Korea!!!

Korea

It’s amazing how many places you end up going to just because you CAN. I have to admit, that’s one of the best things about living in Asia.
Now I must admit, I never really thought about going to Korea before we moved here. It is supposed to be a shopper’s paradise and many tours take shopping crazed people over there. Boy do they ever fill the streets!!! Not only that, we took the Queen of Shopping with us! Janet (our counselor at school) absolutely loves shopping and was truly in her element, weaving through the throngs of people and booths across Seoul. Nothing like learning from the master!
The city has a cool “City Bus Tour” service that allows you to get on and off the bus for the entire day for only $10. It’s really a great deal. Now, knowing that people come to Korea to shop…guess where some of the stops are???? Well, you got it…it’s the major shopping areas!!! We did not (thankfully) hit all of them but the ones we did were definitely colorful, noisy, and interesting. The first one we hit was the Itaewon area – actually…we went to Itaewon every day we were there!!! They have regular shops along with street vendors selling just about anything you could imagine wanting to buy. The streets are packed with people from all over the world. We were impressed that so many people spoke at least some English, and some quite a bit (far more than I could respond in Korean…TaeKwonDo only provided us with a few useful phrases). Unlike Vietnam, these people were very polite and friendly and while some tried to ‘push’ a bit, they were very calm about it and took “no” for an answer.
Janet is an avid Harley-Davidson rider and has a mission to locate every Harley-Davidson store in the world to take a picture of it – with her in it - and buy some shirts from them. Well…the Seoul HD store happens to be near Itaewon so we took a VERY cheap taxi ride out to it (it was actually only a few long blocks away).
Yongsan Station was Jeff’s love…it was the electronics market area. Janet and I walked around the area while Jeff enjoyed a trip up and down the many floors, dreaming of all that was available.
We did manage to squeeze in a couple of cultural stops…we went to Namsangol, a traditional Korean Village. They had preserved some of the old houses with courtyards and small garden areas around. There’s a larger, more developed one that we just didn’t have time to visit…maybe next time. There are many similarities to Japanese structures with the open doorways, shoes removed and gates at the entranceways. We also saw the Gyeongbkgung Palace. A spectacular palace in a beautiful setting, juxtaposed between stately, modern buildings and vast mountain vistas. Truly a great setting, yet sad to see it encroached upon. Alas…seems to be a problem everywhere.
Not to let you think we passed up on the shopping….we did go to two other huge market areas. The Namdaemun is absolutely gigantic (please forgive me if I’ve named the wrong one…I truly can’t keep the names straight). Anyway….this place is really two shopping areas. One is nothing but street markets, packed so tightly it’s next to impossible to weave your way between the vendors, the stalls, the people, the food…it’s like Otovalo compressed into 2 blocks. Unbelievable!! We ate in one of the many booths there…they did call us in and served us pretty traditional Korean food (of which Jeff, bless his heart, saved me from the meat portions of the dish). Janet and I spent quite a bit longer there while Jeff decided to go back to Yongsan Station (gee, I wonder why). The other section is a HUGE department store type area where you can truly shop until you drop. Apparently they re-open at something like midnight and you can shop until 5:00 AM. We went through it at a far more normal hour.
I couldn’t leave Seoul without a look at the Kukkiwan, the Tae Kwon Do headquarters. I truly expected the place to be closed…it was Sunday when we had the chance to go there. Much to my surprise the place was open and FULL of cars and people. It turns out it was the weekend for the Hanmadang 2005 and we wandered into the opening ceremony!!! I could have watched the forms and sparring all day! There was something pretty special to make it there and actually walk around inside!