Mark & Erik's East Asia Adventures: Seoul

PHASE 2: SEOUL

We took off to Seoul appreciating that Erik knew enough Chinese to get around Shanghai, and equally dreading our complete lack of Korean. Did we have any prayer of actually getting around competently?

For those without enough time to read the details, we will sum up our journey to Seoul in three key points:
1) Tragic, repeated shaming of our ancestors and the Korean culture through gaffes, klutziness, and complete incompetence
2) This video, which more or less defines the nightlife, music, and youthly vigor of the city in a single spectacular burst--many of you have surely already seen it (no, really, everyone was doing it)
3) Basically nothing of note in Seoul has not been burned down at least three times, either by the Japanese or by disgruntled servants

So for those still wondering the answer to the first question, the answer was "no, there was no hope of getting around competently." We frustrated quite a few cab drivers, waitresses, shop owners, etc, with our utter lack of language or cultural knowledge. Korea is where we decided we needed to start keeping track of the number of ancestors that we were shaming by the day. We'll be keeping track throughout the rest of the adventure.

So what is Seoul? It's a significant megalopolis, but cozy in its own way (including this grist mill on a main street); polite despite being busy. We heard a total of six or seven honks in the entire city during our stay, despite absolutely crippling traffic. Trees were more-or-less everywhere; parks and mountains dotted the cityscape. It was more organized and less "grey market" than China. It was cleaner, better-smelling, quieter. In some ways, many parts of it were more tame than one would prefer.

Nonetheless, it was quite enjoyable as a whole.

FOOD: Shanghai food was spectacular, and a tough act to follow. Luckily, Seoul was up to the challenge. Mark and Erik made sure to have bibimbap and Korean Barbeque, but also branched out to other stuff that was 95% delicious and the other 5%, at least, interesting.

Our first night in Seoul we decided (against Erik's sudden spell of shyness) to enter a small tent near our fairly lavish and eccentric hotel where an old Korean lady was making food in a little iron cookstove. No menu--simply a box in the middle of the table with unlabeled compartments full of food. We were warmly invited despite our lack of language, but we mastered the pointing/grunting international language, and were capable of saying "I don't know what that is but if you set it on fire I'll try it," and "really, I haven't yet had enough of this beer." In this tent we found a buff dude named Tuan and his girlfriend (we forget her name, but in our defense, she spoke a total of 8 words in the 4 hours we were there), who was a Vietnamese-Norwegian travel maniac, and spoke great English (as his... 4th language). Tuan gave us an idea of what we were eating, most of which ended up being assorted chicken gizzards and tofu soup (the former makes up most of the "interesting" category, though the latter was quite yummy). Tuan was sufficiently fun that we ended up rounding out that night with him, getting quite tanked on Korean beer--we lost the morning the next day and decided not to do that again.

Our other particularly wonderful experiences were our two Korean Barbecue jaunts. The first was an outdoor, plastic-chair kind of establishment in one of the open markets (see below for more on the markets). Lots of middle-aged Korean guys there for what as probably an after-dinner bite, and for us, way too much stuff for the table, but absolutely delicious. We were able to communicate to the waitress that we wanted something with beef, and she seemed to decide that she'd just take care of it and we could figure out whether we were happy (she did fine). Like most restaurants, the waitress here made time to show us how to eat the food, putting 0% trust in our ability to eat it appropriately and not screw up (we were fine with this). The second was inside, and rated very well by Fodor's (we found it very good but not necessarily mind-blowing in relation to the joint outside). Here, we struggled massively to get food, but eventually figured it out. The biggest boon came when we figured out the waitress spoke Chinese, and we were able to communicate poorly in that. Sadly, she was very excited about this and really wanted to probe deeper, and Erik was just unable to keep up with her Chinese. Erik shamed his ancestors when he put some fresh bok choy on the grill and burnt it, sending up some smoke and causing the waitresses to start yelling and fussing.

