Episode 47: In Which DFM Goes On 7 Dates, And A Bell Rings 33 Times

Some readers are probably wondering what happened to me last week. Last week was a continuous blur of meeting friends to say good-bye for the last time (this trip). To compound matters, my access to Internet has been sporadic. To make up for my absence, here is the entire week in recap, in one post.

On Monday, December 28th, I met Mitja, my Slovenian friend, for dinner in Itaewon. We went to Don Valley (the same place I went with Tae-young back in March) to have some galbi. Despite Don Valley being a Korean restaurant, it was obvious that no Korean would be caught dead coming here twoice.

Mitja has a Korean girlfriend and he has been living in Korea off and on for about a year. He says he has eaten more than his bodyweight in galbi in that time, and so he could tell that we were being ripped off - the lettuce was unfresh and the ssamjang minimal. I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a little bit of justice when I could tell that the restaurant owner was disappointed that Mitja understood Korean dining culture and demanded his side dishes refilled. Mitja, for his part, felt not the least bit embarrassed about constantly calling the waiter over to give him refills. He later told me, "if they had a cart at which I could refill my own side dishes like the other Korean restaurants, then I wouldn't need to bother the waitresses so much."

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On Tuesday I went to Insadong to meet Elise. She took me to a restaurant called Koong, which is famous for its North Korean mandooguk (dumpling soup). The founder of the restaurant is Mrs. Lim, who has made the Kaesong recipe traditional dumplings for 75 years (Kaesong is a city in North Korea).

The restaurant is now run by Mrs. Lim's granddaughter, but I assume the mandoo still tastes the same. If I'm honest, mandoo of any variety doesn't look that hard to make, so I'm sure Mrs. Lim's granddaughter couldn't have messed up the taste too badly. Unfortunately, I've never tasted the original mandoo of Mrs. Lim, so I have no basis for comparison. Consequently, I could have been sold horse manure wrapped in dough, told it was "award winning," and I wouldn't have known the difference. A free meal is always delicious though, so I'm not complaining.

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On Wednesday, December 30th, I went back to Jeungsan at 7:00 PM to meet Shin Seung-hyeun (formerly known as Sin Seung-hyeun, but I changed his name to make it easier to pronounce). Mr. Shin, The Fruit Guy, has been wanting to take me out to dinner for the last two months, and so even though I had to move I told him I'd come back, and we made the arrangement for this night.

We walked a few blocks to a local gamjatang (pork ribs and potato stew) restaurant with his two young sons who came along. I couldn't stay too long though, and so after stuffing myself on giant pork ribs, potato, and ice cream for desert, I headed over to Ace Climbing Centre where Choi was waiting to take me out for yet another good-bye party. And so, for the next two hours I tried to find every spare cubic inch of stomach room left over after my first supper to fit in even more galbi.

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On Thursday I visited Woojin at the newly built Times Square mega mall near Yeongdeunpo station (near Ace Climbing Centre). Woojin later helped me ascertain that banks in Korea will buy my Korean won back at rates roughly 25% higher than those of Royal Bank in Canada. With this information I went back to my hostel to rest up for the New Year's Eve festivities.

A couple of days ago Mr. Lee (the manager of Jin Guesthouse) told me that 8 teachers from Daegu were coming in and had wanted to book one room. Since I was staying in the only 8 bed room, I volunteered to move to free up the remaining bed.

My new room had six beds, and I was sharing it with two Norwegian blokes, currently on a break from studying in China, and Klaire, an Australian teaching in Japan on holiday in Korea. With nothing much to do inside the hostel, we all decided to check out the "famous" bell ringing down town at Bosingak.

(Left to right: Harald, Klaire, and Joe.)

(Harald was very popular with the locals, and these high school boys fell all over themselves with excitement at the chance to have their pictures taken with a foreigner.)

(There it is, the bell that all the fuss is about. The bell in Bosingak gives Jongno and Jonggak - the nearby street and subway station respectively - their names, as "jong" means bell in Korean. Every New Year's Eve, and only on New Year's Eve, the bell is rung 33 times to represent the 33 Heavens of Buddhism.)

From the above picture you can see that there were many people there (the Internet says the crowds sometimes number in the 10 000s). However I must say Seoul needs to work on its fireworks presentations. The lone streak you see on the right of picture X is from a handheld stick that revellers could buy at the site, and which shoots really weak mini-fire works about twenty five feet in the air. Joe agreed with my negative evaluation of the fireworks, saying that in Shanghai, where he is studying, there are fireworks every night that defy description.

After the freezing cold "party" that involved watching poor Korean pop stars having to dance and perform in significantly less clothing than is advisable for -13 degree centigrade weather, Harald, Joe, Klaire and I went back to the hostel, where Klaire fell asleep, and Joe, Harald and I watched Rambo 4 - one of the few movies that is over 50% killing and gore, but still needs more.

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On Friday I went to see Ms. Yun in Sillim-dong. After some kimbab and a movie I said good-bye, and went to Ji-hyeun's place (near by), where she had invited me to try some of the delicious ddeokguk (rice cake soup) she had made for me.

In the mean-time I had been told by my friend in Ulsan that she was in New Zealand, so I couldn't stay with her the next week, like I had planned. Furthermore, my friend in Busan told me that I couldn't stay with her until Wednesday, so for the next five days I was without a home.

At least I wouldn't have to worry about that for the next two days, because I had already arranged to meet with James from Suwon and spend the night at his house, after a park workout of course. Before I left though, I had to drag my luggage across town to store it in Tyler's house (the other "foreigner" climbing at Ace, who was nice enough to let me sleep on his couch for three nights after I came back from Suwon).

