Seoul’d Out

Okay, okay, okay.  Enough with the Seoul puns….but believe me they were rampant during our three days in Seoul. 

We had our alarms set for 6:45 AM on our first day in Seoul because I thought I had scheduled our DMZ tour for that day.  We woke up to rain pouring down outside.  …..not exactly the type of weather that you want to see when you plan to be outside the whole day.  Although we got a good night’s sleep, it still didn’t seem long enough after the previous day’s abridged sleep and all day travel.  Our hotel offered free breakfast, so we went downstairs to grab it before leaving for the day, and we ended up meeting a very fascinating gentleman, Lars (…I think that was his name….).  He was born in the Philippines, had family in Sweden, and married a woman from New Jersey, where he lives.  Each morning that we went down to breakfast, he was there and pleasant to talk to.  (side note: Every time we encountered someone on the street who wanted to talk with us, I immediately thought that they were trying to scam us and hugged my purse a little closer.  I’m not sure why I felt this way since we were still in the safety net of Asia.  If anyone did that to me in Japan, I know that their intentions are pure, but anywhere else I’m not exactly sure, so I revert back to the pre-Japan Melissa in which I can’t trust anyone.)

I knew that the reservation that I made for the DMZ said to be in front of our hotel at 7:30 AM for pickup.  We gathered our umbrellas and waited outside.  7:30 came and went, but no one came.  We waited until 7:50, and I decided to double check my paper to make sure that I had gotten the times right.  I had.  Only….. I had gotten the days mixed up.  Whoops!  Our DMZ tour was actually scheduled for Tuesday, not Monday.  We all had a good laugh about it and regrouped in our room to figure out what to do the rest of the day.  After a bit of research, we decided to hit up the War Monument/Museum.  Luckily for us the rain stopped.  Yay!  Before we even went in the building, there were lots of old army tanks, machine guns, and aircraft sitting around, so like the big dumb idiots that we are, we played around on those.

 

Another thing that was really cool about the War Monument/Museum were the giant plaques hung up outside with the names of the soldiers who had died.  On one side was Koreans, and on the other side were UN soldiers.  The American names were listed state by state, and I searched the names under “Kentucky,” but none of them seemed familiar. 

 

When we finally decided to actually go in the museum, we realized a bad thing.  The museum was closed on Mondays!  NOOOOOOOOOO!  However, we rearranged plans and decided to wander down the street to Itaewon, the foreign part of town.  It was actually a really cool place to be with trendy little tourist shops and LOTS of foreign food to try.  We ate lunch at a kebab place and then decided to break up into groups of two so that we could better explore the area.  Something that surprised me about South Korean business owners is that they are AGRESSIVE.  They want you to spend money in their shops and won’t stop bothering you until you have.  I’m accustomed to passive Japan and the States where if you want to just enter the shop and look at things, that’s fine.  However, as soon as we entered shops in Korea, a clerk made his/her way to us and showed us this and that, trinkets, post cards, dolls, and other shiny objects.  We tried to lose the clerks a couple of times, but they all were so insistent!  I hated it, and it made our shopping experience really uncomfortable.  I don’t want to feel forced to buy something just by walking in your store!

Ian and I met back up with Mollee and Melissa at a local coffee shop.  One good thing about Korea is that they LOVE coffee shops, and there is absolutely NO shortage of them.  It’s like being in the Pacific Northwest!  I don’t like coffee, but I love the coffee shop atmosphere and will enjoy a tea as I sit and relax with friends. 

 

Our next stop on our Seoul Train (Ha!  Sorry….couldn’t help myself…) was to the nearby park for a relaxing picnic.  However, we ended up playing and goofing around and decided to hike up the mountain to Seoul Tower for a great view of the city.  Ian wanted to go up the actual tower, but it cost about $20/person, and I couldn’t justify spending that money just to see a view that would be only slightly better than the view I already had.  We wandered around the Seoul Tower area for a bit before heading back down the hill and making our way to Gangnam.  No trip to Seoul is complete these days without a trip to Gangnam to get the super touristy picture of yourself dancing in front of the neon “Gangnam Style” light stage.

 

We knew that the light stage was near the subway exit, but we went out the wrong exit and decided to get dinner instead.  Korean BBQ is supposed to be really popular and famous throughout Asia, so we decided to try it that night.  It was indeed a feast!  It was similar to Japanese yakiniku in which we ordered a couple of plates of meat to BBQ (Asian BBQ is nothing like BBQ in the States.  It’s more like grilling.), and they brought us sides of vegetables, kimchi, salads, soups, tofu, and all kinds of things to go along with the meat.  We ate until we were literally stuffed silly before heading out to find the Gangnam Style sign.  Once we did, we took the obligatory tourist pictures and began to stroll the crowded and bright streets of Gangnam, which is a very trendy part of town. 

