day9 of our korea trip was a trip to GyeongJu.  Joseph had read in the travel books about this place as the place to go to see Cherry Blossoms in korea. I briefly mentioned it to my uncle and next thing you know, that’s where we were headed.

Unfortunately, the day we decided to go it rained. Most of the days we were in Korea it didn’t rain. Just bad timing I guess but the views and the drive was still great. just look at some of the pictures above. plenty of trees to look at and just a beautiful place to be.

since most of korea was about food, for me at least, i must also share about the food we had there. for lunch my aunt had planned to take us to a very popular and good restaurant, but once we got there it was ridiculously packed. the way was far too long, and since we had planned to see a bunch of things that day we went to another place next door.

needless to say, they thought the food wasn’t that good. i didn’t really mind it. i think i’m too used to korean food that is just mediocre. My mediocre is the equivalent to bad in korea >_<.  i’ll skip on describing the mediocre food. not worth my time or effort

next up was a trip to one of the oldest buddhist shrines in korea. by now it was pouring. my uncle bought us each a plastic poncho and thankfully they had some umbrellas in their car. one of the nice things about doing touristy things while it’s raining is that there are so few tourists it almost doesn’t matter

Joseph was able to sneak this blurry picture in before we got into any trouble when told we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the shrine. you can sort of make out the gold buddha behind the pillar.

the rain made us all a little miserable. walking around the dirt paths, in the rain was not ideal. our pants were soaking, we were cold, and the risk of falling while walking up the hills and stuff was much greater than we would’ve liked. so we left shortly thereafter. maybe one day joseph and i will go back when the weather is more manageable.

like the korean fried chicken, these gyeongju-bbang pastries were a trendy food for a while. it’s basically a thin flour pastry filled with redbean paste. it’s a not too sweet, small dessert. i’m not a big fan of these types of desserts. mainly because i don’t really like my redbean to be on the drier side. still tasty tho. i think joseph had a few.

next up was a museum. it’s now been way too long for me to remember the name of the museum, but it’s the main one in gyeong ju. here we saw more statues, and old relics. it was also a nice break from the pouring rain.

the highlight of the day for me was dinner. look at this spread! all these little dishes took up the entire table. fish, meats, pickled veggies, stir fried this and that. plethora to choose from. a great meal to end the day.

here’s a nice little aside:

all of us in the states complaining about gas prices, can now stop. in korea this WAS the price of gas back in july (only a little into the rising gas crisis we’re going through now). it’s about $1.60 per LITER. that equates to about $4.50/gallon for the cheapest gas. i’m curious as to what the gas prices in korea are now. i’m imagining my aunt’s family in korea taking the bus or subway instead of their 2 huge audi sedans or the gas guzzling volvo. ok.. yeah..probably not likely.

hopefully my next korea post won’t take 2 months to write =P

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one of the rides was called “the ninja“. the coaster was ok, the park definitely had some better ones. but the line was nice and short. but the best part of the ride was when the “host”/operator kept yelling “hi-ya”. at first, i was disturbed because it seemed racist, and then i realized it wasn’t racist, he was just doing the grunt that most people learn when they do martial arts. but it made me think. “does the theme park expect the operator to yell ‘hi-ya’ everytime a set of cars leaves?” if it does, man that sucks for the operator. i’d totally get tired of saying ‘hi-ya’ without getting to smash something to bits.  i know i’d also lose enthusiasm after a while.

but the funniest thing that came to mind was different variations of rollercoaster names and operator shoutouts - what if there was a soul rollercoaster? what would the operator say? maybe something in jive? or how about a bull fighter roller coaster? perhaps yell “ole! ole!”. the funniest one i thought of was “the tantra” and the operator can yell “NAMASTE!” (the tantra is a set of hindu scriptures, also known as “weavings” or “looms” - finally my high school world religion class comes in handy)

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Instead of an annoying ring, you wake up to the smell of bacon! I’d probably wake up for this, eat it, then fall right back to sleep. However, there might also be a negative to this lovely contraption. Eventually, your room will smell like bacon (this is not the negative, if anything this is a positive). However after a few days of use, waking up may become difficult again since you become accustomed to the smell of luscious bacon. I guess that’s where the annoying backup alarm noise, already built into this clock, comes in.

