Seoul: more Korean language notes

  • No explicit word for “please” (implicit in polite form of verb)
    e.g.  “XXX juseyo” means “I want XXX please” or “Please give me XXX”
  • Only language I know where the word for “yes” starts with letter “n” (it’s ne)
  • My hovercraft is full of eels: 내 호버크라프트는 장어로 가득 차 있어요
    (Nae hoebuhkeurapeuteuneun changuhro kadeuk cha isseyo)
    (from http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hovercraft.htm)
  • For the techies, HTML codes for Hangul: HTML codes for Hangul

Seoul: Top10 lists

OK, so these lists don’t actually have 10 items, but you know what I mean…

Based on what I did, with some italicized items that I unfortunately did not see/experience

Top Things To Do:

  • Palaces and Historical Sites
  • Views of the CIty
  • DMZ Tour
  • Silloam Fomentation Sauna and hot tubs
  • Stroll along Cheong-gye-chon (stream)
  • Shopping at Dongdaemun or Namdaemun (night) markets
  • Museums
  • Enjoy Local Food

Top Palaces and Historical Sites:

  • Changdeokgung (palace) and Secret Garden – World Heritage Listed (do the 10:30am English tours of palace and garden, back to back)
  • Gyeongbokgung (palace) and the changing of the guards ceremony at the top of the hour (lasts 15 minutes)
  • Bukchon Hanok Village for traditional house architecture

Top Views of the City:

  • N Seoul Tower on Namsan (mountain) (360° view)
  • 63 City (tower) on south bank of Hangang (river) (view to northeast)
  • Inwangsan (mountain) – short hike close in to town (view to south)
  • Bukaksan (mountain) – longer hike, not quite as close in to town (view to south)

Top Museums:

  • War Memorial Museum
  • Leeum Samsung Museum

 

Seoul/Guam: Sitting in ORD, one leg to go; plus Frequent Flyers

One more short flight from ORD to YYZ, can’t wait to be done with flights. Until Tuesday that is :-)

I actually met a United Global Services member (that’s United’s top elite tier that is invite-only) in NRT lounge – he was flying the same ICN-NRT-GUM-SFO flights, and then I coincidentally sat next to him on the NRT-GUM flight. He gave me some good tips regarding the perks I’ll be receiving as my elite level increases.

On my SFO-ORD leg, the lady next to me (in first class) is a 1K member, who coincidentally flew out of Istanbul on Turkish Airlines the very same morning I did two weeks ago (albeit to Toronto instead of my flight to Chicago)! It’s a small world after all…

Seoul: Technology tidbits

Korea, and Seoul in particular, is one of the most wired places on earth. Or should that be most wireless places on earth?

Internet access is very fast (speedtest.net showed 30/10 Mbps down/up at my hostel, about 10 times the speed in North America).

Many cafes, restaurants and bars have free wifi (though Starbucks does not).

There is wi-fi across much of the city, though not free. I didn’t need it enough, but I think it was $2-3/day.

Around town (and especially in metro stations), they have large touch screens with area information, including google satellite map of the area. Very cool.

Surprisingly my GSM phone did roam in Seoul (and Tokyo airport), though I didn’t make calls. (Tip: if you call your phone from Skype in order to check voicemail, turn off your phone first or you may be hit with roaming fees; also, you might need to wait an hour for the phone to be unregistered from the roaming network).

“Seoul Subway” Android app by Sungpil Jang (probably an IPhone version too) – way cool, even offline. Even offline (i.e. no data plan nor wi-fi connection), it will calculate a route between 2 stations including times of the next train(s), and tell you the car and door number for quickest transfer between lines (i.e. where the stairs/hallway to the next metro line is exactly).

