Hanok Village

On Wednesday, we took at trip to Eunpyeong Hanok Village. This is in Seoul, but Seoul has a lot of other "towns" within it, including what is called Eunpyeong New Town. After the Korean War, there was little in this area, and then it became a place of poorly built wooden housing where the very poor lived.

Then, as Seoul grew, and they were trying to eliminate buildings that were unsafe due to being fire hazards or unable to withstand earthquakes, Eunpyeong was selected for the next urban growth. Much of Eunpyeong New Town looks like a lot of other parts of Seoul with high-rise apartments. But in one section, they instead built a Hanok village.

Eunpyeong Hanok Village and a lantern and mountains

What's Hanok? The word Hanok comes from two Chinese characters, the first "Han" meaning Korea and the second "Ok" meaning house. I will show you some Hanok architecture. But this word, Hanok, didn't exist for a long time. The Korean way of building houses was the only way houses were built for many centuries. So Hanok houses were just houses. It wasn't until Westerners came and brought their building techniques that two very different styles of buildings were constructed, western style houses and the traditional Korean style houses. That latter construction became known as Hanok architecture.

Hanok homes

Hanok houses are built using pillars, beams, and rafters, but without using nails to attach them. The cuts in the pieces allow them to fit tightly together. Traditionally, all these elements would be made of wood. That's still common, but other materials are now used as well. In addition, Hanok architecture uses stone blocks as cornerstones and under the wooden beams that make up the outer walls. This means the wood is not directly making contact with the ground which helps prevent water damage and rot.

A detail in one of the walls of one of the homes. I think tiger. Alrica thinks maybe tiger, maybe cat.

Hanok houses also have sloped roofs and overhangs at the ends of them. The width of the overhang and the pitch of the roof depend on where the house is being built and the conditions in the area. The slope is meant to help with dispersing rain and the overhangs block the sun from shining directly into the house in the summer. They overhang the windows so the sun, high in the sky, doesn't heat the house as much. In the winter when snow is on the ground, and when the sun is lower, those slopes and overhangs help to direct more sunlight into the house. This includes direct sunlight, but also the light reflecting off the white snow. Traditionally, the roof would be made of thatch, but modern Hanok architecture uses tiles. And they are not flat tiles, but rounded to better resist hail and sleet.

You can check out the roof and the overhangs

Perhaps the biggest innovation of the Hanok is the ondul. This is the heating system. Fireplaces are inefficient losing a lot of the heat energy up the flue. In a Korean home, the floor of the house was placed over large stones called baking stones. These stones absorb heat well and slowly release it when they are hot. The ondul system consists of a furnace at one end of the perimeter of the house. Fuel is burned here and the hot air, smoke, and exhaust travels in tunnels under the house, heating the baking stones. The vent or the flue is on the opposite side of the perimeter of the house. The fires are lit, and the hot air and exhaust pass under the house, heating not only the house, but also the baking stones. Then, even after the fire is put out for the night, the baking stones stay hot and slowly radiate heat up through the floor of the house, keeping it warm all night long.

I love the traditional old-world style of the door along with the smart doorbell

This is still the preferred heating method for Korean homes today, even those built using Western style architecture. But there has been one change. Rather than the exhaust of an open flame heating the baking stones, now it is heated water from a boiler which travels in pipes around the baking stones. It is similar to a radiator or a baseboard heater in the west. But the difference is the stones which stay hot for longer and the fact that the heat comes up through the floor itself.

It is a very clean aesthetic

Eunpyeong Hanok Village is beautiful and this is only partially due to the lovely construction of the houses there. The backdrop is also amazing, surrounded by lofty and picturesque mountains.

The village and the mountains seen from the museum rooftop platform

While we were there we visited the Eunpyeong Hanok museum where we learned all this neat stuff about Hanok architecture. It also discussed the history of the village. One interesting thing I learned, when they decided to build Eunpyeong New Town, they found lots of old, old graves. Bodies had to be reinterred. And the reason is this. Long ago when Seoul (which was called Hanyang at the time) was the seat of the emporer, there was a law that no one could be buried within the city walls, nor within 4 kilometers of the city walls. (I assume it wasn't actually measured in kilometers back then, but it was a distance equivalent to 4 km today.) Eunpyeong was a nearby station for horses and messengers and travelers going into and out of Hanyang. And it was just outside the prescribed prohibition area for bodies. So it became a major place for burials of people from Hanyang.

This was inset in a wall displaying people in traditional Korean clothing called hanbok

In addition, the rooftop viewing area of the museum offers fantastic views of the village and the mountains. If you're ever in the area, you should visit!

Another detail in a wall calling nature to mind

We had a great time. And we got a bonus moment of magic. We were sitting in a gazebo along the Eunpyeong Trail. Surrounding the gazebo were many cherry blossom trees that still had a good number of petals. We were sitting, enjoying the trees, and how the occasional petal would fall. Then a breeze came through and many petals started streaming down. It was like we were watching snow fall outside a window, but the snow was delicate pink flower petals. It only lasted a few seconds, but it is a memory we will hold on to for years to come.