[via dvice]

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that’s probably exactly how i felt when i saw this:

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on the websites it said there was free wifi. i was skeptical. shady chinese folks trying to lure people away from using the bolt bus or any of these new fringe benefit bus companies. well.. behold. it’s true. the shady chinatown buses are no longer as shady. maybe i should start from the beginning….

last nite i checked out the times for the bus and the website gave the information on where the bus was located, the fare for oneway and roundtrip, and lastly an icon that is widely used to represent wifi. i got excited, then remembered that this was the chinatown bus. they don’t even let you use the bathrooms (not that anyone would want to anyways).

the 10:30am bus said it was “sold out”, so i figured i’m going to get on the 11:30 bus. But I’ve been on these buses before, and know that the system is sort of loose. so i got to the stop early 9:45. i saw the ticket lady and asked if i could get on the 10:30, she said “sure”, took my ticket and put a number on the back of it.

the bus finally came at like 10:15. one of the ticket people started calling out numbers. finally mine was called and i got on. there were at least 30 people without numbers tho, just standing around since they didn’t bother to check in with the ticket folks.

they then called for people who bought tickets for the 10:30 bus online but didn’t bother to check in. they got on the bus next. then the folks who bought tickets online for the 11:30 but wanted to get on earlier got on.

then the rest of the folks. sad. about 15 didn’t get on. they had to wait for the 11:30 bus. some were irrate about how they had waited in line and complained about the unspoken rules. walked away in disgust only the line up for the 11:30.

now i sit on this bus to blog about my experience. here’s the key take aways:

1. buy your tickets in advance whether from the ticket folks or online

2. Get there early and checkin with the ticket folks to get your number or get an idea if you’re going to possibly get on the bus

3. don’t just assume that since you were there early you’ll get on the bus, and be prepared to get on the next one if you don’t follow step #1 or #2.

have a great memorial day weekend, friends!

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joseph and i started planning the trip to the dmz before we left for korea. at first i was a little apprehensive. as a kid i vaguely remembered having gone, but it was nothing exciting and it was just peering through some coin binoculars. well it turns out what i vaguely remembered was true, but it would’ve been far more exciting if i had known i was “special”.

south koreans aren’t allowed on the dmz tours that go past the binocular viewing area. so no one in my family ever knew we were allowed past that “line.” when i mentioned it to my aunt in korea, she was a little baffled as well. but after a few calls to the USO, we were booked. (if you ever plan on doing this, make sure you book in advance because they were completely booked for 3 of the 4 days that were available while we were there)

we started with a very early morning cab ride into the city. they want you there around 7:30am! and since we were staying outside of seoul that would’ve been even earlier on a bus or in the subway. i got some breakfast of kimbap and we bought some drinks.

this tour is pretty big. it’s two full sized coach buses completely packed with people mainly from the US. it’s then a fairly uneventful hour drive to the DMZ. but once you get there, you get off the bus, only to be transferred to a different bus. this bus takes you to get briefed. some stories of altercations that have occurred between north korea and the us/south korean forces at the dmz.

they also shared some information about north korea and the tactics they try to use at the dmz for the foreigners. like this flag pole. s. koreans built the “smaller” one on the left, and shortly thereafter, the n. koreans built the monstrous one on the right. it’s really rather amusing, since the n. korean flag can’t fly when there is rain or sleet because it’ll rip under it’s own weight.

they also make you sign this scary waiver. the waiver basically says that if an altercation were to happen during the tour, the US and s.korea are not responsible for your safety. that combined with the lovely briefing of previous altercations, basically scares you into not making gestures or saying anything inappropriate durng the tour. oh yeah..lets not forget all the military personnel that can/cannot be seen throughout the tour.

