Korea (July 25-28)

DAY 1

I arrived in Icheon, Seoul around 10pm and was met at the airport by both Sheila (Baha'i from Kochi) and Miho (from Kochi) who had arrived a few hours earlier. Together, we took the bus, then taxi to get to Sunghi's place, one of Sheila's students.

Sunghi's mom owns and runs a restaurant way out in the country. Their place was about a 20-30 min taxi cab from the outskirts of the city. By the time we found our way to their place, it was midnight. Sunghi's mom speaks Japanese, so we communicated with her mostly in Japanese, or sometimes through our in-house translator, Sunghi. Between English, Japanese and Korean, conversations were always...interesting..!

They also had the cutest little puppies! Only 3 months old, they were so adorable..!

Sunghi's mom is a very warm-hearted lady who asked us to call her okasan (meaning 'mom'). Since we'd only had what was served on the plane for dinner and it was now quite late, she prepared us a delicious meal. We really lucked out having an excellent chef as our host! Throughout our stay at their place, she prepared us many different kinds of Korean dishes. A lot of the food is very spicy, but so delicious!

We mentionned that we were all looking forward to trying akasuri, famous in Korea. The Japanese believe that Koreans have beautiful skin because they have akasuri done often. Akasuri is basically a whole body srubbing, getting rid of all the dead skin that accumulates on your body. You lay on a table butt naked and someone scrubs every inch of your body with what feels like a wash cloth with teeth. It was unlike anything I've ever experienced before....was it good? Well..it was until the lady forgot about my broken thumb and yanked on my hand...that was painful!! I learned the word for 'pain' in korean. Overall, it was good..you do feel squeaky clean once it's done. :) So after finishing our late night dinner at around 3am, we all headed down to a 24 hour onsen place (everything in Korea seems to be 24 hours) and all got a chance to experience akasuri.

DAY 2

It was a gorgeous day so we made the most of it by spending most of the day outdoors. We got up fairly early and made our way down to the Blue palace (government office, similar to the White house), then to Kyong Bok palace with Sunghi acting as our guide.

There, we go dressed up in traditional Korean outfits and had our pictures taken by a professional. Once done, we were allowed to take pictures with our cameras and wander around a bit. After having taken this picture:

we were approached by 3 tourist guys who wanted to take a picture with us. We didn't see any harm in it, so they took pictures with us one at a time. A few others who saw the guys taking pictures, came up to us and asked if they could as well. Then, there was a large Chinese (i think) tour group coming around the corner. The few people on the edge of the group came wanting to take pictures, then suddenly the whole rest of the group came as well..... It was becoming a little ridiculous...we should have charged!

Later in the evening, we met up with Kim at a cafe. The last time I saw Kim was maybe 8 years ago...it was so nice to see her again!! Though it's been such a long time since we last saw each other, she hasn't changed a bit...same ol' crazy Kim. :) We also met Miho's friend, Jasmine at the same cafe.

Jasmine is a Korean girl who spent 5 years in Paris and speaks almost flawless French, she can also get by in English though she has a strong accent. So in our group there was Kim, Jasmine and I who could speak French..it was nice to be able to speak French freely!

We went to out to dinner together, and made plans for the next day

DAY 3

We woke up this morning to the sound of rain beating down hard. Despite it being a short trek from the 'old' house to the restaurant, by the time we arrived we were all drenched. Umbrellas just didn't cut it for this kind of weather. Okasan offered us some towels to dry ourselves off.

We were getting ready for breakfast, setting the table and bringing the food over

when suddenly there was a loud BOOM! It sounded like it came from one of the side rooms, we rushed over to see what happened and found that a piece from the ceiling fan had fallen down allowing the rain to pour in! We got a bucket to catch the water and grabbed some towels to dry things off. A minute later, the same thing happened in another side of the room...and was quickly followed by water leaking then pouring from all the around the restaurant!!! It was raining inside! All the tables are equipped with an electric pot..we made sure they everything was unplugged as Osakan ran to shut off the main electric power switch. Before she could finish unplugging everthing, one of the cables snapped and flew around the room with sparks...

