Your Seoul is mine!

..Said the city. MAN! I don't even know where to begin telling you about my, Silja's and Jani's trip to South Korea (Han-Guk as the locals say), Seoul. We arrived today (Sunday) very tired but extremely happy.. I mean, we have now seen some of the best stuff in Asia. The only downside was it was quite cold in Seoul as there was quite a brisk wind all the time. Other than that the trip was above and beyond any expectations for me. Fabulous trip! I'll tell you about it, and for a change, let's do it in a logical, chronological way. So here goes.

We woke up at 5.00 A.M. on Thursday morning as our taxi left at 5.45 A.M. for terminal 2 of Beijing International Airport. The flight was with China Southern, and was quite pleasant though not as good as Japan Airlines. After couple of hours we landed to Incheon Airport, which is 50 km west from Seoul. From there we took the cheapest option (naturally) to get to Seoul, i.e. subway with few transfer stations between Incheon and our final destination, Sinseol-dong subway station. After blundering a while we found our hostel, which was situated quite well relative to the price (maybe 9 euros a night/person). The hostel is Backpackers Korea, which is run by two extremely - I can't stress it enough - helpful and chill guys, NK and Sam. I mean, they arranged everything we asked from them instantly without any kind of hint of requiring something in return, did their chores everyday (cleaning, free breakfast (toast, jam, eggs, coffee) responsibly and the best of them all - hanged out with us in the nighttimes... More about it later. The hostel itself was quite simple and small, but contained just the stuff a backpacker/tourist needs. Info on sights, kitchen, showers, WCs and as a bonus, Sam's first Christmas tree :). Beds were comfy, there were security lockers, so we were all set up for exploring downtown Seoul.

On the first day we went seek out for the stream-type of thing that runs through the city centre. It was an ingenious design of assimilating a pleasant strolling avenue to the heart of the city, which was filled with relatively new fleet of cars: the river ran lower than the trafficked streets, and beside it both sides went walking streets, which had some nice lighting in the evenings for the Seoul's millions of inhabitants. We only managed to see some part of it because we got lost in the process, but went to a restaurant for a combined lunch/dinner. There we had our first kimchis, these side dishes which are done by fermenting all kinds of plants. I heard it's very healthy stuff.. The food was mainly seafood, with octopus tentacles as the main ingredient. We akso went to some shopping mall at some point, and it was loaded with newest unique Korean to-be-looks and stuff. From there I bought myself some Korean delicacies to offer for my classmates, and for myself I bought tradional chopstick, which are completely made out of metal. The salesperson, unbelievably was from Beijing's Wudaokou, but worked and studied now in Korea.. So I chatted with her some Chinese.

After a while we decided to go to a Nanta theater, to which Sam had made us reservations for three seats. The show is world-famous and not without a reason: it was well coreographed, the plot was good and simple, the characters were exhilarating and extremely skillful in their stuff. So what did they do? They were 4 cooks in a kitchen (stage), who were banging all sorts of objects with kitchenware. Needless to say, cabbage and other vegetables were sliced in a very messy fashion. What was good was that the audience was also considered; there was some interactivity as they fetched some people from the audience to do stuff for them. And one of the cooks made us all clap our hands and stomp our feets after his drumming solos. Maybe the funniest part of the show... The guy was almost crying in the stage when the audience - after the 5th retry - could not follow his simple stompline. We were very satisfied with the show.

The theater was at some shopping distict called maybe Myeongdong, which combined in a very relaxed way international exploitation corporation trademarked products with the more cheap-looking stalls and grills with Korean sausage, eggcakes, skewers and Tteokbokki (good stuff). I enjoyed the atmosphere there, even though it was somewhat crowded. From here we headed back to our hostel to think about the next thing to do. The clock was already something like 10 or so P.M., so we had to come up with something fast. Fortunately, NK and Sam were just planning on going to a nearby bar/restaurant with some of our fellow "inmates" to taste the famous Korean drink, Soju. There was two Taiwanese girls, with which I spoke some Chinese, then there was the superactive Anthony from California (SJ) with lot to say, very happy guy :), and another American guy from NY, Johnny, with who I spoke about all the shady stuff going on in the U.S. of A. Plus of course me, Silja, Jani, NK and Sam. Time passed on very fast, so it was maybe 3.30 A.M. when we got back and went to sleep. A very nice evening in a local pub with us as the only customers :) The food was also good, I never know the names though...

Korean language and its words were quite hard to remember because of the odd words. The Korean symbols contain some two or three sounds each which form the symbol itself. There are only 24 different sounds, so it should basically be easy to learn in some sense. But the words themselves can be quite hard to say, though easy to pronounce (Korean language belongs to the same Ural-Altaic language family than e.g. Finnish, very surprising, no?). This ingenuity was invented by some emperor of Joseon-dynasty (the ruling dynasty of South Korea up until 1910, when the Japanese occupation started. Only after WWII Japanese were driven away but the country was left without a leader for three years. Russians occupied current North Korea side and the U.S. the current South Korea side. In 1948 Korea was officially divided to South and North Korea, and in 1950-1953 Korean war was waged, which resulted in 2.5 million dead people and the two countries in a technical state of war which continues even today. To prevent this kind of war from ever happening again, a demilitarized zone (DMZ) was established near the border (demarcation line) on both sides.), who loved science and literature. A mighty fine invention I'd say. For a beginner Korean might sound like Japanese, but there is a very big difference if you hear them spoken one after another.

