Seoul Searching

Okay, so we're back from Seoul. Had a great time... beautiful city and all... and definately a lot more to do there then in our small town of Masan. We were glad to get back though.

Anyway, here are the pictures/videos/stories.

Day 1

It all started Friday night after work. Our bosses gave us pears as a gift for Chusok. Little did we know we'd each be getting pears the size of softballs... and 7.5kg of pears each.






Our fridge... dominated by pears.

After unpacking our pears, we took off for Seoul at 12am. We were expecting a MUCH longer bus ride than usual... but it only turned out to be 4 hours. We weren't supposed to check in to our hostel until 8 or 9am... so we had 4-5 hours to kill and were really tired........ so we rented out a DVD-bang (DVD room) to sleep in. In South Korea you can rent out these rooms with a date/friends/by yourself and watch a movie... but we chose to sleep instead.


Cozy. Until I elbowed Dawna in the head.


Random sign at the hostel. No dead-drunkeness? Love the PM typo.


Shooters?! In Seoul?


The subway line in Seoul. I thought Toronto's version was advanced... look at all those stops...


Random shot of a lady cooking in a market in the middle of an artsy area...


Stopped for some tea in a nice little shop...


Dawna's tea.


My tea.


A couple of the people in a parade for the Chusok holiday. Notice the 7-11 in the background. They're everywhere.


More festival.


Video from the festival.


We heard somewhere that there was an awesome taco restaurant in Seoul... so we searched it out. They had the best lemonade i've ever had in my life. The food was pretty good too... definately a bit overpriced... but the lemonade and Dawna getting her sour-cream fix made it all worth it.


The nachos.


Bean/chili/beef burrito.


Some of the architecture at night in Seoul.


One of the many shirts that make no sense in South Korea. Took this picture in an underground mall. Yea... the entire mall was like 5 levels... and entirely underground. I got tired of it pretty quickly... everything looked the same.


Day 2


The hostel we were staying in.


We woke up at 7am on this day to take the DMZ tour. The DMZ is the demilitarized zone in between South Korea and North Korea. It's still considered a warzone since neither side has declared peace. This is the peace bell. It's rung every hour to honour the people that died in the war.


This is the freedom bridge. It's the bridge many crossed to return back to their country from the North.


The freedom bridge.


The bridge is closed down at the end now. There's military people guarding it at all times.


One of the soldiers guarding the end of the peace bridge coming to say hello.


Statue demonstrating a country (Korea) torn into two (South and North). It shows the people trying to reunite the two sides again.


This was taken inside the third tunnel of aggression. We're technically not allowed to take this picture... but did anyway. This tunnel was disovered in 1978 and was dug up by the North Koreans in an attempt to infiltrate the South. It's 44km away from Seoul... and i'ts 1.7km long. Apparently it's big enough to move 30,000 soldiers (and all their equipment) in an hour.


A shot of the North and the South. If you look closely you can see both their flags. The North Korean flag is standing on the tallest flag pole in the world... while the South Korean flag is the biggest actual flag in the world.


Closer, zoomed-in shot of the North village and their flag.


Our final stop was in Dorasan Station. This will hopefully be the train station that connects the South and the North one day. It's seen as a monumental place in South Korea right now. Although this picture says "To Pyeongyang" (North Korea's capital city), this has obviously not opened up yet. George W. Bush was at this station a few years ago.


Went out for some hamburgers later that day. South Korean sprite.


Stupid/funny sign. Woo, college!


So this is after the DMZ tour... much later at night and back in Seoul. We went out for some wine/hookah at this cool Hookah bar. They had nearly 50 flavours of hookah stuff.


This was taken after the hookah bar... we were walking down the street and noticed this beautiful Nori-Bang bar (Karaoke bar). We had no intention of going inside.


... Until we were approached by 5 random Korean dudes who wanted to party with us... and so we went inside the place. They paid for the Nori Bang, the drinks and the snacks... pretty awesome.


Some more Nori Bang'ing.


Dawna and Abbi doing their best TLC renditions.


Dave W, Bryson Parks... Chad Kroeger and his heart do live in South Korea.


Some Supermassive Black Hole for selection...


Good times.


Our new friends.


Don't really know what pose that is... but yea.


And so after Nori Bang was over, the dudes invited us over to their work office. They paid for the cab there. They also got some more snacks and drinks... and we found out that they were really really good artists. They can draw pictures and make amazing sculptures of people.


Me being drawn by one of the guys.


They charge about $1000 for sculptures of peoples faces... they're worth it because they're really good. They offered to do one of Dawna's eye for free.

"
Started talking about the show, 24. Here are the Koreans doing their best Jack Bower impersonation.

Day 3


On our last day, we decided to visit a palace in Seoul.


Dawna in front of the palace.


Dawna and I.


Dawna and Abbi Stiles.


This is how far we are from everything...


So yea, all in all... an awesome trip. I'm still pretty pumped that we have the next two days off....


- Gilad