Beauty and the Bread (and the Ratings Racket)

On Monday, Alrica and I visited the Seongsu neighborhood. This neighborhood is known for several things. It is the home to beauty, to salt bread, and to shoemakers. Let me describe each.

Beauty

In Seongsu, there are many stores selling beauty products: creams, lotions, cosmetics, tools for caring for eyebrows, nails, and teeth. The idea of beauty is very important in Korea, and this is the district where you can find all your beauty needs.

One of the big cosmetics/toiletries chains is called Olive Young. Their flagship store is in Seongsu. And one of the services they offer is a skin assessment. However, this is incredibly popular, and they only give out so many in day. So you are supposed to arrive right when they open if you want a chance at it. We believed that they opened at 10 and we arrived at 10:02. Either they opened earlier than 10 or it really is true that you have to line up before they open, because there were already too many people there and there were going to be no more skin assessments.

Maybe we will go back and try again. We may not. It depends mostly on if Alrica wants to do it or not. Personally, I know the biggest thing to know about my skin, I have psoriasis. But I suppose there could be secondary features I could learn about. But if I am being honest, I'm not likely to buy whatever products they suggest I buy based on my skin assessment. I agree it could be fun to see what a skin assessment is, but I'm not sure if it is fun enough to be worth the effort to me.

A fire extinguisher for the Ultra Facial Meltdown Recovery Cream 

Though we weren't able to get assessed, we still wandered the store a bit. Alrica was probably interested in the products. I was interested in the marketing.

Why would a skinless skeleton be chosen to hock skin care products?

Salt Bread

One of the virally trending foods in Seoul right now is salt bread. Salt bread is bread rolls that are made with lots of butter and, as you might have guessed, are also made with a good deal of salt. They are smooth and soft and definitely very buttery and salty. No surprises on those last two. Seongsu is the part of town where all the elite find their finest salt bread. This is to the point that you have to wait in line to enter the bakeries.

Before we purchased our salt bread though, we saw a shop called Bagel Land. Now, we had not had bagels in a long time. So we decided to head inside and get a bagel sandwich. It was good. No, it wasn't New York bagels good, but it was good. And after a long bagel drought, it was even more attractive.

On a Tangent: Ratings Racket

Throughout our travels, we have used Google Maps to navigate a lot of places. It works great usually, though there are some places that it is not very effective. I'm thinking of the medina of Fez, for example.

South Korea is another exception. For a long time, the South Korean government withheld its detailed GPS information from Google. There are specific South Korean mapping apps: Kakao Maps and Naver Maps. They are fantastic so long as you are in South Korea. They even have a Marauder's Map feature for the metro. I can see where the metro trains are in real time. But they only work in South Korea.

You see, South Korea felt that Google doesn't play fair. They will show you locations of businesses that paid them for the right and fail to show you the locations of businesses that didn't. In other words, they are racketeers. If you zoom in far enough, then you can see the businesses that didn't pay. But if you just do a search for pizza, you are going to see the pizzerias that did pay in the initial map area that Google gives you. So South Korea said, no pay to play! We are opposed to you Google.

Until last month.

South Korea reversed its previous course in regards to Google. Since Google is the powerhouse that it is, and so many foreign tourists use Google Maps, the government decided it had to let Google compete with Kakao and Naver. Basically, South Korea decided in favor of tourist friendly rather than business protectionism.

This has led to the "Google Review Event". What it means is that there are lots of businesses in South Korea that have no Google reviews and no ratings, because until now Google Maps hadn't known those businesses were there. Seeing as how this move was to make foreign tourists more likely to use the app they already know, this is concerning for the businesses. Tourists won't choose them because they have very few ratings and no reviews.

So many such businesses are offering a "Google Review Event." If you complete a Google review of that business (and usually you must include a picture) then they give you something for free. Bagel Land was having such an event. Alrica completed a Google review with a picture and she received a plain bagel for free.

OMG! Free bagel!

This leads me to the second Google racket, the reviews themselves. When we started our travels, I was great about doing Google reviews of places. I felt that it was very helpful to the businesses to have a detailed review (and I am detailed) in English for their international travelers. And I felt like I was giving back to the travel community because my review might help them. (As I said, very detailed.)

When you write reviews, you get points for the review. The number of points depends on how much you write, if you include pictures, and if you answer specific questions. But what do you need points for?

When you've done five review, you become a "local guide". But you start as a local guide level 1. And you need a small number of points to make level 2, maybe it is another 20 points. But then you need like 100 points or something to make level 3. And maybe 500 more points to make level 4. I'm not sure of the exact numbers. But it is a growing scale.

This is exactly like Dungeons and Dragons. You start out as a first level character. Maybe you need 2000 experience points to reach second level. But then you need 4000 more to reach third level and 8000 more than that to reach fourth level and so on. But here's the question. What are the points earning me?

In D&D, as I gain levels I am better at attacking my opponents. I get more spell slots and access to better spells. I can better resist poison or the breath weapon the titular dragons that I might meet in the titular dungeons. Experience points matter, at least for playing the game.