Once the repair man came over and was able to slow down the water, we spent a good while soaking up the water with towels and wrigging them into the big pots that we had scattered around the room to catch the water coming in.

Needless to say, it was a very unsual morning..!

A few hours later, having gotten most of the floor dried up, had breakfast etc.. we got ready to say goodbye. Oksasan is such a sweet lady, making us all feel like we were part of the family!

Since it was raining so hard, we decided to do something indoors: we went shopping. We spent most of the day at one of the two big shopping centers downtown.

Around 6pm, I went to meet Kim after work in Gumnum while Sheila and Miho stayed at Jasmine's place. Kim and I headed to her apartement, in one of the most expgensive neighbourhood of Seoul.

After having dried up a little, we went out for dinner at a yaki niku place. I tried chicken feet, which tastes much better than it sounds!

We went out clubbing, then around 2am went to meet Kim's boyfriend way outside of Seoul city. He took us out for a late (3:30am..) dinner and then did some karaoke. I LOVE karaoke!! we had a blast. We finally made it home around 5:30am, and went straight to bed. I had left before Kim's mom had gotten home from work, and by the time we got back she was asleep, so I didn't get to see her.

DAY 4

Sheila, Miho and I made plans to go visit the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) today, the border between North and South Korea. Only approved tour buses are allowed in the area (you can't drive there yourself), and reservations must be made a few days ahead of time in order to go. The bus's departure time was set for 8am.

Neither Kim nor I heard the alarm go off, woke up too late to catch the subway to the meeting point. Within 2 minutes of having woken up, I was in a taxi heading downtown to the meeting spot. While changing, Kim's mom came in half asleep rubbing her eyes having just been woken up by Kim. My eyes were not quite open yet, I quickly gave her a hug before rushing out the front door. The last time I saw Kim's mom I was 12 years old!! I would have liked to have a chance to meet her under less rushed circumstances...but I was afraid I would miss the bus!

I thankfully made it on time. There was a large Japanese group, and only 4 English speakers (the 3 of us, and Katy from the States). We had our own personal English guide, Justin.

The tour took us to three main stops. The first was the 'freedom bridge', where POWs were exchanged from North to South.

At the entrance to the southern end, you could see the following:

The next stop was at a museum where we learned about the attempts that North Korea made to infiltrate South Korea by digging 4 tunnels. We then put on our protective hats, got into what looked like a mining cart and went down one of the tunnels. At the bottom, we walked to the furthest point allowed, a concrete cement wall. Beyond the wall, is another very thick concrete wall. Beyond that one are North Korean soldiers that patrol.

Outside the tunnel is the following sculputre

The DMZ zone is about 4 km wide. It's mostly devoid of any humans. There remains more than a million unexploded landmines left over from more violent times.

The last stop was at an observation deck, from where you could see the two famous villages (one named 'Propaganda Village', run by North Korea, the other 'Peace Village' run by the South. Beyond them, you can see North Korea. There's a yellow line beyond which you cannot take pictures...there are men in uniform everywhere making sure no one does anything they shouldn't be doing.

The last train station at the most northern point of South Korea as of now, but soon to be part of the Trans Eurasian Railway Network.

Knowing how much I love dogs, Sheila got me the cutest pillow which looked like Sunghi's puppy! Back on the tour bus, we took a picture with the early birthday present she got for me last night.

Justin commented on how cute it was, so we got a picture with him as well :)

On our way back, he was kind enough to have the bus drop us before the regular stop, and even came with us to show where a market he had mentioned was, as well as show us where to catch the airport bus (I was heading straight to the airport from the tour).

I made it back to Fukuoka, then Nagasaki, trying to catch some Zzz whenever I could. I had an excellent time on this trip!!