We made sure to have good kimchee (which was actually quite ubiquitous), bibimbap, and some other good spicy stuff as we toured, the best highlight being a place nearby our hotel in Itaewon.

Ancestors were similarly shamed as we wandered into restaurants (between palaces) and kept trying to make clear that we wanted meat without pork, and we kept not understanding that they were saying "no, we don't have it." At one point, a hostess/owner (after setting our table), mustered up her best English to look us in the eye and say, "please leave." It was fairly humiliating.

PALACES: Seoul has five major palaces built during their one major dynasty (Jeson) which lasted from the 1300s until the Japanese takeover of the penninsula in 1910. We saw the two biggest and the prettiest (the latter of which had major Western influence), according to Mr. Fodor. The primary feature of the palaces worth sharing is that each of them has buildings that have burned down no fewer than three times, and sometimes more. Primarily, this has been due to Japanese invasions (the Japanese also built or changed many features of the palaces during occupation), but they were occasionally burnt down by servants (hoping to erase records of their status and start life anew) or frustrated citizens during financial crises.

Without a doubt, they were pretty. Though as venerable experts on palaces of the far east (Erik and Mark have both explored them rather extensively in China and Japan), the Korean versions somewhat pale in comparison. For the most part, palace grounds were empty sand, and the palace halls were relatively small.

That said, there were some definite highlights. We went on a great tour of the largest palace's "Hidden Garden," whose grounds were significantly larger than that of the palace itself. From our great tour guide, we learned some details about the intricacies of dynastic construction (including how stone floors and underground fires were used to keep bedchambers warm, and how different gates were built for the Emperor and his officers), some history, and some of the finer points on dynastic garden design and what it symbolized. The gardens were beautiful, and focused primarily on trees and rocks, rather than flowers or exotic plants. Such construction gave the gardens a serious sense of unchanging permanence (especially "back in the day" when they were largely evergreens), which the Emperors seemed to enjoy as they toured back to write poetry, think, speak with officers, or (as we like to think) impress the ladies.

SHOPPING: Shopping was a bit different in Seoul than in Shanghai. Seoul's street markets existed in a very big and real way. They were, as it turns out, primarily shops in which Koreans frequented to get food, clothing, perfume, other day-to-day stuff. They were still fun, for sure, but didn't have a whole lot of what we were looking for. Primary exceptions to this include some great Korean barbeque, street vendors with great fried foods, and some weird "Korean Tea Biscuit" stuff that was ultimately some nutty pasty stuff wrapped in some powdered, stringy cocoon (I would be shocked if it was meant to look anything other than a cocoon). Lots of young folks at one of them and old folks at the other.

THEATRE: Always the spotlight hog, this was Erik's favorite part (Mark enjoyed, too). We went to see "Nanta Cookin'," which is apparently the most popular stage performance in Korea of all time. It takes fairly traditional drumming techniques and applies them in a modern, word-less (but not noise-less) comedy about a group of chefs that need to quickly cook a meal for a wedding. It was silly, tons of fun, and the music was excellent. To boot, Erik got brought up onto stage to taste their soup and help the cast determine whether the recipe was good enough (Fogg approved). It was a ton of fun and  Erik's penchant for theatrics worked well (where the other person up there, a young Korean girl, as a bit too shy for the stage). [Pictures of this still coming.]

THE FISH MARKET: Erik and Mark woke up at 4am to get to the Fish Market by 5am to see the catch come in. By the time we got there, the market was already deep into its daily activities, with individual merchants killing, bleeding, and filleting fish in front of our eyes, octopi both swimming and lying out flat and dying. The coolest part was seeing the intense auctioning of (likely) massive catches of fish, with a few dozen folks in hats (likely indicating the company they represented, likely a grocery retailer or major restaurant group, etc) bidding across from a screen (indicating what's up and what's been bought) with a microphone-armed and enthusiastic auctioneer.