But with Google, what do these points earn me? Well, I have a badge, a little orange circle with a shape in it. At fourth level, that shape becomes a star, one with four points. At fifth level it is a five pointed start. At sixth level, it is a six pointed star. I think you see the pattern.

That's it! That's all you get. You get the title of Level 6 Local Guide and a badge with more points on the star. Google claims you "might" get early access to new Google features. But what features? Unspecified. Has it ever happened? Not in my experience.

What's more, Google started to flood me with emails telling me 100 people have read my reviews. Oh look, someone thumbs upped one of my reviews. Hey Erich, your reviews are really helping people. Why was Google so desperate to tell me how effective my reviews were? That's when I realized it. I'm working for Google. For free.

Every time I complete a review, I'm making their product more valuable. And what am I being paid for that service? Points. Points that don't do anything. I don't gain spells. I don't get better results from Google searches. My Google Translate app works the same no matter how many points I have. If my contributions are truly so valuable, why are you only compensating me with the Emporer's New Points?

So I have scaled way back on doing Google reviews. If I really believe it will help that business and I like that business, I would write one. If I have an exceptional experience, I would write one. If I think I can impart something to my fellow travelers in a super helpful way, I would write one. But I am not going to write reviews about every restaurant, vendor, market, or museum I visit. I'm done being part of the racket.

Okay, rant over, back to Seongsu.

Back from Tangent: Salt Bread Continued

As I said, at the bakeries, there are lines. So we got into one of them for a place called Haz Bakery. We waited maybe 15 minutes to get in. Inside we bought salt bread (cause you have to try that) and some bagel dessert thing. It was like chocolate mousse and a hard hazelnut chocolate layer on a plain bagel. But note: this is not a bagel dish. This is a dessert dish that happens to be on a bagel. Both were good, though I'm not sure what makes salt bread the viral food that it is. It's good bread, but it isn't astronomically good bread. It isn't so exalted over other breads that I am tempted to return to Seongsu just to get more of it.

Some of the options at Haz Bakery

Maybe I just lack a proper Korean palate.

Shoe Making

There are shops in Seongsu where one can go have shoes made. Yes, you can also buy Nike and Adidas shoes at shoe stores. But you could have shoes made to fit. We didn't do so.

Shoe Mosaic

But we did visit a park that is shoe themed. So this is a serious trait of the neighborhood.

That is a HIGH heeled shoe

Also, beside the park was a convenience store and we were thirsty. So we stopped to buy some beverages. Being the brave culinary adventurers we are, we tried this:

In case you don't read Korean, that's an apple cider vinegar drink

Guess what happens when you try something called an apple cider vinegar drink? Yeah, it tastes like you're drinking vinegar. I'm sure my insides are squeaky clean, but I won't be buying a second package of it.

Maybe more confirmation that I just don't have a proper Korean palate.

Affordable Housing

In living the way we do, Alrica and I want to have time to explore all these myriad places we visit. So we try not to overwhelm ourselves with work. The trade-off is that one doesn't make as much money. That's fine, because we find that we can still do what we want to do on our budget. Alrica sometimes posts about the budget. Maybe she will again soon. But whether or not she does, here's a somewhat obvious fact: the cost of living of a place makes a big difference in how we can live.

When we are spending a month or more in someplace with a very low cost of living, like Vietnam or Thailand, rent is very affordable. And an inexpensive meal might run two dollars a person. And a slightly more expensive meal might run six dollars a person. And if we want to splurge, we can spend fifteen dollars a person.

South Korea is not in that category. While I would say the cost of living is less than in the United States, it's not way less. So we have to make some accommodations to fit the budget. And that includes in our accommodations.

Much of the population of Seoul lives in high-rise buildings. This is reasonably new. In fact, almost all of Seoul is reasonably new. Understand that after the Korean War, Seoul was in rubble. A few buildings survived, but not many. It had been the scene of three major battles during the war. This means most of the buildings are from 1950 or later. And much of the housing is from 1970 or later, including high-rises.

But not all of the residents Seoul lives in high rises. Including us. I am going to try to explain our neighborhood. We live in a market.

The central street of the Central Market. Only here on the street where I live!

That could be confusing if you are thinking of a grocery store. No, where we live is an entire neighborhood where the streets have stalls along side them. The center street which only allows pedestrians and motorcycles and bicycles even has stalls in the center of it. There are some shops built into the buildings on either side of the roads, but much of the business is at the sidewalk level, no need to pass through doors. Of course, there are buildings. And those buildings, while dedicated to commerce on the ground floor, often have residential space on the upper floors. These buildings tend to only be about two or three floors.

Our building is three floors. There is a textile shop at ground level. On the second floor are two apartments, one of which is ours. There are more apartments on the third floor.

In many ways, I love this space. It's surprisingly quiet given that we live above a market. And the location is fantastic. Not only is there great food all around us, but we are so close to several bus lines and metro lines, we can get anywhere. The heat comes from under the floor, and the temperature is quite comfortable. True, the windows give us views of the walls of the neighboring buildings, but they open and let in fresh air.

