Domo Kun Wallpaper: April 2010

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Seodaemun Prison Museum, Changdeok-gung and Dick Beer

Two months down, who knows how many more to go? Life in Seoul is settling into a decent routine for Mel and I: work, eat, shop. Does this make for interesting blogging? I'm not so sure but I'm pretty happy with my growing collection of cheap watches. We're still managing to do the odd touristy thing on the weekends though, and last weekend we visited the Seodaemun Prison Museum and Changdeokgung Palace.

The prison was built by the Japanese while they were all up in Korea's bid'ness in the '20s-40s. It was built to hold Koreans that caused them trouble. And if you know anything about Koreans, it's that they love to cause trouble.

They sell Hello Kitty balloons and cotton candy at the prison, which I'm just going to go ahead and say is a little messed up.

The prison held once around 500 prisoners and there were a few long buildings like this one to look through. Most of the cells had wax mannequins in them recreating something bloody. They were also pumping the sounds of tortured screams through the speakers in the cells. If this sounds pleasant to you, why not bring your elementary-aged kids for a visit? Everyone else did. There were dozens of tour groups with little little kids seeing stuff like this:

The "rape room". Bloody hanboks make me sad :(

One of many torture rooms. Points to the guy on the left for keeping his hair looking good despite being hung on a cross.

We visited the leper building, which looked like it would be a nicer place to stay than the cells except for the being a leper part.

This tree was called the "wailing poplar" because it stood just outside the execution room and people would hold onto it and wail for their lives. Did I mention what a bright and sunny day it was on Saturday? Oh, it was such a nice day to be outside.

There were no pictures allowed in the execution room, but here's the body disposal chute. The execution rooms was just a noose with some benches around it to watch the show. And thus completes our tour of the Seodaemun Prison.

After our visit to the Prison Museum we took the subway a few stops to Anguk Station and visited Changdeokgung Palace. This palace is the "back-up" palace to the biggie, Gyeungbuckgung, which we'd already visited the first time we were in Korea. You can only visit Changdeokgung on an organized tour, and English tours are offered daily at 11:30, 1:30 and 3:30. You know we slept in and wound up on the 3:30 tour. While we were waiting for 3:30 to roll around, a lady in a hanbok gave us a free book about filial piety, which is a pretty damn important in Korean society. I've only read a few of the short stories in the book but they are all about Dad being right. If you're interested, you can borrow it when I'm done.

We always look forward to doing touristy things like this and then become instantly bored once we're there. I think we're suffering from temple/palace overkill. I've seen so many that they all look alike to me now. Also, I couldn't understand about 80% of what our guide was saying and I listen and work with ESL speakers everyday. At one point a lady in a wheelchair had to leave because the remainder of the tour wasn't wheelchair accessible and we were sooooo jealous that she got to go. Nice palace though, but I'd strongly recommend Gyeungbuckgung if you can only visit one.

As I mentioned, the weather was pretty nice on Saturday (Sunday too!). It's been unseasonably cold here ever since we arrived so the sunny weather was very welcome. We left the palace and went for drinks with Shanda, Hannah and Pip by the Han River. We sat outside of a 7-Eleven that has beer on tap. A marvelous idea- I'm looking at you, Aylesford Needs.

It started to get windy by the water so we walked to a cozy little bar, Dick Beer. That's right, DICK BEER. You might remember this establishment from such posts as this one. Turns out, Dick Beer has a trick to set itself apart from the millions of little pubs in Seoul- it plays a bit, just a little bit of a song, and then suddenly sets off a deafening buzz of static and distortion through the speakers that brings all conversation to a halt and gives your heart a healthy flutter too. And this keeps happening for hours. Even when there's no music being played. And the owners act like they don't notice. We'll be back.

And hey, just in case you were wondering, here's how Dick Beer is spelled in Korean. Goodnight, internet.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Poster Children

HEY, guess whose unauthorized image is being used to advertise for the Pentaport Rock Festival? They even super-imposed our shadows on the crowd hahahahahaha! I wonder if this poster was printed and hung up anywhere??

After having supper tonight with one of Mel's first ever students from her first teaching job in Canada we went to the salon and I got my hair did. It wasn't long into the cut before I could hear Mel cackling at one of the computers in the lobby and me and the hair dresser went over to see what she was looking at. We're famous!

Pentaport, was a lot of fun but we're probably going to the Jisan Valley Festival if we're not elsewhere on vacation this summer. Vampire Weekend and Belle & Sebastian are playing -FTW!!!