the first picture above is the n.korean propaganda village. it’s basically shells of buildings in which no one lives. not really sure why the n. koreans think the rest of the world is too stupid to realize that it’s not a real village? they do it to “attract” people to n.korea, but i think it only the not-so-smart folks fall for that. while the rest of the world tries to attract the smartest folks from other countries.

the second picture is the location of one of the altercations we were briefed on. at this location, there was a tree between the far left and center trees that blocked the view. so s.korean and us troops attempted to cut down the tree. n.koreans came after the “loggers” with axes and promptly decapitated a few. there’s now a memorial plaque where the tree was.

joseph already shared a little bit about the “bridge of no return” so i won’t go into details, but it’s scary how crossing that one bridge meant you were n. korean or not.

hopefully this is the last time joseph’s hair will ever look like this. i don’t think it was necessary for him to form his hair this way, but i guess some people might think his faux-hawk could be misinterpreted as a big “f* you.”

throughout the time we were there, we were told often of when we couldn’t take pictures. which would’ve been fine if they told us when we could’ve taken pictures! so most of the time joseph and i looked at each other asking ourselves “what? we could’ve taken pictures just then?”

one place they were clear we could take pictures was behind this photo line, about 10 feet away from the binoculars. unless we had some professional cameras, there was no way to get some very clear pictures of n.korea. instead we opted to take pictures of the guards, the photo line, and a far away watch tower.

btw. if you’re a korean food connoisseur,  be wary of the lunch on this trip. joseph liked his bulgogi, but i really disliked my bibimbap. the banchan (appetizers) also stunk. it’s all edible. i’ll leave it at that.

during the tour they also take you down one of the tunnels the n. koreans built as entries into s. korea to try to attack. the tunnel is really long. amazingly long. like so long many people were huffing and puffing trying to avoid the low ceilings, and to get to the end, only to have to promptly turn around and avoid the low ceilings again. at the end of the tunnel tour, i was all sweaty and nasty, so i decided to cool myself down with a frozen treat. above is a gookhwabbang. it’s essentially vanilla ice cream, with red bean and a layer of mochi within a casing similar to an ice cream cone. joseph said he didn’t want one, but he ended up eating half of it. i should’ve bought two =P i looked for it at the hanareum here in nyc, but they only had the version without the mochi in the middle. still pretty tastey tho.

at the end of the tour, we were dropped off again at the USO at around 3pm. So with time to kill before having to go to home, we walked a block or two to the war museum. outside the museum is basically a large park that surrounds the museum. in the park there’s lots of huge statues and memorials remembering  troops from various countries and korea.

museums in korea are CHEAP. $3 cheap! and that’s without a discount. if you’re poor and want to go to korea, these huge museums is probably where you want to go. (yeah yeah alot of nyc museums are “free”, but they also try to guilt you into “donating a minimum of $5 for students and $10 for adults”, cheapest museums i’ve ever been to are the dc museums. the smithsonian foundation basically make sure most of the museums are absolutely free, without the guilt trip)

at the museum there’s large dioramas of what it was like during the war. from what you probably have already seen on the tv show - MASH - to refugees who had to leave their homes due to fighting. the middle picture is a korean artist’s depiction of a tear drop. it’s made of dog tags from  numerous soldiers and then wrapped in barbed wire from the dmz. the museum is a great crash course on the korean war. you can get as detailed as you like, or skim through the bulk of the exhibits.

i think i shared before about joseph’s obsession with korean fried chicken. we had seen this place before the dmz tour and decided if we had time, we’d go there for an early dinner. since this was the more popular chain, i was expecting greatness. throughout seoul we saw lots of storefronts saying “two two chicken opening soon” it was like seeing a starbucks around every other corner in nyc. so we ordered similar to what we ordered at kyochon. beer and coke, fried chicken in sauce and spicy garlic chicken.

i’m really not sure why this was a more popular chain than kyochon. the chicken wasn’t as good. instead of only the double boned wing peice, it was various parts of the chicken ranging from the breast meat to the drumstick. i still crave the korean fried chicken done right!

