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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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“The first mouthful was gross but the second taster was quite repulsive.” |
The DMZ tour took most of the day and we were back in Seoul by about 4 pm, with enough time to check out Deoksugung Palace - one of five in the area. We enjoyed it, though in the end it was a case of "another day, another palace". Such flippancy seems a tad rude. The highlight was meeting a little girl with perfect English and her class, who wanted to interview us both. We obliged and were asked the usual run of questions but cutely.
Jiyoung ordered some Chinese for us and it was promptly delivered to our door. We finished it off and left the dishes outside the door for the delivery guy to pick them up - now that's service. Jiyound headed off to work but when she came back, she took us on a mission to a midnight market.
Dongdaenum Market starts at 10 pm and goes until about 4 am. We headed there to soak up some of the ambience and get some street food. There are heaps of stalls setup on the neon lit streets in this area, with tonnes of stuff for sale. If you want a bargain, this is the place to go! We grabbed some hottoek (the highly addictive, brown sugar pancakes) and fish on a stick but Sean felt like something different to the relative norm. What did this mean? Cooked silkworm larvae!! The first mouthful was gross but the second taster was quite repulsive. Adrienne tried a small sample but decided to flag anymore. This is meant to be popular with the school kids.
Washing the taste of silkworm out with a Coke, we headed back to Jiyoung's place for a well deserved rest. We woke late on Wednesday and Jiyoung suggested that we look at Insadong. To get there we walked to Apgujeong, through the Beverly Hills of Seoul. It was Dolce and Gabbana to the left, Armani to the right and stacks loads more designer stores side-by-side. In the midst of this we came across Huckleberry Farms, an organic store with New Zealand emblazoned across the front of it: three stores in NZ and two in Seoul... hardly any NZ products though (we counted three).
Eventually we came to Insadong with sated stomachs - we tried these awesome walnut flavoured balls of dough. Wicked! We wandered the streets and were intercepted by a TV crew filming God knows what but they asked us what we knew of Korean culture - basically nothing. Eventually they realised that we had only been here a couple of days and couldn't speak Korean. They got us to smile into the camera and say "bali bali" (spelling?) into the camera. Jiyoung told us that it means "quickly, quickly".
We were looking at the Bhuddist supply stores before being distracted by Jogyesa, which is the largest Bhuddist temple in Seoul. The life of Bhudda was painted around the outside of it and three, large, gold statues of Bhudda sat inside. The ceiling was covered in hundreds of lanterns and the hypnotic drone of chanting could be heard. Definitely worth a look.
Another hottoek was on the cards before going to Namdaemun - another big market. The market is named after the city gate that still exists there and is also known as Sungnyemun. We turned up in time for a patrol demonstration, which also included the changing of the guard. Brightly clothed "soldiers" marched through the gate playing drums, cymbals and trumpets, with a good dolloping of flags for effect.
It was a crush at the market. People swarming everywhere, cars trying to make way against a tide of humans and bargains galore. We bought some food at the local stores; Sean had some ramen noodles and Adrienne had the greatest invention since the solar-powered torch - a hotdog on a stick coated with hot chips!!! It tasted brilliant too :-D Yoghurt soju was the next taste sensation. Jiyoung mixed us up a batch and we wiled away the night with this tasty drink, exchanging stories.
The only downside of the day - we jumped on the wrong train for the first time in our month of travel. We got the right line but the wrong direction. Looks like we were finally baptised.
previous travel blog entry
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