A trip to Korea

Our
visit
to
Korea
(Aug.
30‐Sept.
10,
2012)
We left Hartford early on Wednesday, Aug. 29 for Detroit (fabulous airport, by the way),
had a 3 hour layover there which we used to good advantage by walking in the terminal
and drinking a beer (hydration is so important for these long flights). We got on the
Korea bound plane, then sat for 1.5 hours as they replaced the SatCom system. Then 14
hours flying, with all shades down most of the way, although it was daylight the entire
trip. We sneaked a peak and a photo somewhere over southern Alaska. I think we went
well south of the North Pole.
Mostly, Paul and I caught up on movies. We arrived late, late Wednesday evening – well,
actually 3:30 am EDT - but it was 4:30 PM Thursday in Korea. Mighty confusing, but
we eventually connected with David at the base. We stayed in a motel on the base for
three nights, excellent room (suite). Went to bed, slept till 6:30 the next morning and as
far as we can tell, no jet lag.
Friday was hot and humid (as indeed was just about every day we were there) and we
spent it mostly on base, with a brief excursion into town (Songtan) for lunch. The town
grew up around the base, and it's jammed with little shops with English and Korean signs
full of things to sell to the military. We saw lots of places selling socks (!), umbrellas,
fake Coach and Louis Vuitton bags, custom tailoring, including dress uniforms, tattoo
parlors, massage parlors, bars and “clubs”. The main shopping mall
opposite the front gate to Osan Base:
is a hodgepodge of shops, merchant stands and sidewalk vendors of all sorts. The
buildings are three or four stories high, and the average storefront is about nine feet wide.
It’s a pedestrian mall, in theory, but in practice you have to watch out for motor scooters
and cars, and – in the early morning – piles of trash-filled bags. We got a view of part of
the mall over the rooftops from one restaurant, and the wiring is scary: snakes of cords
and cables unprotected from the weather draped and twisted in all directions. Whatever
building codes exist either don’t include regulations about wiring or – more likely –
aren’t enforced.
I suspected they manufacture Gore-tex somewhere nearby, as there are numerous shops
that sell treated garments. (Later: David says the Gore-tex almost certainly fake, and the
custom tailoring was a lot cheaper when he was stationed here 10 years ago.) Lots of
food options, much fast food of many nationalities. Kate says that the ladies who ply their
trade hang out in “glass houses” so they’re visible from the street, but we didn’t see any
of those. A bit mind-blowing to be in America (on the base) and in a very foreign country
the minute you go out the main gate.
It was quite interesting staying at Osan base. We watched a U2 take off Friday. It’s a big
black bird, very loud. Paul says he had somehow expected something quieter because he
had heard it described as a glider with engines. (Big engines.) We were cautioned not to
take photos on base, especially anything that requires pointing the camera towards the
flight lines.
Saturday Dave took us all to the Korean Folk Village, which was very interesting indeed.
Like Sturbridge Village, it’s a collection of historic structures from elsewhere, and again
like Sturbridge, there are live demonstrations of crafts. There are also cultural
performances, and we got to see drummers and dancers
And tightrope walkers
There was a good small museum with dioramas, which I confess to liking even though
they tend towards the old and dusty. But I can get a feeling for what things really looked
like, and how people actually interacted with the landscape and artifacts, that’s hard to
get just looking at structures and artifacts alone.
The girls enjoyed the attached amusement park, and we watched them on some of the
rides before exploring a small sculpture garden.
Sunday was fairly quiet. We moved from the base hotel to a hotel in town, the World,
which was very pleasant. Lots of marble in the lobby, though the furnishings weren’t
equally high end. Our room was enormous, with microwave, refrigerator and sink, two
queen beds, a flat screen TV and a computer, and lots of closet space. The bathroom was
walled in marble, the floor was tiled, the toilet was fitted with a system that could wash,
dry and warm. I think of it as a Japanese system, as we’ve previously encountered such
toilets in houses and hotels in HI that cater to Japanese tourists, but Dave says they get
almost no Japanese visitors, so maybe it’s a more broadly Asian thing. The tub had 10
apertures for running water at you in addition to the 6 whirlpool ports. This may also
explain the drain in the floor. I found it interesting that with the high-end wall covering,
the tub, sink and toilet were made out of fairly flimsy feeling molded plastic. The towels
had “World Hotel” woven into them.
Monday we went to Everland, Korea’s answer to Disney. It’s an enormous amusement
park and resort complex, with multiple roller coasters as well as many, many other rides.
