So we arrived back home last night from our 11 day Korean vacation! Korea was fantastic, I think it surpassed all of our expectations as a travel destination. Now, it true that maybe our opinions might be a little bit skewed as we are all people who have just lived our first month and China and it being our first time back into a fully developed country…but still! I think Korea is great in any case.
Sandra and I arrived in Seoul last Wednesday night and spent the better part of our first two days eating, sleeping and shopping. We had a bit of sticker shock as prices in Korea are roughly comparable to Canada (maybe a bit less, but it also depends on what you’re buying) and we are in full-blown cheap travel mode and are used to Chinese prices on top of that. But Korea was great because they actually had clothes that were sometimes long enough and big enough for me and there was even a remote possibility of finding big shoes (or at least not be laughed or scoffed at when requesting size 10). The one strange thing is that in Korea you’re not allowed to try most clothes on before you purchase them. It seemed to be mostly around concerns about make-up coming off on the clothes..very strange! Hardly any store have fitting rooms and you always see people holding things up to themselves in mirrors and sales assistants pulling the sides tight…. that’s as close as you can get to trying it on! So yeah, it was fun to look, but not a lot was purchased in the end.
Korean food is pretty tasty, similar to Chinese food in many respects, but with noticeable differences. With every meal you order in a restaurant you get cold dishes with it, usually involving something pickled and maybe a few varieties of the oh-so-Korean Kimchi. One thing I really loved was Korean barbecue where you order raw meat, veggies, and whatever and cook it at your table, so delicious! It was also nice to not have food safety as a constant concern for a few days as I am always on guard waiting for a special E-coli surprise in China.
On Friday night our other friend Christian (also German) arrived and then the sightseeing could officially begin! That night we met up with Leon, an old family friend from Canada who is currently teaching English in Seoul. We started off with some Karaoke, a popular pastime in Korea as it seems to be in many Asian countries. I have to say that we had some memorable renditions of CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising,” Enrique Iglesias’ “Hero,” and an impressive finale of “Twist and Shout.” A little known fact about Leon is that he is one mean karaoke performer and I am being absolutely serious! Very impressive. Karaoke was followed by a bar where we met a few of Leon’s fellow teachers and the shooter specials got a little out of hand. The night ended “early” around 4a.m. as a member of our party (not naming any names…but would like to clear both Leon and myself at this point) was feeling a little rough.
The next morning was mostly spent sleeping, resorting to a breakfast of hotdogs, and not feeling particularly chipper. We did however make it to the main Korean royal palace for a walk around the grounds. Very neat architecture and a beautiful natural space in the middle of Seoul. It was a long weekend for Koreans so the palace grounds were packed with happy picnicking families and small children dressed up in traditional Korean dress. I’ve decided that Asia is definitely home to the most adorable children/babies and elderly people, no contest with any other continent I am sure.
The following day we woke up early and went on a tour of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that acts as a neutral buffer zone around the military demarcation line that separates North and South Korea since the end of the Korean War. The tour involved walking through one of the four tunnels dug by North Korea under the DMZ. The tunnels were discovered by South Korea in the 70s and have since been barricaded off and opened to tourists like me :D After being discovered North Korean officials claimed that the tunnels were for coal mining despite the almost purely granite geology…oh that North Korea. After the tunnel we watched a video with a very happy tone (“the DMZ is full of beautiful and rare wildlife” and “all Koreans look forward to a future of reunification when Korea will be a united and prosperous country,” etc), anyhoo it was pretty glossy considering the complicated history and politics, but a nice thought I guess. Next they took us to an observation platform things where you can look at North Korea from afar…haha yeah, kind of lame.. we could have been looking at some South Korean village for all I could tell from that distance. After that we went to Dorasan railway station which was built in 2003 after North and South Korea made an agreement to be connected by rail for commercial goods transport..I guess the station is supposed to be a symbol of improving relations. Overall the tour did not rock my world and only really manages to just reinforce the mysteriousness surrounding North Korea. It is possible to take guided (read: propaganda) tours of North Korea, but they are very expensive and sadly were not even close to being in our budget range.
The next day was reserved for “Everland” the Disneyland of South Korea. But before we set off for Everland we agreed to see a temple in the morning as Sandra was really keen on seeing a Korean temple before we left. So we got up early, took the metro to the appropriate stop and saw across the street an ornate rooftop, so we headed that way assuming it was the temple. We arrived on the temple grounds and had to pay a small admission fee (seemed a bit strange and rather touristic, but well) and so we wandered around snapping pictures as usual. I was not so impressed as it seemed very similar in style and architecture to things we’d seen already (plus I was like a restless child waiting to go to the theme park). Wander, wander, wander..there are many buildings on the grounds but you can’t actually go inside and there are a few doors opened up with velvet ropes across and nobody in the buildings. “Guys, I know this might be a stupid question, but where is the actual temple..and you know, people practicing Buddhism? Does this seem rather palace-y to you?” Sandra makes up some reassuring response about how people probably don’t practice Buddhism here anymore and now it’s just a historical site, blah blah, the building in the middle is the temple, and so on. Finally Christian intervenes and points out that we are actually visiting the same palace we saw two days ago – and it was! Perfect! haha we felt like the most ridiculous tourist on earth! Christian hadn’t said anything because he thought he must be going crazy as neither Sandra or I had noticed or said anything. We had just gone in a different entrance and seen the grounds from another perspective..we just believed so much that it was a different place that we didn’t even notice we were looking at the exact same buildings! hahaha too good! Anyway, we were running late and didn’t have time to go to the actual temple so we headed off to the amusement park instead (priorities people!).
