Seoul Adventures, Part 3: Transit Nightmares and a Mansion

When the bell rang for the New Year, I was not much more than 200 feet from the subway entrance, but it took 20 minutes to get there. People just weren’t moving or all trying to go different directions. It was a huge pain. Once I made it to the subway, I had to wait for two trains before I could get on because the platform was so full.

The train platform. SO MANY PEOPLE!

I had to make two transfers, first to the 3 Line, then to the SinBundang Line or Bundang Line. Catching the 3 was easy. I took the train to the transfer to the SinBundang Line and got off. The train pulled away as I got to the caged off area for the SinBundang line, and this is when I really started to worry. It was 1AM, 1 Hour to get home and the Bundang line is not fast and I had to wait for the next 3 Line train to come through. I waited and waited. Waited, waited, and waited. 20 minutes pass while on the platform and I try to talk to a couple who was looking for the SinBundang line to see if they were from the same area I needed to go to. I took out my handy phrasebook and pointed because I was too tired to try to speak Korean. Thankfully one of them spoke English. They were from two neighborhoods over, thank god, so we decided to share a cab if there were issues with the Bundang line.

After 30 minutes of waiting, another train came. We went down to the next stations to see if the Bundang line was open. When we arrived there, it was also closed. Tried another transfer point, again, closed. So frustrated, exhausted, hungry, sleepy, etc. I joined the couple to find a cab and ride home.

We got in a cab which took about 15 minutes to get to Sunae station where it dropped me off. I said thank you and gamsa hamnida a million times and paid for my share of the fair, but then I had a 20 minute walk home at 2AM. Korea is very safe, I have never felt threatened at all, even when I was in the massive throng of people where I could have easily been pickpocketed, I was not concerned. So walking home was more of a marathon of a distance than a nervous trek through dangerous streets.

I was so hungry on the long, quiet walk back that I stopped and got a bag of chocolate chip cookies in a convenience store on the walk. I gobbled them up in two minutes. They were delicious. I got back after another ten minutes, put my key in the door, turned it the wrong way, swore, unlocked the door and immediately changed and collapsed on my bed. I Skyped with my mom and brother for a minute before falling asleep. Soundly.

In conclusion, I do not plan on going back to Seoul for any late night adventures any time soon. It will definitely be a few weeks at least.

Or so I thought...

I ended up back in Seoul again the next weekend to go to Hongdae. Hongdae is a hip, young area people go to party. There is a University there. There are also a lot of clubs. My friend Kenny's friend was hosting a party at one of the clubs so we had to go. I ended up having a blast! I have never been clubbing before because noisy, dark places are not good for someone with vision and hearing problems. Regardless, I do love music, so I just made it work and danced like crazy! Here is some evidence from the night.

The DJ was pretty awesome

I forget what song they were playing, but it was an American rock song.

Dancing on the stage.

I have a good feeling Hongdae will be an occasional treat I'll give myself. I also did not need to rely on public transit. We took a cab home.

Seoul Adventures, Part 2: New Years Eve

So all week leading up to New Years I kept asking the Korean teachers “what quintessential Korean thing is there to do on New Year’s?” They all mentioned two things: the ringing of a giant bell in Seoul and going to the east coast and catching the first sunrise of the year before most other people have even gotten into it. I am still very nervous about traveling, especially on my own, in a country where I do not know the language (and you will see with good reason why later), so I decided I WAS going to Seoul for the bell ringing since I already knew how to get there and back. I proceeded to run an aggressive campaign to get people to come with me, but all my attempts failed (subliminal messaging, completing people’s sentences with my answer, answering other people’s questions for them, and the mother of all Jewish weapons: guilt), so I was going in on my own.

On New Year’s Eve Eve, I went out with my coworkers and stayed out quite late, making waking up after only 5 hours of sleep to trek all day not so fun. Regardless, I was on the bus with Amanda around 11:30. When we got into Seoul, we walked around Insadong for quite a while. She had a list of things to buy and was determined not to leave empty handed. I was still “just looking” since I still have 11.5 months to buy these things. After we spent a good two hours walking up and down the main street and into a few alleys, one of which led us to the tea house from the previous weekend by complete accident, Amanda was ready to head back home.

