5 Reasons to get out of Seoul when you visit Korea

Seoul is an amazing city, that's for sure. Since moving to Korea I've been to Seoul more than a few times, and every time I go I'm amazed by how cosmopolitan and massive the city is. Seoul-proper is surrounded by Gyeonggi province, but it's not very provincial. Seoul's metropolitan area covers most of Gyeonggi province and includes smaller cities like Cheonan and Suwon. With it's great collection of cultural and historical assets, it's no wonder many visitors to Korea never even leave the capital. If I visited this country on a quick stopover, or even a seven day vacation, I might be hard pressed to get out of the biggest city on the peninsula, but there's a lot of reasons to get to Seoul Station, hop a train, and get out of Seoul.

Busan has a great mix of nature and architecture

Busan has plenty of places to bask in the neon

If it's seafood you're after, Jagalchi Market is the place to be.

1. Busan is probably my favorite city in Korea. It's the second largest city on the peninsula, but feels distinctly different than any other place in the country. As a port city, Busan has a lot of great things to offer. Do you like beaches? Busan has Korea's most humanity covered stretch of sand at Haeundae Beach. Do you like mountains and temples? Busan has a fair selection of those too. Do you like seafood? Yes? Then you would probably enjoy a walk through Busan's Jagalchi Fish Market, where the fishing boats are constantly pulling in and out, and the days catch is so fresh that it's still swimming at the vendors' stalls. Yes. Swimming. Literally. If you're into nightlife, Busan has plenty of that to offer as well, with stretches of neon lined streets that light up the night just as brightly as any comparable street in Seoul.

Korea has a variety of easy, affordable rail options

2. Korea's mass transit system is amazing. If you want to zip around this country on high speed rail, it's easy. If you'd prefer to save a few dollars and move at a slower pace, you can do that too. The Korail system is not only easy to use, but pretty inexpensive as well. Trains come in 3 flavors, KTX, the 300kph high speed train that will get you from Seoul to Busan in around 4 hours; Saemaul a lower speed train that makes slightly fewer stops and is priced at a mid-range (meaning less crowded cars); and the incredibly inexpensive but slower and slightly more crowded Mugungwha. While the KTX is the sexiest beast on the rails here, the other trains are perfectly good ways to get around too, and make for a great way to see the countryside. Express intercity buses cover the routes that the trains don't, and within the cities the subway systems are cheap and easy to use, the bus systems are relatively easy to use (although it helps if you can read Hangeul or are comfortable asking for help), and taxis are cheap. There's no excuse to not get around and see the country from a transit point of view.

Ancient burial mounds are the final resting places of former kings

Gyeongju just looks ancient.

3. Gyeongju is Korea's cultural navel, where you will be most in touch with what Korea was like before Western contact. While it's still a relatively small city, it's easy to reach by any of the train options, and its sites are more than worth the fare to get here. Where else can you see the ancient graves of dynastic monarchs and visit a raunchy sex museum on the same day? The array of cultural sites available in Gyeongju is matched equally by its lovely backdrop of verdant green mountains. In the warm months you can rent bicycles and tour around the city and its fields, and in the springtime Gyeongju turns a beautiful pink color as the cherry blossom trees bloom everywhere.

Jeongdongjin waterfront

Limestone cliffs drop into beautiful blue-green water

Seaweed drying in the sun

4. Jeongdongjin and Gangneung are two small beach towns nearly as far to the northeast as you can go in South Korea. While many people's perception of Korea is of a cold, frozen, industrial wasteland, these two towns might fool you into thinking that you're in Hawaii, well, if it wasn't for the lack of palm trees. A 3 hour bus ride from Seoul into Gangwan-do province will land you in Jeongdongjin and Gangneung. Here the air is clean, and you will see old ladies picking seaweed in the surf and drying it on the beach for their soup. There's not much to do here other than sit in the sun and enjoy the scenery, and what scenery! Imagine if you will tall, green mountains, limestone cliffs that drop dramatically into the sea, white sand beaches, and beautiful blue-green water, and you've got a good description of the area. If you like seafood this is a great place to be as well, with plenty of hue (raw fish, Korean style) and seafood stews to keep your belly full. A trip to this part of Korea not only feels like a trip away from the city, but also like a trip back in time.

