Heading to Seoul

Heading to Seoul

Seoul, South Korea, Asia

I got up this morning and packed up all my gear again. My bag is getting heavier and heavier now, but at least I don’t have to carry it for much longer. I’d said bye to Andrew last night because he gets up at like 4am to go to work, so there was no way I’d see him today. Crystal and Jax gave me a lift down to the Bosan train station at about 10:30am and I said bye, probably for a couple of years. They’re moving to upstate New York in March, but I won’t be back in the States for a little while after that.

I was waiting for my train to Seoul and a man who was about 70 years old sought me out and started chatting with me. I have become so jaded while travelling in Asia that I figured he had to be selling something. There’s no way he could just be a nice guy. I was only kind of right. He was a Jehova’s witness, and he was looking for someone to preach to. I told him straight out that I wasn’t interested, and he took it pretty well and just chatted for a while. It was about an hour and a half ride into Seoul, and it was nice to be chatting with someone who didn’t really want anything from me. It was a nice change from most other Asian countries.

I changed subways a couple of times and managed to find my hostel without a problem. I’m getting really good at finding my way around cities I’ve never been to before, so that’ll probably be a handy thing to hold on to. My first impression was that Seoul was an awesome city! Just from when I walked out of the Hyehwa Station it felt and looked like a very cool city to be in. I has a good vibe that I felt in Shanghai, but no other city in China. I dropped my stuff off in my incredibly small single room (seriously it was like a closet), and headed out.

I grabbed some pizza for lunch, and it was one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had. It was a sweet potato pizza from this little joint that had one table in it. It was awesome! I had my pizza and then headed out to see Changdeok Palace. I hopped on a city bus for 1000 won ($1) and took it just a couple of stops and it dropped me off right in front of the palace. The transportation system in this city is incredible, especially as a westerner. Everything is written in Korean and English, and they even have audio announcements on the subways and busses saying what the next stop is. It’s perfect.

The palace was cool to see because it was so different from other palaces around the world. There is a lot of open space within the palace walls, and even inside the buildings everything was kept quite simple. It looked very nice, but not too gaudy, which you tend to get at some palaces (see Versailles…). I hung out there for a couple of hours and then made my way into the city to meet my friend SeAhn. We had met on the trip to Egypt last year and when I found out that I was going to be coming to Seoul, she was happy to meet up.

SeAhn took me out for dinner, and wouldn’t let me pay, apparently that’s Korean custom. We went to a VERY traditional Korean place where the inside of the restaurant looked like a traditional house. We took our shoes off and sat on the floor to eat off a table that was only about 18 inches off the ground. We then had a meal that consisted of at least fifteen courses. I tried a little bit of everything, but there were a couple of things that came out that I didn’t care for. I was surprised at how chewy octopus was, and how hard abalone was. I also tried raw crab, and that was definitely not for me. I’m not a seafood fan anyway, but that stuff was definitely not to my liking. There were some awesome meats that came out and the vegetables that came out with everything were delicious. My favorite was the fried green pumpkin slices. I’d never heard of them before, but they were awesome!

Dinner ended up taking about two and a half hours to eat, but it was really nice. Since SeAhn and I hadn’t really known each other that well from the Egypt trip, it gave us a chance to get a bit more acquainted. We walked around the city for a couple hours after dinner and got to see some of the lanterns that are in the stream for the Seoul Lantern Festival that is going on. Unfortunately they aren’t lit yet, but they were still cool to see. We walked by the biggest palace in the city, Gyeongbok Palace and got a preview of where we’re going to start our tour tomorrow. I grabbed the last subway back to the hostel and it’s about 1am. I’ll meet SeAhn tomorrow morning and we’re going to explore for the day. She was nice enough to take the day off work to show me around, how awesome is that?!

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