...which ultimately failed to materialize. Maybe I've been desensitized to speed (real or imagined) by action and sci-fi movies, but 300 kilometers an hour just didn't seem like it. First off, we were only going that fast for about 20 minutes out of the whole rotten three-hour ride. The distance between Busan and our first stop, Gupo, was so small that it wasn't feasible to power up and rocket down the line to get there. Meanwhile, there's me, sitting with my face glued to the window, impatiently waiting for the countryside to turn into a mammoth motion blur, silently urging the engineers to hit the juice. Nothing doing. Heck, between Gupo and Daejeon we only hit 250 kilometers, and I started to get an idea of what a disappointment I was in for. If this is 250 kilometers, I thought as I watched the small towns and rolling hills and mountains and forests pass by a non-blurry fashion, 300 kilometers isn't going to be anything special.
I was right. After Daejeon, our speed finally increased (very, very gradually) to 300 kilometers per hour. First I knew of it was when I looked up at the TV monitors embedded in the ceiling of the car and saw the little speed readout in the upper corner of one of them ticking off our rate of travel. Looking out the window I wouldn't have known. One hundred and eighty-six miles per hour over the ground seemed, as I looked out at the countryside going by, no faster than freeway travel. I managed to stop being disappointed for the snow that appeared as we neared the northern end of the country, blanketing the countryside with a soft veneer of white I'd already subconsciously resigned myself to missing down on the islands.
Adam, Elaine, Jeff and I had deliberately left Phase Seven (traverse the Seoul subway system) out of our group plan, because our individual plans diverged at that point. Adam and Elaine were off to Sinchon, in the northerly part of Seoul not far from the city center, to sample the nightlife. Jeff was headed to the Insadong airport to pick up his friend Bryan, flying in from Ottawa; thence they'd head to north Seoul and kick around.
I was destined for Jamsil, south-southeast Seoul, across the Han River. It was the fun district, whence lay Olympic Park, the Sports Complex, and the gigantic COEX Mall. It seemed like an interesting place to spend a few days, so I'd picked out my hotel, and with (literally) no reservations, I said my goodbyes to the others, promised to meet up with them the next day at Myeongdong for lunch atop N'Seoul Tower, and boarded a subway train.
The ride was long. I had to go 12 stops, including my destination, Cheongdam, a little north of Jamsil proper but still in the neighborhood. I emerged from the station and got my first look at my Seoul district of choice.
I found my hotel, the Tiffany, with a little difficulty, despite the fact that it was staring me in the face. (It's just fifty yards down the sidewalk to the right in the above picture; you could see the sign from the subway station.) I checked in, first having to make a down payment on my room. This hotel had been described in my guidebook thus: "Like an old pickup truck, this hotel doesn't look pretty but it gets the job done." This was true. It wasn't much to look at from the outside, much less the inside. But the rooms were clean and bright and suitable.
Without much ado, pausing only to wash some travel grime from my face, take off an underlayer, and re-equip myself with a camera and some water, I sallied forth into the chilly winter's day (it was much colder in Seoul than it was on Geoje, thank goodness; I'd begun to feel as though I'd miss out on winter weather entirely). My destination was the nearest Jamsil attraction to my hotel: the COEX Mall.
The outside view was pretty stunning to a boy raised in the 'burbs like myself. The mall was underground but the skyscraper above it was full of corporate offices and meeting rooms. 
Reputedly the largest underground mall in Asia, COEX sports an unbelievable array of diversions: an aquarium, a massive bookstore, an arcade, a duty-free shop, and enough stores, boutiques, shops, restaurants, and snack bars to choke a 20-mule team. I spent five hours wandering around the place, almost never retracing my steps, and I still didn't see everything. I commenced at the aquarium. It was overpriced, something in the neighborhood of 30,000 won, but I didn't care. The thought of going to an aquarium in a shopping mall rather overwhelmed my sense of prudence and frugality. It started slow but became impressive by degrees: I saw Eurasian beavers, fruit bats, sharks, sea turtles, penguins, and seals. Some of the exhibits were unimaginative, some of them oddly so (one was composed of a perfectly ordinary bed, sticking out from the wall, with a pillow and covers; only instead of a headboard there was a fish tank set into the wall).
Overall, I was pleased when I emerged from the gift shop and turned a quick left to check out the duty-free shop. This was a high priority, even higher than the Kimchi Museum, I'm saddened to admit (which I never got around to seeing). The possibility of cheap booze, unburdened by import tariffs, was now having fairly good try at overwhelming my already-overwhelmed sense of prudence and frugality. Fortunately for my pocketbook, the shop contained nothing but designer handbags, cosmetics and shoes. Chanel and Calvin Klein had got to COEX first. Disillusioned and let down, I wandered back out into the maze and wandered for a time. I stopped into the arcade and was treated to a wave of nostalgia as I beheld many of the same games I'd played in a dozen arcades and fun parks in my youth, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jambo! Safari among them. I spent a few thousand won lassoing African animals and then wandered back outside again. I stopped by Bandi & Luni's, the mammoth bookstore somewhere near the center of the mall. I mean mammoth when I say mammoth. It was at least half as big again as your standard one-story Barnes & Noble or Borders, which made sense given the fact that they sold thousands of books in both Korean and English but also had, inexplicably, a toy section to boot. I snooped about and snapped a few candid pictures (using a trick I'd picked up from a travel photographer, holding the camera at stomach height and looking down at it as though you're fiddling with the buttons on top when you're really snapping candid pictures of what's in directly in front). I did this just in case the management had some problems with pictures. I've been in a few shopping malls where they have, you see. Don't give me that look! I'm not going to blackmail anybody. I'm just deathly afraid I'll get Alzheimer's disease here someday and then I won't remember that I've done any of this cool stuff. So I take lots of pictures. If I wasn't so lazy I'd put some more into this blog.
Okay, fine, here:
That's one of the best candids I got. It was pretty crowded in there. Lots of studious Koreans reading up; I was proud to see it.
By this time I'd assayed the phalanx of eateries present; they were for the most part fast food joints, but there were a few genuine restaurants mixed in. I selected one, the Uno Pizzeria (of Chicago fame), and made a reservation. To kill the 30-minute wait I wandered about a little more, but saw nothing of overtly compelling interest. My meal was delicious, pepper steak with a baked potato, soup, salad and breadsticks. I ate every last crumb. Full of food and eminently satisfied at what I'd scouted out, rehearsing the glowing reports I'd give to the others upon the morrow, I finally departed COEX Mall and waddled back to my hotel. I channel-surfed for a bit, then shut out the lights and slept contentedly.
Here ends part two...part three, N'SEOUL TOWER, coming soon...
No comments:
Post a Comment