 

Melissa and I were very tired after a long day walking around town and decided to head back to the hotel.  It was already 9:30, and by the time we got back it would be 10-10:30.  By the time we took showers and got in bed, we’d barely get eight hours before waking up the next morning for our DMZ tour.  Ian and Mollee were fine with that plan because they wanted to stay out and explore a little longer.  However, making our way back wasn’t as easy as we thought.  We got turned around in the Gangnam subway stop, and it didn’t help that our map was printed with a font size of 5.  As we squinted at the tiny print trying to figure out where exactly we were in Seoul’s spaghetti-like subway system, we finally got it and took the right way to our subway stop. 

There were multiple exits out of our subway stop, and in hindsight, we should have been a bit more careful about that.  However, we knew that our hotel was close to the palace, so we followed signs toward the palace exit.  When we surfaced, nothing looked very familiar.  However, we brushed it off saying that in the darkness of night things look different.  We continued following signs to palace, not recognizing anything.  As we twisted and turned onto different streets, both of us were doubting the direction we were going.  When we finally hit the stone wall of the palace, it dawned on us…..there was more than one palace, and we were at the wrong one.  We were lost in the heart of Seoul without a map or functioning phone to call and tell Ian and Mollee.  We walked toward the main road, and thank God that I had the address of our hotel in my bag.  We noticed a couple of cabs on the curb and decided that whatever the price would be, we’d pay it just to get back to our hotel safe and sound.  I showed the cabbie our hotel address (which was written in Korean), and he handed it back to me, basically saying sorry, but he had no idea where that was at.  I think at this point in time Melissa and I both had that sinking feeling in our stomachs of OMG-WHAT-ARE-WE-GOING-TO-DO?????  I said that we should just find our subway stop and figure out what went wrong from there.  Unfortunately this was late at night, and hardly any shops were opened, but finally we found someone to ask.  He pointed us in the right direction of the subway stop, and we made it back.

As soon as we were underground and looking at a map, we realized the error.  There isn’t just one or two palaces in Seoul but FIVE, and we had gone toward the wrong one.  After double checking to make sure that we were going in the right direction, we left the subway station, and immediately things were looking familiar.  By this time it was 11:30.  TWO HOURS after we had left Ian and Mollee.  Since Melissa and I had the only keys to our rooms, we said that Ian and Mollee were probably wondering how they had beat us back and worried about us.  Once we arrived at the hotel neither Mollee nor Ian was waiting in the lobby.  We assumed that they had gotten new keys from the front desk, but neither of them were in the room either.  Melissa asked if they would have gone out looking for us, but I knew Ian would have been smarter than that.  He would know to stay in one place.  I decided to check the hotel for them.  I looked on the rooftop garden, the basement breakfast room, and even asked the front desk staff if a guy with a beard and a blonde girl had come in.  No one had seen them.  Melissa and I frantically tried contacting them in any means possible—Skype, Facebook, LINE, email, etc in case they had wifi were they were. 

It was a little after midnight when they walked in the door.  I immediately questioned Ian.  “Where the heck have you been??  I thought you guys were only going to stay out a little longer!”  He laughed and told me that they had some problems getting home.  They knew it was getting late and weren’t sure what time the subway closed, so they hopped on the train at 10:30.  They got to Seoul Station and had to transfer.  As soon as they got on, a message in Korean played over the intercom.  He said the only other lady in their car got up and left, but they didn’t think anything about it until the train started moving….slowly….much slower than usual and gradually stopped in the middle of a dark tunnel.  Apparently, that train was going through a cleaning cycle because a team of workers came onboard to sweep, mop, and wash while Ian and Mollee awkwardly sat and watched.  Eventually the train started running again, but by the time they got to the next stop, the subway system had closed for the night.  Too far away to walk, they hopped in a taxi, prepared to pay whatever the fee might be.  (However, it turned out to be only $8!  I love cheap South Korea!)

As soon as he told that story, I laughed and told him ours.  As it turns out, the four of us should have stuck together!  By the time Ian and I showered and got in bed, it was after 1 AM, and we had to be up the following morning at 6:45 for our DMZ tour (for real this time!).