Gwanam Temple at Palgongsan

Lanterns lining the walkways at Dongwhasa Temple

Dongwhasa Temple

Dongwhasa's massive Buddha statue

5. Palgongsan Natural Area just outside of Daegu is an easy to reach mountain retreat, complete with colorful Buddhist temples and alpine trails for hiking. It's easy to reach, as you can take any of the trains into Dongdaegu Station, and take a Daegu City Tour bus from the station directly to the mountain. The Gatbawi hiking trail is a challenging hike to the top of Palgongsan that ends with a stone Buddha wearing a traditional Korean hat. On the way you'll find Gwanam temple, where you can stop for lunch, or just take pictures. Smelling the incense as you get closer to the temples and finally hearing the chants and bells of the temples as you break through the forest is an enchanting experience.

Another stop on the tour is Dongwhasa Temple, one of the biggest temples in the area where you will see a massive stone Buddha sculpture, plenty of monks on their daily meditative walks, and gorgeous structures that have been built and rebuilt over the years. If you really like the idea, you can even participate in a temple stay, living as a monk for a couple of days and enjoying the environment.

So, you're traveling and have a layover in Seoul, why not make that layover a few days and visit a country that's often nothing more than a place to stretch your legs in between flights? Korea isn't the dismal, frozen, industrial wasteland you imagine, but a country distinctly different from all of its neighbors, but similarly beautiful.

Smiling Dalseo!

The district (bigger than a neighborhood, smaller than a city) that we live in here in Daegu is Dalseo-gu. Carolyn and I decided that we needed to get our cameras out and go practice photography a bit before our big trip to Bali in 2 weeks. Because we a) are low on funds and b) have never really explored beyond the subway lines, we headed out to walk around Dalseo a bit. After a hot, rainy afternoon of trekking around Dalseo-gu, we cleaned up and went downtown to see Harry Potter. We had a nice Japanese ramen meal (real ramen is so much better than instant) and walked around downtown practicing our photography some more. Here's a few of my photos from the day:

The Holy Grill at Wolbae

Oh thank heavens. The Holy Grill opened a new location near the Wolbae Home Plus recently. Babehoney has been once before, but today was my first visit to the satellite of the best place to eat in Daegu. They have a limited menu, just sammiches and burritos, but it's all just as good as the downtown location. The best part, it's not all the way downtown! I had "the New Yorker," which is basically pastrami, pickles, and cheese on 3 pieces of grilled white bread. It was great. And cheap! 4,900W! The fries were amazing too. Babehoney had the steak burrito, which was also 4,900W, and it was even amazing-er. As many of my Korean friends that speak English would say, "Maybe we will eat there many times." Woo Woo!

In unrelated news, we went shopping at HomePlus. I wore my new Salomon shoes (gotta break them in before the trip to Bali) and contacts. Gotta get used to that again!

Now, off to gear up for the workweek.

A Colorful Weekend in Colorful Daegu

This weekend we decided to stay in town and simply enjoy our surroundings a bit, and try to get a bit more familiar with more of the food options available to those of us lucky enough to live in Daegu. Friday after work found us heading downtown. I met Babehoney at a Davinci Coffee shop in the Jungangno underground shopping plaza and we headed up to the street level to find something interesting to eat. We did a complete circle starting at Gorilla Burger looking for something that would pique our culinary curiousity (we decided on Turkish Kebabs and forgot about them during our circle) but ended up back at the Gorilla Burger. I had the Hawaiian Burger and it tastes JUST LIKE a teriyaki burger I would have had when I lived in Kona. I like their fries too, because they serve them with ranch dressing. Not something you see too often here. The walls are decorated with velvet painting renditions of Abraham Lincoln, President Obama, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and a few others. All in all I'd give Gorilla Burger a 9/10 because it's a really good American style burger at a really decent price with cool ambiance.

After eating we stumbled upon the Dongseongno Festival where we watched some hip hop groups perform and a couple of singers. It was a cool thing to happen upon, and it made for a complete Friday evening. I typically find these kinds of festivals irritating, but this one was really well produced and the weather was perfect for watching something like this. A quick stop at the Kyobo bookstore to look for travel guides (for our upcoming vacation in August) and we were on our way home.

Saturday we cleaned the apartment up really well and then once again made our way downtown. We remembered that we had forgotten to get kebabs so we made our way over and had a couple of them at the Turkish place. I'm kinda surprised at how many Turks live in Korea, but it's a good thing they do because I imagine that otherwise it'd be damn near impossible to find Mediterranean food. The kebabs were pretty good, but I think I prefer the Greek gyros a bit better. I had lamb and Babehoney had chicken. Once again a very inexpensive meal, but cool nonetheless. I'll give the Kebab place a 7/10 good meal, good price, but not super amazing.

