Wednesday, May 5
I woke up a bit late, so I had to run to the bus stop to try to catch the bus to Seoul. Unfortunately, I got there right on time, and was told it had come several minutes early that day. The next bus was not for two more hours, so I took a bus to Yangyang instead to try to get an express bus from there. Luckily, I managed to get on a bus without any problem. It took under 3 hours on the bus to get to Seoul, which was a lot faster than I thought it was going to be. The bus ride was uneventful, except I saw a commercial for "Nutcracker!" on the TV, which was the show that the dancers were involved in. It was due to start in Seoul on Saturday.
In Seoul, I headed for a district with a lot of cheap hotels, the Insa-dong area. The hotel I was looking for in particular was nowhere to be found. Luckily, a man on the street told me he knew where it was and said that I should follow him. That began a ten-minute walk away from the area of the hotel, but I figured he must know where he was going. Eventually we stopped at a tourist office, and he said, "Ask them." Well, it was better than not having a hotel, but it certainly was far from where I wanted to stay. Instead, I asked the tourist office to book me a place at a cheap hotel. The found one for about 20 dollars a night with a private bathroom, so I took it. It was decent, and had free internet, and free telephone calls to America, Japan, and Canada. So I called Victoria several times while staying there.
After I checked in, I went to one of the royal palaces, Gyeongbokgung, and saw the end of a changing of the guard ceremony. The royal palace was particularly crowded for a weekday. The palace is mostly a reconstruction, because either the Japanese destroyed most of it or the civil war did. The palace admission is really cheap, about 50 cents. It also includes entry into the national folk museum, which had traditional dress, crafts, and games from the three ancient Korean kingdoms. It was fairly interesting. I found it especially interesting that the Koreans are thought to be the first people to create a metal block printing system. Also, they created their phoenetic writing system in about 800 A.D., representing a great advancement over Chinese characters that the Chinese and Japanese have never figured out to this day (well, the Japanese have a phoenetic system, but consider it inferior).
I felt like some comfort food that night, since I knew I was going to be eating alone. So I bought a big American-style pizza and some ice cream and went crazy while flipping through the 100-odd TV channels they had. The coolest was actually the online gaming channel. They had a network dedicated to video game news and competitions. Korea actually has a whole online gaming league of professionals who do nothing but play video games against each other. This TV channel showed some of those games, which were interesting for me to watch. One game they played a lot of was Starcraft, which I used to play in college, and I knew some of the strategies. It is a fun game, and it was fun to watch as well. I think I watched it a bit too late into the night for my own good.
Thursday, May 6
Because I had stayed up so late the night before, I woke up later than I normally did on the trip, around 10am. Continuing my comfort food theme, I went to Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast. There were a ton of Dunkin' Donuts all over the place. In general, there were a lot more American restaurants in Korea than in Japan. I don't know if it was because of the prolonged military presence in Korea or what. Victoria and I saw a similar trend in Okinawa, where there were a lot of military bases around.
After breakfast, I called the woman I had met hiking, Kyung Mi Lee. There was no answer, so I went on a tour of another palace. This palace could only be seen as part of a guided tour, so I had to go at one of three times for an English tour. The tour was a bit bland, and I didn't pay attention to the tour guide hardly at all. She kept sprinting ahead as well, which annoyed me. I guess she had to finish by a certain time, though. What I did instead was make friends with the other people on the tour guide. There was a giant church group from somewhere in Seattle, who had their own tour guides as well. There was also a grandmother, mother (Veronica), and daughter(Maya) trio that were quite interesting. The grandmother and mother were from Chile. The mother lived in Japan, and was married to a British man. Because of all this, the girl, who was about 6, spoke English, Spanish, and Japanese. Wow. It must be confusing for her at times, but I think that is the best way to go about doing it. Just learn tons of languages when you are a baby.