The girls had a blast.
Paul and I went on one ride, a water circuit, which we enjoyed, and Paul went on another
ride with Daphne, but mostly we wandered and watched. Dinner that night was at a Thai
restaurant in Songtan, Chang Pwuck, even better than the La-Na where we had lunch on
Sunday.
Tuesday we took the metro into Seoul to get our bearings in preparation for our three day
stay. The tourist office was very helpful, supplying maps and helping us arrange a
cultural tour of the city for Thursday. We even managed to locate our hotel, which we
wanted to do without having to drag our luggage with us. We had been warned that it was
hard to find, and agree that the warnings were helpful.
The Korail metro is wonderful: clean, smooth, efficient. It costs about $2 to go almost 50
kilometers from Songtan to the center of Seoul. After some fumbling around with how to
put more money on the metro cards (a very pleasant, friendly man stopped to help us) we
were able to function very well. Turns out that each metro line has its own theme music,
which plays as a train is approaching the station. Line 1 (Songtan-Seoul) has a trumpet
fanfare that I almost recognize; Line 3, which we took several times when in Seoul, has
the opening phrases of a Vivaldi violin concerto. Inside the cars, screens announce the
next station and which side the doors will open on in English as well as Korean. People
don’t eat or drink on the metro (except kids), but wow! Are they ever plugged in. My
informal survey indicated that 5 out of 7 people in the car we traveled in on Sunday were
listening to IPods or doing things with their smartphones.
We went from a nice modern station in Songtan:
to a more modern station in Seoul:
Along the metro tracks in many places, not just near the station, you can see small trees
and shrubs cut into topiary, well maintained, although the grass around them isn’t always
trimmed. Also visible from the tracks were numerous vegetable gardens, everything from
commercial farms with row upon row of plastic covered tunnels to “community garden”
plots, to tiny corners of land right next to the tracks (and highways) planted in beans and
squash. From the highway I noticed that at the base of a 40 story apartment building, just
below the carefully placed and probably very expensive granite facing holding up a slope,
someone has a small, intensely cultivated vegetable plot. There are gardens right next to
huge piles of cans, bottles and other refuse, next to manufacturing concerns and gas
stations. (Zoning appears to be rare here.) Squash vines are draped over chain link fences
along the major highways. I do wonder about soil pollution and how much is transferred
to the vegetables being produced.
We could also see the enormous numbers of apartment towers, the housing style that
dominates the landscape in greater Seoul. Twenty to 40 stories high, each tower probably
has 3-4 apartments per floor, and the towers appear to be clustered in groups of 6-10 at a
minimum. This leaves a lot of land surface for agriculture, and I surmise it’s a more
efficient use of resources all around, but it’s a startling contrast to the suburban sprawl
here in the US. Here is a view taken from Dave’s car:
Wednesday we moved into the Doulos Business Hotel in Seoul for 3 nights, into the
world's smallest hotel room (double bed against the wall on 1 side, just enough clearance
between bed and desk to get to bathroom.) But it was fine, very clean, and bathroom is
good sized. Really good breakfast buffet: eggs, pastry, green salad(!), various Korean
meat dishes, good coffee. The paper coffee cups say: Better Sleep. Better Business. And
then a quote: "He makes me lie down in green pastures..." etc. As we saw no other signs
of religious orientation here in the hotel, we can only assume that someone went googling
for quotes about sleep and chose this one. There was a sound track in the breakfast room
that included John Denver, the 2nd hit of the guy who wrote “The Girl from Ipanema”, a
movement from a Schubert string quartet, a section from “Pictures at an Exhibition,”
some Sondheim, and a few bits I didn’t recognize. After three days we concluded that
someone has a playlist and hits “random”, as we heard the same music every day but in
different order.
Seoul is a great big modern city. The main boulevards are lined with handsome
skyscrapers representing a lot of industry (manufacturing, banking, etc. etc.) However,
sandwiched along alleys about 1 car wide behind the skyscrapers are lots and lots of tiny
shops, manufacturing companies, restaurants, hotels (including "love hotels"), bars,
massage parlors, plumbing supply houses and apartments. The crowding is simply
unimaginable, and thankfully everyone seems to be very good natured during the traffic
jams that ensue when one truck is delivering goods to one shop and comes face to face
with another truck picking things up. This all gets complicated by the ubiquitous motor
scooters, and pedestrians walking obliviously side by side or talking on their cell phones.