KOREAN WAR MEMORIAL: One of the major highlights of the city was the Korean War Memorial. Situated next to the US Army Base (which was so poorly marked and clearly somewhat hidden as to be suspicious... the US base there is not the most popular of locations), the Memorial had a gorgeous outside full of heavy war equipment and an inside filled with a tear-jerking, very real account of the war. The inner account was shameless about laying blame on the USSR and PRC, and spared no lavishness in its gratitude  to (primarily) the United States (but also other members of the UN security force). It showed the depth of the intensity of the war for both soldiers and the "home front," and we found it very compelling (there are no photos).

Outside were a few key highlights. The first was the collection of US, Korean, and North Korean / Russian equipment in the field, which is always a bit of a military fanboy's wet dream. The second was the outdoor memorial sculpture (and sculptures of soldiers), which was fairly powerful in its own right. Finally, we saw ancient warrior reenactors, who participated in a theatrical dance-fight of some sort [video forthcoming]. On our way out, we saw a group of soldiers, but we weren't sure what they were up to.

GUNGAM STYLE: We did indeed rock it Gungam Style and headed out to the ritzy district. While putzing around, we enjoyed the lights and glamour, and stopped up in an 11th-story bar for an overpriced beer.

MORE ANCESTOR SHAMING:  We shamed our ancestors in the cabs, as well, trying desperately to communicate where we were going. Somehow, the card given to us by the hotel was insufficient for the cabbies, who understood neither the address nor the phone number listed, which we found a bit absurd, but we allowed this to repeat rather than preparing to fix it next time.

Mark and I started quietly communicating to each other that we were aware of active ancestor shaming by tattooing an ancestor onto our forearms (much like a fighter jet might paint other jets onto its side after a kill)...

Ancestor shame count: 7

PHOTOS:
Photo albums here:
Soul Gardens & Temples
Seoul Life
Seoul Food
Soul Fish Market
Soul Nanta Cookin'
Korean War Memorial
Seoul Travel

Seoul ended in Seoul fashion, with a nice, orderly trip via rail to the (smaller) Gimpo airport, on the way to Tokyo's Haneda. Stay tuned as life gets a whole lot wackier and Erik/Mark fly to Tokyo...

Mark & Erik's Adventures in East Asia: Shanghai & Suzhou

PHASE 0: INTRO

Friends!

Thanks for joining us through our East Asian adventures. A few notes before we begin the content:
-There are bazillions of photos, and we'll be sharing with you some of the highlights. Albums can be found on Facebook (we'll link you), but we'll share particular highlights as the story unfolds.
-Things won't be in chronological order within a particular phase.
-We're going to both leave out details and also potentially bore you with our musings, but deal with it.

PHASE 1: SHANGHAI

The unintended adventures of logistics will be a repeating theme for us, starting from the very beginning. To start, getting to Shanghai was a bit worrisome. Erik had to travel to Canada for work sans-passport (which took both skill and luck to pull off) as we got our visas processed by the Consulate. Luckily, Erik managed to sneak through the border both ways with only a NEXUS card, which is usually respected but not technically allowed and definitely not a good idea. In one of the legs coming back to the US, Erik was asked to present his passport... which he didn't have. How he got through that is an exercise left to the reader.

Once at Logan, Erik and Mark discovered hiccup with our flights that almost had one of us getting a seven-minute layover in Chicago, but we fixed it. Whew. We took off from Boston and got into Shanghai without further incident.

Upon landing, we hit the MagLev train to get into the city, reaching speeds of 300km/h (we thought this parituclarly impressive until we saw the same speed on the regular rail going to Suzhou--more on that later) and covering the 30km in something like 8 total minutes.