After lunch we made our way to the CGV and got tickets to see Source Code. I thought the movie was really good. Usually I don't like those "you figure it out" kind of movies, but this one was pretty good. I especially liked the ending because it jived with what little I know of quantum physics and made for a good warm fuzzy feeling. We made our way home and picked up a box of fried chicken and cheesesticks from the BBQ Chicken. I think the delivery driver/cashier/owner guy was impressed with my upgraded (barely) Korean from the last time I was there. Definitely the best fried chicken evar. The rest of the evening we spent watching movies in bed.

Today we woke up at about 9:30, cleaned the hamster cages, had a light lunch of a tuna sammich (by the way, if you're out of mayo and you have cream cheese in the fridge...it works...) and made our way to the Daegu National Museum to see the National Geographic photo exhibit they have right now. Actually, today was the last day. The photos were amazing, and the exhibit itself was really attractive. It was very crowded and here in Asia there's less personal space, so it was a bit uncomfortable, but definitely worth all of the queuing we did to see the photos. We took a quick lap through the permanent collection, mostly old bronze and iron tools and weapons, some armor, Buddha statues, and a miniature Confucian academy, and headed back downtown. When we got downtown we decided to try a place we spotted on our aforementioned lap of downtown and walked over to Italy Italy. I was excited to see things like farfalle, fettuccine, alfredo, bolognese, and other non-spaghetti Italian style pastas on the menu. I was even more excited when the first forkful of my fettuccine/farfalle alfredo was real alfredo sauce and not "cream sauce spaghetti" like you can find anywhere else. It was awesome, and not too expensive at all. Worth every single of the 12,000 won we each spent on dinner.

This weekend was so productive, and we're really happy to know that we can now easily access the following comfort food categories: Mexican, Mediterranean, Italian, and good old American burgers. The past two weekends of exploring Daegu have been fairly calm compared to our trips to Seoul, but certainly they have made the city seem a bit less backwater (how can a city of 2.4 million people feel like a backwater? ...compare it to a city of 20 million!) and full of conveniences we didn't know were even here (oh yeah, we found a TGIFridays downtown too...in the Lotte Department store.)

I'll see if I can add some videos to this post at a later time...uploading to US based websites like blogger takes forever on our internet connection and it's time for bed.

Sport Shopping in Seoul

I can't believe how far behind I've gotten on my blogging. Oh well. Babehoney and I took a weekend trip up to Seoul a couple of weeks ago for Buddha's Birthday, and it was a great time. After arriving and checking in to the guesthouse we were staying at, we headed over to Gwanghwamun square because there were several festivals going on in the city that we wanted to check out and that was a central point to all of them. We walked through the Hi Seoul festival, and then did some sport shopping at the H&M and a few other stores where we actually found some clothes big enough to fit us!

After an afternoon of shopping we headed over to the Buddha's Birthday Lantern Parade, a heck of an event that featured huge lanterns and thousands of smaller ones marching down the streets to the sounds of Buddhist chants, samulnori groups, and other traditional musical groups.

We were pretty wiped after the parade so we headed back to our guesthouse and crashed a bit early. The next morning we woke up and had to change rooms in the guesthouse, so we needed to stay in the area until our new room was ready. We found a cafe that served gourmet burgers and hot dogs and had a great lunch. I ordered 2 hot dogs, not realizing that the dogs would be foot long ones and that the toppings were taken to an extreme level. We ate everything, re-checked into the hotel, and then went about our adventures for the day.

On the way back we stopped for a spot of tea at the Hello Kitty Cafe. It was amazingly...cute. And the green tea latte and brownies we ordered were very good. I had read many bad reviews of the Hello Kitty Cafe, but I have to say that in my experience I'd recommend it. 

We tried to hop a bus to Insa-dong, but somehow missed the stop and ended up on the northwestern outskirts of the city. After spending a bit of time finding our way back to Insa-dong, we shopped around for local wares and looking at the dudes playing flutes and stuff. We enjoyed an ice cream waffle (wow, waffle with ice cream, bananas, strawberries, caramel, chocolate, etc...huge) and a lemonade, and then moved along to the Buddha's birthday lantern festival, where we made lanterns for ourselves.

After the festival we decided to try and find some ethnic cuisine that wasn't, well, Korean...so we looked through a city guide and found a place called Dos Tacos in Seoul Square. It was the only business open in the Square when we arrived, and the food was pretty convincing. We stuffed ourselves on Mexican cuisine, and hopped a train to the other side of the river where we wanted to check out a fountain show that plays off of a bridge. 