And that brings us to Tuesday, January 5, where I'm now sitting in Tyler's living room, watching his movies, trying to live as cheaply as possible until I head to Busan tomorrow. Check back in a few days for a full update of the journey.

Episode 37: In Which DFM Helps The Chinese, And Blames The Japanese

On Friday (the climbing trip was last week), Ji-hyeun told me that her, Choi, and Na-ra (the only regular climber at Ace younger than me), were going out for an afternoon in Dongdaemun the next day. It had been quite some time since I had been to Dongdaemun and since I hadn't anything planned for the day I decided to come along (don't worry, I was invited).

Dongdaemun is of course one of the main gates of the old city wall (mun means door/gate). While most of the other gates have been destroyed by natural causes or arson (Namdaemun), Dongdaemun is still standing tall. Apart from the large gate though, the Dongdaemun area is probably most famous for its massive market. When I came here in March I did not explore the market as much as I had Namdaemun Market with Nelson (my Filipino friend), so I did not get an appreciation for just how large it really is. All that changed today.

Dongdaemun market is massive. Ji-hyeun told me that during the Silla dynasty (57 BC - 935 AD), part of the area contained within the present Dongdaemun Market was the major market in the Silla Kingdom (the precursor to Korea). Obviously, from my wording of that last sentence, the present market hasn't lost any of its size.

While the massive, nine-floor Hyundai Department stores are impressive in the range of products they offer, customers are nonetheless often limited in variety. At Dongdaemun market though, customers will be blown away by the incredible number of stores, each specializing in a different product/service. I saw a few shops selling more or less just umbrellas, and one building contained three large floors, with 70+ merchants on each floor, all selling fabric and other sewing related materials (buttons, snaps, etc.).

Next, we strolled along Cheongyecheon (nothing new to talk about there) and through the famous Insadong street I've talked about many times. This is my third time walking the length of Insadong street, and at least my fifth time here in total. It's promoted heavily by the City of Seoul as a must see experience, and touted for the "traditional" souvenirs, but to be honest after five visits it is no more exciting than Whyte Ave in Edmonton (which is to say it is not entirely without its merits either).

(To be fair to Insadong, there were actually a few master craftsmen working their art, like this man making hand made tops that spin perfectly in place.)

When you tire of shopping in Dongdaemun Market, you can visit one of the numerous food vendors crammed so close together that if you rub your eyes whilst walking you will easily miss one. Compared with the over-priced, poor quality, poor service restaurants that are overrunning Alberta (or at least were, before "the crash"), Seoul's tiny, inexpensive, "hole-in-the-wall" restaurants and cheap street vendors are what I imagine dining in Heaven would be like, if there was dining in Heaven. I've written before about how much I enjoy the culture of eating and sharing food in Korea, and being able to share it with my friends from Ace was another highlight of this great day.

Before we walked through Insadong street, we went to Tapgol park. Tapgol means "pagoda," and there is a 12 m, 10 level marble pagoda in the centre that is National Treasure #2 for Korea (it's surrounded by an ugly glass case though, so I didn't take a picture).

Constructed in 1471, the pagoda was apparently the only thing left remaining from Wongaksa, a temple which was destroyed in 1515. While I cannot find any evidence to support it, and the date of destruction would seem to suggest against it, I'm going to go ahead and blame the Japanese for destroying the temple, because I'm half-Korean now and so I hate the Japanese.

Tapgol Park was also the site of the signing and reading of the Korean Declaration of Independence to Japanese Colonial rule, on March 1st, 1919. However, as Ji-hyeun said, it is now just a place for "old men to kill time."

Eventually it was time for my Ace friends to leave (we had been out for four and a half hours), but I decided to hang around in Jongnak station for a while (it had a book store) until I received a phone call I was expecting.

While I was admiring the subway map and how I had walked past three subway stations, on three different lines, during the afternoon, a couple of Chinese tourists approached me to ask me for advice.

They were in Seoul for only three days, and wanted to know how to get to Itaewon and Apgujeong, and which place I thought was more exciting. Having lived in Itaewon for two months, and having received second rate dental service, from a "first rate" dentist, in Apgujeong, I could happily tell them to go to neither, but rather walk along Cheongyecheon and visit the nearby Gwanghwamun and statue of King Sejong instead.

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Back in April I met a young man from Slovenia, visiting his girlfriend, on the subway. His name was Mitja, and we had communicated with each over the summer while he was finishing up his degree in Physics. Coincidentally, he was back in Seoul at the same time I was, and today we decided to meet up in Anam-dong where he lives (Anam-dong is nearby my one of my schools, and is where I have coffee with Elise every Thursday).

I had only planned to talk for an hour, but anyone who knows me knows that is an impossibility. I felt sorry for Mitja's girfriend, because she was the odd person out on what amounted to a non-stop, four hour conversation between two people who really like to talk... way too much.

I probably should have paid better attention to the time, because when I tried to get on the subway I found out that the subway from Anam-dong closes a lot earlier than that from Jeungsan (my home station), and I thought I might get stuck on the other side of the city.

Sadly, I was able to flag down a taxi (sad because they were now operating on the increased night prices). I was hoping to just sit quietly in the back and watch my money disappear as the numbers on the meter raced higher, but the driver insisted on chatting to me in Korean the whole trip.

Amazingly, I was able to understand almost everything he asked, and we ended up having a pleasant conversation. The driver must have been appreciative of my efforts to learn Korean, because he soon picked up the pace, and it wasn't long before we were racing across Seoul at well over the speed limit. I can say for certain now that the grip on the Sonata's tires far exceeds the grip between the bottom of my jeans and the seat.