A little bit of Seoul

We rounded out the year with a visit to Seoul. I was only mildly interested in checking out Korea; it was never at the top of my list of travel destinations. We stopped there for a few days as a layover on the way home. On the flight there Danny complained he would rather just go home already. It turned out to be a really cool city though. It is heavily influenced by the west so I could easily find foods I like. It is much more modern and clean than Shanghai.  It has a much slower pace than Tokyo. We kept wanting to compare it to San Francisco, it was very relaxing and laid back. It is surrounded by mountains which makes it very picturesque.

Our flight got delayed by an hour, which I guess isn’t too bad. We took the subway to our hotel, which was a traditional Korean house called a hanok. It had paper walls and rooms that all faced south built around a courtyard. It was a cute place and in a great area, called Insadong, but in retrospect I think we should have stayed at the traditional house for one night and somewhere more comfortable the rest of the time. The beds were mattresses you rolled out on the floor and there were two shared bathrooms for all the guests which was not enough for more than a dozen people when they want to shower in the morning. It is still worth trying for a taste of traditional Korean life.

The first day we looked around Insadong, a cute neighborhood with restaurants and lots of shops selling touristy knick knacks. They sell a lot of pottery. Compared to China everything is really expensive, prices are just slightly less than in Philly. I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to bargain like in China but generally it seemed to not be much of a bargaining culture. We tried traditional Korean food for dinner. I got bibimbap, a dish with rice, vegetables and raw egg. Danny wanted to get a shredded beef dish called bulgogi but for some reason it seems like most restaurants only sell it in two person servings so he settled for some dish with tofu and pickled raddish. Every Korean meal comes with kimchi, side dishes of vegetables which are mostly pickled and spicy.



After dinner we tried going to this area called Namdaemon which has a night market selling lots of tourist stuff. By the time we got there everything was starting to close though. The next day we did the USO tour of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and Joint Security Area (JSA). The USO tour is supposed to be the best one because it is the only one that is allowed to take people into a lot of areas. I really don’t know a ton about the Korean War but I was curious so see the area. They tell you some interesting stories and anecdotes about the history of the area. A lot of what they tell you sounds like really petty, stupid disputes like each country trying to build a higher flag pole than the other and having 11 hour meetings to agree on the height of flagpoles. We visited the boardroom where they held these ever so productive meetings. One side of the room is officially South Korea and the other Side is North so technically we went to North Korea. We also had a view of Panmunjom, a North Korean Village that the American and South Koreans believe is uninhabited. The American army call it Propaganda Village. The South Koreans also have a village in the DMZ zone which they call Freedom Village, it is pretty ridiculous. The tour included lunch at a cafeteria where Danny got to eat mediocre Bulgogi. I had bibimbap again. We also went to this cave that the North Koreans dug to try to sneak into south Korea and an old train station that lets you view the second largest city in North Korea. Everywhere you go they have really strict and idiotic rules about where you can stand and what you can and can’t take pictures of. They also don’t allow people of certain nationalities to take the tour.
    

The tour got back around 4:00 and left us off about a block away from the War Memorial of Korea. It was a really cool museum, although it really glorified war a lot. It had sections about ancient Korean War history and sections about the Korean war. Everything was really nicely designed, they had traditional uniforms and lots of movies and 3d models. They even had a giant fortress you were able to climb up and a practice shooting range where people lined up to shoot fake guns. They even had a section about war in the future with a soldier dressed up just like the guys in Star Wars. It was really funny. Outside were some sculptures and life size airplanes and boats with real sailors, or possibly just guys in sailors’ uniforms, standing around taking pictures with tourists. Danny and I debated which was more degrading – real sailors or fake.

      

We went to a really cute area called Itaewon for dinner which has tons of foreign foods.