Seoul: Metro (subway) notes

The Metro (subway) reminded me of the one in Taipei, i.e. efficient and easy to use:

  • Impressive network of 9 subway lines and 3 commuter rail lines, including one from both airports to downtown Seoul.
  • English language in addition to Hangul everywhere
  • Smart transit stored-value cards called T-Money (non-refundable W2000/$1.75 to purchase the card, then reloadable)
  • Short distance fares (to most tourist places) are the minimum W1000/$0.90 cash or W900/$0.80 with card
  • Card gives you a 10% discount over cash – simply tap the card to the reader on entrance (minimum fare is deducted, and balance shown), and again on exit (if fare is higher, additional amount is deducted; balance is shown again)
  • Station announcements made in Korean, English and Mandarin (sometimes also in Japanese)
  • The turnstile for station entrance/exit is designed for maximum efficiency: there is no blocking gate or physical turnstile, just tap the reader and walk through (I discovered what happens if you don’t pay: as I left for the airport, I pushed my luggage in first before I tapped the reader, and the gate closed and honked at me)
  • There are often monitors showing the time of the next train, sometimes with graphical indicators of where the train physically is, in relation to the previous 2 metro stations on the line.
  • Metro stations also all have numbers identifying them: a 3 digit sequential number within each line, where the first digit is the line number.
  • Some stations have platforms in the middle, some are split; either way, make sure you head to the correct platform by knowing either the end station or at least the next station in the direction you want to go
  • Sometimes the direction sign will list multiple key stations in that direction (not just the next/last station)
  • In the train, there is an indicator of whether the doors will open on the left or right for each station on the line map above the door, in the multi-lingual announcements and on the monitors (for trains that have that).
  • Lines 5678 are newer than 1234 – you see the 5678 “new metro” logo a lot
  • Both in trains and on platforms, a little musical ditty plays before the announcement of an arriving train or station; the music varies by line/direction and is a cute addition to the announcement.
  • Washrooms are clean; sometimes they are inside the station, sometimes they are outside of the paid area.
  • There is at least one cool Android app called “Seoul Subway” by Sungpil Jang (likely for IPhone too) with Seoul metro info that, even offline, will calculate a route between 2 stations including times of the next train(s), and tell you the car and door number for quickest transfer between lines (i.e. where the stairs/hallway to the next metro line is exactly). Wow.
  • There is also a cool online map with station search functionality.
  • Generally the metro is quite crowded; if I’m standing on a platform and there aren’t a lot of people, I probably just missed a train and the platform will get crowded before the next train arrives.
  • There is cell phone coverage and wi-fi in the trains, even underground.
  • I’d say 80% of people under 30 are using their phone (usually playing games or watching TV as they have fast connections) on the train.

Small negatives:

  • The metro doesn’t run very late, though the last train times are posted by the station entrance (in Hangul and English)
  • Transfers between lines can involve a lot of walking, as stations are rarely stacked on top of each other.
  • There are many stairs, not always with escalators (though there is usually an elevator somewhere). At one station I counted 60 stairs to get up to street level, though some are deeper than that.

Seoul/Guam: 4 of 6 flights completed on way back

Sitting in lounge in SFO, catching up on Seoul blog.

Managed 2.5 hours of light sleep in lounge in Guam.
Also slept lightly most of the way on the 5 hour overnight HNL-SFO leg.
So I’m feeling ok, despite having been travelling for 41 hours already.

Side note on upgrades:
I didn’t get upgraded HNL-SFO, though surprisingly there were no 1K status folk above me on the list – with one exception, they were same level as me (Star Alliance Gold) but must have been travelling on higher fare classes (not surprisingly, given my cheap ticket). So there is hope yet for when I hit 1K status.

I did get upgraded on both SFO-ORD-YYZ legs a few days ago, which is surprising (though it was an expensive ticket). Now I see there at least 11 people on the upgrade list for SFO-ORD and only 2 seats left in first class for them.

Seoul: sauna and hot tub details

Very close to the Seoul Station is the Silloam FirePot Sauna (sauna and hot tubs and more). Also called Siloam Fomentation Sauna.
Note the Lonely Planet directions are terrible – check the map on the aforementioned website.

