Shanghai-Seoul

Technology is making this world a whole lot smaller (figuratively of course). This blog is certainly evidence of it, and the fact that I'm writing on it from a computer in Seoul is further evidence. I say this because about five days ago Danthemanstan called me and said, 'you still want to go to Korea?'. I said 'sure' and now we're here. We had thought about going earlier this year, as flights were cheap, but a 'vacation' at school turned out to just be a Friday off. So, he was planning to go to Tibet with Dave and Dave's dad, but Tibet, although a part of China, is both more expensive and more difficult to get to than South Korea (for Americans, at least). No visa for South Korea (there is one for Tibet) and the flights were cheaper, so to South Korea we would go! Now, South Korea is decidingly not a part of China, although given a few years, who knows what China will be claiming. So, with the click of a button (and some typical Chinese red tape) we arrived this morning at Incheon International, the best airport in the world. They had drinking fountains, which was good enough to please both of us.

Getting there wasn't too much fun. We had an 08:00 flight, so we needed to be at the airport in Shanghai at about 06:30. There isn't a really easy way to do this without getting a hotel near the airport, which we didn't really want to spend money on, and because I had obligations last night, couldn't get to Shanghai before 23:00. So we spent the night at the airport. Initially we were in the waiting area, but then discovered that Burger King was open and had padded benches. So we grabbed a late night snack and I fruitlessly tried to sleep, Danthemanstan saw the futility and just read and rested. We ground out the night and rode a nice, short less than two hour plane ride to Seoul this morning. This short journey even included a meal, I love these small Asian airlines!

We took it pretty easy today, due to our lack of sleep last night. We, with absolutely no Korean, were able to get into town and find a hotel. Traveling really is pretty easy if you can follow letters, numbers, and colors on signs. I had some good kimchi dumplings at a small Korean restaurant, and then we went to check out the Korean public bath, which was highly recommended in the guidebook. It was a bit hard to find, but once we got in and settled was very relaxing. I expected it to be a super awkward and thus fantastic bustle of naked Korean guys relaxing. Instead, it was just us and some Japanese tourists, and thus pretty private. The bath we went to was in the second basement, perhaps the reason for its lack of patrons. After the night on a Burger King bench, though, the hot and cold tubs combined with three saunas made for a relaxing afternoon. We walked around some streets and managed to only miss one stop on the massive Seoul metro system. Seoul is the world's second biggest city, and has a metro system to back that up.

After getting back from the bath/sauna, Danthemanstan hit the hay and I went to get some dinner. I managed to do the point and nod at a restaurant and had some very good spicy octopus with kimchi and greens on rice in a simmering stone pot. At dinner, I discovered one bad thing about sitting cross-legged on the floor at the Korean restaurants: the propensity of my leg(s) to fall asleep:) I have noticed some similarities between certain words in Chinese and Korean (or what I think the word should be in Korean). I tried to say this, in Chinese to the restaurant owner, but totally failed. Why I thought it would work, I don't know, but I managed to make a fool of myself, pointing and speaking broken Chinese...which of course made no sense to him. But another patron was able to translate for me, and they all seemed to get a good laugh out of me. I walked out of the restaurant like an idiot, realizing that them knowing that 'eight thousand' in Korean sounds the same as it does in Chinese isn't really that interesting. So, that's my first day in Seoul. *(I will add pictures at some unknown time in the future).