The next day we decided to check out some palaces. Seoul has five palaces. I wanted to try to hit all the world heritage sites; however they all have annoying rules about only allowing visitors on tours in order to keep the world heritage sites protected. I’d have preferred to wander around on our own. We went to Changdeokgung Palace first. It looked really similar to Forbidden City in Beijing, but smaller. It had similar architecture, bridges and stairways. I think if I saw it before Forbidden City I’d have been a lot more impressed but it was nice. You were allowed to actually walk inside a lot of the rooms if you took off your shoes because they were actually rebuilt or renovated pretty recently.

       

Afterwards we went to the National Folk Museum of Korea. The museum itself was ok, it had a few displays about Korean customs like weddings and funerals but we didn’t stay long. I preferred the displays outside the museum which were designed to look like a traditional Korean village, including a house similar to our hotel. The Museum is in the back of the Gyeonbokgung Palace. I think usually people enter through the palace and see that first but we did it backwards. It was pretty similar to Changdeokgung but it had a pretty view of the mountains from most spots. As we were leaving we got to see a changing of the guards by the front gate.

  

After I had bibimbop for dinner again, we had an early night because Danny had to work. He met with some collaborators at Korea Academy of Science the next day while I toured on my own.

I went to Jongmyo Shrine, which it turned out also can only be visited on a guided tour which I didn’t realize and I arrived an hour before the English tour. There isn’t much to do around the shrine, unless you are a retired Korean man, in which case playing goh at the park in front of the shrine is likely to be the center of your social life. There do seem to be coffee shops everywhere you go in Seoul so I killed an hour there. Jongmyo is a shrine built for the Korean royalty. Once I finally went in the shrine, I found it looked really similar to the palaces except it had a bunch of pathways that you weren’t allowed to walk on that were built for the spirits to walk on. It also had a room set up to show how traditional offerings were set up for the spirits. It had rooms with tablets for each of the important Korean emperors.

I was planning to check out one more palace afterwards but it was hot and I already lost an hour so I just went back to the hotel for a bit before meeting Danny and his collaborators from the academy for dinner. I think when traveling spending some time with locals or expats living in the city gives a lot more insight into the place than you would get otherwise. We had a traditional Korean banquet meal, which isn’t quite as scary as traditional Chinese foods but still involves a lot of meat.

After we left we went to Meoyondong, an area similar to Nanjing road or Times Square. We got there as things were starting to close up though, we always have bad timing…

Our last day there was our one year wedding anniversary. We went to a town called Suwon around an hour outside Seoul. We visited a Korean Folk Village that I read about online. It was different than I thought, I pictured it being like a Renaissance festival but it was more like a Theme Park. It was still really cool but really empty. A lot of the time there was nobody around but us. They had a few little shows scheduled; my favorite was the equestrian performance. They held a traditional Korean wedding twice a day, which I thought would be a really cute anniversary activity but it was sort of underwhelming. We also saw a tight rope walkers. It also had an amusement park area where I was the only passenger on a few rides. At least I didn’t have to wait in line all day. I wonder if it was just empty because it is a Tuesday afternoon or it is just doing really bad business.

 

Once we got back to Seoul we took the cable car to the top of Mount Namesan. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant with a lovely view of the city at the base of N tower. We went to the top of N tower, which was in my opinion overpriced and didn’t have as good a view as the restaurant because it had gotten all foggy at that point. It is still one of those things you have to do as a tourist.

It was a much more relaxed trip than most of our travels, we got a feel for the city but there wasn’t so much to see that we had to make ourselves crazy running around. I liked that Seoul felt really laid back, of the cities we visited in Asia it seems like one of the most livable places for foreigners.

The Prettiest City in China

Despite the fact that we are reaching the point of being sick of so much travel, I planned a long weekend in Yangshuo. I never heard of it before we moved to China but Danny had always wanted to go to the area.  Visiting Yangshuo is a very different experience from most of our travels in Asia so far. Mostly in other cities we run around frantically trying to see as many important landmarks as possible. Guilin and Yangshuo are pretty much known for having pretty karst mountains and outdoor activities.

