Seoul Searching

I traveled to the stunning metropolis of Seoul this weekend and I gotta tell ya its pretty cool but I'd never live there. Perhaps that is a little biased, my travelling amigos and I stayed in a lovely hostel in the heart of the clubbing Hongdae district. Having only seen that aspect of the city, I should say I wouldn't live in that area. Amazingly enough we met a groovy Korean guy with connections up the wazoo and excellent English. We volunteered as token foreigners in a web commercial of some kind for Kimchi products, and afterwards he took us out for drinks with the head manager of all Thursday Parties, most of which were free. Swell times. The night life is unreal, and it was solid fun til the sunrise. Not surprisingly there were way more foreigners around, and they were not with the school boards or hagwons. A plethora of hipsters, grease balls, Middle Easterns, and geezers reliving their younger years. Again though, this was the party district. As for the residents, everyone I talked to spoke English to the capability of my co-teachers, but like Toronto, people are too busy to help you out beyond a finger point and some half-assed directions. When we arrived Friday night it was an overwhelming look: bright lights, a ginormous train station, and hordes of people pushing through and slipping by one another. Part of me wishes I got a picture, but

Lookout point into North Korea, at the edge of the photo line.

The following day we headed out to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone). Met some odd characters described above and then some regular people. Our tour guide was really interesting, knowledgeable and articulate and showed us tons of cool stuff. Including one of the tunnels North Korea dug underneath the DMZ as a means of invasion. Travelling down into the tunnel was a trek and more novel than anything else. In fact the whole trip was just to say "I went to the DMZ." The strictness of the trip was really intimidating, one thing was a lookout into North Korean territory where a photo line was drawn, prohibiting people from taking pictures of this barren land. You might think saying barren has a negative connotation but North Korea doesn't have a single tree because they've all been burnt for fuel and in December the earth is light brown until the mountains which are very dark. It made me very thankful to have grown up in a country that's at peace with its neighbours.

As per usual nights were blurry but fun, the same story in a different city.

This is a picture of a railway that connected North and South Korea through the DMZ. It was built through the sunshine program, which was a program devoted to catching up North Korea's economy. It was pulled when the conservative party was elected in 2002 (or 2007).
Oh yeah! The high point for me was the train ride home, seeing all the cities in between Seoul and Busan and actual animals too. I saw a couple deer but I was to slow/ hungover to snap a pic. But I know animals live in Korea now. Pretty pumped.