An alleyway off of Insadong's main street

At this point she walked me to Myeongdong. She told me if I decided to back out of my Seoul New Year’s, I could meet up with her and Katie for a quiet New Year’s celebration. I put it in the back of my mind as a reliable back up considering how determined I was to see the bell ring, but also just in case I found out about issues with transit or something.

A cool ice thing we passed while walking to Myeongdong

From there I walked around the market. It had tons of familiar and unique stores. I tried walking in every shoe store in hopes of finding a good pair of slippers for my apartment but everything was too small for me or they didn’t have what I was looking for. I did stumble across a really cool watch but the guy wanted $15 dollars for a plastic watch that was really cool, but definitely not worth more than 7 so I left it.

Food stand in the market. The long leathery straps at the bottom are dried Octopus tentacles

Now around 3:30pm I was ready to eat. My meal times have been thrown around by my sleep and work schedules that 3:30pm almost seemed normal time to have a meal. I got SoonDooBoo, a spicy soup filled with tofu. I know you may be surprised I am eating tofu, carnivore of all carnivores, but Korean tofu is a different ball game. It is actually amazing, not a block of inedible junk. While there I did some school work and watched some Korean Basketball. This took me until 5pm. I’m already tired and there are still 7 hours until the bell will ring. Already considering going home, but I was not giving up so easy.

So I walked some more. If I had a pedometer or something to track my distance, I would guess I walked between 7 and 10 miles throughout the whole day. I walked from Myeongdong, through a bunch of alleys, turned out right behind the giant bell by accident, walked again through Insadong, this time in stores I hadn’t before, and that brought me to 7pm. I knew I needed to eat something even though I was not hungry, considering I would likely pass out of hunger while standing for the bell if I didn’t. I decided to find someplace that had small food, not meals, but I unfortunately ended up at Dunkin Donuts, not so much because I dislike their place, because I love Dunkin Donuts, but more for the fact that I couldn’t find a Korean place that served non-meal food.

The bell

While there, I decided to get some work done. I needed to finish reading Treasure Island for one of my classes. This proved to be a problem because I kept on falling asleep while reading it. It was one of those falling asleep in lecture type things where you are asleep for two minutes and you wake up and you realize you’ve been out for a bit. It is barely even 8PM and I am already falling asleep. Wonderful. I was considering giving up, but I thought after how hard I lobbied for people to join me. I would be a disgrace if I did not stay out for the bell, so I convinced myself to stay.

I went outside around 9:30 to scout out a spot, and it was still relatively vacant. I was concerned about travelling back home so I asked some cops who told me all the subways would be open until 2AM. Given that news I was reenergized and decided to stay out.

While standing on the corner, I heard some bells going (not the big one but a bunch of hand bells). I looked and saw the Blue Man Group, Korea. They were all wearing blue suits with blue face paint and were not talking. Then a man dressed like a cat jumped out and started doing magic and juggling. He was not a very good juggler, but it took up time so I wasn’t just standing for 2.5 hours.

Blue Man Group, Korea

The "Magician"

After that ended, the crowd started to form. There were times when there were so many people around that I could lean a bit and nobody would notice and I would be held up. It was nice to get some rest considering I had been walking all day.

All of a sudden, I felt this surge of people from behind me. I started to freak out. Considering I was larger than everyone, I just started to box people out so I wouldn’t get trampled. I soon realized that they had closed off the road and were letting people onto it, so I slowly moved with the crowd to end up with a nice spot to stand on the elevated curb on the far side of the street from the bell. Still about an hour until the bell, I decided to take out my iPod and play some final games of FIFA for the year (Seongnam Manager Mode and Korea vs Cameroon). The games finished just as they started the festivities. There were a few singers and presentation of bell ringers. Of course I did not understand anything, but I used sense to figure it out.

My vantage point to see the bell and stage.

In the crowd, somehow managed to get a picture taken.