I practiced my Spanish some with them, and we got along quite well. After the tour was over, they were going to go to the palace I went to the previous day. However, they started looking for their maps and guidebook, and they realized they were gone. They searched the bathrooms, asked at the ticket stand, etc. but the books were nowhere to be seen. The mother apparently has this problem a lot and tends to misplace things absent-mindedly. Because of this, the grandmother kept all the money and passports.
Around they time they started panicking, I stepped in, and told them I could take them to the tourist information place that was nearby, and figure out where an English book store was so they could get a new guidebook. Since I had been there to book my hotel the day before, it worked out quite well. At the tourist office they got lots of information about Seoul and the rest of Korea, and I circled the largest English book store nearby for them to go to. Meanwhile, I called Kyung Mi again and this time arranged to meet her at the same tourist office in an hour. They were very thankful, so they took me to a nearby restaurant for lunch. This restaurant was very small, but quite interesting on the inside. The chairs were all tree stumps, and the food was incredibly plentiful. We each ordered a meal, and ended up eating only two of them. The fish I had there was delicious. We said goodbye and they left for the palace.
I waited around for awhile, and then the tourist office got a call from Kyung Mi. Apparently she went to the wrong tourist office, so they were going to be late. She brought her sister, Yoon Jung Kim, who still lives in Seoul, with her. Her sister spoke Japanese at about the same level I did, so we used that when I couldn't understand Kyung Mi's broken English. One interesting thing about Korean names is that they all tend to have three names, whereas Japanese only have two names. There are also only a limited number of Korean last names. I read a statistic like 80% of the population has one of 8 last names. The sisters had the two most popular ones, Kim and Lee.
The first place they drove me was to a cable car which led up the only hill in the middle of Seoul, Namsam Park. From the top of the hill, we could see a long way. The most scary thing was not the heights which we were at, but instead the layer of smog that we could see covering the city. It wasn't obvious from the ground, but it looked dirty from the air. Even the sisters commented on it looking bad. We didn't go up the tower, since you could see quite well from the top of the hill. There wasn't that much pretty to see.
After the hill, we decided to take a river boat tour, which mostly consisted of driving through really heavy traffic for over an hour. To make matters worse, we got lost and took the wrong road several times, so we had to keep getting back into heavy traffic. A word of advice for anyone going to Seoul. Do not drive there! Ever! They are crazy drivers and even more rude than the Japanese when driving. We got tickets for a river cruise at sunset and had a drink while waiting. The cruise itself was not that interesting, but it was nice to be by the water and away from the crowded downtown area. On the river I could at least feel a breeze.
When the cruise ended, they dropped me off at my hotel and said goodbye. They were really sweet to me, especially since I was a complete stranger. I was pooped from all this, so I called Victoria and then went to bed.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Well, I have stumbled upon my best find in London so far. This morning while at an coffee shop, paying 10 dollars for a day of internet, I did a search and came up with an internet cafe about 6 minutes from my house with free wireless (and wired) internet for paying customers. I believe this will become my favorite haunt for the next bit until I get my own situation sorted out. At least, I think it is free. I'm still here, so I haven't paid yet. It's called the Glow Lounge, and it is located near South Clapham tube station. I've also discovered they are building a giant Tesco's supermarket right down the street from me. Tesco is one of the largest supermarket chains in England, and considered by many to be the cheapest. However, it is likely that Victoria and I will be changing addresses as soon as I get a job. Given that the Tesco store is basically a big pit in the dirt right now, I doubt it will be much use to us, unless we decide that we like the neighborhood and move to another place close by.
Our current supermarket is Sainsbury's, and it's nice, but it can be quite expensive. Sometimes the prices baffle me, though. We bought about half a kilo of beef and it cost $1.50. We bought a single boneless chicken breast (probably under 200 grams) and it cost us $3! I guess there aren't many chicken farmers in England.
Our current supermarket is Sainsbury's, and it's nice, but it can be quite expensive. Sometimes the prices baffle me, though. We bought about half a kilo of beef and it cost $1.50. We bought a single boneless chicken breast (probably under 200 grams) and it cost us $3! I guess there aren't many chicken farmers in England.
