Vietnam Day 2: Seoul Connection

Arriving in Incheon at 4:30am is a bit anti-climactic to be honest.

While grand and technologically impressive, we were exhausted and nothing was open for several hours.

Very awake in the Incheon airport.

We prevailed however, rallied around some fresh coffee and signed up for a free tour service which would take us into Seoul proper.

So, I am going to be honest here. We were both exhausted and the tour was a bit of a whirlwind. The choices came down to the DMZ and an eco park, or a palace tour and a popular street downtown. We thought the DMZ was going to be the longer transit and opted for the other one but it turns out that was also a 1 hour transit. Either way, we load onto a bus, but not before our nice older Korean guide insisted we layer up, because it was 4 degrees and apparently freezing.

The ride there was mostly uneventful except for 2 things: First, Cassidy chose our spot on the bus, and it turned out to be the only spot where the entire view was obstructed by the decal on the outside of the bus. Insult to injury was added as often the guide would reference things to the right of the bus, which was precisely where we could not see. The other things was that according to our guide, Koreans love condos. Like, they don't want single dwelling units, and land. So much so that she claimed that people who do build houses they love and then have an extremely hard time selling them later on down the road. At first we didn't think much of this, but then you get closer into Seoul and see that indeed, the city is just massive buildings of condos everywhere. Kind of unreal to be honest.

Prime views from the bus

Once we offloaded at the Gyeongbokgung Palace, Cass and I wandered around not really knowing what was going on because we simply didn't have time to translate everything, and lost our guide almost immediately (It's an interesting read on Wikipedia if you are interested in the first royal palace of the Joseon Dyanasty) . We had fun, and watched as tons of tourists took selfies in traditional garb, which according to the guide is a recent phenomenon, based on the international popularity of a K-drama set in this same place/era. Check out some of the pics below.

This is our tour group. Cass and I are already lost at this point. So we were not featured.

Then we were off to Insadong street. With an hour to kill, we got some lunch, which was sooo good. Cass got a ball of Skate (a salty tough fish) and I got a bowl of dumplings. The people were friendly, and I was told by a random dude that I poured Soju "like a pro." He said he hoped it would help with our jetlag. It did not.

Though our seat meant we could now see what we missed on the right side of the bus on the drive into town, both Cass and I slept on the way back. I cannot undersell just how tired we were.

Powering up on meat sticks.

Which means the remainder of our day is not really worth relaying - we hung out in the airport just waiting for the plane. Both of us slept through most of the 5 hour flight, which was a small mercy.

What I can say is that the South Korea had not been on my list of places to visit, but this little taste has definitely sparked an interest and I would like to give it the time it would take to learn more ,eat more, and explore the land of the condos.

The night was not over. After catching a ride into Hanoi, and seeing first hand the insanity of the traffic, we briefly settled into our apartment and Cass showered. I actually fell asleep while he was in there. But we hit the streets, found a small bar a block away and promptly fell into convrsation with another traveller, JZ from Philly who used to work on capital hill in the US but quit and was on the tail end of a couple month travelling vacation through the area. We drank Tiger beer (at 40,000 dong = 2.10CAD), had some good chats and parted ways around 1AM. Another day in the books.

take the wheel

blinkers fade away

through the smog