Then the countdown began, in Korean. I tried to join in, but I just learned the numbers earlier that day in my vast amount of extra time, so I couldn’t keep up. When the bell rang, it was the first time in the past three weeks that I have had any homesickness. Every year I have seen my family within several hours, but this was the first time it would be 6 months before seeing any of them.

Now this is where the fun begins, and by fun I mean nightmare. To be continued tomorrow...

Seoul Adventures, Part 1: Foreigners Meeting Foreigners

I have now been to Seoul twice (written prior to last night’s clubbing). It takes about 40 minutes to get to the north side of the city, where I started out both trips. It is interesting to be so close to an international city such as Seoul. It will take a while to get used to it. Although I have been twice, I have not ventured out very much from this area within the city known as Insadong. Insadong is considered one of the cultural capitals of South Korea. It is a market area that has a number of stores with “traditional” crafts. The odd thing about it is that there are permanent stores and mobile carts and stands in the same place. It is an interesting dynamic. Although I have been twice, I have still yet to purchase anything, but I am formulating a list of good gifts to get for friends and family.

All that said, now I can go into the specifics of each visit. The first visit was over our Christmas vacation weekend. Most of my coworkers had planned a trip to Tokyo for the 4 day weekend, but I was not ready to jump on a plane so soon after arriving. So I went with my other abandoned coworker (just kidding HR-ites who are reading), Amanda, to explore Seoul. I wanted to go to a palace and see the architecture and read about it while Amanda wanted to go get gifts for friends and family.

We started by going to ChangDeokGung, an ancient palace inside the city of Seoul. While waiting to purchase tickets, I heard some people speaking English so I decided to strike up a conversation, and boy was that the right idea. The couple that were there were brother and sister on a 12 hour layover from Vietnam, where they are English teachers, to Hawaii to meet their parents for a little vaca. So we just ended up walking around with them in the palace and spent the majority of the day with them.

The palace was gorgeous, however there were no posted signs or anything to read about the different areas of the vast complex so it was much more of a visual tour. If you do make your way to Korea, I would recommend going to a palace, but with a tour. I plan on going back and taking a tour of the same palace with the extra secret garden tour, which is supposed to be phenomenal, sometime this spring or summer when stuff is in bloom.

Palace Gates

Welcome to Korea, where I am taller than 15% of doors

This is the basic design on all the buildings. The picture does not do the colors justice.

So the group of us left the palace to walk down the street. We decided to take our new friends on a crash course of Korean cuisine. We stopped for KimBap, a Sushi-esque rice, egg, radish, assorted greens, and chosen toppings wrapped in seaweed sheet. I will need to do an involved blog soon on cuisine, but this description will do for now. After our little appetizer, we went to find a Korean BBQ*. While we ate the BBQ, we swapped stories about life and teaching in our countries. They had so many funny stories about living in Vietnam and how backwards it is, it made Korea sound like a cushy job teaching in the suburbs. After we ate, we found a cool little tea shop (more on the shop later oddly enough) and shared more. It was truly so much fun to randomly find such cool people and connect in such a short period of time.

Jujube Tea from the Traditional Tea House

After that, our Vietnamese friends had to head back to the airport to head to the warmth of Hawaii (yes, that is a hint of jealousy). Amanda and I went back to Insadong to do some shopping/looking for a bit but neither of us were particularly successful. The two of us split up as I went to Chabad House for services and dinner. It was really wonderful to have a good Jewish experience so close to arriving. I did enjoy it, but there were times of frustration, just based on the differences with practice between myself and the Orthodoxim who led the services/house. I was able to light the Channukiah which was really touching. Unfortunately most of the people who were there were just visiting so I could not find and meet peers or people who I could connect with, so my social group remains only those who I work with (again, HR-ites, this is not a bad thing, just a limiting thing). After services I found my way home on the subway.

Snow falling as I left the Chabad House

Trip number two was for New Years. It will be in the next post.

*If you have not had Korean BBQ, you really should try to find one. Get KalBi or this thin pork stuff that I can’t remember what it is called