The next day (Friday) we woke up at 9 A.M., so we did not sleep that much. After eating the hostel's breakfast we tunneled ourselves into the Gyeongbokgung palace, which had been in use by the emperors of the Joseon-dynasty. The palace had some cool views and contained a folk museum, which described well the Korean people's history and habits, I think very interesting. Also the traditional Korean instruments were introduced, which was quite nice. After this overdosage of culture we headed off for Insa-dong, which is a market street with lot of tradiotional stuff. I liked the small shops and the street vendors and stalls with their traditional making of Koreand delicacies and so on.. The arcade was quite a drumming experience and the restaurant we visited there offered us some more seafood, vegetable food, Bulgogi (beef) and of course - kimchi. After Insa-dong we decided to go to Insa-Dongs landmark, Jongno-tower. First we went to the uppermost floor, but it contained only a restaurant which we could not afford, so we decided to do something a bit crazier: we went to some 24th floor, which we accidentally saw on our way up was completely empty, just the whole-floor carpet was there. So there we were laying on the mat (or I was) and with one eye I watched down to the big masses of traffic through the glass windows. We continued on to walk the centre-piercing stream, which had some really nice decorations. We could not find anything worth mentioning about, so we headed to the hills, where N-tower (the highest place in Seoul) was located. We took a cable car up the hill, and an elevator up to the N-tower, from where we could see the night-time views from very high up viewpoint. As an additiona bonus we could urinate and watch the views at the same time. The views were cool as they always are. Next on our execution pipeline was Jjimjillbang, which is a common bathhouse for the local people..but not just any kind of.. It was downright amazing!

In Jjimjillbang there were two sides and one big area. The sides were obviously for the different genders, but the big area was for both. In the sauna-area everybody were completely naked, and I think we were the only foreigners there with Jani (the place was on the 12th floor of some normal looking building; we got tipped again by Sam). The place was were cool: there were three different kind of "saunas" (the hottest said it was 93 degrees C, but it just did not feel that much..maybe some 75 C of Finnish sauna temperature I'd say. There were hourglasses in the hottest sauna not to kill ourselves in the heat, but we were in the sauna for quite a long time while the locals were looking their jaws on the ground at us. In some other milder "sauna" there was a small warm pool, where u could just hang around and relax, while the ceiling sprayed some foggy-water down on u.. The pool area next to the saunas had different kind of pools for every taste, and one could also get a massage for a price there. What stroke me the most was the general area: there were people just lying on their mats on the floor, maybe sleeping or relaxing, stretching, watching tv (everybody had though loose clothes on them), getting over a hangover, generally just anything you would like to do after having a sauna.. Some were in the gym exercising while I myself for example took a massage in a chair (very nice). There was a restaurant and a convenience store (plus some health&wellness services) right next to the area so you could maybe go buy there a beer or two and relax in that way. There were also different rooms: oxygen rooms, -3 celsius room, +80 degrees room, where u could further relax with your mates... All was so relaxing and the atmosphere was very warm, soft and calm, just like after a good sauna at a Finnish lake. We were completely absorbed in the situation and felt like never leaving the place or at least searching the place from whichever city we were in in the future. That night we slept mighty well!

We got maybe, like, 6 hours of sleep, as our next day tour started 7.30 with a taxi pickup from the hostel. We were going to go to see the demilitarized zone (DMZ) at the North and South Korean border. The transportation to the spot was done on a tourist bus with lot of Americans, Philippineans and even one Finnish guy (who we never spotted). We first visited a place (Imingjak) where there were a bridge connecting the two countries and along which some prisoners and/or long-time-no-see-relatives could pass on from side to side in some special occations. There was also an altar there for praying for the people's relatives on the other side. Our tour was only a half-day tour, so our tour guide (she said her name was Eugene but maybe its spelled completely different) was rushing us all the time: 15 minutes there, 15 here... It was quite fast-paced stuff. Anyway, we went next to the 3rd tunnel, which had been dug by North Koreans in an attempt to reach Seoul and do some major damage there. There are more of these tunnels and they always had been exposed. We got to walk in the tunnel and see the dynamite holes and stuff inside, although I at least had to crouch there because it was quite a low place. Some museum we went to showed us the major events in the DMZ and some topography of the area, plus some introduction video, which more like seemed to be a propaganda clip to me. Neeext, was an observation deck, from which we could see North Korea:. Photographing was allowed only from behind a certain line, so we could not get good shots of the place - it's all in our heads as we used the binoculars there to scan the area. E.g. there was the world's highest flag pole (by NK) in a fake, deserted village, an industrial complex and some people walking in the rubble. We had our own private tour guide there, a Chinese-Korean guy who was doing a story for the second biggest newspaper of South Korea about this tour, so he told us lot about the history of the areas. Which was nice. On our last stop we took a glance at South Korea's northernmost train station, which quite near to the DMZ. We returned from the DMZ quite tired, so we just went to eat something in Seoul, went to a building called 63 but found it uninteresting, so we decided to head back to the hostel. There we made Sam order us two Korean pizzas, e.g. toppings were bulgogi and sweet mashed potato. We then wanted to rest for the last evening's ordeal for an hour or so, so we did. The plan for this night was to go to Sam's friends 27th (western counting) or 28th (Korean counting) birthday party. This was unbelievable night... From the hostel came Sam, Silja, me, Sam and two New Zealandese girls, Sheryl and Nicole.

