the amazing race seoul

We started Saturday morning by going to the Itaewon area of Seoul and visiting the War Memorial Museum. This truly is a great place to visit while in Seoul. It houses war memorbilia from all the wars and conflicts that Korea has been involved in. We ended up being there for 4 hours or so! There are tanks, helicopters, airplanes, etc. around the building that you can look at and even go into. Inside, there were 3 floors of all sorts of items to look at, along with several areas you could watch documentaries of events (especially the Korean War). Just a little tidbit of information - the island that we live on housed POW's from the Korean War. In fact, Gohyeon has a POW Museum that Ken and I have been meaning to go see. (We have actually toured the outside, but it was closed on the day we went.)

From there, we headed to the streets of Itaweon. This area has a large concentration of expatriates due to a nearby military base. We strolled the streets for a couple of hours exploring all the street vendors and antique shops. We actually saw a Norwegian lady that I knit with in one of the shops! What a small world. I could tell that Ken was winding down, but one of the main areas I wanted to visit was Insadong Street.
It is a pedestrian only street (at least it was on the weekend) and houses many tea shops,
art shops, antique shops
and Korean souvenir stores. I definitely didn't get enough time here - it will be my first stop when I return. There were also alot of trendy boutique shops.
After dinner (yes, we ate at TGI Fridays one night and Tony Romas the next night in case you were wondering if we ate at any wonderful restaurants. Remember that we gravitate to anything western when possible!), we returned to the hotel to collapse and watch one of the blackmarket DVDs we bought on the street.
We had already purchased return bus tickets for 9:30 the next morning. We thought that if we caught a cab around 8:15 we would safely be there in plenty of time. After all, it was Sunday morning and hopefully traffic would be light. What we didn't count on was foot traffic. The Seoul Marathon had begun that morning. We got into the cab and circled the block before we realized that we wouldn't be able to get through for the time being. So we ditched the cab and headed down into the subway. After riding a few stops, I realized that we had gone one stop too far and we had to get off and turn around. I think Ken had decided that there was no way we would make the bus. We had to get off at one point to transfer to another line. It was at this point that I decided we should try the cab again. I felt like some of the people probably feel on The Amazing Race when they are in the cab trying to get somewhere quickly. We made it to the bus in time - I think it left maybe 2 minutes later. It was such a nice trip - I will leave you with a picture of one of the beutiful floral arrangements in the hotel.

doing the dmz

As I mentioned in the previous post, Ken and I went to Seoul last weekend. The bus ride up there was uneventful. It took around 4 1/2 hours at the most and the bus was very nice - had seats that reclined and foot rests. We stopped around midway and we were able to go to the restroom and get something to drink and/or eat. The subway was right outside the bus station, so we hopped on and headed to the hotel. We stayed at the Lotte Hotel, which was downtown. It really is a beautiful place and was such a convenient location.



We got up early the next morning and boarded a bus bound for the De-Militarized Zone, or DMZ.
(I am not going to bore you with alot of history. But if you are interested, just click on the underlined words and they will take you to more detailed explanations of where we were.) The bus had 2 tour guides - one that translated into Japanese and the other spoke English. They both were very good and kept us entertained with little facts and stories on the 45 minute bus ride up there. After going through a checkpoint where we had to all present our passports, we arrived at the location of the 3rd Tunnel. There are 4 known tunnels that South Korea has found between the North and the South and this is the closest one to Seoul. It was discovered in 1978. A North Korean defector has said that there are 20 of them. North Korea denies it, but South Korea feels that these were built for possible invasion. We donned hard hats
and rode a monorail down into the tunnel. I had a wave come over me of "I shouldn't be doing this, it is claustrophobic for me" as we first started down the tunnel, but it quickly subsided, thank goodness. It was very narrow going down. Once we got to the bottom, we were able to walk in the actual tunnel until we got to 70 meters (I think that is right) of North Korea. We were not allowed to take pictures in the tunnel. Picture taking was limited - the guides were continually reminding us when and where we could take pictures. We then boarded the bus and headed for the Mt. Dora Observatory, where we could see North Korea.
It was interesting to note that most of the trees were cut down on the North Korean side. Our guide said that this was due to the fact that they needed the fuel and also so that spies are more easily spotted. There is also a flag on the North Korean side that supposedly is the tallest in the world.
It was difficult to take any pictures due to the fact that we were only allowed pictures from behind a certain yellow line. However, there was an abundance of binoculars to look through.
Our tour guide said that we were fortunate in that it was an extremely clear day.
We then stopped again at Dorasan Station . This is the last train station going north.
I made a couple of friends here. They don't smile much though.

Our last stop was at Imjingak Park, the site of the Freedom Bridge. This is the only bridge connecting North and South Korea. After a Korean lunch (we sat next to a man from Minnesota who was in Seoul to run a marathon), we boarded the bus back to Seoul.

Even though you really don't see a whole lot, this was quite an experience. Just to know that you are so close to a country that is so shut off from the world is something you don't do every day. It is sad that it has to be this way. Our tour guide said that there are 100 million Koreans separated between the two borders. Unbelievable.