Seoul

I often describe Seoul to those who ask me as a "Tokyo Lite." Like Tokyo it is modern, clean, blessed with an extensive and easy-to-navigate subway system, and full of lighted signs. It's also very crowded, fairly expensive, and difficult to get by speaking English. On all these points, Seoul is similar to Tokyo, but I would say Tokyo is more extreme on all counts. Less quantitatively, Seoul feels a little more relaxed.

I definitely enjoyed the food. Korean BBQ is expensive even in Korea, and I indulged on my first night. They fill your table with dishes. I also ate the standard bulgogi and bibimbap many times. I was surprised to find that restaurants almost never had any English translations on their menus, nor picture menus (both are common in China). This had the unfortunate effect of limiting what we would order, since the staff rarely spoke English. We lucked out on our first meal without our local guide Young when our waitress turned out to be Chinese.

At one restaurant, a tiny hole-in-the-wall in the basement of a building, we were the only guests serviced by an old lady who was hostess, waiter, and cook. We pretty much let her decide what we would eat. She would make small dishes, bring them out, wait and watch us while we had the first taste so that we could show our approval. Only then would she smile and go back to make the next dish. I ordered a beer; she said something I didn't understand, left, and came back with a beer she had bought from the convenience store upstairs. A very local experience.

Unfortunately it wasn't until our last night that we discovered a food street near Gangnam station, which had dozens and dozens of excellent looking inexpensive restaurants.

We saw a few of the standard tourist sites, some with Young and her husband Moe. The one that really stood out to me was the Changdeokgung, one of several palaces in Seoul. In structure and scale it is similar to the Forbidden City in Beijing, though I found it much more beautiful and friendly. In particular it has a Rear Garden, which was stunningly beautiful and very relaxing. Touring the palace took almost two hours, and the experience was tainted by the requirement that you go as part of a tour group, and generally have to keep up with the group rather than viewing things that interest you at your own leisure. Nevertheless I was captivated by the melding of natural beauty with traditional Asian architecture.

The other major tourist thing I did was visiting the DMZ. The tour is run by the USO, and because it involves going on US military property, some nationalities are not permitted to take the tour. China is on that list, so Jessie couldn't go with me. Besides seeing the DMZ itself, we got to visit a series of blue UN huts which actually straddle the dividing line between north and south, so that in walking from one side to the other, you are crossing the demarcation line. The huts have one door on each side, and the policy is that the hut may be used by either side by entering and locking the opposite door. The huts were meant to house negotiations, which have never taken place. So in a strictly technical sense, I've been to North Korea while inside one of the huts, though I don't actually make that claim.

The DMZ tour also included visiting tunnels deep underground, dug by the North to act as a conduit for soldiers to invade the South.

The final noteworthy event was the excuse for coming to Korea in the first place: Young's wedding. It was held in a large banquet hall in a hotel. The guests numbered somewhere between two and three hundred. The whole event was pretty quick, maybe two hours for a ceremony, some speeches, and a quick meal. Afterwards there was a private ceremony where Young and Moe dressed in traditional wedding attire and did a tea ceremony. Jessie and I got to watch for a few minutes.