We teached Sam some bad manners as he drank some of my Soju in the subway with me. Some Korean older gentleman came to talk to us and said that we should drink whiskey instead of soju, as the soju is too cheap for that purpose :) He gave us his contact info card and was trying to business as any good president of a dry cleaning firm. The area where we were heading was Hongik University area, a free-spirited area with lot of bars, jazz clubs, live performances and youth. We were introduced to Peter and Bear, although their real names were left in the dark for me. Peter was having the birthday, which we first went to celebrate to a restaurant/bar, where we had all kinds of traditional Korean food, a veery good ones, veeeeery good ones. Soju and Rice wine was flowing as we were setting the mood for the evening. We got well along despite some communicational problems from time to time. We then changed place to a Japanese style Izkaya, where we were sitting on the floor with our shoes off, eating some more of delicious cuisine, such as Korean sausage and dip with onions. We were drinking verry much soju, as we as Finns had challenged the Koreans to drink, because I had heard Koreans also are quite heavy drinkers (probably because of the mentality towards work, which resembles Japanese one). So there we were going on about everything, and actually at this point we had been joined by some of Nicole's friends (a couple). We played Korean and Finnish drinking games, and had a lot of good time, enjoying the people, the atmosphere, the food, the alcohol. It was then karaoke-time, so we went to a very living-room looking room in a karaoke house. We sang our hearts out and enjoyed some small cake Sam brought there, but we did not fortunately drink there anything, because it was not allowed. It would have been too much. After this though we went to a convenience store with our own beers, sojus and mugs, and mixed them and drank there. Nobody seemed to care because all the people around us were probably too quite high, the atmosphere was very youthful and good-spirited. Taking our beer-soju shots we went to some undergorund club with shake-dat-ass-kind-of-music, where we were dancing a lot. At this point Sheryl, Nicole and her friends left because of..well they were having the DMZ on the next morning. We were dancing a lot! Lot of Koreans there watching while I conquered the dance floor. We were jumping aroung two metal poles like any good strippers. Somebody wanted to go to a bit more famous place so we went to a famous club, whose name I don't remember, but it was absolutely filled with popula. No chance of doing anything there and the music was..well I think it was OK but the crowd was too much. We left quite fast from there to some UG jazz club, where we winded down and listened to some groovier but downtempo'er beats. Silja, Sam and Peter passed out but Bear, me and Jani were still hanging on in this reality. We did not drink anymore (Bear took one mixer), and after a while, having had enough of the scandinavian jazz-clubbers, we decided to pack our gear take a taxi to our hostel. The time was 5.30 when we were there. Alarm clock was set at 8.00 for us to be able to leave at 9.00 for the Incheon airport and the flight back to Beijing.

All in all I could say that Seouls atmosphere was very open, exciting and filled with all kinds of original ideas. The places were interesting and I bet the summer time would be quite nice, because it would be warmer and there would be more colours (in the nature I mean; the neon lights almost were as excessive as in Tokyo) to enjoy. The people were very friendly in Seoul and they did not stare at us one tenth of the amount they do in e.g. Beijing. I was left with content and excitement towards revisiting Seoul again and especially meeting our fabulous Hosts at Backpackers Korea. Such a devoted guys, such a great city, such a nice Jjimjillbang, such a nice people, so much to do and so little time. This is what I'm talking about when I talk to you about travelling and doing the real stuff!

Gamsa-hamnida to you for listening and reading this text.

P.S. I just wanted to mention this great small detail that tells you something about our hosts. They would not probably have rememberd that we have to actually pay for our stay at the hostel unless we had not reminded them just before going out to the Hongik University area. Sam, with other hand holding soju, first said "no pay later" but then we insisted because we knew we would be quite wasted next morning, so he took the payment and sipped another mouthful of soju.

P.P.S. We were insanely tired in this morning, but now I'm finished with writing this and can go to sleep satisfied for I did something in these past days I would never forget.

Seoul, 3.12-6.12.2009

Silja Seoul

Jani Seoul