Seoul City

  Seoul, Korea Rep.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006

After spending a few days exploring the cultural relics in Gyeongju we decided it was time to head to the capital to soak up the atmosphere of another Asian megopolis. Seoul is home to around ten million people - it's a lively city that manages to combine spectacular high rise buildings with ancient temples and palaces; leafy boulevards with bustling markets, of course there's plenty of neon too and so many gadgets for sale that Jim, ever the technophile, is in seventh heaven!

03 Downtown

Our first day in the big smoke was spent shopping for said gadgets (the seven storied Technomart turned out to be the best place for the 160GB hard drive Jim needed for his photos - beware: we already have 10,000 for your perusal and we still have six months of traveling to go!), successfully applying for Chinese visas, booking the tickets for the ferry to China and getting Jim's camera serviced - as you see it's been worked pretty hard recently.

09 Great hat

After a day of such chores we were pleased to be able to get the guidebook out again on Tuesday and see some sights. We started with a couple of museums: the first was dedicated to explaining the intricacies of courtly life during the long reign of the Joseon Dynasty (1392 - 1910). An extremely strict Confucian social hierarchy governed everything from the clothes you were allowed to wear to the type of food you could eat and how you could decorate your house. It's fascinating to observe just how far custom and religion dictated your social standing.

08 Military museum

After pondering the ancient traditions we made our way to the really interesting National War Museum - not only does it give an overview of the military history of the country, but it gave a really detailed account of the Korean War too. We were both pretty astounded with how quickly the Northern Communist soldiers made it to Seoul (only three days and the capital was in their hands) and just how close the Republic came to being overrun completely - at one point the South Korean / UN force held only a thin tract of land around Busan, right down in the south east corner of the country. The exhibitions served as an excellent history lesson for our trip to the Demilitarised Zone later in the week.

04 Autumn park

As well as visiting the museums we also spent time wandering around a few of the many palaces Seoul has to offer. Visually they're like a cross between a Chinese and Japanese traditional architecture (lots of sloping tiled rooves and painted wood), but they all have one very typically Korean twist. They all incorporate special Ondol under floor heating - it's a building tradition that continues to this day - but where they now lay hot water pipes under the floor, previously they used to light fires and allow the hot smoke to pass through special subterranean flues. The technology may be very simple, but it's really welcome when the weather is so bitingly cold; we also discovered it was perfect for drying all our laundry very quickly!

12 European christmas

The other highlights of our trip to the Korean capital included getting the cable car up the hill to Seoul Tower to see the city in all its neon nighttime glory; walking through what was optimistically called "European Christmas World" (a rather tacky affair it turned out) and dining on Korean haute cuisine. In total I think we were served 28 dishes - including acorn porridge.

Through travelling in China and Japan we've got quite adept at using chopsticks, although the Korean insistence on using thin stainless steel ones does make eating a trickier affair. Coupled with that they also seem to have very strict dining etiquette - spoons are widely used, but no knife must ever be placed on the dinner table - so scissors are used instead. We got round these formalities, but it did remind us of one amusing episode in Lhasa where we saw a young Chinese girl eating with her family - struggling to use a knife and fork - she soldiered on for a time, but eventually her parents asked the waiter to bring her some chopsticks. How different from at home!