I admit, it is small. Let's say, it is efficient. And even with all its efficiency, it's straining the budget a bit. But we wanted to try living in Seoul, and we had come in underbudget in our last few locations, so we aren't worried about it.

View of the door and shoe rack

Allow me to describe the "efficiency" as I termed it. When you enter the front door, (there is no back door,) you are in the kitchen/laundry room. It's just like a hallway. Beside the door is a shoe rack (because you don't wear shoes indoors in Korea. Going forward, first you see places to place the garbage and recycling. Next is the refrigerator which says "Cooing" on the door. I don't know if this is meant to be cooling, but missing a letter l or if the refrigerator is making soft pigeon noises. I haven't heard any soft pigeon noises, so that's some evidence of a negative.

Kitchen view toward the washing machine

On top of the refrigerator is a microwave labeled "Cuckoo". We have a bird theme going on. Though, it's nice that some things are written in the Latin Alphabet. The dials for the microwave are in Korean. Same for the washing machine, but we'll get there.

The towel is hanging down from on top of the microwave. No towel rack.

Beyond the refrigerator is the counter, the cabinets, and the sink. Then at the end of the hall is the washing machine, though there is a curtain rod and drape one can pull to hide the washing machine, I suppose if one has company. I'm not sure where the company would go, but they don't have to see the washing machine. What a relief.

The washer is also labeled in Korean. When I translate some of the settings, I have "Dehydration" which I can set to "River" or "Middle" or "Approximately." I think my translation app is missing context. But I take it to be high, medium, and low.

On the left side of the hall are two doors, one to each of the two bedrooms. The bedroom farther from the front door is the larger of the two. Here there is a table which has to double as our dining room table and as our desk for working. So there is a lot of me moving my computer from table to bed and then from bed to table. The table is a small round one, and can only seat two people. So again, not sure what I would do if I had company. But that doesn't seem likely.

Bedroom, Dining Room, Office

The landlord has a lot of stuff in the room. There are pretty things and smelly things on the table. There is a television on a stand in one corner and at its base are books, boxes, and other small appliances. For a place with limited space, our landlord is already filling a lot of it.

I discovered (to say it nicely) what one of those small appliances is. It seems to be the Korean equivalent of an Amazon Echo, an Alexa. I learned this because I was meeting with a student and suddenly I heard a female voice speaking in Korean. It sounded just like the voice that Alexa has. But I had no idea what it was saying. I ignored it, because I was working with a student. All of a sudden, the television turned on. There is a cartoon on the screen which is also speaking Korean. I hqd to excuse myself from the meeting so I could turn off the TV. After my meeting, I found what I believe to be the Amazon Echo and held the power button until it turned blue. I think this means I turned it off, though maybe it suffocated. Either way, it hasn't spoken to me since.

I have no idea what I said during my meeting that was close enough to the Korean "Alexa" to get it started in the first place. So I have no way to test, for sure, that it won't happen again. If it does happen again, I will remove its power cord, but I am trying to be as non-disruptive as possible.

The other bedroom really has only room for the bed, a stool, and the door to the bathroom.

The "en suite" bedroom

The bathroom is the funniest part. First, it's a wet bath. What I mean is that there is no separate shower stall. The shower is on the wall and when you use it, the bathroom gets wet. The drain is in the bathroom floor. This is not new to us. We've seen that in many places in Africa and Asia. This one is a little bit different though. The faucet for the shower is the sink faucet. Many of you are used to the tub faucet having a tab you can pull up and that switches it to the shower. Same idea here, but it is the sink faucet which has a tab that you pull out and it switches to the shower. So you take your shower in front of the sink.

The sink faucet that redirects to the shower

The bathroom is under the stairs that go up to the third floor. At the sink and shower, you can stand normally. But the toilet is located at the far end, under the slope of the stairs. There is even a sign warning you to watch your head.

The sign on the sloped walls says "Watch your Head" (in English and Korean)

For all the men out there, you will understand what I am going to explain next. When you have to urinate, you have two choices. You can sit to pee, that works. But if you prefer standing, well, I have a song for you! I bet you can figure out what the melody is I have in mind.

Every limber Limbo boy
Has a skill he can employ.
Watch your head because of stairs.
So you're not caught unawares.
If you want to stand, that's fine.
Be prepared to bend your spine.
When the toilet's placed like this.
You must do the Limbo piss.

Another upside! It's rare that I come out of the bathroom not humming The Limbo Rock. And I am doing such good stretching exercises!

Anniversary Epiphany

I'm gonna get to the epiphany. But I need to set it up.

The wide Han River

I really like Seoul. I took a solo explore today. I took the metro to a station beside the Hangang (the Han River). I crossed the river on foot. No, I didn't walk on water, neither Seoul nor I are that unwordly divine. But I did walk over a bridge. That river is so wide! It took me at least 20 minutes just to cross the bridge. In fact, later I crossed a tributary of the Hangang called the Tancheon Stream, and that seemed wide enough that calling it a stream felt like false modesty. It was definitely wider that the Truckee River back home, but, as my family might say, that's like being taller than Appreon. (Suffice it to say that Appreon is a particularly short gnome, so the idea is that everything is taller than Appreon.)

