Downtown Seoul & some Gangnam Style

Today were out of bed by 7 mainly because we had to navigate the metro again, in order to meet up with a walking tour around the downtown area of Seoul. At this hotel we have access to a club room where they do a pretty good buffet breakfast, which includes the services of an egg chef who makes a pretty good omelette.

As we walked down a very steep hill (which we walked up last night), you can get some good views of the city, although the pollution haze is quite visible in the early morning, until the sun gets up a bit higher.

We started our walk near the Presidential Palace where there are a couple of statues to the the former rulers of Korea, in the times when it was not occupied by Japan. The most significant of these being King Sejong who invented the current Korean alphabet, which is like a phonetic version of the Chinese symbols.

From there went to the National Museum, which has a great selection of models and dioramas that depict the different historical periods of Seoul. There are also some very impressive displays of the clothing, art works and documents through the history of Korea, from the 6th century, right up until the current day. There was a fantastic reconstruction of a 1970’s apartment that provided plenty of nostalgic reminders of things like record players, chunky cordless phones and very small televisions.

We then walked past the old school that was used by the Japanese scholars, and then around the main Palace Garden. It is Autumn here now and the leaves are starting to turn, so there are some magnificent colours to be seen.

As we walked around to the front of the palace, there is a daily display of the changing of the guard. It is very colourful and noisy … and just a little touristy. The ‘actors’ are well drilled, and the costumes are amazing. There is a running commentary that is quite helpful in understanding all the stages of what was a pretty complex process.

We then walked across the road into the public space in front of the city hall and through some local markets until we reached the Cheonggyecheon stream. This is a natural stream that flows through the central city district, but after the end of the Korean War in 1953, a lot of displaced people set up a shanty town along its path. The government of the day, in it’s infinite wisdom, buried the stream under concrete and then built a highway over it in 1958 in order to remove the residents. Since, 2005 the government has spent $900M dollars restoring the stream to a common space for all to use.

To continue the ceremonial theme from earlier, we then walked to the old city gate to witness the ringing of the bell, which, during the Japanese occupation was used to indicate curfew times. The bell is very large and unlike western bells the sound is made by striking the bell from the outside. The bell itself is very thick, so the sound resonates for quite some time. This is a pretty cool thing to witness… and we actually got to help ring the bell three times as part of the ceremony.

That was where our walking tour ended and we parted company with our guide. She was very knowledgeable and her spoken english was very good. She pointed us in the direction of some good lunch places and left us to it. Today’s Korean meal was Shabu Shabu, which is actually a Japanese meal where you put meat and vegetables into a soup and boil it. There is a spicy and a non-spicy side of the hotpot. Luckily for us the spicy side was not too spicy!

After lunch we made a quick visit to the Jogyesa Buddhist Temple, which is the centre of Korean Buddhism. It was originally built in the 14th century, but was destroyed by fire in the 1910 and subsequently rebuilt. This weekend also marked a festival where there were some amazing floral displays set up around the temple which were quite spectacular.

Then it was time to get Gangnam style and cross the river into the ‘Gangnam’ district made famous by Korean popstar ‘Psy’. His song ‘Gangnam Style’ was the first YouTube clip to reach 1 Billion views. The area has a unique mixture of coffee shops, cafes, bars, fashion & beauty shops and plastic surgeons. It was fun to observe, but I’m not sure that I’ve seen more bad fashion choices in one place. I’ve also certainly not seen more Bentleys, BMWs, Mercs and Audis in one place either …

After hanging out in the area for a while, we navigated the metro back to the hotel to rest our feet for a while. We’d covered a lot of territory today… over 20,000 steps for me, and 27,000 for Debbie. I think she’s finally broken her long standing record of 23,000 steps when we walked all over San Francisco to the the Golden Gate Bridge in 2007.

Again we had a great view of the sunset prior to heading out for dinner. I don’t think I’ll tire of watching that sunset in the time we are here.

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