Ilsan

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Ooh Wee! probably one of the coolest outings we've had yet!

Me (cath) in my highly evolved brain forgot to bring my ID photos with me which is, we're told, a pretty important part of getting an alien card. (Take me to your leader... 😊We tried, rather unsuccessfully, to see if the neighbouring town just down the road would have a place that can take ID photos which turned out to be a really great ID photoless walk. We were told that if we took the staff shuttle bus (free trip, always keen, yay!!) into Ilsan (one of the neighbouring towns on the way to Seoul) we could get them taken at a booth in the subway. What a plan!! So we did 😊

We went with another SA girl, Pauline (been at EV for about a month), and an American, Nate (he's been here 7 months thus designated tour guide) as soon as they'd finished their classes -round 6:20ish. The trip in took about 30min and dropped us off right outside the subway. Getting ID photos taken was a easier than I thought it would be, well, as soon as we figured out what buttons to press, when to wait and when to swop the confused 'huh' face (usually worn interchangably with the 'wo-oh, this is so cool!' face when walking around the towns) to the smiling one usually accepted in ID photos.

We caught a taxi and headed to a big shopping complex called La Festa. I was surprised to recognise a lot of the shops and brands there... they even had a 'Body Shop'! They're big into Nike, Reebok, Adidas and Superman brands and the sports shoe shop, 'Athlete's Foot' 😊

There were tons of stalls on the streets too. Mostly things like gold jewlery and clothes (everything at pretty cheap prices!) and then there were heaps of food places with mostly pork or seafood being cooked in some way or other over a gas cooker. The food actually looks really appetising! Much to Pauline's protests over how we'll all end up with typhoid or hepatitus and grow purple gills and a third eye or something, we bought a kind of pork (at least we think it was pork 😊 ) kebab... Pauline didn't get one. Shame. It wasn't at all bad 😊

The crazy thing is, is that most of the stores will have a selection of their merchandice on display just outside their shops, which isn't all that wierd, but none of them, not even the ones with the R400 shoes on display, will have someone watching over the goods!

The lighting aroung all the buildings is all very similar to the lighting we saw in HK... high rise buildings all lit up with neon advertising (We think it's advertising, it could also be the answer to the chicken or the egg question... who knows?? I let you know for sure once I've learned hungul)

Seeing as the reason to go into Ilsan was to get dinner we decided to find a place to eat. (The ID photos were the excuse to tag along with the cool kids) Hows this for a marketing strategy? All the restaurants have one or two of their chefs out in the street braaing some of the food on the menu 😊 ...also mostly pork (and any part of the poor animal... from it's ribs and meat to it's intestines!) and seafood (calamari and clams and stuff... not really fishie fish).

Nate suggested a 'galbi' place. You go in and order your meat (they can't speak English and none of us could speak Korean... so another surprise!-we-hope-it's-pork meal!). There's a big basin in the middle of the table filled with coals which another waiter comes and covers it with a grid and pulls down an extractor fan to suck out all the smoke. Just about as soon as that was finished, the first waiter brings you your raw meat and a whole bunch of bowls filled with unusual, unrecognisable probably spicy things 😊 You get handed a finger towel and a trust-me-you'll-need-this bottle of water.

The whole thing is really socialble, and actually tasty spicy, Darrell's favourite meal this far even!! Some of the bowls had garlic cloves, some had lettuce leaves and sweet corn, some have plain letture leaves and leaves that taste like a cross between sesame seeds and mint! the idea is that once the meat's been cooked you cut it into strips and put in onto a lettuce leaf with a bit of the spicy cabbage strips and a chunk of garlic and some sauce and you eat it like that... It's actually really nice!

We stopped off at a convenience shop on the way home at ticked off a bit more of our grocery list... and had more fun trying to figure out what a lot of the other things were! Have you ever considered how similar the packaging for toilet cleaner and fabric softener look! 😊

With all our things ticked off (and a few added) we headed back to the bus station for the hour trip home.

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Photos

Ilsan by taxi
Bright lights and busy streets

Night market
People selling everything for gold earrings to pork ribs at 11pm

The Superman store
Any brand name goes!

Galbi
Pork on the coals, and plent of other little plates of very different tastes