We saw the lights of the show as we approached, but we arrived after the last show ended. Nothing to be sad about though, as the Han river is a mighty river that is cool enough to look at on its own. We sat there for an hour or so watching Korean couples and families play in the darkness. This country is very different as you don't feel the need to look over your shoulder constantly at night when you're in a dark place. In fact, it seemed strange to see people playing basketball and children riding bicycles so late at night, but it's Korea, and everything is different here!

The next morning we headed for the Seoul Zoo. I found the zoo to be fairly nice, with better treatment of the animals than I would have imagined. It was a little startling however how little, umm, fencing there was for some of the big cats. I thought the Tigers might not have a problem getting to us if they really wanted to...but I'm no expert. We spent the day at the zoo, and although it threatened to rain on us all day, it only managed a few sprinkles at the very end of our time at the zoo.

After the zoo we headed over to the Coex mall to grab dinner (we went to TGIFridays, if you think we're crazy for getting western food in Korea when we have the opportunity, you've never lived somewhere where it's not always easy to find your old favorites...) and see the aquarium. Unfortunately after our meal the aquarium was only open for another couple of hours, so we didn't go. It was a bit expensive for only 2 hours. We did do a bit of shopping though. I bought a man-bag and a hat, and Babehoney got some jeggings. I also splurged on new headphones. They had a Nintendo store, but it was very expensive and they didn't have a 3DS, so it was of little interest.

The next morning it was raining cats and dogs. We grabbed breakfast at Dunkin Donuts. I had a banana donut, chocolate donut, and tomato/carrot glazed donut. I'm not so hot on the tomato/carrot glazed kind ;). After breakfast we walked over to Cheongyeonggung Palace where we spent most of the day. Seeing a palace like this devoid of tourists is awesome, and the rain made the experience unique. It was easy to imagine wearing those ornate, shiny robes and sitting in a palace like this making policy decisions and deciding who should be executed by slicing.

On the way back to the train station we made 2 stops. One was for Japanese curry, and it was really good, but not super notable. The other one was at the Hello CAT Cafe. Not the Hello Kitty Cafe. Hello Kitty Cafe was pink with Hello Kitty faces everywhere. Hello Cat cafe was much more plain, with CATS everywhere. For 8,000 won you get a drink and admission to pet the cats. There were probably about 15 of them and some of them were more snuggly than others, but it was really nice to borrow a kitty for a while and get some furry animal petting time in. They even had a sphinx, which was pretty cool. Hairless cats feel a bit like plucked chickens in case you're wondering.

At the end of the day we hopped on board the KTX and sped back to Daegu for a short workweek. In fact, last Friday was teacher's day. All of our classes were shortened so that teaching hours ended at 12:30, and I received a flower and two really cute letters from two of my students. Some people were loaded down with ricecakes and stuff, but I'm plenty happy with two handwritten letters instead...ricecakes aren't really my thing :). 

After such a big weekend we didn't have a whole lot of energy to do much other than go to work and taekwondo, but we made it to 3 classes last week and now the master has offered for us to take a promotion test on May 28th. Last weekend we stayed in town and spent some time in public parks reading books, doing a bit more sport shopping and searching for new restaurants. We found one called "The Holy Grill" that actually has respectable Mexican food. All of the servers speak perfect English and it's a good escape from the normal Daegu places we go. It's worth every single of the 16,000W for the enchilada or chimichanga too! Now, off to plan the next big adventure.

The Daegu Genius Youth Orchestra

I guess it's time to reminisce a little bit. In middle and high school I played in the Youth Orchestra of San Antonio, and it was a pretty great experience. I remember us sounding very good with an amazing string section and a really strong wind group. It was a lot of fun, and I've somewhat been regretful about not joining the concert tour to Australia in 1999. Because of my experience with YOSA I was excited when the Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education (DMOE from now on) said that the Daegu Genius Youth Orchestra would be performing at our mandatory teacher's workshop last night.

I expected that they would be good, but they were astounding. The string sections were perfectly in tune and incredibly precise with their playing. The brass and woodwinds were very strong, and the percussion played perfectly. I found the musical interpretations of some very dynamic music to be very Korean. Everything was controlled. Fortes were not too forte, pianos though were very piano. The YOSA Philharmonic might have been as good, but we were not as precise as these kids. That said, we sounded more like a western orchestra. They played some very cool music from the late classical to contemporary periods, and I had to pick my jaw up off of the floor once they finished. They definitely were the Daegu Genius Youth Orchestra.

