I'm a Seoul man
Trip Start
Jul 24, 2007
1
43
50
Trip End
Ongoing
Seoul,
Seoul,
Korea Rep.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
The first leg was a 9 hour flight to Hong Kong, 2 hour gap, then on to a new plane for the 3 hour skip to Seoul. All was going well until the pilot uttered those fateful words "well folks looks like we will be arriving ahead of schedule" DOH!!!
Cue thunderstorm, lightning and Barry's big dipper style wobbles. The International airport was then closed with us doing loop-de-loops up above. Because of the rollercoaster effect loads, and I mean loads, of passengers started calling for Hughie and Ralph...........Yuk, they even ran out of hughie bags.........double Yuk Yuk
bless my seoul
.So we diverted to the smaller airport, landed and were then told, velly solly but you no get off here!!!! At this point things started getting a bit raucous. The cabin crew couldn't understand the Korean announcements, the people on the flight are going bonkers (99% of people preferrred to get of at Gimpo), people started shouting, smoking and generally causing a bru-har-har.
So after an hour of mayhem the pilot says, we are going back to Incheon airport and could everyone sit down. Well, it was like a scene out of Spartacus.............everyone started standing up and as the stewardeses got one to sit down someone else jumped up!!! Crazy. Then what I guess was a rendition of "we shall not be moved" was belted out............minutes later the doors opened and everyone piled out:-)
Luckily we got someone on the plane to wite down our address in Korean as it was total chaos outside the hairyport trying to get joe maxis as everything was closed (including the ATM, it shuts at 10 oclock).
After all that we got a god nights kip and headed out on the streets. Seoul is really clean and really safe. Shops had REAL mobile phones outside on display, stores all left their doors open and unattended and everywhere generally had a feel of easy going-ness. The lingo was a bit hard to pick up, but we did our best. The few utterances allowed me to do impromtu lessons in Eng-er-ish with some of the school kids as we went about the place. It s amazing if you just relax in the main square or temple ground, loads of locals come over trying to make contact and speak a few words
Bright sparks
. They are really mega pleased when you speak back in Korean, an nyong ha se yo!There is a great sense of old and new integrated in Korea, sparkly skyscrapers sit beside centuries old temples and designers stores are next to dingy markets. Unfortunately the only designer thing I have is my stubble.
The Olympic torch was there for part of the relay and talk about inflaming passions! There were protests galore with thousands of Chinese flown in to "show support" for the Beijing olympics, orchastrated rent-a-mob supplied with flags and banners. There were also a plethora of protest groups, Tibet, north korea, japan.......most of whom ended up getting lamped by the Chinese!!! One bloke tried to set himself on FIRE in the middle of the road luckily the feds got to him and dampened his enthusiasm.
We also took a trip to the DMZ De-militarised Zone and North Korea. Talk about stepping back into the Cold War, we had a long list of things we could and couldn't do, what not to wear and what not to say. It was a great trip and amazing to see this live theatre played out in front of your own peepers. The DMZ is a 4km wide strip that runs for 280 km coast to coast, the gap has become one of the worlds best spots for wildlife as their is no human interaction at all in this zone
Darling buds
.Food here is very important and is the main focus of the day. As you know they eat some different things including mans best friend! although they say the grub was really pedigree, we didn't paws at those stalls, we just went walkies on past.
We really enjoyed Korea but now it is time to head on.
"Popped in, Seouled out"
Next stop: Taipei