We went bike riding,hiking, rafting, fed buffalo, took a cruise and most importantly took in the beautiful scenery. We only had three days there but I think we would have both been happier if we could stay a week. Danny really didn’t want to go home.

 We flew into Guilin, the closest airport to Yangshuo, really late Thursday night. We were a bit worried about finding a taxi at midnight and did end up waiting a while. I was really surprised almost all the taxi drivers pulling up to the taxi line were women. Our driver told Danny there was a taxi strike in the city because they wanted to crack down on illegal taxis and raise rates. I’m kind of surprised because taxis in Guilin are really expensive compared to most places in China. Our driver was not officially a taxi driver, she was driving her husband’s cab. I’m not sure how her driving instead of her husband made a difference in the strike but there were fewer cabs available in general.


We stayed in a cute little hostel in Guilin called Wada. I’m ok with hostels as long as they have private rooms. The biggest advantage is it seems like hostels in China are more likely to have western foods than the hotels we normally stay in. In the morning we took a half day tour of the Li River that left us off in Yangshuo. We set it up in advance which is a little more expensive than just booking it once we arrive but it does mean you can avoid worrying about what to do the first day and we were able to find a tour mostly in English. We took a bus for about and hour and a half to the river. Our guide was ok, he pushed really hard to sell other tours as he told us about the area. We hadn’t figured out our plans for the rest of the day and it was really cheap (about $30 for both of us) so we signed up for a second tour in the afternoon where you go rafting. For the morning, we took a little motorboat along the river. The Li River has some of the loveliest views of the karst mountains – limestone mountains that are carved away by water over the years. Our driver pointed out all the important sights, although he didn’t speak English so Danny had to translate for me. Most of the sights are just specific mountains, rocks, or trees that the locals decided resemble something in nature like a type of fish, or a frog.

 

 




















 
We got lunch at a little noodle shop that was actually pretty decent and cost less than a dollar.  We chatted with our fellow tourists. This was our first tour where most of them were actually foreigners who spoke English. They were friendly and I was really happy to be on a tour with people I could communicate with. We sat with a German couple who had just finished a graduate studies program in China.



After lunch our guide gave us a really brief tour of the area. He pointed out one of the “yellow mud huts” which were hastily built in mass in the time of Mao Zedong when Mao told people to have as many kids as possible to increase the population. Funny that his successors instituted the one child policy…

The guide told us a bit about the houses. Above each doorway two round beams of wood stick out. The larger the wooden beams, the wealthier the family. The guide explained there is a saying, which Danny was vaguely familiar with, "Mén dāng hù duì". In English it means something like, “The doorway matches families’ social status.” So if your family has a very large beam above the door and your neighbor has a very small post you should not let your children get married, you should match your child to someone with an equal sized door post, or if you are really ambitious a larger door post. There also are red scrolls on each side of the door because red scares away the “nian” monster that comes every year.

As we walked down to the river, we checked out the view from an old fashioned bridge that is featured in a few Chinese movies. As we were taking pictures on the bridge a guy walked by leading a buffalo.


 

We each got to recline in a two person bamboo raft. I decided I liked our driver immediately because he had a cool bamboo hat. Instead of rowing the drivers used a long bamboo stick to push us along the river. It was really lovely scenery. Unfortunately it was raining a bit but the raft had a big umbrella and we wore ponchos. The driver pointed out more oddly shaped mountains that resembled animals, and couples taking wedding photos. We made three stops along the way.

The first was to watch cormant fishing, fishing with a cormant birds that are trained to catch fish then spit them out and give them to the fisherman. We actually had seen it before when we visited Xitang. It was still sort of cool, although in Xitang we were the only ones watching and the boat came much closer up to us.

Next, we stopped to feed some buffalo. Danny made fun of me for being scared of buffalo, really I just didn’t want to get that close to them because other people got their hands licked while feeding them and I thought that was sort of yucky.


The last stop was a small man made rapid that we went over.

From there we took the bus to Yangshuo. We both regretted slightly that we didn’t choose the route that let us out in Xing Ping, another little town just past Yangshuo. The tour gave options of going there, Yangshuo or heading back to Guilin.