Back to the first South Korea trip (I will catch up eventually, I promise!).
Monday, May 3
Breakfast had to wait a little while, because the hotel didn't serve anything but coffee, and all the restaurants served a traditional breakfast of exactly the same thing as dinner. I didn't really want fish, rice, and spicy vegetables for breakfast, so I found some snacks in a small store nearby.
My next disappointment of the day was that I went to the trail leading into the main national park, only to be told by a gate guard that this trail was shut off. The trails are apparently so overused during the summer that, in order to protect them, they have to shut them off for the rest of the year. He didn't speak English or Japanese, but I managed to get him to point out on the map which trails were okay for me to go on. Basically I had to hike some 3 miles on the road to the west (there was no shoulder or anything), or go around to the main entrance, which could be reached by bus. I chose to take the bus. I followed the instructions of the guide book, which were not very helpful. I took the bus to Sokcho, and then waited some 40 minutes in Sokcho for a bus which finally came and took me to Seorak-san national park. However, I realized that I should have gotten off the bus to Sokcho halfway there, because I just ended up taking the bus back the same direction I had come from halfway. So when I went to Sokcho, I had driven past the park entrance, and then much more. So I wasted a good part of the day just getting to the park. It took about 3 hours.
At the park, I took a ropeway up to the top of one of the higher mountains, and there was a beautiful view there. You couldn't hike very far from the ropeway, and it was wet, so I took the ropeway back down, and went for a hike to some waterfalls about 45 minutes away. It was nice hike, and there weren't many people around. It was actually getting to be about 5pm by this point, and I didn't know what time the last bus to my place was, so I left after the hike. This time I asked a park ranger how to get back to Osaek, where I was staying. It only ended up taking about 1.5 hours, though I had to change buses several times. I also picked up some bread on the way back, though it was really gross, unlike the whole grain bread I had found in Gyeongju.
The dancers were not at their hotel when I went there. I figured they had already eaten, so I had dinner by myself, which isn't that fun.
Tuesday, May 4
I woke up and found out that Sex and the City was on TV, so I watched that for awhile, as it was the most interesting thing I had seen on TV in a week. I ate breakfast in my room (a peanut butter and jelly sandwich), and headed out to the buses. This time, the dancers were ate the bus stop at the same time I was, so we headed to the park together. They were lucky that I was there, because I actually knew what I was doing. They had spent the previous day relaxing in the spa, and hadn't gone into the park proper. We made it to the park in an hour, and I was much happier about that.
They headed up the cable car, and I headed up a mountain famous for it's Tottering Rock, a giant boulder that any single person can rock back and forth. It is about half way up the mountain. On the way up the mountain I kept getting passed by groups of 20-somethings wearing identical shirts and carrying team flags. Near the rock, they were doing different tasks as a team. I found out later they were involved in team-building activities because they were all new recruits to Samsung.
After getting a picture of the shaky rock, I hiked up the rest of the way to the top of the mountain. The path up was mostly a giant metal staircase, which left me feeling a bit dizzy when I looked down it. At the top of the mountain was a small lookout platform over some cool granite formations on the mountain, and a small table full of things you can buy to commemorate your hike up the mountain, like a medal or a photo. There was also a guy with a loudspeaker pointed right at the group of us on the platform, screaming in Korean about the mountain and why we should buy his junk. I was not impressed, but the Koreans didn't seem too upset that there was a guy standing five feet from them using a loudspeaker device. I decided I didn't like this type of hiking, and I found a small path away from the top that led to a rock where I ate lunch. A couple other Koreans came and sat near me and had a picnic. They offered me some of their food, but I had lunch, so I politely declined. Maybe if they had spoken English I would have talked to them more.
I did met a couple people on the mountain who talked to me in English. The most memorable was a woman who I met on the way down the mountain. She lived in America with her family. I guess they had immigrated there several years ago. She understood everything I said to her, but I didn't understand half of what she said. She didn't really seem to understand sentence order, which made things difficult to say the least. She was headed up the mountain, and I was headed down the mountain, so we parted ways. I figured that would be the last I saw of her, but I was wrong.