Rating: definitely worth it! Better than a Turkish Bath (hamam), perhaps not as good as a German Bad (spa) since the water parts are segregated.
Cost: W12,000/$10.60 between 8pm and 5am, W9,000/$8 between 5am and 8pm. Open 24 hours. I think your can stay for 12 hours, but no re-entry. (Costs a little less if only doing hot tubs)
No need to bring anything, but consider clean socks and underwear (feels much better afterwards when you are so clean).
I spent 2.5 hours there, trying out the various saunas and hot tubs.

So what is it? A large 5 story building with much more than saunas and hot tubs.
The locker rooms are on the ground floor, where you lock your shoes in small shoe-sized lockers, then exchange your ticket and shoe-locker-key for a regular-sized locker key, as well as loose fitting shorts and a T-shirt, and a towel (a hand towel in the west, but it’s a regular shower towel here in Korea!)

In the basement are sex-segregated hot tubs and showers. There are several hot tubs of different temperatures (inc. cold), using mineral water pumped from 300m underground. Some tubs have extras like jade, wormwood, charcoal or yellow mud (no, it doesn’t stain you yellow). In the middle of the room are showers (no stalls) or Japanese-style sit-down-on-a-stool showers. Swimsuits optional (nobody was wearing them on the men’s side, except for some masseurs – yes, there are 2 or 3 massage tables down there (extra cost)).

Upstairs above the locker rooms are 3 co-ed floors, and they’re the reason you get those shorts and t-shirt. Recall that you can stay for up to 12 hours…
Not just multiple saunas (see below), but also restaurants, snack bars and a cafe; barber shop, laundry service, Internet room, games room, singing room, mats to hang out on, yoga room, a room with exercise equipment, a massage room (extra cost), a sleeping room (with a hundred or so bunk beds), a snoring room (I kid you not) and more.

With that sleeping room, and it being open 24 hours, it’s possible to use it as a cheap hotel of sorts for one night, e.g. if arriving very late or you want to freshen up after having checked out of your hotel.

As for the saunas, there are many different ones 3F (the third floor) with different purported health benefits:

  • salt
  • jade
  • charcoal
  • yellow earth
  • infra-red (for some reason this one had a men’s and a women’s; all the others are co-ed)
  • ice-room (brrr but refreshing)
  • fomentation (steamy but not like a steam bath)

In some cases the materials are in the walls and ceilings; sometimes they are on the floor, e.g. in the salt room you walk and lie down on pebble-sized chunks of salt

There were young and old people, singles and couples; often young couples would lie together on mats in the large “atrium” outside of the saunas watching TV on their phones.

Seoul: DMZ Tour details

There are many tour operators who do DMZ tours; I chose the one affiliated with the local USO office: Koridoor.

Rating: definitely worth it! Very interesting, and you can’t do it without a tour.
Cost: $77 inc. tax (about $5 more if paying by credit card; less for military personnel)
Duration: Typically 7:30 to 15:30. Sometimes a later departure is available
Sights: JSA briefing and tour (step into North Korea briefly), 3rd Infiltration Tunnel, Dora observatory, Dorasan Station

Acronyms (see also this Wikipedia article):

  • MDL: Military Demarcation Line: the actual border line cutting across the peninsula
  • DMZ: De-Militarized Zone: roughly 2km area on both north and south sides of the MDL, across the entire peninsula
  • JSA: Joint Security Area within the DMZ where UN buildings are situated for negotiations

Details:

  • It’s about an hour bus ride each way to the DMZ (approx 55km north of Seoul)
  • First stop is Camp Bonifas just outisde the DMZ: you get a short interesting video on the history of the Korean War and DMZ (also showing maps), and then a briefing by US soldiers
  • A drive around the JSA in the military’s tour bus, which includes a few viewpoints such as the Bridge of No Return and the site of the infamous Ax Murder incident over the cutting down of a poplar tree, but most importantly the UN buildings right on the MDL, especially the set of blue one-story buildings that literally straddle the MDL, where negotations are held.
  • This is where you can see North Korean soldiers across the line, and enter one of the buildings where you can walk on North Korean soil (within the building).
  • The Third Infiltration Tunnel is a tunnel running under the DMZ that was built by the North Koreans (4 have been discovered so far). It is accessed via a long sloped access tunnel (built for tourists), after which you can walk (with requisite hard hat) a few hundred meters to the first of 3 walls built by South Koreans to block the tunnel. Along the way, you see the dynamite bore holes and coal painted on the walls by North Koreans as a misdirection (despite the fact there is no coal in the area).
    Oddly, there is also a natural spring fountain in the tunnel.
    Tip: For taller people, the actual tunnel requires hunching over which can make your lower back sore: even though it is roughly 2m in diameter, there is scaffolding which lowers the effective height.
  • The Dora observatory is on top of a little hill and lets you see the area surrounding the JSA, including the fake North Korean town Kijong-dong with a huge flagpole
  • Dorasan Station is a train station and highway checkpoint before North Korea. Some South Koreans do work across the border at factories owned by Samsung (mostly staffed by lower paid North Korean) and at this checkpoint they are required to store things (such as phones, cameras and mp3 players) in lockers.
    The train station is large and modern, with airport-style security for access to the tracks; however, this is virtually unused until reunification happens.
    The slogan here is: Not the last station from the South, but the first station toward the north.
  • Fun fact: there is a South Korean rice farming village inside the DMZ which is subsidized by the government: no taxes, guaranteed income (US$80,0000/yr per family), protected 24/7 by military (of course they also have to be in village by sundown and locked in their houses by midnight).
  • Fun fact: the DMZ is now quite an unofficial bio-diverse nature preserve
  • Fun fact: there is a one hole golf course – just don’t go searching for a stray ball in the rough as it is surrounded by mine fields

Misc:

Dress code: required by military, no tank tops, slogans etc. And wear comfortable walking shoes.
Food: optional Korean lunch at cafeteria at Dorasan Station (quite tasty and filling actually; either vegetarian bibimbap for W6,000/$5 or bulgogi for W10,000/$9) or brown bag it
Tip: Yes you can take photos, just not everywhere. Listen to the guide/soldiers.
Tip: In the JSA, you can’t bring any bags or purses or camera bags (must be left on your bus).
Tip: Remember to bring your passport on the trip.
Tip: Book in advance as tours fill up and don’t run daily. On their website, just because a tour is listed in the calendar, does not mean that the tour has space! For my one week trip, there was only one tour that had space.
Tip: Bring a snack and water bottle as lunch isn’t until almost 14:00. There are drink vending machines and gift shops at multiple stops.

Seoul: fun with language

Unlike other Asian languages that use complicated (to us westerners) pictograms or scripts and are tonal (e.g. “ma” can be pronounced 5-7 different ways in Mandarin and Thai), Hangul (the Korean language introduced in the 15th century) is actually composed of letters that roughly translate to many English letters, with a specific syllabic pattern, and pronounced fairly flatly. Of course pronunciation rules aren’t always straightforward, but you can get reasonably close. The first few sections of Korean Writing System give a good overview.

I can read most of the letters now, which helps for place names and some key words, but obviously if you don’t know the Korean word for something, then you won’t understand the word you are reading/pronouncing.

For example, 신촌 is Sinchon (pronounced Shinchon), the metro station closest to my hostel (and yes, in the metro, maps and signs also list the stop name in English everywhere). I can read the 3 letters inside each of those 2 syllables. My turning point came one day at lunch when I was even able to recognize the Hangul for beer (maekchu), a local drink (soju) similar to vodka, and rice wine (makkolli) on the no-English menu posted on the wall (for food, I pointed at a picture of the dish I wanted).

I may not be able to read much Korean, but I’m pretty sure the sign, locked gate and barbed wire are all saying: “Keep out!”

No entry sign on part of Inwangsan (mountain)