A Hop, Skip, and Jump Away (Part 2)

And now, part 2 of the Seoul experience, courtesy of our Korean tour guides.

Taking a picture at one of the old palaces still in Seoul with a palace "guard." It's impossible to see, but the impressive beard that man is sporting is actually fake. Up close, you can see all the glue he had to use to keep it on. Pour soul...

This is my obligatory "Asian pose" at the Cheonggye Stream. The 5-mile long river was an incredible place to escape the bustling streets just above, and I can only imagine how great it would be for dates. Apparently, the stream occasionally becomes a river when it rains a lot. There were escape ladders every few hundred feet.

A "helpful" ajumma singled us out to explain to us the significance of the statue (you can't see it, but it's the large stone structure on the left) and the large stone dais that you can see in this photo. The statue is of Sejong the Great, the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty, and the king who promulgated the Hangeul script. This script is still in use today and I've got to hand it to them. Once understood, the Korean script is actually pretty intuitive and easy to understand. Pronouncing the swallowed vowel sounds, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter.

This picture was actually taken a few time, and in every picture our friends and my brother had their hands up flashing some symbols or another. I was the only one with his hands in his pocket. After words, they all gave me disappointed looks. In the background, the old king's leisure room. Notice it's height. My guess is that being up high made it hard to see all the naked concubines running around.

This was my reaction to eating the incredible winter treat, hotteok. For those who have never had the pleasure of trying one of these delights, it was like eating a steaming pancake filled with honey and sesame seeds. At a dollar a pop, lines formed in front of street vendors filled with anxious people waiting to warm their hands and stomachs with these tasty treats.

This was the inside of one of the traditional houses in the Bukchon village. It had the sliding wooden doors, paper thin walls, intricately cut widow frames, and the kind of sterility you would expect from a typical Asian household.

After walking around for hours, we stopped inside a tea house in the traditional village. My friends and I decided to drink tea made from various herbs and plants. My brother, however, went for an herb-infused makgeolli, a Korean alcoholic beverage made from a mixture of wheat and rice, which gives it a milky, off-white color, and sweetness.

Our final destination, the Noryanjin fish market, had us bargaining for our dinner and tasting weird fishes (ie. the skate I mentioned in Part 1). Of course, no Korean dinner would be complete without a bottle or two of soju. Actually, a real Korean dinner would probably have consisted of way more than just one or two bottles. Additionally, I'm told that you're not even supposed to eat saengseon hoe (read: sashimi) without drinking soju. Who am I to argue that?