Hangang, with mountain backdrop.

On the south bank of the river I walked through one of the Hangang Parks, this one called Jamsil. I saw people out in a grassy area for picnics and a day by the river. Interestingly, many of the families had these pop up tents. They weren't large tents to sleep in, but just to relax in during the day, to somewhat get out of the sun. In another part of the park there was a beach. Now, this is along a river, not the ocean. But there was sand placed here with pink lounge chairs and pink umbrellas. And some of the kids were playing with buckets and sand rakes like you would at the beach.

Look at the little pop up tents

I wondered at first if it was a Barbie event

Oh, and I saw a fish ladder! I saw this spot where the water was running down a series of short steps. I thought it looked like a fish ladder, like a place that fish can jump upstream because there is a bigger spillway that they can't jump. So I continued to walk downstream and sure enough, I found the bigger spillway. This is neat and all, but I am excited that after a good amount of travel, I recognized an architectural feature in a river as a fish ladder. I did not, sadly, see any fish jumping their way up it. But this is spring, so more likely this is swim out to the ocean season and not return to spawn season.

Cardio for carp! Workouts for walleye! Stairmaster for salmon!

There was also a flower garden. I think it is in progress. There was a central area that was gorgeous, full of all kinds of flowers. And there was a lot around that central area that was grass and dirt. So it will probably look even better in the future.

The completed part of the flower garden is colorful...

...with a lot of species and varieties of flowers

This is not to say Seoul is perfect. It has big pluses: lots to do, great public transportation, and what a view, mountains everywhere. But it has some minuses too. For example, pollution. Understand, I don't mean litter. This city is unexpectedly clean. The Koreans do not litter. And that's amazing because if you have trash while you are out on a walk, you do not see any garbage cans in which you can place it. You just have to carry it until you get home or visit a convenience store. Yet still, nobody litters. The pollution they do have is in the air. There is a gray miasma. I got some pictures of the Lotte World Tower, the tallest building in Seoul. It's less than a mile from the river, but do you see how hazy the top is?

Atmospheric opacity not set to zero

Trying to get back to the point: I really like Seoul. And I really liked Hanoi. And I really liked Nonthaburi. And the list goes on. I haven't felt that into every city we have visited, but many of them. Anyway, that got me thinking. This is one of the two threads that leads to my epiphany.

I walked past this today. Sadly it was closed. I wanted to see all the strangeness. And bakeryness.

Yesterday was my anniversary. Here's an amazing coincidence: Yesterday was Alrica's anniversary too! And we were both celebrating our 27th anniversary. How random is that, the very person I am exploring the world with has the same exact anniversary. Will wonders never cease?

Some people brought their remote control boats to the river today

For our anniversary, we had fried chicken. Now, at this moment you might be thinking "That's a little underwhelming, Erich." But no, you see, in South Korea, fried chicken is a thing! They love fried chicken here and it is served in these delicious seasoned sauces. We tried Garlic Soy and it was delicious. But there are only about 20 more varieties to try. And each of the chicken places has its own recipes for their sauces. Many of them also do a chicken and beer platter. That's also part of the Korean fried chicken thing. You drink it with beer. Neither Alrica nor I drink, so we aren't likely to enjoy the full South Korean chicken experience.

My Crocodile Dundee moment (Trancheon Stream): "That's not a stream..."

We also went for a walk along the Cheonggyecheon Stream. This one really is narrow enough to qualify as a stream. It is a lovely waterway that runs through Seoul for over ten kilometers. It is the romantic place to stroll in Seoul. There are many people walking along it. But you can't go there when it is raining. The stream is also a major part of Seoul's flood control system. As we were walking under some of the bridges, you can see places in the walls that can open up to release stormwater. And there are signs warning you not to hang around when it is raining because these doors could open disgorging water, and you might drown. The stream is below the level of the roads, so you have to walk down staircases to reach it. During rain, there are gates that close at the staircases to keep you from going where you shouldn't.

(Cheonggyecheon Stream): "... That's a stream!"

You might think that since I am leading to an anniversary epiphany that I had said epiphany on my anniversary. But I didn't. I had it today, the day after my anniversary. But it is informed by anniversaries.

You have been warned

When we were on the tour bus for the DMZ tour, we were talking to another couple about how we live. And one of them asked us if we have found any cities we want to settle down in. This is a question we get asked a lot. Alrica and I have even talked about, well, not quite that, but something related. We talk about when the day comes that we don't want to travel as often (because travel days themselves are not fun.) Are there places we would want to stay for three months or six months or twelve months at a time?

