First Korea trip, part 3?

Sorry it has been so long since I wrote about the first parts of the Korea trip. Kept forgetting about it.

Friday, May 7

I got up early that morning and headed over to the large palace I had been to earlier. On the grounds there, every Friday, they give out passes to go tour Dae Wa Haeng, the Blue House. It is the Korean equivalent of the White House. Since the President lives there, I had to show my passport (I can only imagine North Koreans are not allowed on the tour), and we were only allowed on the grounds and peripheral buildings. We weren't allowed to take photographs except in one particular area, I guess for security concerns. The house is surrounded by beautiful gardens, and lots of security forces. We also went inside a banquet hall where heads of state are entertained. It was a neat experience, since visits are so limited. Apparently in the 90s, security forces arrested a crack army team from North Korea that had snuck over the border in the gardens. They were on a mission to assassinate the president, and were detected just in time. Nothing that exciting happened on our tour though.

Afterwards, I went shopping for some presents, and found some nice Korean handicrafts. I also wandered around some crazy markets looking for stamps, among other things. I asked people where I might find stamp stores, and they manage to point me to a place near my hotel. I went there, and was directed back to the original place I was looking. The stores were underground about 100 meters from where I first asked. Unfortunately, the stamp stores mostly had new stamps, not used ones. 80% of the store owners didn't know Japanese or English, so that didn't help things either. One storekeeper gave me some cancelled Korean stamps for free, so he became my favorite.

I eventually wandered around until I found the train station, which was new and modern. I bought tickets for my trip on Saturday back to Pusan, the port city with the hydrofoil to Japan. On my way back, I stopped off at the newly renovated City Hall courtyard. They were having a laser light show there to celebrate the renovation. It used to be an ugly traffic circle, but they turned it into a nice park area. The light show was delayed by about 30 minutes, and then was disappointingly short. It was only about 3 minutes long. Then it kept repeating itself. They mostly shown lights onto the city hall, plastering a fake Roman facade on it, and making the city hall appear to tilt, etc. It was a bit of a disappointment, so I went back to the hotel after 10 minutes.


Saturday, May 8

The train I got a seat on was the new Korean bullet train, the KTX, which is the first bullet train in Korea. It runs from Seoul in the northwest to Pusan in the southeast, and it slightly slower than the trains in Japan. However, it cost about 1/10 of the bullet trains in Japan, so who am I to complain. One thing about the train was that the seats were fixed, so half of them were backwards (including my seat), and they were much more narrow than the Japanese ones, which are very wide and comfortable. However, they did have luggage storage space, which the Japanese trains don't have. My train was fully booked, so I was a bit cramped.

When we got to Pusan, I went back to the same guesthouse I had been in before, since I knew where it was and that it was clean and cheap. Unfortunately, there were no more Japanese people there. Actually, I was the only person at all, so it was a bit lonely. I had a plan to go visit some church by the ocean, but I think I gave it up when the bus never came. Instead I went downtown and looked around the shopping area there. I thought I might see a movie, but the only movies playing were "The Passion" and a bunch of Korean movies, so I didn't see anything. Instead I just got some things that looked like french fries (they were actually some strange Korean vegetable like a potato), and some other stall food from street vendors. Eventually I just went back to the hotel, as I had to get up early the next morning. Probably my least exciting day.


Sunday, May 9

I woke up at 6am and made it to the ferry on time. This time, the ferry was mostly empty, whereas it was full when I came across. I think the end of Golden Week, the Japanese holiday period, is to blame.

The only notable thing about the ferry ride was after I went through immigration, but before I boarded, there were souvenir shops selling chocolates and other goods. I thought I would pick up some omiyage for my teachers since I had some extra Korean coins left. The price on the box of 20 plain chocolates I found said 5,000. So, I gave the woman a 5,000 Korean won bill ($5). Then she says, no it is yen (about 50 dollars!). Nothing would ever have cost me that much in Korea. I think my hotel in Seoul was about $25. I just said something to her about extortionist prices, and left. The reason it was so expensive is because Japanese people have to buy gifts for their co-workers when they go away (omiyage). In Japan omiyage is overpriced, but not that much. Mostly I think this was to try to extra money out of Japanese people who had forgotten to buy stuff in the city. In the city, I imagine the same thing was about $2. Since I was not Japanese, I didn't care that I didn't buy an omiyage. I just do it sometimes as a treat for the other teachers. But I wasn't going to spend that much money on a small box of plain chocolates.

Then there were the long train rides back to Toyama, which were uneventful. Thus ended Korea trip 1.