     






























 
The bus left us off in the center of Yangshuo. It is a beautiful little town surrounded by karst mountains. There are two main streets filled with restaurants, and knick knacks for tourists to purchase. We looked around briefly and Danny had a snack from a food cart run by a woman wearing traditional Chinese attire including an incredibly ornate silver hat.

 


We decided to stay a bit farther out in the countryside rather than smack in the middle of town since the point of the trip was to enjoy nature and the scenery. Our hotel was a ten minute, 30 RMb ($6) taxi ride from town. We stayed at a place called the Giggling Tree which is managed by a Dutch couple. I’d read about the place online and it had excellent reviews. It is really cute, although a bit smaller than I’d pictured it based on the photos from the website. It feels like a quaint little bed and breakfast. It has a restaurant with decent western foods. Our room had a beautiful view of the mountains. We decided to splurge and get the large room because the price difference was only about $5. Our bed had a mosquito net which is really novel for me, having never slept under one.

 

The next day we rented bikes from the hotel and bought passes to visit a cave. It took us about an hour and a half to bike to the ticket office of the cave.  It is a really pretty ride through the country side past karst mountains. If we had more time we should have taken the more rugged back roads but we took the most direct route to Moon Water Cave, except the half hour we lost going the wrong direction. On the way we passed a few other sights including a rock climbing area that we would have liked to spend an extra day to visiting. There are a few caves with mud baths and hot springs in the area. I’m not sure if the one we picked was the best of them, but we enjoyed it.

From the ticket booth they drove us to the entrance. Somehow we managed to completely forget bathing suits but they sold them for pretty cheap at the cave’s entrance. They were really ugly and mine didn’t fit me properly. The area outside the entrance to the cave was really stinky. They recommended we didn’t bring a camera in which we were stupid enough to abide by. They really just wanted to sell us photos.

The cave was really cool. We took a boat in through a narrow pathway. After a few minutes we stopped and got out and began to walk. We hiked along the inside of the cave for about half an hour. Parts of the cave’s interior were low and narrow, at points we even had to crawl. Danny kept bumping his head and we both were glad they gave us construction hats to protect ourselves. After a bit of exploring we tried out the mud bath. It presumably is supposed to be good for your skin but I didn’t notice any difference. They had a naturally made water slide though. It was pretty fun. Afterwards we soaked in the hot springs. I’ve never been to one before. It was relaxing, just like a Jacuzzi but without the bubbles, and of course it was carved away naturally inside a limestone cave. I read online it may be artificially heated. I’m not sure if it was but we enjoyed it. Afterwards we got suckered into buying photos since we didn’t bring our camera in.

Afterwards we road our bikes a short ways to Moon Hill.We grabbed lunch at a little restaurant at its base with a lovely view and unimpressive food. Moon Hill is shaped like a pyramid with a funny little half-moon shaped hole through the center. It was a relatively easy hour long hike to the top. We were feasted on by mosquitos as we climbed but the view was worth it. Yangshuo is lovely. Afterwards we stopped at a little ice cream stand that seemed to be part of a farm that grew passion fruit. Danny got the home made passion fruit ice cream. It was pretty decent, but had too many seeds for my taste.


     

  



















 


The bike ride back was really tiring. Since neither of us is a very good biker, we were both really tired and our legs were rather shaky by the end. I’ve decided one of my main goals in life is to not get so lame and out of shape that I decide I’m too old for this sort of stuff within the next 30 years.

We had dinner at our hotel again, which has a rather large assorted menu. I’m always happy if I can find pizza while traveling in China. They do manage to find some rather unique ways to mess it up though. This one did not come with corn or melon on top though so I was pretty happy. 




