit of ancient Korean history sits at the base of the N Seoul Tower. This signal station dates back to, well… Before telephones, anyway. Smoke by day and fires by night provided a message that was readable the next town over.

Here’s another view of the signal station, from the tower’s observation deck.

Had I wanted to I could have walked through Namsan Park the entire way up to the base of the tower. But I clearly hadn’t wanted to…

And here’s the view of Seoul that I paid the big bucks for — actually but a quarter of the 360-degree panorama that the tower offers.

You can click on the photo if you want to see where my hotel is…

Sky Restrooms dominate the landscape atop N Seoul Tower and a spectacular aerial view of Seoul awaits those who want something extraordinary.

Extraordinary or not, I used one of the stalls as I didn’t want all of Seoul seeing me pee…

Seoul: Days Six & Seven

Gonna have to combine two days of sightseeing into one, as I’m falling behind on my posts… You may not think so if you’re East of the International Date Line, but I know better!

In preparation for my pilgrimage to the DMZ yesterday I visited the Korea War Memorial on Wednesday afternoon…

Hopefully you can appreciate that there’s quite a bit more to this story than what we all saw on M*A*S*H* back in the day. For a good start, I’d recommend the Wikipedia entry on the subject.

As luck would have it, the famous War Experience Room was closed on the day of my visit, but the rest of the exhibits gave me a good foundation in the basic history of the war. Maybe the only letdown for me was that towards the end of it all it was starting to feel just a bit like a recruitment ad for the ROK (Republic of Korea) armed forces…

The next morning I was picked up at my hotel before dawn by the good folks at Grace Travel Company, Ltd. After filling up the van with more tourists and then transferring to a bigger bus we headed out to Imjingak, where this photo of Freedom Bridge was taken. On this site, some thirteen thousand POW’s were exchanged immediately after the Korean War, but lots of people on both sides are still separated from their families on the other.

Here’s me with two members of the ROK Honor Guard at Dorasan Station. The South Koreans built a railway right up to the Northern border with the promised from North Korea that trains would be able to continue on through — but then they apparently changed their mind.

And yes that is indeed my hideous white parka, which I ended up not even needing for the afternoon dress code, as the temperature got downright balmy.

Around noon I parted ways with the wusses on the half-day tour and was treated to a Korean BBQ lunch with (surprise!) some more English teachers — these ones from Osaka. When lunch was through it was time to enter the DMZ proper.

After entering the Joint Security Area (JSA), transferring to a blue United Bus and a quick briefing at Camp Bonifas it was finally showtime. We were led to the JSA Conference Room, which is bisected by the border between the two countries.

Outside, the ROK soldiers stack themselves up partially hidden behind buildings, presumably to give the enemy the finger without them knowing it.

And this is as close as we could get to a North Korean guard, who was stationed maybe a hundred feet away. Of course my only picture caught him in mid-sneeze.

Interestingly enough, if a North Korean tour group had been chosen to visit the Conference Room at the same time as us, our tour would have been cancelled on the spot, with no refund.

Here’s me in North Korea! That concrete slab running into the next building over marks the border between North and South — as you can see, I didn’t venture North very far.

If those pesky ROK guards weren’t all Tae Kwan Do Black Belts I would have tried to smuggle home some of that sweet “freedom gravel” on the right.

Seoul: Day Five

The first order of the day was to visit my local Tourist Office to book my tour of Panmunjeom and the DMZ. I got a bit of a surprise when I was told over the phone that I couldn’t wear a leather jacket on the tour — maybe Kim Jong-il is a vegan? Anyway it put a bit of a damper on my afternoon, as job one was now to find a cheap jacket to wear but for one day.

It was probably a stupid idea to set out for the massive COEX Mall, but I wanted to see it anyway. No sooner did I exit the Samseong subway station when I was confronted with this huge CYON DMB phone, taunting me with it’s Korea-only full-screen broadcast video.

Anyway, like I said it was dumb to think I could get a cheap jacket at one of South Korea’s most prestigious shopping centres, but the window-shopping and people-watching were fun. Korea, it seems, loves kids. The little munchkins are everywhere, and it seems you can’t walk five steps without coming across a kid-friendly photo opp in use. Teddy bear picnic, Christmas Village, Teddy bears making toys in Santa’s workshop… You get the idea. As a bachelor I guess I should be pissed off by all this, but even I must admit that they’re pretty damn cute — especially when they’re yelling “hello!” while running up to me in that awkward kid way where they have to think about every step they’re taking.

I had also asked the kind young lady at the Tourist Office to write down the following phrase for me in Korean:

Will you sell me one of your display phones? Yes that’s right — not a working one… A display model.

Armed with this I marched back through the doors of Techno Mart, but the best price I could get was the equivalent of fifty bucks Canadian for this hiptop-esque handset, so instead I took the brochure with me for free.

My thrift was rewarded immediately outside the Techno Mart building with a street vendor selling a hideous white P-Diddy knock-off parka for twenty Canadian dollars. It was large, meaning the Asian version of large, meaning that I could barely do up the zipper around my waist. No matter, I knew I wouldn’t find any better, and I’m quite sure that I won’t be shot at by any North Korean border guards tomorrow — they’ll be laughing too hard to properly aim their rifles at me!

On the way home I decided to try out my first Kraze Burger, a decision based in part something I’d read on another blog. Pictured here is the matiz — it was okay, I guess, but really nothing special. The sauce tasted a bit like fish, and the huge white bun made it more than a little hard to eat. The pickles were good, at least!

But then I ordered this salad, which was awesome! It was the same price as the burger (about $7 CAD) but was everything I had been craving since my last serving of greens on New Year’s Eve.

In case you’re wondering, I realize the inherent lameness of raving about a salad at a burger joint. I just really liked it, is all…