Kickin' it in Seoul -emily-

Dustin & I just got back from our uber busy and adventurous three-day (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday) weekend. On Sunday morning we decided to scout out the 2200 bus, a fabled 45-minute trip to Hapjeong subway station in Seoul. If we could find out where to catch it and when, the 2200 would supposedly be the fastest and cheapest way to get into the city. We managed to find a friend who had gotten the 2200 bus schedule from somewhere and then spent the better part of an hour waiting outside EV hoping it would a) come at some point, and b) we wouldn’t miss it by being on the wrong side of the road. As luck would have it we were indeed waiting on the wrong side, but managed to run (dangerous!) through traffic and make it on before it left.

The next two days we spent in Seoul checking out Yongsan (got an internet hub, woo hoo!) and Domdaemun (another market, similar to Nomdaemun) and then Nomdaemun again, which is quickly becoming our favorite place in Seoul. Here I feel obligated to comment on the fantastic shopping one can do in Korea. It is truly amazing, especially in the markets and if you’re willing to bargain (a necessary skill really) you can get amazing deals. Anyway, we finally bought all of our camping gear! So now, on our next three days off we are planning a camping extravaganza possibly to the West Islands down near Incheon, or to Sureoksan, a national park. I’m pretty darn excited about all of the travels that are possible in Korea if you have a tent and good backpack. Camping is allowed virtually anywhere you can find a place to put a tent and there are a lot of remote areas we want to see that don’t offer hotels and such.

Back to our weekend- we spent Sunday night in a ‘love motel’, where you can rent rooms by the hour or the night, wink wink. Contrary to how they sound, love motels here are actually quite nice and inexpensive. We found one that was recommended to us by a friend and spent $65, even with upgrading to a deluxe room with a hot tub. The language barrier becomes increasingly more apparent when you spend a lot of time in Seoul. In English Village, everyone speaks English (as that is the point of the place, duh) and you have to actively spend time trying to learn Korean, as opposed to learning it through necessity. So, this means that we spent an hour and a half trying to find Hotel Mong, where we stayed the night. Apparently our Korean pronunciation wasn’t very good because we asked for directions from quite a few people, but eventually found it on our own. (Mostly because I heard a cat meowing from an alley and we went to investigate, voila!- there was Hotel Mong, this city is an urban planners’ nightmare!)

On Monday we ventured to Ilsan (nearby suburb of Seoul) in search of the veritable Holy Grail of Korean grocery shopping- Costco. You truly haven’t lived until you’ve been brought to tears by the prospect of buying imported goods in bulk. We have Frosted Flakes, we have soymilk and we have five pounds of strawberry jelly. Thank the Lord. Getting our food cache home also brought tears to our eyes, but for entirely different reasons. We missed the EV shuttle that runs from Daewha (Ilsan subway stop) to the Village and had to find a cabby both understood our butchered pronunciation of Paju, English Village (Paju, Yongeo Mal) and knew how to get there. This proved impossible, so while carrying approximately 75 pounds of bulk food items (10 pounds of which was quickly thawing meat) we found first one cabby who understood Guemchon Station (Guemchon Yeok), then switched cabs and found one in Guemchon who knew how to get to English Village. In all $200 (or 200,000 Won) for food stuffs and another $25 in cab fare. O the lengths some will go to for 60 packets of Swiss Miss and 5 pounds of crab meat…

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