For our last day we decided to spend half a day in Guilin since we were a bit curious to see it. In the morning we went into the town center of Yangshuo and spent a bit more time shopping. We got shaved ice, which was surprisingly good, but not quite as good as the place in Taipei which is supposed to have the best shave ice in the world. I decided I really wanted to buy a bamboo hat to hang on our wall as decoration so I looked around the stalls until I found some really cool ones. It ended badly, one of our hats seemed to have been infested by little bugs Google identified as Powder Post Beetles. They kept eating our hats and leaving bamboo dust underneath it. After dragging those giant hats all around Yangshuo and Guilin we ended up having to throw them both away a few days later. I’m sad I don’t have cool hats, otherwise known as Kong Fu Panda hats.















From Yangshuo we caught a bus to Guilin. It definitely is not worth spending time in Guilin, we should have stayed in Yangshuo. As soon a we got off the bus this guy in a vehicle similar to a golf cart offered to drive us for only five RMB, less than a dollar. We decided we’d  try it.

We had him drive us to the art museum which we had read about on wikitravel. I didn’t have high expectations but I love art and it is free so we thought we'd go anyway.

It only took about five minutes for our golf cart to navigate its way through the busy streets and stop out front a pretty, newly built but traditionally designed building. Inside the whole first floor was completely empty. The woman at the front told us the display was on the second floor.

I felt really nervous walking through the entirely empty “art museum.” Upstairs we were led through a large empty room into a side room where the lights were flicked on to reveal an unimpressive looking gallery selling numerous Chinese ink paintings. We looked around for about two minutes before heading back out. Wikitravel could have had the courtesy to label it properly, oh well.

Outside our golf car driver was waiting eagerly. They also were selling sightseeing cruises, although Danny didn’t love the idea. I think we were both feeling pretty skived out by our driver stalking us and the empty museum. Even though no harm really came to us, I just got the feeling people were trying to screw us out of our money. In part to get away from our driver/stalker I ended up deciding we should take the cruise. I think he got a cut of the fee we paid for the cruise but I’m not sure how it worked. No way he would have hung around all that time to get 5 RMB a ride. Danny thought the cruise was overpriced and not worth it but he went along with it because I was supposed to be in charge of planning this trip. I thought that just meant I was in charge of the flight and hotels, I put a lot of effort into picking cute hotels… I didn’t have a set plan of what to do in Guilin… oh well.

The cruise was actually ok. We were the only foreigners on the boat and all the locals in China seem to smoke but that was about the worst of it. We saw all the main sights of Guilin, more karst mountains named after animals. It was nowhere near as pretty as the views in Yangshuo. There were too many ugly buildings blocking the way. I dragged my giant, stupid hats along with me the whole time. It would have been worth it if it weren’t for those stupid beetles. They make such cool wall hangings.






















Half an hour later we got off the boat in a different location down the river to find our driver/stalker waiting for us. Awesome. We decided to check out seven stars park,recommended to us by our waiter from Giggling Tree. He was a friendly guy, a new waiter; he was somewhat uncertain of how to talk to foreigners, although his English was decent. Seven Stars Park wasn’t especially impressive but I don’t think you’ll find many better places to see in Guilin. It is pretty much their version of New York’s central Park. You have to pay a fairly high admission fee though. Inside there are a few points of interest including a temple, a few waterfalls, a zoo (which costs extra), and a view of a camel shaped mountain. There really isn’t much excitement. I could see the appeal if you live in Guilin but it isn’t particularly worth the trip for tourists. There weren't really any laowai (foreigners) there.






















We got a snack at a pub on the pedestrian street. While we waited for our food this random guy came over and sat down at our table. I pretty much always assume that means he wants money. He started by congratulating Danny on having a foreign girlfriend. Whatever… Next he began telling us he was an art teacher, which is funny because I actually am an art teacher,but I didn’t bother to tell him that. In his case, I’m pretty sure it was just a scam where he tries to high pressure sell us art after we agree to go see his nearby gallery. He said he was going to be teaching art at UCLA through a teacher exchange program. His story really fell apart for me when I asked him what type of art he taught and he said just art. He knew nothing about art. Ah well, it was amusing.