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Published: April 22nd 2008
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Arriving in Korea was much more similar to Japan than China... although Suk-In might stop being my friend for comparing her country to Japan. But they are also very westernised in many ways, and a lot of people either speak some english or at least try to understand and explain themselves.
This time we did have some booked accommodation, and pretty much knew how to get there. We stayed in a cheap little hostel in Insadong, which is in the centre, but quite near to most of the palaces and also in a very lively area full of art galleries and nice tea houses and restaurants... although after walking around, it seems like most places are full of nice art galleries, tea houses and restaurants. I think Seoul is art gallery city.
After sleeping for two hours on our last night in Tokyo, we arrived at Incheon Airport in Seoul around midday. We spent most of the night talking to Sergio, Rafael and Manuel, and trying to upload photos onto the blog, which did not work in the end.
We had a cheap hostel booked this time… so no trekking looking for where to stay, or listening to some
dodgy tuk-tuk guy to take us somewhere we didn’t know. We got directions at the airport and got the Airport Shuttle to a stop about five minutes walk from the hostel. We stayed at the ‘holiday in Korea’ (appropriately spelt with one i). The place was nothing special, but it had in-suite bathroom, free breakfast and free internet, and it was in a great location in the Insa-dong area.
We were really tired when we got there, but we just had short rest, a shower and went out to look around the area.
Seoul seems like quite a buzzing city, full of young people, and there was a great street near the hostal with loads of art galleries, restaurants and tea houses, and lots of people wondering around. After a little walk we got a bit hungry, so we went to a restaurant and had a massive meal that made it quite difficult for us to be able to move afterwards. We had some hot-pot type dish with beef, mushrooms and vegetables, and one of those seafood pancake dishes (payeon?) which is so great… on top of that there were all these little dishes to nibble on, and obviously
the traditional plate of Kimchee which is always there in Korean food… for those who don’t know, it is a very spicy fermented vegetable (generally cabbage or a kind of tuber) which is quite strong in taste, but you kind of get quite addicted to it… we really liked it!
After that massive meal we walked around for a bit, but went to the hostel quite early to make use of the free internet and upload all the pics for Japan. We were also very tired still, so tried not to go to bed too late.
The next morning after our free breakfast of boiled eggs, toast and coffee, we went to the nearby Chandeokgung Palace. It was quite a beautiful place, but the visit had to be done as a guided tour, and there were about 200 people in the English tour, with one poor girl trying to explain things… but to make things worse, they did not let you go off on your own… so you had to follow the crowds the whole time, and still not be able to hear much of the explanations. So that one was a bit disappointing even though it looked like
a great place. We then went of to get the cable car to go up to the Seoul Tower, which is at the top of a hill in the middle of the city. The whole of Seoul is pretty much surrounded by mountains in most directions, and crossed by a large river (as much as we could see… since there were quite a lot of clouds, either due to pollution or just normal mist… not sure). But the views from the top of the hill were quite amazing. The only thing was that we started to get the feeling that we were getting charged ‘special’ prices everywhere, and our ‘special’ cable car ticket was even a different colour to everyone else’s. Things were not exactly cheap, but they were not as expensive as in Tokyo.
We decided to walk back down the hill on foot, to keep our tight budget in check, although so far we have not quite been managing to stick to our limit spending… lets hope Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos will balance things out.
After walking back for quite a bit… we were starting to get pretty hungry (we had been going with only our
breakfast and some water, and it was probably nearly 5:00pm by then). We then sat down for another massive meal lots of little nibbling dishes… and this time three different things cooking in front of us on the table… and of course… Kimchee!!!
After that we just about managed to go around the streets of Insa-dong for a bit and then go back to the hostel to rest and to use our free internet.
The next day we visited the Gyeongbokgung Palace, which was much better than the first one, since we could actually walk around at our leisure seeing what we wanted. There was also some re-enactment ceremony which meant there were loads of people dressed up in soldier outfits. After that we went around this residential area which had loads of little narrow alleys with some beautiful old traditional style Korean houses… there were also lots of art galleries around here, so we have decided that Seoul is ‘art gallery city’.
We then walked along a canal which they have done up quite well, considering it goes right through the middle of the city. We then needed to find where to have our massive meal of the
day… we seemed to get into the habbit in Seoul of just having one massive meal late in the afternoon… although we did have some really nice snacks from the street in between, especially those sweet fried cake type pancakes with the caramel filling… they were so delicious!
But we could not leave Seoul without some Korean BBQ… so we found a place that did Korean BBQ and had some delicious pork ribs and some beef too… also with all the little side dishes and of course… Kimchee!!!
We went back to the hostel quite early again, trying to recover from all the lack of sleep that we still had accumulated from our last days in London, then Beijing and Tokyo… and we also had to get up at about 5am again to catch our flight to Hong Kong.
Although we only stayed three nights in Seoul, we had a great time… and the best thing was that we were quite relaxed without any rush to have to see anything in particular, and just enjoyed the food, the streets and all the arty culture that seems to be all around the place with so many young people, and of
course…Kimchee!!!
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Las fotos estan estupendas esperamos sigan disfrutando al max. acá seguimos nuestro tour,con las fotos y comentarios apropiados.