Aventures for a Soul with IT Angst in Seoul

The Southeast Asia Journey in Search of Off-Limits Burmese Roads.

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My third attempt get out of Burma by land, either to India's Manipur, where the British army cut a path through in WW II, to get behind the Japanese in Mandalay, southern China, Lao, or Thailand, through the Golden Triangle, all of them illegal for a foreigner, started in the Winter of 2012 with ...

(Tame) Adventures for a Soul with IT Angst in Seoul

On my way from New York to Rangoon, with stopovers in Seoul and in Bangkok, I discovered the strange world of Seoul.

January 7, 2012

Looking for adventure? Seoul, South Korea is not the place — unless getting lost in a cyber world counts — or maybe finding your way in an underground labyrinth — or hopping in light tropical wash-and-wear clothing over frozen snow piles.

On my way from the Big Apple to Bangkok I made a stopover in Seoul because I've never been in South Korea. In 1960 I tried to get from Peking (as Pejing was then pronounced and spelled in English), where I then was, to North Korea. That didn't pan out because of intractable Chinese and North Korean bureaucracy.

Of course I knew full well Seoul is not in the tropics when I packed my carry on for Southeast Asia, but I didn't expect the serious cold spell that makes me now walk the city swaddled in my two T-shirts, and my two shirts under my one light bush jacket — and still shiver.

Getting lost in Seoul's cyber world, started with my first visit to a toilet. All was familiar to me, until it came to the point of pulling paper off a roll. Where I expected to find that precious white gold was a control panel with twelve options on little images with instructions in wriggly Korean writing. I pushed something with an image of a fan — and got my behind fanned. After experimenting with different buttons, fearing one might activate an ejection seat, then, accompanied by toilet music, getting washed where the toilet paper would have been in action, first with water way too hot, then with a stream so strong it practically lifted me off the (heated) toilet seat, I got dried by the fan and was allowed to leave. As soon as I got off my seat the contraption flushed automatically and the music stopped. 

The drink and food menu in the hotel restaurant/bar is hidden in iPads. For many people, like one of my brothers who is still in typewriter mode, or I, who only about two month before had bought an iPad and got instructed by an Apple Store Genius in its use, this might as well mean prohibition and famine. Without help an IT challenged novice won't be able to chose drink or food. Guests who know how to operate the gadget can speak to it in their language and the tablet orders stuff for them in Korean. I pointed at the picture of a beer bottle.

I got into the underground labyrinth when I went to explore the city. In above ground daylight were only very few pedestrians, strange for such a big metropolis, I thought. When I tried to cross a wide street with a continuous stream of traffic, and no pedestrian crossings in sight, I noticed stairs that led down. An underpass, I assumed, but it was not the expected straight forward job in the direction of the other street side. I had entered a bustling population center with stores, eateries and the kind of pedestrian crowds you'd normally see in a large city. Out of the above cold, I wandered, looked, explored and wandered some more with no idea as to whether I went North, South, East or West. Eventually back up in freezing daylight by one of the stairs, I had not the foggiest idea where I was, in which direction I'd find my hotel. I dove underground again found a store that sold city maps, climbed up, re-oriented and was saved.

After that adventure I decided to cross streets the New York way — jay walk. After the third or fourth New York style crossing, the law caught up with me. Two police officers, a female and a male, took me by the arm and led me - to jail? No jail. They led me downstairs and pointed me in the underground direction of the other street side. Once you get the hang of it, just going straight, not looking at stores, it is a piece of cake.

Seoul, as large cities go, is impressive. Already getting from the airport to town in an airport limousine, as the bus was called, boggles the mind. Even though it was dark when I came in, I noticed that we drove for miles on impressive causeways over large water expanses, some of them frozen. That, sort of gave me the willies when I though of my wardrobe fit for the tropics.

I decided to go see Unesco World Heritage Changdeok Palace built by an Emperor of the Joseon Dynasty founded in 1392. 1392 is exactly a hundred years after the Swiss Confederation was formed by a bunch of cow herders in a meadow. The structures of the palace are impressive even though plaques inform visitors that the place had been razed, looted, burned many times either by foreign invaders or internal revolts. The secret garden is off limits to wandering folks. It can be visited only in a guided tour. Since I was already there and had not much else to do, I took the tour even though visiting a snow-covered garden, secret or not, didn't promise to be a highly recommendable event.

The warmly dressed guide talked non-stop about where and how the princes used to eat, compose poetry, or watch sunsets while I almost froze to death. A group of young men in the tour, I think a Dutch, a Norwegian and a German, loudly discussed the pros and cons of what is more convenient, to sharpen dull chainsaw chains or, with the ridiculously low prices of Chinese made tools, to simply go and buy another saw.

I left the group who continued to visit more places where princes and princesses did this and that and went to warm up in a modern-day tea house. The hot Quince tea was so good, I had to also try the hot, fresh ginger tea. Cozy warm again I was not sorry about having missed out about what else the princes and princesses did hundreds of years ago in their garden.

Full to the gills with Kimshi - they must really love that stuff - no matter what meal I ordered, it came with that pungent cabbage, I fly late tonight to Bangkok.

I'll arrive there around 11PM. Because of that late arrival time I made an online hotel reservation for one night in a "centrally located hotel that offers airport pickup". I reasoned that arriving downtown Bangkok way after midnight, I'd never find open backpacker digs. Next morning I plan to transfer to my familiar Khao San district with many cheap and friendly hangouts, where women in high heels and men in shirts and neckties are rarer than purple dogs. 

So, if all goes to plan, the next report will be from more familiar haunts, Bangkok.