For the Chuesok Holiday (Korean Thanksgiving), I went to Seoul with three fellow teachers: Gary, Mike, and Brandon. We left from Masan on a bus at 1:00am on Tuesday, and I arrived back in Masan at 2:15pm on Saturday. These were our adventures...
We also spent some time shopping in Itaewon. They had all kinds of cheap knock-offs. You could buy Louis Vuitton wallets and bags, or Emporio Armani shirts and underwear. The main street was lined with vendors as far as you could see. It will be a good place to go back and shop at the next time I'm in Seoul. This time I just got two golf gloves, a sweater, and an LV wallet. Itaewon is one of the areas of Seoul that is known for its night life. On Wednesday night, Gary, Mike, Matt and I went to a roof top BBQ that Matt's friend was having. It had a bit of an Asian flair to it with a Chicken Pad Thai dish that was included. The rest of the food was more conventional. The view from the roof was really nice as it looked out on the North Seoul Tower. After the BBQ, we headed to the main area of Itaewon to go to a few bars. We left around 2am and walked by one of the more interesting areas of Seoul. There are two streets next to one another called “Hooker Hill” and “Homo Hill”. The names say it all. We thought it would be interesting to walk up one and down the other. “Hooker Hill” was setup as little houses with women sitting inside waiting for somebody to make them an offer. We made no offers. “Homo Hill” was just a hill with bars. We did walk by a lovers quarrel that was extremely vicious. We walked up just as one guy kicked another guy in the stomach, and then proceeded to trip him and make him fall face first on to the street. This was a little uncomfortable, so we all tried to walk past it and down the rest of the hill as fast as we could. You can skip the hills if you want, but you really should visit Itaewon if you ever get to Seoul. We finished the night with some Chicken Kabobs and a cab ride back to our motel.
On Thursday, we got up early and met up with one of the guys, David, that I met on the plane ride over to Korea. David, Mike, Brandon, Gary and I took the Subway to the All American Grill in Itaewon for breakfast. Afterwords, we headed to the Insadong area to visit one of the many palaces in Seoul. We went to Chungdeokgung Palace, which is probably the best known palace in Seoul. It was built in the 1400s by one of the kings from the Joeson Dynasty. It was really amazing. The palace was very large and it contained a throne room, multiple bedrooms, multiple libraries, offices, and what is know as “The Secret Garden”. This was an area added later on to the backside of the palace. It was built as a place for the kings and their families to rest and relax. It is a very large natural area with various creeks, paths, gardens, and buildings. After we left the palace, we went to the main shopping area of Insadong. It was ridiculously crowded. At times, you couldn't move as you tried to make your way down the street. They sell mainly traditional style Korean items. Even the food was traditional. Some of the street vendors were selling cups of small beetles and snails. We passed on the food options.
After we left Insadong without Mike and Matt who stayed for a show called “Jump”, Brandon, David, Gary, and I went to the North Seoul tower. The tower is one of the two great places to see views of Seoul at night. Since it was Chuesok and everybody was off, the place was packed. They have a cable car that takes you up the base of the tower, but the lines were over an hour long just to get on the cable car. David, Gary and I decided to walk up the hill instead of waiting for the cable car. Brandon decided to stay behind since he had seen it before. 800 steps later, we were at the base of the tower. We had to buy tickets to get on the elevator to go up the tower. We were told it was an hour wait to get on the elevator, so we rewarded our walk up the hill with Cold Stone Ice Cream. At this point we began to feel a little bad for Brandon who was still waiting at the bottom, but there wasn't much we could do. We weren't going to turn around. Finally, after about an hour and a half wait, we got on the elevator and rode to the top of the tower. The views were incredible. Every direction you looked, you saw the lights of Seoul. The city is really big; I guess it would have to be considering it is the second most populated metropolitan area in the world. After about thirty minutes of looking around, we got in line to go back down the elevator. That took about thirty minutes, but there was a clown doing tricks and making balloon animals to help keep us entertained. He was even nice enough to ride in our elevator back down to the bottom. He talked to us, but none of us had any idea what he was saying. Three hours after we left Brandon, we found him waiting for us at a table outside of a convenient store. The four of us took the subway back to Sinchon. It was about 10:00, and we had to hurry back since Gary had a bus back to Masan leaving at 1:00am. His school was making him teach on Friday, so he had to go back Thursday night. We made it back to Sinchon in plenty of time. Gary though, missed his bus. He ended up getting kicked off the subway on the way to the bus terminal, because the subway closed. Gary picked up a cab, but they took him to the wrong bus terminal. By the time he made it back to the correct terminal, his bus was gone. What made it worse was the fact that it was the last bus to Masan for the night. So, Gary spent a wonderful night in the bus terminal waiting for the 6:00am bus back to Masan. Needless to say, he wasn't very thrilled at school on Friday.