Erik & Mark were thrilled to find that Erik's Chinese was more than good enough to get around, despite a 4-year hiatus. Waiters, taxi drivers, etc, immediately assumed Erik was fluent after he spoke. Despite having some trouble (Mom always said, "you talk a lot better than you listen"), Erik was able to pick up all the key bits and parse out what didn't make sense. We made by with little issue. Mark even picked up a fair amount of Chinese and by the end was easily parsing out words that were part of his vocabulary.

Shanghai was in many ways reminiscent of Beijing, but had some key differences. The biggest two: first, it embraces most aspects of its past (where Beijing was much more Communist and much more manicured about the pre-Communist period), and second, it has a much smaller and more relaxed feel to it--at least in Downtown.

The familiar parts for Erik were the smells, the noise--lots of weird emotions of nostalgia popped up from the three-month stint in Beijing (one of the smells in particular was that unidentifiable, city-wide one that never leaves you). The traffic was probably even more chaotic, the stall vendors possibly even more aggressive. We were offered "ladies" probably a dozen times (which hadn't happened in Beijing). Sadly, there are a lot of aspects of Shanghai that irk the traveler in fairly stereotypical ways, like old ladies following you through the bazaar, yelling "Hello! Watch, Bag! Hello!"

But some of the general chaos was stuff that we really liked. A lower economic barrier (in labor/consumer regulation, in paperwork, etc), culture of personal initiative, and no-safety-net world meant that there were tiny businesses of incredible sorts. We saw an entire block of moped repair shops; countless street stalls selling all sorts of wares for local and tourist alike; road vendors sold home-cooked food and raw stuff, including two of our favorite dishes: a fried wrap of noodle-and-vegetable (local fare), and a spicy onion/garlic naan-style bread thing (Muslim northwest food, or "Uyghur"), both of which were less than 30 cents. More on food below.
So the chaos, while sometimes bothersome, also meant great tastes and smells and little bits to buy around every corner, which one just doesn't get in the US. The "grey market" has its charms.

SHOPPING: We got a few prezzies for folks back home, and had a fun time haggling. Erik had to warm up to his old skills (got "burned" the first run at it, but still got a better deal than would be expected in the US), but Erik and Mark turned to a "good cop / bad cop" style of haggling that worked brilliantly well. Mock anger, yelling, and general boisterous gesticulation was followed by laughing and mutual back-slapping after the deal was done. We obviously didn't "win" (if we define" winning" as pushing the vendor down to the edge of what they'd be willing to sell for), but everyone walked away feeling like they got a good deal and had fun, which is what's important.

ARCHITECTURE: Mark and Erik loved the architecture. As we mentioned above, Shanghai is a lot more laid back than Beijing and embraces its history well. It has much less of the "central planning" feel to it that Beijing has and for that reason has a fairly incredible amount of creativity in the new architecture out there.

We'll break down the architecture, as we understand it, into three parts: "the really old," "the occupation," and "the new."

The really old: Very much what you'd expect--lots of great pagodas, a few temples. Much of it, for whatever reason, is under active construction and renovation, which was actually fairly neat in its own way. More below.

The occupation: So Shanghai was largely occupied by various powers (namely the British, French, Russians, and Americans) during the 1800's, and the architecture shows off in a big way. The Bund is the best example of this. You can see from some of the photos here that the Chinese flags all over these buildings used to be of other nations and there's clearly a Point Being Made by them now being Chinese (rather than either the flags removed or the buildings replaced with something else). The former Western influence is also fairly obvious from the fact that the lion statues are often westernized (and are not all the same bloody lion from 4000 years ago).

