18 August
Met Nell at 10 at the Gyeongbokgung Palace to do a day of touristy stuff since we were both in Seoul at the same time. A lot of that shit is better shared.
So we started off with the palace and walked into the start of the changing of the guard ceremony. I think we missed the first 5 minutes or so but from the rest of it I gather that was just a bit of marching from the previous guard group.
My immediate thought was to start comparing it to the ceremony outside Buckingham Palace. The guards' uniforms were interesting. Seemed to be different colours based on their role (archers one colour, swordsmen another etc...). The fake facial hair glued onto every guard was a highly amusing part of their uniform. Where is their dedication to the part! I guess it's a lot to ask the women to grow a goatee.
The ceremony is basically the same. It's in the courtyard in front of the palace. The overnight guard squad marches in. The new squad taking over marches in. Both march to drums or music of some kind. The captains of the squads talk and the new guy gets a report. Then the old squad marches out to drums and the new squad takes over.
I enjoyed this one more than the UK one mostly because I was right up close to it. There was maybe 200 people there and everyone got a front row spot. The U.K. one is just smashed with a couple of thousand people and it's hard to see or hear anything unless you're right up the front.
That said - I think the UK ceremony is definitely better if you can get a good spot. It has much more pomp and weight to it. It's much more polished (guards arriving on horseback, the uniforms much more impressive) and it has the weight of however many years of The British Empire behind it. You can definitely tell the guards are actual military personnel instead of paid actors performing for tourists.
The palace itself was nice. Again ... the inevitable comparison to the Forbidden City in Beijing was the first thing that came to mind. The buildings themselves were very beautiful. I found the colour scheme very pleasant and they looked in good condition. I'll probably offend someone with this but the buildings all look pretty much the same. Different room configurations and such but the general construction was pretty similar to the Chinese places. Like the ceremony there were very few people there so we were able to get a good look at everything. It was odd to be touring something like this in a city the size of Seoul and have it be quiet. The majority of people that were there looked like Koreans. Not a lot of westerners.
So we walked through the place. Lovely buildings, some nice parkland and a nice big temple at the end we were not allowed to go into. There was also a small section showing some stuff from around the time of the Korean War where the Americans would hang out.
Lots of stuff under construction to completely restore/recreate the whole palace complex. I'm in two minds about this sort of stuff. It's great for the Korean people to be able to go and see their history but if you're rebuilding the whole complex it feels like you're creating a tourist trap.
Immediately outside the gate of the palace we came across this artwork. Seems like an odd pose to put children in but what do I know?
2 questions:
1. Which infamous movie did this remind me of?
2. What do you think they are trying to say with this?
We then headed off to the Bukchon Hanok village which was about a 15 minute walk down the road. It's one of those "traditional villages" where you can see how the city used to look before it modernised. I guess you'd call them hutongs in China. Lots of small houses, narrow roads and laneways. It's basically been turned into a bit of an artistic and tourist area but there are still locals living there and non-tourist businesses operating.
Seoul is so much cleaner than China. I'm thinking of this place as American-Bejiing. It has a lot of the hallmarks of your big Asian cities but it's clean (only rarely do you get the rotting garbage smell and there's not much litter) and modern and there is some sort of order to the way people move and travel. I guess Bejing had order too ... in a large enough sample chaos has some sort of predictability.
We didn't do too much other than just walk around and stick our head in a few places.
2 items checked off the list. Next we were heading towards the Dongdaemun Design Plaza with a lunch stop along the way.
We walked past the modern art gallery and it had a pretty cool exhibit outside. Faux trees. Basically spinning posts with green material to look like foliage. They created quite a breeze and looked pretty awesome.
Nell had a very sensible approach to lunch venue ... we headed towards the craft beer sign. Alas it was closed. So we ended up at the little place next door at a table next to some of the local police. If the cops are eating there it must be good right?
And it was good. Korea delivers again with awesome food. Every meal so far has been great! We both went for what I guess was their lunch special set menu. Nell went for the whole fish (which the police all appeared to be eating) and I went for the BBQ pork. And Nell shouted a beer since she profited from our taxi mishap in Mongolia ;]
The BBQ Pork was delicious. Tender, full of flavour and slightly spicy. The fish was great too. Nicely fried and well seasoned. And we got the usual million side dishes. The best side dish was some sort of potato wedge thing. Not sure if pickled or what but they were great.