Meanwhile, while Gary was riding a bus, Mike, David, and I met up Friday morning with the other guy I met on the plane, Saul. We were going to hiking at a national park in the northern part of Seoul. The park is named Bukhansan National Park. It is the highest point in Seoul, and at 1100 meters it dominates many of the views in Seoul. After spending about an hour and a half on subways and buses, we were finally at the park entrance. That was the easy part. The hard part was knowing where to go from there. I have found that hiking in Korea is a little more confusing than in America. This is largely due to my inability to read Korean. They have many intersecting and divergent trails on the mountains here, and they are all very well marked. Unfortunately though, they are all marked in Korean. This creates a slight difficulty for me. We tried to ask somebody where we should start, but we had no idea what they said. Thus, we just went for it. The first part of the trail was quite difficult. It was very steep and crossed a few streams. The streams were small, but David and Saul still found a way to get their shoes wet. After the long steep ascent, the hike leveled off. Our goal was the top of something, we just didn't know what. It seemed like it would be an easy climb from there on out. We came across a temple at one point that was pretty nice. It was right next to a wall that overlooked Seoul. I climbed up on top and took some great pictures. It was crazy to think that you were still in Seoul on this mountain. Only the amazing views of the city and the 100s of people on the hike reminded you about the fact. Everyone else followed me up and stood on the wall as well. Even a couple of Koreans joined us. I guess they knew what was coming though, as they got down pretty quick. Only minutes after they dismounted, an older lady came buy and managed to tell us we shouldn't be on the wall. We started to get down one by one, but as we were getting off an older man came around the corner and saw us. He proceeded to get out his whistle, yes, his whistle, and blow it at us repeatedly. There is nothing as odd and annoying as an old man blowing a whistle at you. I was kind of rooting for him to swallow it. We told him we were getting off as quickly as we could, but he kept on blowing. I still hope he ended up swallowing it. After that, the hike picked way up in intensity. It quickly became the most technically demanding hike I've ever been on. It started with a rope that you had to use to climb up a steep section that was probably 10 feet high. We all made it fine except for Mike who might have slipped and fallen on his face at one point. He only had a minor cut, so we moved on. Then, the next half mile was spent using steel ropes that were bolted into the ground to help pull yourself up and to keep you from falling on parts that went down. In some parts, instead of the rocks being slanted up and down, they were slanted off to the side. That meant, if you lost your grip, you would fall about 700 or 800 feet to the rocks and trees below. With all of the people crowded around trying to do the same thing, it was pretty intimidating. Not to mention the fact that we were all doing this on slick rocks with running shoes. A lot of the rocks were wet from the rain on Tuesday when we got there. As somebody who is afraid of heights, I found it pretty nerve racking. The Koreans were like mountain goats though. I was blown away at how they would bound up and down the rocks, many times without the use of the ropes, and many times on the wrong sides of the ropes. Granted, they've grown up in an extremely mountainous country, but that did not make them any less impressive. In the end, I didn't quite make it to the top. We came across and intersection where one way went back to where we started, and the other way went straight to the top. We started out on the up portion, but it was more of the same: crowded, steep, and full of drop-offs. I stayed back as did David and Mike. David said he would have gone on if he had better shoes, and Mike said he would have gone on if half of Seoul wasn't climbing the mountain. Despite having gone skydiving, I just can't do heights without some sort of fail safe. In skydiving you have a parachute and somebody else to pull the cord. On this mountain, you had a bunch of people pushing you up against a rope. However, even though the fear won, the hike was amazing. I never thought I would experience something like that in the middle of Seoul. The views were stunning, the exercise was intense, and experience was completely worth it. I still regret turning around though, just a little bit.
After the hike, which was much longer and much more difficult than we anticipated, we were starving. We took the buses and the subway back to Itaewon for hamburgers. They were the perfect way to finish the hike. I went back to the motel and cleaned up. Mike came and got me and we headed to the Hongik University area. This is the area that Gary, Brandon, and I wondered around in looking for a motel. It has a really good night life scene despite the lack of accommodations. We met David and Saul at the subway stop in Hongik, and headed to some bars and clubs. The area was definitely reminiscent of being back in Austin. There weren't as many bars and clubs as there are on 6th street, but he place was packed and the music was great. After we were finished at about 3:30, we found out that the street food was also quite good. I walked back to my motel called it a night.
On Saturday morning, I awoke completely exhausted from a lack of sleep over the past few nights and some extremely busy days. I had to be at the bus terminal by 10:05am to catch my bus back to Masan. I wanted to go get breakfast one more time, but I was way to tired. My trip to the bus station was far less eventful than Gary's, and I made it with 15 minutes to spare. I spent the entire trip in a half conscious state as I couldn't keep my eyes open nor could I really fall asleep. 5 hours later, I was back in my apartment with my first trip to Seoul complete. It was a great trip. I can now say that I would love to live there, but I'm kind of glad that I don't. I would spend way to much money, I would lose my appreciation for the finer things in life such as Subway and Quiznos, and I certainly would be learning less about the more traditional side of Korea. I can't wait to go back though, and I will in February. We have already decided to go back during the Lunar Holiday and tour the DMZ!
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