We thought Songtan was crowded, but Seoul has it beat by a mile. I think there are more
coffee shops per block in Seoul than even Brisbane or Portland. Familiar chains include
the Coffee Bean, Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts. Very modern boulevards
with old-fashioned alleys running between the boulevards:
"Our" alley, where the Doulos Hotel is located, is apparently the center of trophy
manufacturing and sales for the city. There must be 25 different shops selling urns,
medals, and commemorative tchotchkes of all sorts, ready for engraving. This is in a
space about 2 blocks long! But it was perfectly quiet at night.
Wednesday we spent a few hours touring the arts district in the afternoon. We saw the
changing of the guard at the palace, and visited some interesting galleries. Lunch was a
tad edgy. After finding only coffee shops, and restaurants with menus we couldn't
understand, we wandered into a covered market a couple of blocks long.
We got some fried rice cakes and an omelet-looking thing that was also probably a rice
base but contained chopped spinach, carrots and cabbage and some bits of fish. A
heaping plate of squares of the green, veggie-looking dish cost 2,000 won, about $1.80.
There were quite a few vendors selling things they were cooking in the market, but the
language barrier is pretty fierce, and we sort of wanted to know what we were eating.
That night we went out for Korean food at a restaurant the hotel recommended and had
lots of veggies with a fried egg on top, very good. Before that we went for a drink at a
local bar. I avoided the martini, as I've experienced foreign martinis before, and ordered a
gin and tonic. Sweetest thing I've ever had, and came with a lemon slice, a cherry and no
fizz. I think the "tonic" was soda of some sort.
Thursday we took a city tour that included lunch. We saw the National Museum of Folk
Art (OK, but the Korean Folk Village was better), several palaces, a Buddhist temple
and baby Buddha:
and a complex of five 18th-early 20th century homes that were brought from elsewhere
and assembled on site, sort of Sturbridge Village in miniature. The major palace is a
huge complex
I’d guess 50 acres or so inside the walls – and contains 15 or 20 buildings. It used to
contain about 150 buildings, but many were destroyed by the Japanese during the
occupation (1910-1946) and more were destroyed during the Korean War. The buildings
there now are reconstructions. Though no one spoke of it directly, we sensed a lot of antiJapanese feeling.
The palaces and temples are made of wood, with lots of fretwork, which feels rather
Victorian, and much of the wood is painted in bright colors, or gilded. One thing that
struck me was that virtually all the painted decorations are abstract – the closest you get
to an image is the occasional stylized flower. (Though, to be fair, there were two painted
phoenixes on the ceiling of the “first gate” of the major palace complex.) I asked the
guide whether there was some religious or cultural prohibition about showing people or
animals, and she responded that it was forbidden to have any sort of portrait of the
Emperor, so maybe that carried through into all decoration of royal spaces. Certainly
some of the old prints and drawings we saw in the galleries and antique stores showed
people. But there were some sculpted pieces, notably on ridgepoles and roof edges:
monkeys and dragons, predominately.
And there were several cat-like creatures “guarding” the palace. These magical beings
could eat fire (nice to have that ability on call when you live in a wooden complex) and
could use their horns to stab people who had malevolent intentions towards the emperor.
Some sculptor had a nice sense of humor, or else lived with cats: one of them is poised on
the brink of the canal that runs through the complex, ready to lap up water.
The tour included a rather rushed lunch at a “typical” Korean restaurant, where we had
crackling rice with veggies and sauce and various bits of pickle. It was OK, but neither of
us found Korean food especially appealing. The one good thing was that we could get
quite a few vegetables to go with the starch.
We also visited the ginseng and amethyst factories, where we didn't bow to pressure to
purchase, walked through the more commercial section of the art galleries and shops, and
visited one of the enormous covered markets. No purchases - I found the enormous
amount of goods simply overwhelming, though the fresh veggies and fish made me wish
we had a kitchen available. I assume that the tour company gets a cut of whatever we
spend at the ginseng and amethyst places.
Our guide was a very pleasant young woman, fluent, though not completely
comprehensible, in English and Chinese. Other participants included a guy from "Asia,
not China", he said, though he identified as Chinese, and a couple from Dubai currently
living in Los Angeles. She works for a public/private partnership that does something
about energy development. We don't know what he does except talk. We have his email
address; he urged us to visit Dubai, and offered to make all the arrangements for us. It
seems unlikely that we’ll take him up on the offer. Three young Chinese women were
with us about 1/2 the time.
