London to Korea
Trip Start
Unknown
1
5
Trip End
Ongoing
Seoul,
Korea Rep.
Friday, December 14, 2007
our last night in london was spent with brad, debs, yakka, and annie. we dropped off a bit of stuff, my precious stereo and speakers, guitar, jackets, etc. we also showed off our new camper van, the refugee smuggler. we've bought a big long wheel based 1988 white transit van, with a high roof thats been converted, sought of, to a campervan. its has a gas hot plate and grill, two couches which equal one bed, cupboard space for all ambers clothes, and it had a chemical toilet, which we removed to make room for more of ambers stuff. its already been broken into with the crappy old stereo stolen. which is a bit annoying as we now no longer have a drivers side door lock, so we have to lock and unlock through the passenger side door, but it did give me the excuse to go and buy a whizz bang new stereo, so not a complete loss really.
sarah stayed with us last night aswell. she was invaluable in the morning trying to get us ready to go, helping us pack and throw things out. we were flat out just trying to get ready, as it seems we have been since april this year. with building the shed and painting the house and holidays, birthdays(my 30th especially, but that's another story), family and all that king of stuff we haven't had a quiet weekend to ourselves for 6months. for the last three we've just been working all day, coming home picking up a paint brush, or a hammer or reading travel books etc just trying to get ready in time. long days, a bit testing at time, but we got there. we actually ended up leaving right on time at just before three to get our 8 o'clock flight.
we had to drive the camper van around to brendon proudfoots house. he has kindly offered to look after it for us while we are away in australia and india until we pick it up in May. but of course, as an experienced london driver should know, peak hour, in traffic, on a friday, is not a good combination. it took us nearly 2 hours to drive from friern barnet to edgware(3miles?), blowing our estimates way out the window. after alot of hair pulling and a few choice words thrown in now and then we droppped it off. but then we had to board the underground in now peak hour time, with our backpacks, but not just two we had four. ambers bag 27kg, mine 25 kg, my hand luggage about 15kg, and even sarah had my old backpack full off stuff for her to take down to brighton to store for us. so poor little sausage not only had to come to the airport in peak hour with a big heavy pack but also had to say goodbye turn around and head back down to brighton with said pack and not even have the reward of flying anyway. a treasure she is.
So in a big rush we made it on the plane in time, me smuggling this overloaded pack thorugh with out to much drama. With our krispy kreme donuts inhand, which we remembred, but we forgot to claim back the VAT on all the stuff we had recently bought eg camera, so lost out on a fair few hundred of pounds, but at least we were on the plane. seats were in the middle but happy to be leaving london. we bought one way tickets to and from australia becasue it worked out a lot cheaper. so we were flying Korean Air, which we thought might be a bit dodgy, but turns out to be the best flight we've ever had to date.(at least the london to seoul leg). big seats, heaps of leg room, good food/movies/games, definelty recommend it, and cheap. we weren't sure what to expect when landing, the only real research we did was into the temperature, which we were both surpirised to find the highs expected were only 4 degrees with lows of minus two. chilly. anyway the research we did proved to be correct, if we were tired getting off the plane, as soon as we hit outside we were bolt upright. it was cold cold cold and windy. a little tip if ever getting off and incheon air port seoul GET THE BUS. there are buses running continually to all major hotels and accomodations places in the city and are only 14000 won. i tell you this becasue we didn't get the bus, we got a taxi, which was 93000won about 50quid, and was longer than getting the bus. but the buses are nice, big comfortable, not the crappy buses that you would normally think of. GET THE BUS.
to celebrate the start of our trip and not to follow any of the budgeting boundaries that will come into play when we start our world tour properly, and becasue we 'saved' money on our air flights, amber book us into the five star sofitel hotel for the night. very nice, room 1114, oops sorry suite 1114, is recommended. great views of the city. we were so tired after flight, as you always kind of are, even if you do get sleep, we nearly just went to sleep straight away. but we pulled ourselves together found some intestinal fortitude and forced ourselves out into the now freezing cold. and once again when outside we were instantly awake. its funny, interersting, puzzling, i'm not sure of the word, to find yourself in a country where you don't speak the language, can't read any signs, and not really quite sure about the food. but anyway we strode out on our little discovery tour or seoul, not daring to go to far, but to go just far enough to try and discover something about the people and the place we were visiting for one night. the one thing you should take with you when trying to discover a place and remember it besides a map is a camera to record where you have made your first bold steps. this unfortunately we didn't do. stupid. so our quick tour literally just took us out of the hotel across the road down the street turned left, walked down a road around athe block then back up the road from whence we had just come. brave, aren't we.