Halfway down the mountain, I ran into the dancers. They were resting at the Tottering Rock. They told me about a path I didn't know about from the top of the cable car, so I decided to go hike there. It had a good view of the mountain I was on currently, which looked pretty cool when I had seen it from the ground. They hadn't brought anything to eat, so they were starving, though there were tons of restaurants on the trails. I told them I was going to head back to the hotel soon, but if they wanted to have dinner, I would like that. They said that would be fun, and headed up the mountain. On the way down, I stopped and bought a caramel thing on a stick from an old woman selling them (one of many women doing this). It was quite messy and so I stopped to eat it. While I am waiting, who should come down the path but the Korean woman who lived in America with three of her friends. They were really funny, and decided that it was a bad thing I was travelling by myself. They said I should come to Seoul with them that evening and stay at one of their houses. I was impressed by this gesture of welcoming, but I had already paid for my hotel room, and I didn't imagine it would be comfortable for five of us in a tiny car with my giant pack, and whatever luggage they had. So, I ended up declining, but I promised to call my friend when I got to Seoul and she said she would give me a tour. She was on vacation visiting friends in Seoul, so she didn't have anything to do particularly. I got her phone number and they wandered back to the parking lot and drove to Seoul.
As for me, I took the cable car to the top of the mountain again, and this time the view was much better. I also walked up the short trail to the peak, where there were nearly 360 degree views of the park. It was worth paying for the cable car again. I took the bus back to the hotel again, and I fixed the computer in the hotel. It was apparently broken, but I didn't really do much except clean it out. They let me use the internet for free, and they had actually done my laundry early that morning for free, too. They were really nice, but I was also one of the only people at the hotel.
The dancers weren't back to their hotel yet, so I went to the hot springs baths and took a dip. It was very nice. They had lots of baths: carbonated water, a tea bath, scalding hot bath, wood-soaked bath, and a bath full of rocks. I really enjoyed it, and it was relaxing. After the bath I found the dancers, but they had already eaten. I guess they never ate lunch and were starving when they got back to Osaek, so they had gone straight to a restaurant. It was too bad, but I understood where they were coming from. Also, they were a group of friends already, whereas I was looking for friends. Still, it would've been nice to not to have had to eat alone. This place was too much of a ghost town already. It's a little freaky eating by yourself in a restaurant, even more so if you are the only one in the restaurant.
Monday, May 3
Breakfast had to wait a little while, because the hotel didn't serve anything but coffee, and all the restaurants served a traditional breakfast of exactly the same thing as dinner. I didn't really want fish, rice, and spicy vegetables for breakfast, so I found some snacks in a small store nearby.
My next disappointment of the day was that I went to the trail leading into the main national park, only to be told by a gate guard that this trail was shut off. The trails are apparently so overused during the summer that, in order to protect them, they have to shut them off for the rest of the year. He didn't speak English or Japanese, but I managed to get him to point out on the map which trails were okay for me to go on. Basically I had to hike some 3 miles on the road to the west (there was no shoulder or anything), or go around to the main entrance, which could be reached by bus. I chose to take the bus. I followed the instructions of the guide book, which were not very helpful. I took the bus to Sokcho, and then waited some 40 minutes in Sokcho for a bus which finally came and took me to Seorak-san national park. However, I realized that I should have gotten off the bus to Sokcho halfway there, because I just ended up taking the bus back the same direction I had come from halfway. So when I went to Sokcho, I had driven past the park entrance, and then much more. So I wasted a good part of the day just getting to the park. It took about 3 hours.