The new: Pudong is the best example of the new in Shanghai, with many of those super-creative buildings we spoke of earlier. The most recognized is the "Pearl" TV tower, which Erik thinks looks a bit silly.
Some other great examples:
-Hotels tend to be some of the most creative, making a fairly wide departure from what you'd normally expect in Western countries.
-The Knife (not the official name)
-The Tazer (also not official)
-Pudong as a whole, truly spectacular at night
-Mark's favorite, the Citi tower, which has a giant screen Mark wants to play Tetris on

SUZHOU:
We took a day trip out to Suzhou (silk capital of China!) via regional train, which is a nearby city with a different taste and history. Much less influenced by international trade, visitation, and occupation, it's got a bit more of an "old school" feel, more poverty, and a whole lot less English. Taxis here were cheaper, friendlier, and a fair bit less terrifying than those in Shanghai (we're fairly certain one of our cabbies was falling asleep at the wheel while in Shanghai, but we made it okay). Much of the city was lined with canals, and boat transit is still a fairly legitimate means of moving people and goods alike. Interestingly, the lower number of tourists may account for the shop vendors being a bit less aggressive and incessant, which made it a bit easier for us to just walk around the shopping districts.

We saw a few nifty pagodas and a very nice garden (the "Humble Administrator's Garden," which was not so humble), as well as the Suzhou Silk Museum. At the museum, we got to see some live silk worms noshing on some mulberry trees and rolling out silk coccoons.
The Humble Administrator's Garden ("not so humble!" I joke, as the first person who has ever made that joke, ever) had loads of rocks, trees, ponds, and juxtaposed rocks and trees and ponds in a fairly gorgeous fashion and with the kind of terrifying obsession you'd expect of the Chinese.

From the top of the tallest pagoda in Suzhou, we had what was actually a really great view of the Suzhou area. Note that the city is actually fairly large, though this is usually the case for eastern China.

SHANGHAI PARKS & SITES:
Other sites of note in Shanghai included:
-Yu Yuan Gardens, which were fairly peaceful and pretty. Lots of great rocks to crawl around. Lots of awesome roof architecture. Koi ponds galore.
-The City Temple, where a lot of folks actually went to pray

FOOD: Mark and Erik really prioritized getting good food in all three cities, and Shanghai really set the tone as a hard act to follow. Shanghai, like Beijing, is best eaten by jumping into little nooks and gesticulating wildly at the stuff with red peppers on it. When they say, "tai mala le!" ("it's too spicy!") you must insist that they are wrong and that your stomach is made of iron. They will lament and give you what you want. Just make damned well sure that you have some good beer beside to cut some of the spice, or else you're going to shame your ancestors, and you wouldn't want to do that (definitely not... stay tuned for serious ancestor shamery in later episodes...). So here's what we've got for food:
-Spicy stir fry thing #1 (I have no idea what the names of these things are--we pointed at pictures)
-Hot and sour soup and some other spicy braised saucy thing
-Dumplings from Din Tai Fung, the consistently-rated best dumping chain on the planet
-Spicy soupy thing of some sort, we liked it and in short order annihilated it and the Hot and Sour soup kindof got left to the side
-Obligatory teahouse tea, complete with quail eggs
-And, as necessary, some good beer. Japanese in this case, but tastier than the Chinese stuff

NIGHTLIFE: We were a bit disappointed with the nightlife--it consisted mostly of Western-tailored bars and clubs, which we realized we could get back at home and so we instead spent our evening time getting to bed at a reasonable hour (we're so old!) and got up early to putz around the city instead. It seems the bar/club scene is such a Western concept that even Chinese folks want to go to something Western themed to go out. And, to boot, the beer was at least as expensive in these places at the US, so it just wasn't worth it.

PHOTOS: 

Links to photo albums on Facebook (public, don't worry if you don't have Facebook [yes, some people don't]):

Shanghai Gardens & Temples

Suzhou

Shanghai Life

Shanghai Travel

Shanghai Food

Shanghai Buildings

So that just about wrapped up Shanghai. Our last day there was quite lazy, and involved sleeping in and moseying our way to the airport after the Din Tai Fung, where we hung out in the lounge for a bit and raged over being unable to figure out how to connect to the internet (poor us). Onto our Asiana flight, and we were on our way to Seoul...

Stay tuned for the next episode! Same Bat time, same Bat channel!