I saw this hydrant on our anniversary stroll

Here's my hesitation with the idea of settling somewhere. And it is my epiphany. If I were in one place (even if making occasional week long trips elsewhere) would that place seem as exciting to me? Like here in Seoul, I think this is a very cool city. But do the citizens of Seoul think that? Probably some do, but others wish they could get out of it, go live somewhere else. They've done all the things they want to do. They have taken in the magic that they are going to take in and now it is just living for them. It's no longer special.

I saw this hydrant on our anniversary stroll too. Does that make it less special?

Why are anniversaries special? Because they only happen once a year. I love my wife everyday. There is nothing about our anniversary that makes our marriage better on that day. It's just a day for us to reflect on that fact that we are on this life journey together. You remember when you were new in a relationship and you did things like celebrate your one month anniversary? And then two months? And then you stopped doing that?

Did you stop because the romance died? Hopefully not. I think you stopped because by making an event out of it too often, the event isn't special anymore. Once a year is often enough that you get to enjoy it, but rare enough that it stays something out of the ordinary.

By changing up where we live every month or two months, we get chances to discover locations and think "This is a neat place! I like living here." But if we just settled down and stayed in one of those places, it would just become that place we lived. It doesn't mean we would dislike it. We would just stop seeing the characteristics that made it special and attractive in the first place.

If you're thinking, "Erich, I just read this whole thing and it took you forever to build up to your epiphany and all amounts to is the adage 'familiarity breeds contempt'," then I respectfully disagree. I would say it is "familiarity breeds indifference." But I am also noting that part of our lifestyle of being world travelers is caught up in the traveler part. It is different to be a nomad that to be an expat. I just know that for now, I get enough benefit from the disruptive part of our nomadic lifestyle that I don't want to give that up.

How would you translate this sign? I'm going with: Don't freak out. Crabs are just like you or me. But lower to the ground.

Someday will I want to be an international settler instead? Maybe? Probably? Probably not? I don't know. I guess I'll have to wait for another epiphany. But, like anniversaries, epiphanies can't occur too often. Otherwise, we just call them ideas.

Food and Money and Drones

Have you ever played a video game where you have to go collect food. And then you have to collect wood, and then stone, and then gold, and so on? Naturally, there are other objectives of the game as well. But you have to collect resources to make everything else happen.

Yesterday was our resource collecting day. We went grocery shopping. But there was a lot more to it than that. Because we also had to collect money.

When we arrived, we got cash at an ATM at the airport. That should have lasted us quite some time. But things don't always go as planned. We also purchased Climate Cards, one for each of us. The name, Climate Card, might imply it will give us some sort of mastery over weather. It's like Elmer Fudd's magic helmet in What's Opera, Doc. "North winds blow! South winds blow! Typhoons! Hurricanes! Earthquakes!... SMOG!" If you have no idea to what I am referring, immediately start watching cartoons and don't stop until you do understand.

Alas, that is not what a Climate Card does. It's the card you use to scan in and out of all the public transportation in Seoul. We scan on to the bus and scan again when we leave the bus. It's what you use to get through the turnstiles at the metro stations. So first you buy the cards. They aren't too expensive, maybe two dollars each. But then you have to charge them, put money on them so you can actually ride things. This is where we ran into the unexpected. All our research says you can do this using a foreign credit card, but you have to use an app. So we downloaded the app, expecting to be able to choose our language. Uh, no! It's all in Korean. And first you have to register and it asks you question after question. It's a lot to keep translating and the translations aren't very good. Needless to say, we decided maybe this app wasn't the way to go.

Instead we headed to a metro station to see if we could charge it there on one of the kiosks. Yes is the answer. Or maybe, yes but. Because the whole answer is that you can charge it using a kiosk, but you can't use a foreign credit card to do it. You can, however, use cash. So a big chunk of the cash that I got at the airport, expecting it to last quite some time, was used up at the kiosk. Not a big deal, we still had some cash left. Plus, there are lots of ATMs around.

Or are there? (dramatic music sting)

For food collection, we decided to ride on a bus (which we can now scan into and out of) to Seoul Station. This is the main train station in the city. Attached to the station is a bunch of outlet stores and a huge Lotte Mart grocery store.

I knew that I was running low on cash, but we were going to Seoul Station and a big major supermarket. Surely, they would have an ATM there, right? If not in the grocery store, surely they will in the train station.

No. And here's what's wild: They had these machines that look like ATMs, but they are automated currency exchange machines. If I had US Dollars, I could have put them in the machine and gotten South Korean Won out. But I don't have US Dollars. I haven't had US Dollars since the last time I was in the United States.

We ended up walking several blocks away to a bank. There we found an ATM and successfully completed one of the game quests, collect money. And along the way, we saw Super Bull.

By day, mild mannered source of beef. But in times of trouble...

The very large Lotte Mart is quite something. It's not just a grocery store. On the lower level it has groceries and pharmacy items. But on the floor above you can get clothing, camping gear, toys, and electronics. It's basically like a Walmart Superstore, but one two floors instead of one sprawling floor. They also have a food court area.

Selling decorative keyboards. In Korean, of course.