anyway by this time we were hungry so our next major decision was to choose a restaurant, which isn't the easiest decision to do when you can't read the signs. so walked around for a little, summing up our options, dazzled by all the flashing neon lights beckoning us to come in to eat some food we had no idea being offered. and also just trying to find the place where to neon light corresponds to isn't easy either. different to western society where most eateries , bars etc are on the ground floor of a building, it was hard to tell which floor these restaurants or bars were on or even to find the stairway that lead to their entrance. but anyway we ummed and ahhed for awhile but then came along the neon lights that just meant Korea really. THE BRONX 'live and jazz' bar had our name wrtten all over it, in neon to boot. so we timidly made our way into this live and jazz bar, not quite sure what to expect, not sure of the acutal customs in play. but we walked in, was met by a lovely young korean hostess, who us not speaking korean and her not speaking english was able to sit us down with a menu at a window side table, all by ourselves, with not only the glowing neon lights outside as our view but also the glowing eyeballs of the koreans looking at us to luminate or menu. speaking of which, was not only in korean but also english, to help the weary traveller struggling to stay above water in this strange new land. so with the help of the bilingual menu, we ordered beer and nachos! what else would you have in korea. amber also ordered some beef dish. described as beef with noodles, harmless. while waiting for our beers to be served, we hear this deep soothing barrotone voice come over the sound system, announcing something in korean. the only words we got were frank sinatra. then frank sinatra started playing, obviosly the live and jazz had just begun, our beers arrived and we talked away about this and that, and then that barry white voice came over the loud speaker again, annoucing again blah blah blah miles davis, we turned around to see this skinny little korean dude, all deck out in a cream leisure suit with a purple tutrle neck jumper, and his died blond hair looking oh so cool and swarve with his well kept moustache, and pearly white teeth. the dj. we nearly snorted our beers through our nose we laughed so hard. very very funny. so the nachos come out which actually just proved to be weird tasting potato chips, with thick melted orange cheese on top. not delectable, but we got through them and thank god we did. we had maybe half a beer with those. ambers harmless beef dish comes out. beef with noodles. not sufe what kind of noodles they were but they were transparent, and beef is beef right. no. amber had one bite started to say 'this is really nic..!' before flames shot out of her nose mouth and ears and smoke rose from her head. well not really, but you can imagine. HOT HOT HOT. flapping of hands, skulling of beer, the whole works then asks me to try some. and i agreed, tasted and the same thing HOT HOT HOT except i had tears and red face, ordered more beer more beer, waving the hostess over to bring this relief, it didn't work. so we did the universal cheque sign(you know pretending to sign your name) paid the bill walked out asap and went into the soothing cold cold air with mouths open breathing in that chilly salvation, sweet sweet cold cold air. nachos not a silly option now. so we walked back to the hotel, mouths open wide, courting some strange views from the locals, pick up the new whizz bang camera we had just bought(Nikon D80), and head off back into the night to tkae some happy snaps. doing our creative best to capture the feel and the vibrancy of this new land, we took five photos kept two, deleted the rest and head back to the hotel tired cold and hungry. great start. next day, no idea of the date now, but sat or sunday, we woke really early ordered about 50 pounds worth of room serive breakfast, then back to sleep. brilliant sloth. when we woke again, this time alot happier and more content than before, we had just enough time to shower pack and leave before it was check out time. so we left our bags at reception, and with five hours to kill we headed out into seoul again, but this time we had day light on our side, no neon lights to lure us away from our path.
one thing we noticed about seoul, was that everyone was really short and really well dressed. and not just dressed nicely i'm talking suits and dresses and well done hair the whole bit. and very very few westerners. we saw maybe 5 total the whole time we were there, and of course they were aussies, shorts and acubras. can't miss'em. we had sussed out the train station the night before, and read the hotels guide to seoul, and amber conveintly found two markets right near our hotel one with about 10,000 shops! the other not far away but not with quite as many. so we headed for the 10000 shop one called Naedamun Market, just a short train ride away. it was spot the big tall white guy, everyone so short, but so well dressed. it was sunday morning so the market wasn't packed, which was a god send really. it was good to see, but i would hate to try and buy something there when really busy. all the shops are crammed togther either side of the roads and then a line of shops in the middle too, with no room to move either side even when empty. trying to move around when full must be a nightmare. amber did really well and managed not to buy anything while we were there. got a few token photos, then headed off to the Dongdaemun Market. this was much more spread out, not so many shops more big department stores one side of the road and an areana the otherside where the market is. i was over this market walking exercise, so to placate the hungry beasy we found burger king and had more american/korean fair of a double bacon cheese burger meal. yuck, but full. we caught the bus, direct from the sofitel out to the airport it took and hour and a half to the minute to get there. very punctural. but while at the airport, to pass the time amber and i have a habit of peopole watching. and we started noticing all these young korean couples dressed in matching outfits. we didn't believe it at first but then noticed more and more and more. same shirt, pants, shoes, bags! everything. we couldn't work it out if it was a tradition or cool or something newly married couples do. must find out. but they were eveywhere. (we ate more junk food at airport, so sick of it now. for the last two months while painting and showing house and just being so busy all we had been eating was junk food. we now can't wait to get australia to get some good food. amber seafood and me a CHICKEN PARMA!!!)
but yeah so Korea, we'd like to visit again maybe, but our lasting impression is of big cities, well dressed small people who like hot hot food. and that oh so cool dj.