At the park, I took a ropeway up to the top of one of the higher mountains, and there was a beautiful view there. You couldn't hike very far from the ropeway, and it was wet, so I took the ropeway back down, and went for a hike to some waterfalls about 45 minutes away. It was nice hike, and there weren't many people around. It was actually getting to be about 5pm by this point, and I didn't know what time the last bus to my place was, so I left after the hike. This time I asked a park ranger how to get back to Osaek, where I was staying. It only ended up taking about 1.5 hours, though I had to change buses several times. I also picked up some bread on the way back, though it was really gross, unlike the whole grain bread I had found in Gyeongju.
The dancers were not at their hotel when I went there. I figured they had already eaten, so I had dinner by myself, which isn't that fun.
Tuesday, May 4
I woke up and found out that Sex and the City was on TV, so I watched that for awhile, as it was the most interesting thing I had seen on TV in a week. I ate breakfast in my room (a peanut butter and jelly sandwich), and headed out to the buses. This time, the dancers were ate the bus stop at the same time I was, so we headed to the park together. They were lucky that I was there, because I actually knew what I was doing. They had spent the previous day relaxing in the spa, and hadn't gone into the park proper. We made it to the park in an hour, and I was much happier about that.
They headed up the cable car, and I headed up a mountain famous for it's Tottering Rock, a giant boulder that any single person can rock back and forth. It is about half way up the mountain. On the way up the mountain I kept getting passed by groups of 20-somethings wearing identical shirts and carrying team flags. Near the rock, they were doing different tasks as a team. I found out later they were involved in team-building activities because they were all new recruits to Samsung.
After getting a picture of the shaky rock, I hiked up the rest of the way to the top of the mountain. The path up was mostly a giant metal staircase, which left me feeling a bit dizzy when I looked down it. At the top of the mountain was a small lookout platform over some cool granite formations on the mountain, and a small table full of things you can buy to commemorate your hike up the mountain, like a medal or a photo. There was also a guy with a loudspeaker pointed right at the group of us on the platform, screaming in Korean about the mountain and why we should buy his junk. I was not impressed, but the Koreans didn't seem too upset that there was a guy standing five feet from them using a loudspeaker device. I decided I didn't like this type of hiking, and I found a small path away from the top that led to a rock where I ate lunch. A couple other Koreans came and sat near me and had a picnic. They offered me some of their food, but I had lunch, so I politely declined. Maybe if they had spoken English I would have talked to them more.
I did met a couple people on the mountain who talked to me in English. The most memorable was a woman who I met on the way down the mountain. She lived in America with her family. I guess they had immigrated there several years ago. She understood everything I said to her, but I didn't understand half of what she said. She didn't really seem to understand sentence order, which made things difficult to say the least. She was headed up the mountain, and I was headed down the mountain, so we parted ways. I figured that would be the last I saw of her, but I was wrong.
Halfway down the mountain, I ran into the dancers. They were resting at the Tottering Rock. They told me about a path I didn't know about from the top of the cable car, so I decided to go hike there. It had a good view of the mountain I was on currently, which looked pretty cool when I had seen it from the ground. They hadn't brought anything to eat, so they were starving, though there were tons of restaurants on the trails. I told them I was going to head back to the hotel soon, but if they wanted to have dinner, I would like that. They said that would be fun, and headed up the mountain. On the way down, I stopped and bought a caramel thing on a stick from an old woman selling them (one of many women doing this). It was quite messy and so I stopped to eat it. While I am waiting, who should come down the path but the Korean woman who lived in America with three of her friends. They were really funny, and decided that it was a bad thing I was travelling by myself. They said I should come to Seoul with them that evening and stay at one of their houses. I was impressed by this gesture of welcoming, but I had already paid for my hotel room, and I didn't imagine it would be comfortable for five of us in a tiny car with my giant pack, and whatever luggage they had. So, I ended up declining, but I promised to call my friend when I got to Seoul and she said she would give me a tour. She was on vacation visiting friends in Seoul, so she didn't have anything to do particularly. I got her phone number and they wandered back to the parking lot and drove to Seoul.