Alrica and I got noodle dishes. Mine was noodles in beef broth with bulgogi. Alrica's was more interesting. Her noodles were topped with jjajangmyeon. This is a black bean sauce. You can see the black beans. It's also cooked with pork and a fermented soybean paste. It was very savory and delicious. I liked my noodles, but Alrica's noodles were the winners.

Alrica also got a beverage and she used a kiosk to select it. She assumed, since it was a kiosk, it would give her choices of languages. Turns out, no, not at this kiosk. So Alrica selected her beverage by picture alone. She thought she was getting a boba milk tea with caramel. That's not quite what she ended up with. It was a milky drink and it did have boba. But instead of caramel, it was molasses. And there was no tea in it. It was good, though not as good as much of the milk tea Alrica has learned to love in Taiwan and Southeast Asia.

At the ends of many aisles (in the grocery section) there were women giving out samples of things. We got convinced to buy sausages, yogurt, and apricot jam chocopies by some of these women. We successfully resisted kimchi and a few other things that I'm not quite sure what they were. We did pretty well as the game quest of collect food. But what we did not find was drinks that Alrica was interested in. I'll come back to that.

On the way home from the grocery store, we bought one more thing, strawberries, from a vendor who is basically across the alley from the entrance to our building. Wow, these strawberries are good! I have bad news for Americans. Our fruit just isn't as tasty as the fruit pretty much anywhere else in the world. I suppose when you think that you can have fruit in any season and it shipped from who knows where, that's not surprising. But when you are eating fruit in season and it is local, it is delicious. (Well, if you've ever gone to an orchard in the US and gotten fruit there, then you know what I mean.)

Seoul is celebrating spring this month. They are hosting what they call the Seoul Spring Festival. Last night, there was a drone show at Yeouido Hangang Park. Hangang is the name of the river in Seoul. We often call it the Han River in English, but the Koreans say Hangang, which means the same thing. Gang means river. So we were alongside the river, sitting in the park, waiting for the show and wondering if we would get to see a drone show or not.

Why did we wonder? Well, this was our third attempt to see a drone show. We tried twice in Thailand. One of the drone shows was canceled due to a fashion show. At the other, we got fireworks instead. I blogged about that.

But the saying goes "Third time's a charm." And it was. We got to see the drone show. That was quite a spectacle. I am so impressed at what they can do with the drones. And imagine the team behind it. There must be a drone choreographer (a droneographer?) and a lighting designer, and the engineers to design the drones, and programmers to get the drones to do the moves that the choreographer and lighting designer have designed. For example, at one point there was a riverside scene, and there were waves in the water. You have to program the drones to light up and go dark in the right sequence while they are hovering in the right positions.

A dome? Maybe a flying saucer? But since it isn't opaque, they don't fill in the back half.

Other highlights included a person eating dumplings using chopsticks, hot air balloons (the image of them, no actual balloons or hot air), and a recreation of the one of the famous bridges in Seoul which has water fountain shows. (We haven't visited that bridge yet, we've only seen the drone simulation so far.)

Not sure what animal that is

Drone shows are staggering, when I think about the sheer amount of planning and coordination involved. It's like a marching band moving in three dimensions, except they don't have to worry about breath control or playing the right notes, whereas they do have to worry about windspeeds and flashing the right colors.

After the drone show, we were hungry. Instead of going to a restaurant, we went to a convenience store called GS25. GS25 is to Korea what 7-11 is to Japan and Thailand. The GS25 we visited is one of the super convenience stores where there are a ton of options, tables and chairs where you can eat your purchases, a microwave to heat your purchases, and, (ironically given our earlier adventure at the huge grocery store,) a Citibank ATM. They also have a selection of drinks that were to Alrica's liking. So we bought some kimbap for dinner, a drink for me, and several drinks for Alrica so we could bring the extras home.

We successfully completed all our quests for the day and had a drone show as a reward. I think we're winning the game!

The DMZ

When I was a kid, my family often did car trips. Some were to see Grandma and Grandpa, so they were about 90 minutes. Though to me it felt much longer. But sometimes we did much longer road trips, leaving Iowa and heading to Pennsylvania or Tennessee. I happen to have a brother, let's call him Adam. As any parent (or really any parent with more than one child) knows, two kids, backseat, long car trip, those ingredients lead to explosive results. Frequently, my parents would have to impose a boundary line that neither of us was to cross. But then we would have the fun of poking our fingers super close to the boundary to get the other one screaming "He's about to cross the line!" So a boundary wasn't enough. We needed a wider strip that neither of us was supposed to enter. A buffer, or, if you will allow, a backseat DMZ.

A peace bell. If we had a giant bell in the backseat, that would have kept us from fighting.

One rare thing which Korea has is a demilitarized zone, not in the backseat of the car, but in the middle of the peninsula. It's not the only DMZ in the world, but it is probably the most well known and the most heavily protected by troops just outside of it on both sides. We took a tour to visit it.

Hey, it's me in the DMZ.

