After our Christmas day fun, we headed up to Seoul to meet Becky's friends, Amy, Liz and Ellie. Due to their early arrival time this meant leaving Gwangju at silly o'clock in the morning so we arrived at the airport at about 9am. While waiting for them to arrive we saw a man dressed in a Winnie the Pooh outfit, holding a large bunch of flowers, who appeared to be waiting for someone. Possibly Christopher Robin. Sadly he was still waiting when we left so we didn't get to find out. Anyway, it was really good to see the girls get here. As nice as our friends and colleagues are here, it's nice to hear English accents and have English humour around.
We jumped on a bus to Seoul straight away and, 40 minutes later, arrived in Hapjeong and made straight for the hostel. After ditching our bags we hopped on the subway and made our way to Itaewon. Itaewon is an area we had heard much about from our colleagues so we had high hopes. Possibly too high, as we were thoroughly unimpressed and a little concerned that Seoul was going to be a bit of a letdown. It was dirtier than anywhere else we've been since arriving in Korea, quite a depressing looking place and full of foreigners (I should point out, when we say foreigners, we mean people who aren't from Korea). It was disconcerting to be around so many English speaking people! We stayed there for lunch anyway, so I got to have my first fry-up in a very long time. We decided to waste no more time there and jumped back on the subway in an effort to get to Insadong, which we'd read had nice traditional shops and loads of nice restaurants.
First stop was Deoksugong, an impressive palace and park across the square from City Hall. There was an art museum there too - it was quite nice but only really warranted a short visit. From there we tried to get to the shopping area, only to find we'd got off the subway a stop early and it was quite a walk to get there. So back on the subway it was! We then took a bit of stroll up the street but were again a little disappointed, as it seemed to be just a standard high street. As the girls were flagging somewhat due to the jet lag we went into a nice little coffee shop then headed back to the hostel. Reading the Lonely Planet on the subway we realised that actually we'd gone the wrong way from the subway and Insadong was somewhere else entirely! Oops. So our first day in Seoul was a little disorganised and disappointing.
The next day was much better. We went to actual Insadong in the morning, which was really pretty and had nice gift shops etc. We also got to see some traditional Korean dancing - I'm not sure exactly what it's called but it involves a lot of (mostly) men dancing around with various percussion instruments, a couple of horns, and very long ribbons or pom poms attached to their heads. It looks a lot more impressive than it sounds! We then found a little curry restaurant for lunch, which pleased Becky and I immensely.
After lunch we headed over to Seodaemun Prison, where the Japanese had held hundreds of Korean activists in extremely harsh and cruel conditions. On arrival, a young Korean guy who was working there asked me where we were from. He was very excited when I said 'England', and began pointing to the Machester United badge on his jacket and saying the name of some footballer or other. Using possibly the only bit of football knowledge I have, I managed to remember the name of a Korean footballer who plays in the UK - Park Ji Sung. This seemed to make him very happy, so he proceeded to follow us around the main museum, unlocking cell doors so we could pose inside and giving us some nice little pin badges as souveniers. In case we haven't made it clear enough in our previous blogs, Korean people are ace. All in all, it was a pretty depressing place, but well worth a visit, if only to learn more about the way the Koreans were treated by Japan. Next we headed to Dongdaemum Market. Dongdaemum is a total shopper's heaven. We only went into one of the many, many department stores and we spent at least 2, if not 3, hours lightly browsing the 8 floors. Sadly, I was still unable to find a jumper that fits me. Booo! We had our dinner on the top floor before heading back to the hostel again to prepare for a night out by drinking a large amount of soju.
Our night out was pretty ace. We went to the Hongik University area, a ludicrously short taxi ride away from our hostel and started trying to find a few bars mentioned in our guides. First up was Vinyl, a tiny little bar that served remarkably cheap cocktails in what appeared to be IV bags, whilst playing a lot of cool music. It's an ace little place which is an absolute must for any booze hungry tourist. After a couple of rounds of alarmingly coloured drinks we joined a group of Canadians on their bar crawl. I was determined to locate Skunk Hell, a dingy punk club listed in the Lonely Planet, and was overjoyed to discover it was right across the street from Vinyl. Unfortunately, it was also closed. Instead we went to an underground (as in downstairs, not secret or incredibly cool) hip hop bar and danced around poles, whilst trying to fend off the advances of a very drunk Korean man. Although initially he seemed to be offering us money for Becky, he soon switched his attention to whichever one of us was standing within arms reach. Including me. Fun! On the plus side, he did buy us quite an expensive round of drinks. Next up was the amusingly named Ho Bar, where we stayed for the remainder of the night. Good times were had by all. Probably. The photos suggest we had fun anyway!
After sleeping off our hangovers, we went back to the university area. It was really cool, full of cool boutique clothing shops, coffee shops, noraebangs and bars, as well as having all the Western style shops that Itaewon seemed to offer. Not really sure why everyone doesn't go there instead really! As the shopping didn't really have much to offer me, I spent most of my time taking pictures of weird and wonderful graffiti. Having said that, I was able to find some fabric paint at last - I've not found it in any art shops anywhere else, so may be able to turn out some new t-shirts soon. Also, we were all greatly entertained by the subtly named Condomania. That night was an early one, as we had to be early to go find our bus connection for our ski trip!
This post is probably long enough now, so the next section will follow soon. Maybe. Maybe not.
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