Our last stop was an enormous market covering many blocks and jammed with Koreans
shopping for day-to-day items, food, clothing, etc.
We debated about dinner: pizza, pita wrap, Korean porridge, or steak and salad, and went
for the latter. A Brazilian restaurant, as it turned out, with excellent meat, an enormous
salad bar, a short but good wine list (it was nice to have wine, as we'd been mostly
drinking beer). It was jammed with 20-and-30-something Koreans making the most of
the all you can eat salad and dessert. We were the only Westerners there.
Friday we set out for Bukchon Hanok Village, an area that contains quite a few “old
style” Korean houses:
We had hoped to see the Museum of Chicken Art as well. But the chickens won this
round. There are many, many signs of their presence here
but they managed to hide their museum (headquarters?) from us. When we went into
Seoul on Tuesday we asked at the tourist information center how to find the museum, and
were first told it didn't exist, and then that it was way way out in the boondocks, a long
subway ride and then a bus. So we pretty much gave up then. However, the curator at the
HQ for the historic district gave us a map that showed the chicken museum!!! So we
hurried up the street - there was even a street sign that said "Chicken Art Museum 90
meters" and couldn't find it.
We searched alleyways, looked at building entryways...nothing. We went back to the
sign, and Paul paced off 90 meters. It was an art gallery, which we entered. A nice young
woman, when asked about it said, "Gone." Just like that, our hopes were dashed.
We wandered back down to the more commercial part of the arts district and bought a
copper fish we had looked at the previous day, as well as a few gifts. Lunch was really
good Italian food at a restaurant in an old style building. (Peaked roof, exposed wooden
beams, plaster walls – could have been New Mexico or Tuscany.) Later in the afternoon
we went to the huge duty free Lotte store, hoping we might find some good pottery – we
saw very little in the shops and galleries – but it was all Armani, Hermes, high end
leather goods and cosmetics. And it was jammed with people, mostly Korean. Made us
realize again that Korea’s economy is booming (13th largest in the world, apparently.)
Saturday we checked out of our hotel and made our way to Yunsong Military Base,
which is in another part of Seoul. There we met Dave and family, and proceeded to two
museums right across a corridor from each other. The museum of useful objects was
mildly interesting – I sort of liked the idea of a baby jumpsuit with small dust mops
attached to arms, legs and tummy – but it was the Rolling Ball Museum that really
grabbed us all. We loved the kinetic pieces, all of which rolled marbles and other balls
through various obstacle courses. The pieces reminded me a lot of the old Rube Goldberg
cartoons.
After that, we went back to the military base so the kids could enjoy the playground, then
back to Songtan and our last two nights at the World Hotel.
Sunday we attempted to see the city wall of Suwon, a small city about halfway between
Songtan and Seoul. We got there by metro but then had considerable difficulty figuring
out where to find the wall, and how to get there. Eventually we found the tourist office
and got directions, but it became clear we wouldn’t have time to see the sights and still
make it to Dave and Kate’s place in time for dinner, so we’ll try again some other time.
Our return to the US on Monday was smooth, though being up for 32 hours is fairly
tiring!
A few random thoughts: we were surprised at the large number of signs in English as
well as Korean, though sometimes we wondered about translation. For example, there’s a
soft drink we saw in lots of vending machines called “Pocari Sweat”. As Dave said,
“What’s a pocari, and why do I want to drink its sweat?”
The sidewalks in Songtan are made of glazed tiles about 2” wide and 6” long. They are
quite slippery, which may explain why there’s a line of 12 x 12 ridged hard rubber tiles in
the center of the sidewalk.
Lots of interesting smells in the city, probably intensified by the hot, humid weather –
fried and other food, exhaust, cigarette smoke, and drains.
How hard it was to eat a reasonably healthy diet. Carbs, fat and salt seem to be the main
food groups.
Crossing the streets is a challenge, as the Lonely Planet guidebook warned us. You don’t
want to be the first to step into the street after the light changes, as some Korean drivers
appear to think that stopping is optional. I was reminded a bit of bird behavior at the
feeder after a hawk has been around – the littlest and least bright goes back to the feeder
first to make sure it’s safe for the others. And motor scooter drivers apparently have the
option to consider themselves and their machines either pedestrians or motor vehicles,
whichever is more convenient at that moment.
We did see one indication of another way to get around but couldn’t figure out how it
worked:
How friendly and helpful people were. Complete strangers would come up to us and offer
to help if we looked lost or uncertain.