That's the big update for today. Tonight we're going to dine at the Happy Cow and have some Yang Nyeom Kalbi Sal. Mmmm mashisoyo!

Date Night in Daegu, and a note on perspectives.

Last night Babehoney and I had a bit of a date night in the urban paradise of Daegu. Maybe "paradise" is overstating it a bit, but there's nothing wrong with liking where you're at, eh? Now I will regale you with tales from our night out. We get off of work at 4:30pm. We met back at the apartment building, changed into non-work clothes, and headed down to the subway station. We took the train down to Jungangno station and without even leaving the confines of climate control worked our way to the top of the Lotte Young Plaza where the CGV cinema is. We got tickets for the next showing of Battle: Los Angeles and realized that we had 2 hours to find dinner, do some banking, and shop around a bit.

We had dinner at Mi Buono, an "Italian" restaurant next to the movie theater. They serve spaghetti of various varieties and pizzas. We had a tandoori chicken pizza and a honey gorgonzola pizza. They were both really good, but there wasn't much gorgonzola flavor in the honey-gorg. We were happy to find a pizza place that doesn't suck and isn't too expensive. Yay!

After dinner we headed over to the Korea Exchange Bank because I needed to wire about a thousand bucks back to the US. The amazing thing about KEB is that I can make my international wire cheaply and either from home or the ATM. I didn't have my online bank account set up with them yet, so I did it at the ATM. A few button presses and 1,500,000 wons made their way to the USA. It didn't happen instantly though and I was a bit worried, so I went back to the bank today and double checked everything and set up my online banking. Sweet. I also found out that there was a favorable change in the exchange rate and instead of sending about $1,200 home I sent more like $1,325. That's cool.

We explored the downtown shopping options a bit. Babehoney got some new converse hi-tops, and I mainly watched as there are really no clothes or shoes that would fit me here. Downtown really lights up at night with tons of neon. We stumbled by either a church service or a protest of some sort. Everybody was singing along with someone on a stage and holding candles in front of a banner that was all in Hangul. Interesting site, if nothing else.

We made our way back to the theater and I THOROUGHLY enjoyed Battlefield: Los Angeles. What a great flick. It wasn't the standard formula of build tension, alien attack, amazing comeback by humanity. It started straight in on the action. Yes, it was cheesy. Yes it was cliche. Yes I loved it. I'll definitely be buying the Blu-Ray combo pack for this one when it comes out in the US. Well, when I move back to the US and have a TV that makes it worth buying the Blu-Ray again.

We had a little bit of a rush to get to the subway station (just below the movie theater about 9 floors) before the last train, but we made it on and had an uneventful ride home. What a nice evening.

In unrelated events, I bought my first video game since moving to Korea. I got Bulletstorm for the PS3. I had read a lot about the game and thought it would be fun, and the decision was extra easy to make because it was only 40,000W and the only game in the store in English. Decision made. It's a really fun game filled with profanity, dirty double entendre, and remote controlled dinosaurs complemented by over the top gore. There's not much to not like about it.

Ah, my note about perspectives. Living in Korea has done this amazing thing for me. It made me realize that my own country is kinda cool. Sure, the US is cutting corners on some really important things like education, the economy is horrible, and people who spent big money to get degrees are kinda screwed because there's no jobs in many fields and they're graduating with a fair amount of school debt. But, there's a lot about our country that's good. Special education in schools is a big one. That's not offered in every school here and parents can opt out. I like the inclusivity and diversity of the US too. Korea is not bad by any means, but everyone here is Korean less a few foreigners. This doesn't bother me as I'd usually just watch society pass me by, but sometimes I wish people didn't look at me like I have a giraffe crawling out of one of my ears on the subway :). I know I won't eyeball foreigners in my hometown anymore after my experience here.

It's very interesting as an ex-pat to get the outside view of your own country. You can definitely see things that are embarassing or could possibly make life more difficult for you when you live overseas. You definitely want the government's foreign policy to not be unilateral and offensive on a global scale, and you're definitely proud when your country handles things right, and when they're on the scene immediately to provide aid when something horrible happens in a third country like Japan.

Anyway, that's the note on my perspective, and I told you all about date night in Daegu. I'm sorry that there's no fun pictures for this post, maybe I'll do something more picture worthy this weekend :).