June 1, 2006
We're leaving Seoul this morning for Songnisan National Park to do some hiking and camping. This is actually a day later than we had planned to leave. Seoul is unbelievably comfortable, and having a nice hotel room certainly doesn't hurt. We've actually used the enormous TV to watch a Korean movie, Too Beautiful to Lie and the end of The Return of the King. David had seen the Korean movie at Pitt as part of the Korean movie night program, so he was able to explain the plot and some of the dialogue. The Return of the King was in English with Korean subtitles, so understanding it wasn't so much a problem. Both movies, though, led to an incredibly poor choice on our part: a nap. I don't think we've ever succumbed to the oh-let's-just-take-a-quick-nap decision while still in the grips of jet-lag before, and you'd think we wouldn't now, but we did. And without an alarm clock, too. David's been up since midnight, which wouldn't bode well for not napping today, except we'll be traveling in the afternoon, so it should be okay.
Outside of the very comfortable room, Seoul is quite nice, especially for a big city. We've been wandering through historic districts with old palaces and new financial districts (with a different kind of palace) and they're all really very pleasant. There are signs and banners every where, and street vendors are quite common. We saw a woman selling fried larva yesterday, outside an upscale grocery store, and bought some kiwi bubble tea from another vendor. (I'm not prepared to try the larva. Possibly fried grasshoppers, but not the larva.) We also went to Namdeamum market, a huge old outdoor market with nothing but vendors, either on the street, or hanging out of tiny shops on the side. It reminded me of the Marrakesh souq in design.
The smell of the city I find especially interesting. There are about 10 million people crowded in a relatively small space and while (generally speaking) Koreans are quite fastidious about personal care, they seem less concerned about the care of public spaces. This isn't to say that Seoul is especially dirty--it's cleaner than New York--but the smell is rather different. It's a sweetish sour smell that somehow manages to achieve a sticky quality. I think it's a lot of kimchi and fish mixed with other big city smells, but maybe not. Whatever it is, while it's not terribly noisome, I'll be glad to leave it for awhile and explore some of the national parks.