Nell apparently has a tattoo on her head that says "white girl who can't use chopsticks" so they immediately handed her a fork. This happened at breakfast as well apparently. I on the other hand did NOT get handed a fork. Maybe my penis means I am genetically able to use chopsticks? I showed them! I'm trying to change my chopstick style so I fumbled my way through the meal looking like a real tourist.
Eventually we got to the design plaza. I'm not entirely sure what I expected to see there. Maybe a museum or exhibit about "design" and what it is. Instead it mostly seemed to be this really awesome looking building with a bunch of shops and a small exhibit on the third floor that was to do with how Korean writing script developed.
So we entered in the building and walked up this really long spiral tunnel that was pure white. It was kind of odd. It felt unfinished. It seemed the perfect backdrop or canvas for some artworks or displays but it was just a big white spiral tunnel. Kind of felt like it was building up to something at the end .. A plaque or something explaining this was the architect's representation of the plight of starving children in Siberia in winter or something. But no. Just a tunnel.
Since there didn't seem to be much else in the building we went to the exhibit about the Korean script. It was actually quite interesting. I'm not entirely sure I understood exactly what it was about until we got to the end. There were some explanatory pieces as part of the exhibit which I think really should have been at the beginning to provide some context but maybe it was all so obvious to Koreans they didn't feel like they needed to.
My favourite part of the exhibit was 2-fold. There was a small video that showed a battle taking place and you could hear the crashing of the ocean as part of it. Around the corner was a room with the night sky painted on the ceiling that was dark and was playing a nice piece of classical music from what I presume is a Korean composer.
In the dark room you lay down on some beanbags, listen to the music with the ocean crashing in the background and look at the stars. There were what looked like some pictures of celebrities and various other Easter eggs in the painting. It was really relaxing. I nearly fell asleep a couple of times.
After the exhibit we wandered around for a while. Went outside. Walked down to the ground floor and had a browse through some of the shops with random Korean things. They called it the "design market". Not sure if just shops or whether they were supposed to be showcasing Korean designed merchandise.
And then Nell and I parted ways. She went to do some birthday shopping for her sister and I went looking for some outdoor stores to pick up a couple of little things I wanted for my bag.
Neither of us were successful in the end.
It's always an odd experience shopping in Asia. They've got "malls" or whatever you want to call them but then they've also got all the random markets and alleyway shopping as well. In my search for outdoor stores (I knew roughly where I was headed) I walked down all these random laneways that felt like a big market. Then around the corner from the woman selling fish on a stick in a dirty garage you've got these bricks and mortar stores for major outdoor brands that could belong in any major shopping centre.
In any case I didn't find what I was looking for. Maybe in Japan. Nothing important though ... something I can easily live without.
After that I went back to the hotel for my usual freshen up. I've been trying to dry some god damn laundry for the last 2 days but it just won't dry in this room. So I ended up sticking it in the washing machine and dryer at the hostel which worked out well. I'll use those facilities more often as I go.
While the washing was on I went out for dinner. Had Korean BBQ. It was pretty hot and humid to be sitting in front of a hot plate cooking my own food but I soldiered on. The food was great! Following the lady's instructions I ordered 2 meats and then I ordered a fish roe fried rice as well.
She seemed surprised when I ordered soju. Not sure why. The right one is really nice.
The meat comes out and they show me how to cook it. So I'm happily cooking away and grabbing my meat off the plate, sticking it on my rice then dipping it in sauce or pairing it with kimchi. Apparently that is not how you eat BBQ. You're supposed to stick the meat and sauce/side in a lettuce leaf and eat it kind of like a taco. Now nobody else in the restaurant was doing this (Korean or not) so I'm not sure if they were having some fun but I was a good tourist and did what I was told. I still preferred my method but they kept refilling my lettuce bowl so I guess I was doing the right thing.
After I'd eaten as much meat as I could I let them know I was done. Then the fried rice happened. SHIT! I forgot I'd ordered that! I didn't need anymore food!
They come out and cook the fried rice at the table. All these ingredients come out, they mix it up and cook it on the BBQ plate then tell me to wait a bit so it cooks completely. I was chatting away to the waitress trying to figure out what she was putting in there but her English wasn't great and I think I was distracting her. Eventually I shut up. I ate maybe half of it but couldn't do anymore.
When I paid the host thought there was something wrong because I'd left half the meal. How are these Koreans all so skinny?
