N'Seoul Tower

The next day, refreshed and ready for a full day in Seoul (boy, little did I realize), I strode out boldly bound for Myeongdong. That was almost back where I'd started, just a few stops north of Seoul Station. I found myself in a much different neighborhood than Jamsil: narrower streets (but still wide; this was near the city center after all), not as many tall buildings, and a great deal fewer coffee shops.

I was slightly concerned. Though we'd agreed to meet at Myeongdong Station, we'd been unaware of how massive it was. The station itself must have had entrances and exits on at least six city streets for blocks around; on the street where I'd surfaced, there were no less than eight. Fortunately, though, after a bit of walking back and forth and craning my neck, I managed to find Jeff, and his friend Bryan, who'd flown in yesterday from Canada. Bryan was a bear of a guy with long curly hair. We exchanged introductions and pleasantries. Soon enough Adam and Elaine happened up (they'd been in contact with Jeff via cell phone, and knew where to find us) and we got into a cab for a quick ride to the cable car station at the foot of Namsan Mountain, visible from our vantage point outside the subway station. The sun was shining down, but the air and breeze were chilly: a perfect day, in my opinion.

We purchased our tickets in the sunny office and then sat down to wait for the bell to ring, signaling the return of a cable car. We weren't waiting long, and managed to snag an ideal spot in the queue. I was squished into the front-left corner of the car: perfect. From there, I managed to get a mind-blowing view of Seoul on that winter's morning, and a few pictures that didn't turn out so hot but will be suitable for memory stimulation (see Jamsil jamboree). And then we were ascending the wide wooden staircase to the summit of the mountain and the entrance to the tower. It was an imposing sight:


I must admit to giggling like a little kid and running ahead of the others past the trees, gazebos and vistas that populated the top of the mountain to the entrance of the tower.

We all made it inside and went to the top, where we were greeted (after a moment...it seems we were the only ones there, and there was some confusion as to whether the place, N'Grill by name, was actually open) and seated. After a minute or two of looking at the menu, the restaurant started revolving.

V. . . . . . e . . . . . . . r. . . . . . . y . . . . . . s . . . . . . l . . . . . . o . . . . . w . . . . . l . . . . . . y.

I think we were there for nearly three hours and we progressed through only 270 points of the compass. We started out at roughly north-northwest, and hardly made it to the northeast before we strode out of the place.

(I don't know where my craving for speed on this trip was issuing from but it plagued me the whole time we were in Seoul. First the bullet train didn't go fast enough and now the rotating restaurant didn't rotate properly. I wasn't asking for a carousel or anything like that, I just wanted to see the whole panorama once or twice instead of 0.75 times.)

As for the meal itself, though it was delicious and didn't break the bank (as we were in a group and we ordered as many group specials as possible), the meal portions were disappointing. I've never found a filet mignon the size of a Post-It note to be all that satisfying. I did get to eat a little lobster tail, though, and there was enough pasta to go around.

We sat and conversed and r............o................t...............a..................t.................e.............d, and then settled up. We hopped down one flight of stairs and found ourselves on the observation deck, equipped with a paltry gift shop and a better snack bar. I got a cookie to assuage our recent meal's inadequacy (which sure beat gnawing on a lobster shell, which I'd been doing) and we gazed out at Seoul. Or what we could see of it; a snowstorm moved in as we stood there and visibility rapidly disintegrated. Eventually all we could see was the ground, and only then the patch that was closest to the tower. I can't tell you what a weird feeling it is to be looking out of a massive plate glass window at the ground hundreds of feet below and see snow blowing by BENEATH you.

Your intrepid correspondent. This was taken before the aforementioned snow started blowing but it demonstrates the perspective I was speaking about in the previous paragraph.

Also, on that level there was a small booth set up where you could sign a piece of paper with your name, make a wish, and tack it to a bulletin board. The point of this was simple: every Seolnar the powers-that-be in the city send aloft a balloon with all these wishes tied to it, the theory being that they will all come true as a result. I couldn't resist, and wished to have no hangover in the morning. Bryan and Adam and Jeff went in for it too.

Then we rode the cable car back down, and trudged the rest of the way down the mountain in that furious snowstorm. It wasn't windy, there was just a lot of big, wet flakes coming down. It was actually quite charming, and I rejoiced that got a chance to feel some snow on my head (and catch some snowflakes on my tongue) that winter. We'd gotten only two small flurries on Geoje Island, temperate island that it is. Up in Seoul it was truly winter.

We didn't split up. Piqued by my glowing reports of COEX, the others decided to hitch a subway ride with me back to Jamsil and see for themselves. I did my best to show them around on the same route I'd walked the previous day, but I didn't have much luck, and I'm sure they were disappointed. We were still there three hours though. We did a more thorough sweep of Bandi & Luni's (here's another couple of pictures)...
...and had some fun at the arcade. Adam and I had a go at The Lost World and I got to lasso a few more African animals on Jambo! Safari. Unfortunately the line for House of the Dead 4 was still really long. That, or the deadpan youth standing in front of it and calmly blasting undead abominations was actually a staff member and was busily demonstrating for the crowd. Whatever the case he was standing there both times I went to COEX, for as long as I'd been there. He must've had quite the insoles in his shoes to let him do that. We checked out some of the cooler shops, too. I got a compact for my mother at a particular Korean curio boutique.
Thence we adjourned to Sinchon, Adam and Elaine's stomping grounds, for a night on the town. We hit a few bars, drank a few beers, and just wandered.

In our wanderings we discovered something never equalled or even approached before or since in our Korean sojourn: Mr. Wow. Outside one bar there was a vendor set up who was selling what looked for all the world like enormous bratwursts on a bun with mustard and ketchup. On my friends' recommendation (they'd tried them before and had been favorably impressed, even if the brats were unexpectedly spicy) I bought one and chomped on it as we marched along to the next bar. It was 25% spicy and 100% delicious, and one of the primary reasons I want to see Seoul again before I leave. (Although we do now have it on good authority that Mr. Wow has scions in Busan...)

Much later that night, after many more pints of liquor apiece, we wound up in a noraebang. I believe I explained in Korean nightlife that a noraebang is a "singing room," otherwise known as karaoke. Only they do it right in Korea. You get a private room to yourself, snacks and booze, TV screens, disco balls, tambourines, and can just go at it for hours. This we did. I don't even remember what tunes we put on; last thing I truly remember is trying to equal Steve Tyler on "Sweet Emotion," while reaching for my beer and missing by a couple inches. We stayed until closing time, which was remarkable, as those places don't close until the wee hours of the morning ain't so wee anymore. Somehow I grabbed a taxi outside and paid the enormous fee to get back to Jamsil. I was completely gone. I undressed and tumbled into bed, and hovered somewhere between sleep and unconsciousness.

Don't miss part four, THE HAN RIVER AND OLYMPIC PARK...

Jamsil jamboree

Phases 1-5 of the grand plan had been completed. We boarded the KTX, quivering with excitement. I'd never ridden a train quite like it before. It was streamlined, sleek, and imposing; the interior resembled a jumbo jet more than a passenger train (a similarity I would rue a few hours later). I even had a window seat. The windows were huge, and commanded a thorough view of the surrounding countryside (not that it mattered). I sat down, arrayed my possessions comfortably about me, and prepared for the ride of my life.

...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...