First we went to Imjingak. Here we went to a museum called the North Korea Experience. The fact is, almost no one ever visits North Korea. It's difficult to know what North Korea is like, how the people live, what's true and what isn't. But there are defectors, people who flee North Korea. However, it is exceptionally rare that they flee across the DMZ. The DMZ itself is filled with landmines, plus with soldiers on either side of it, that would be a very dangerous thing to do.

A train destroyed during the war and left in the DMZ. Another meaning of a bullet train.

Most defectors flee via China. While we were in the North Korean Experience, we got to hear from a defector. She fled through China with her husband and son. Her plan had been to stay in China, but then she learned that the local Chinese population was given money if they turned in North Koreans. So, they couldn't stay there. She met missionaries from South Korea and they helped her to get out of China and move through Southeast Asia until she reached Cambodia. Then from Cambodia, she and her family came to South Korea.

When defectors make it out, the South Koreans first need to interview them and make sure they aren't spies. Then they are given three months of re-education. The economy of South Korea works very differently than that of North Korea. North Korean defectors need to understand the lifestyle and culture of South Korea.

We learned a lot of interesting things from the defector we got to hear from. The first leader of North Korea was Kim Il-sung. The North Koreans loved him. Life worked pretty well under his leadership and he was seen as strong. But after he died and his son, Kim Jong-il, became the premier, things took a bad turn. The way the economy functioned was that the people did their work and in return they got a food ration. Under Kim Jong-il, the food ration system imploded. Now citizens weren't getting enough food. That had been the defector's main impetus to leave, so she could feed herself and her family.

The current premier is Kim Jong-Un, the son of Kim Jong-il. He is actually much crueler to the citizens of North Korea than was his father or grandfather. He has taken authoritarianism to its logical extreme.

In South Korea, there is a dream of reunification, one Korea again. It doesn't seem likely in the near future. And I'm not sure it is economically feasible. But I do understand the desire. There were families ripped apart when the two halves of Korea separated. People would like to be able to be together with their families again.

After the North Korea Experience, we went to the Dora Observatory. To get there, we had to pass through military control. A soldier boarded the tour bus and we each had to show our passports as he went through a roster, checked our names and that our faces looked like our passport pictures.

At the Dora Observatory you can look across the DMZ and see North Korea. Really, you can't tell you are looking at the DMZ or North Korea except for two things: One, you are being told you are. Two, flags. Each country has one village within the DMZ. And in each of those villages, there is a super tall flagpole with that country's flag flying on it.

You are not allowed to take pictures at the Dora Observatory. Definitely not of North Korea. Again, all you would see is mountains and countryside and a village, but photography is not allowed.

After the Dora Observatory, we went to the Third Tunnel. South Korea has discovered four tunnels leading out of North Korea and into South Korea. The tunnels were meant for a surprise invasion. The thing is, there could be more than four. No one knows how many undiscovered tunnels there are.

You can't take cameras into the real third tunnel. Here is Alrica at the fake third tunnel. The real one is not this tall.

As you might have guessed from its name, the tunnel we visited is the third one the South Koreans discovered. The South Koreans heard from a defector who claimed to have been an engineer who had been brought in to inspect the tunnel. So the military placed lots and lots of PVC pipes filled with water and drove them into the ground. One day, about three years later, a gush of water came out of one of them. So the military places several more around that location and they were able to locate where blasting of dynamite was occurring underground.

Today, when you go the third tunnel, you have to leave your belongings behind, because you pass through a metal detector. Then you go 350 meters (1150 feet) downhill in a bore tunnel that South Korea built to intersect the North Korean tunnel. Here you reach the furthest point that the North Koreans got to. Now you go through the North Korean tunnel. Everyone is given a hard hat and that hat did its job. The number of times I bumped my head on the low ceiling was not insignificant. I would have had quite a headache without the helmet. You walk about 255 meters (835 feet) until you reach a concrete wall with a small window. Inside there is a lot of greenery growing and there are closed circuit cameras so the South Koreans can watch to make sure the North Koreans don't come back into the tunnel. At this end point, you are 70 meters (230 feet) below ground and you are 170 meters (560 feet) from the North Korean border.

This sculpture is called Unifying Earth. It represents the desire to reunite Korea.

Then you have to go back up. It's pretty steep. You are breathing heavily when you're done, good cardio!

On one side of the split globe North Korea is raise and South Korea indented.

On the way out of the restricted area, you must again pass through the checkpoint and another soldier enters the bus. Again, we held up our passports. His job was to make sure everyone who went in is now coming out.

On the other side, South Korea is raised and North Korea indented.

It is really somewhat amazing to think that South Korea's capital city, Seoul, is so close to the border with a hostile enemy. There have been proposals to move the capital, but by the time the peninsula was divided into two countries, Seoul was already the economic and cultural heart of Korea. Perhaps you could move governmental offices, in fact, South Korea is moving many of them, but you can't move the center of culture from Seoul.

I think it's comparable to my parents saying we couldn't just make Adam ride in the trunk. Though, as I very logically pointed out, it would have quashed all the backseat battles. My first foray into diplomacy failed. Still, Adam and I are friends today. Let's hope the two Koreas can be friends again too.