Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Korea
We arrived on the jet foil from Japan, then took the high speed KTX train to the capital Seoul.
On initial impressions, Korea seemed quite like Japan, just not as good. It's not as clean, friendly, exciting or serene. Then again, you could say that about most places we've been to compared to Japan! We enjoyed our couple of days in Seoul but I don't think we'd rush back. It's not a showy city and maybe hasn't got the tourist highlights, but I could imagine it being a nice place to live for a while. That said, we enjoyed the palace, which was very impressive (with changing of the guard ceremony), and the Folk museum next door was very enlightening too. We also enjoyed the food but didn't stray too far from what we know. They have some rather extreme delicacies and like their seafood VERY fresh (see the movie 'Ong Bak' if you need an example!). The Korean BBQ was an unforgettable experience, certainly for the process if not the food.
We stayed in a very weird place (reminded me of an 80's doss house) but it was in a good area near the university. It was very cool and trendy with more coffee shops that you could ever need. Good restaurants too.
We would have loved to do a tour to the DMZ on the border with N Korea, but as well as it being quite a bad time for that at the moment, it was also closed on Monday (like almost everything in Seoul). Next time.
Next up, our final country, China.
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