As for me, I took the cable car to the top of the mountain again, and this time the view was much better. I also walked up the short trail to the peak, where there were nearly 360 degree views of the park. It was worth paying for the cable car again. I took the bus back to the hotel again, and I fixed the computer in the hotel. It was apparently broken, but I didn't really do much except clean it out. They let me use the internet for free, and they had actually done my laundry early that morning for free, too. They were really nice, but I was also one of the only people at the hotel.
The dancers weren't back to their hotel yet, so I went to the hot springs baths and took a dip. It was very nice. They had lots of baths: carbonated water, a tea bath, scalding hot bath, wood-soaked bath, and a bath full of rocks. I really enjoyed it, and it was relaxing. After the bath I found the dancers, but they had already eaten. I guess they never ate lunch and were starving when they got back to Osaek, so they had gone straight to a restaurant. It was too bad, but I understood where they were coming from. Also, they were a group of friends already, whereas I was looking for friends. Still, it would've been nice to not to have had to eat alone. This place was too much of a ghost town already. It's a little freaky eating by yourself in a restaurant, even more so if you are the only one in the restaurant.
Well, I am in London now, after a semi-busy three weeks in the U.S. Victoria and I have found an apartment in Clapham, a town to the south of London. Clapham has a giant common area in the middle of the town, and we are lucky enough to have a bedsit with a view of the common. Now, some people might be asking what a bedsit is, because I didn't know before I came to London. A bedsit is like a studio apartment, but it is lacking one thing: a bathroom. We have a closet with a shower in it, a main room with a kitchenette in it, but no toilet. Our room is in an old, converted 5-floor house. There are about 15 rooms or so in the house, so there are a decent number of people there. I gather that some of the rooms are singles, and others are doubles, like ours. Also, it seems like about half of the people in the house are Spanish, which seems to be a common theme in London. Generally, London seems really cosmopolitan.
I can't believe how many people from different countries there are here. We went to the city tourist office one day, and all the people who were behind the counter were non-British. Personally, when asking for tourist advice, I prefer asking someone who knows what they are talking about. My current situation also comes to mind as a good example. I'm sitting in a place called Caffe Nero, which is a British coffee chain, claiming to be Italian. The wireless internet service I am using comes from an American company, and all of the serving staff are women from Spain. Yesterday I heard an American and a Russian having a conversation here, next to them, a group of Italian men.
Victoria is off at her class right now, trying to get a certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). She's getting some certification called CELTA. She has another week and a half of classes, and then she will be free. I think the class has turned out to be a lot more work for her than she originally thought it would be. Afterwards it should prove a good source of employment though, and more interesting than temp jobs. Hopefully, better paying as well.
I spend my time writing a computer program to show to potential employers, and scanning job ads for things I might be good at, that might give me a work permit. I have also been sorting out stuff like a phone line, and internet at home, because Victoria is too busy to do that stuff. I will be continuing to write in my blog, though I'll probably change the name to reflect my current location. I might not have internet at home for a week or two, so it will be spotty at first.
I can't believe how many people from different countries there are here. We went to the city tourist office one day, and all the people who were behind the counter were non-British. Personally, when asking for tourist advice, I prefer asking someone who knows what they are talking about. My current situation also comes to mind as a good example. I'm sitting in a place called Caffe Nero, which is a British coffee chain, claiming to be Italian. The wireless internet service I am using comes from an American company, and all of the serving staff are women from Spain. Yesterday I heard an American and a Russian having a conversation here, next to them, a group of Italian men.
Victoria is off at her class right now, trying to get a certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). She's getting some certification called CELTA. She has another week and a half of classes, and then she will be free. I think the class has turned out to be a lot more work for her than she originally thought it would be. Afterwards it should prove a good source of employment though, and more interesting than temp jobs. Hopefully, better paying as well.
I spend my time writing a computer program to show to potential employers, and scanning job ads for things I might be good at, that might give me a work permit. I have also been sorting out stuff like a phone line, and internet at home, because Victoria is too busy to do that stuff. I will be continuing to write in my blog, though I'll probably change the name to reflect my current location. I might not have internet at home for a week or two, so it will be spotty at first.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)