Everland was pretty good though there were really long waits for rides considering it was a Monday, I guess many Koreans decided to take the Monday off and extend their holiday weekend. Everland is home to the steepest wooden roller coaster in the world, so that was pretty great, but most of the other rides were pretty standard. Everland further reinforced my image of Koreans being the happiest, smiliest people on the planet. For instance, when you finish riding the big roller coaster everyone claps for the returning riders, whenever the staff aren’t actively working they are making jazz hands (and they don’t even seem to hate it! It’s like they enjoy making jazz hands for a good 50% of their workday) and even non-thrill rides manage to produce an impressive numbers of joyful screams and squeals. The park is largely geared towards families and even with so many small children running around I never heard a single child scream, have a tantrum or even cry – I just don’t get it!
The next day Sandra and Christian woke up early to go the temple we attempted the day before and I opted to sleep in instead (yes, I know, booo bad traveler). That afternoon we flew to Jeju Island, a volcanic island located off the southern tip of Korea (definitely worth a google). Jeju is known as the “Hawaii of Korea” and is a very popular vacation and honeymoon spot of Koreans. We stayed in a waterfront hostel which was full of young Koreans and the odd Western hippie tourist who had stumbled upon Jeju island and never managed to make it back home (or move out of the hostel for that matter).
Our first day on Jeju was spent seeing the obligatory but also fantastic tourist attractions. These included Mt. Hallsan (the volcano which formed the island originally), walking through giant tubular caves formed by lava flows, and climbing up a coastal volcanic crater “tuff” thingy called Seongsan… difficult to describe what these tuffs look like, so I will leave that one up to google as well if you’re curious…or wait, this is it.. http://english.triptokorea.com/english/UserFiles/Image/Jeju/Premium%20Pakage/Seongsan%20Ilchulbong%20Peak.jpg . Mt. Hallsan, the caves and Seongsan are all UNESCO world heritage sites.
The next day we rented scooters!!! Ooooh it was so great! We managed to rent them without producing any form of driver’s licenses or even providing a credit card. I guess the scooter business is pretty slow on Jeju in the off-season or maybe the lack of a common language expedited the process. Anyway, we scootered all over that island for two days straight, we scootered and we scootered and we scootered and the novelty never wore off. Jeju is the perfect place for scooters, not very much traffic, beautiful, winding coastal roads and well, you’re on an island so distances are relatively short. We scooted mostly along the coast, surrounded by palm trees, a coast of black volcanic rock cliffs, bright blue ocean, crashing waves and good weather – Lonely Planet eat your heart out! We scooted through small towns and then back on the coast, seeing all the Korean ladies drying seaweed on the side of the road, scouring the rocks for shellfish, or selling the famous Jeju mandarins in stalls. It was really great - 50ccs of raw scooter power, the sweet helmet and goggle combo, and fresh ocean air – life doesn’t get better! During those two days we saw a good number of the 10 natural wonders of Jeju, including many waterfalls and I even managed to go swimming in the ocean! The water was still so warm despite pretty overcast weather and the beach was just so sandy and perfect. Koreans on the beach looked at me like I was a bit crazy as almost any local looks at someone swimming in their ocean in October, but by Canadian standards it was one toasty ocean!
We flew back to Seoul from Jeju on Saturday and spent one more night in a different Seoul hostel. The hostel had just been opened two weeks prior by a lovely Korean man, Min, who taught himself English through travel and has been on some of the coolest trips (one year traveling overland through Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Pakistan, India, and China and a road trip through the Western US to visit all the canyons, sleeping in tents and cooking Korean food on gas burners). Anyway, we spent an awesome evening with Min and a young Korean student who works for him (his name escapes me) learning all about Korea and picking up some extra Korean phrases just in time to leave the country.
Overall I was very impressed with Korea. The culture, language and history is strikingly different from our own but yet we found the people to be so welcoming, understanding and curious. We experienced so much kindness as tourists in Korea – bus drivers leaving their routes to take us to the correct stop, numerous “Welcome to Korea”s, free mandarins pressed into our hands by the old women on Jeju, prompt offers to help and give directions whenever we look the slightest bit bewildered, small children practicing their English and peppering us with adorable questions like “what’s your name?” or “how old are you?” We were not a spectacle like we are in China and we caught no flack for not speaking Korean, in fact we got an inappropriate amount of praise for knowing a single phrase.
Visiting Korea shed some light on a lot of the discomforts, communication barriers, and cultural clashes that we experience with more intensity in China..Korea was so easy, clean and friendly, it was hard to not to consider whether we had made the right choice for our exchange country. In the end, we realized that so much of what we loved about Korea was it’s relative similarities to home… so thanks a lot culture shock, you’ve fooled us again, but we found you hiding out in our Korean vacation, giving us a taste of comforts we miss so much.
And we didn’t choose China because it’s comfortable and similar to home, in fact, for most of us it was just the opposite reasoning. So we have to work hard to avoid bitterness when we get shoved on the subway, or yelled at for the 100th time in Chinese, and remember that we are in the throes of culture shock and maybe approaching the point where the disdain for your host country is sometimes greater than the love and all these little annoyances are amplified.
So bring it on China! bring on the miscommunication, dirty squat toilets, and embarrassing cultural faux pas, I can take it! I still have your dumplings, this awesome city, linguistic breakthroughs, KTV, good friends, and all those lovely people who are interested and welcoming.
That’s it for today, hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving :D Until next time…