Adventure for a soul with IT angst in Seoul

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 tropical 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 called in English) to North Korea but that didn't pan out because of Chinese bureaucracy.

Of course I knew Seoul is not in the tropics when I packed my carry on, but I didn't expect a serious cold spell that makes me now walk the city swaddled in two T-shirts, and two shirts under my bush jacket.

About getting lost in the cyber world, that started with my first visit to a toilet. When it came to the point of pulling paper off a roll, all I saw was a control panel with twelve options on little images with instructions in Korean writing. I pushed something with an image of a fan - and got my behind fanned. In the end, after 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.

The menu in the hotel bar is in an iPad. For many people, also one of my brothers, it might as well mean prohibition and famine. Without help he won't be able to chose anything. Only a year ago the same would have happened to me a total newcomer to finer IT points like flipping pages by finger stroking an iPad screen — never mind about turning it on.

I got into the underground labyrinth when I went to explore the city. I saw 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, I noticed stairs that went down. An underpass I thought. It probably was, but not the expected straight job in the direction of the other street side. I had entered a bustling population center with stores, eateries and the crowds one would expect in a large city. I never made it to the other side. I wandered, looked and wandered some more with no idea as to whether I went Nort, South, Eeast or West. When I came up into daylight I had not the foggiest idea where I was in relation to my hotel. I went underground again found a store that sold city maps, went up, re-oriented and was saved.

After that I decided to do it the New York way, jay walk. After the third or fourth New York style street 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? Not jail, but the labyrinth. They led me downstairs and pointed me in the underground direction of the other street side.

Seoul, as large cities go, is impressive. Already gettin 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 put together for the tropics.

I decided to go see Unesco World Heritage Changdeok Palace some Emperor of the Joseon Dynasty founded in 1392, exactly a hundred years after the Swiss Confederation was formed. 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 visitors. 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 wonderful sights.

The warmly dresses 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, discussed the pros and cons of what is more convenient, to sharpen used chainsaw chains or, with the ridiculously low prices of Chinese made tools, to simply go and buy another saw.

I left the group and went to a warm tea house. The hot Quince tea was so good, I had to try the fresh ginger tea, also hot, as well. Cozy warm again I was not sorry about having missed out about what else the princes and princesses did 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. With that late arrival time I did an unaccustomed thing, made an online hotel reservation for one night to a "centrally located hotel that offers airport pickup". I reasoned that arriving downtown Bankok after midnight, I'never find an open pack packer place.

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

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