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anyways, back to the purpose of this post. since coming back from korea i’ve had a goal to try to play tetris the entire ~30 minute subway ride from start to finish without dying once and also to see how fast i can get to the farthest level possible for me.

i reached the pinnacle of my tetris experience (thus far). i hit level 62, and got very close to level 63. and surpassed the million mark on my ds.

that’s enough applause. thank you. no really thank you. feel free to bask in my pathetic glory =P

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it took a while to get moving, but once we got to the park, the girls were ecstatic. they were all fighting for joseph’s hands again. (i felt left out =P) but eventually one realized that i was lonely, and joseph only has 2 hands, i would do. so my favorite of the three is #3. as part of the kid entrance fee, were these free face masks:

these girls aren’t afraid of much. they rode on whatever rides they could. in particular this “frog” ride that basically bounced them up and down. they got on at least 3 times. they also liked the child version of the viking. at first i thought the ride looked lame, but after watching it, it went pretty high for a kiddie ride.

i think joseph had more fun than i did with the girls. i think it was one of the highlights of the trip for him. at one point, my cousin’s wife and i went on a ride together by ourselves. the non-english speaking kids were left alone with joseph. they’re all still alive, so i’m guessing it went ok =P

throughout the park there were some “interesting” foods. peanut roasted dried squid isn’t readily available at disney world, but it definitely is at lotte world. joseph didn’t want to try it, and i wasn’t interested in eating a package by myself so we moved on and saw a few of these “steff hotdog” stands. steph’s favorite i’m sure!

joseph mentioned a little bit about lunch, but here it is again. joseph and i had the pork cutlet with omurice (fried rice wrapped in an egg omlet). as with most amusement park food, it’s mediocre at best, but it was a decent price which was nice. the girls got a bastardized version of spaghetti. over cooked pasta, and some too sweet sauce, but they enjoyed it.

some pictures of my favorite of the three in the last one, #3 bought herself and the other girls, some dippin dots icecream. these kids get money from various friends and family as they see them. so no use in providing an allowance, just take them to family members or around church for some free money =P

the girls had to leave at around 5pm to go to a butterfly exhibit, and then get home, so joseph and i were left at the park to try to finish riding some of the other rides. but since it was later in the day, it was difficult to finish riding when the lines were so long and we didn’t want to go home too late.

for those of you into korean dramas, lotte world is also the place where they taped some of the scenes for “stairway to heaven” (천국의 계단).

before we went home, we decided to try to get some dinner. after walking around the mall for a bit, we ran into this budaejigae (부대 지개) place. it was pretty good. for $10, we had fast and generous meal. i think i would’ve liked it a bit spicier, but the hotdogs, spam, ground meat, and  rice cakes were the best part of the jigae.

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since sat nite, triplet #1 and #2 spent the nite at my aunts, we went to church with my cousin and his wife so we could hang out with them some and also get to meet #3.

i made some french toast for everyone for breakfast

besides being “heavy drinkers” these kids also know how to play cards, go-stop. more signs they are definitely family. luckily, they haven’t learned to gamble at 6 years old, that won’t come till they’re about 8:

then finally we got ready to leave. i got ready too

the church service we went to had translations in english, but the translations were a little light so, no comment on the sermon.

then off to lunch. joseph had three things on his agenda basically; 1. dmz, 2. hanging out with family, 3. eating korean fried chicken. so we went to an area near church called “gangnam” and looked for fried chicken similar to bonchon chicken. and instead of bonchon, we hit kyochon chicken (which also has LA, and NY Queens locations). kyochon was once a trendy place to eat and a huge hit, but more recently a different chain called two-two chicken is the current fad but more on that in a future post

joseph loved kyochon. for the rest of the trip, whenever we had the chance to pick something to eat, fried chicken was his first choice. we never got back to kyochon, but we did eat chicken at least twice more on the trip.

after lunch we went to this cafe that had like this weird chinese theme.

i also love street food. i didn’t get to eat much of it because it always seemed like we were always full, but i did get some corn. the rest of the pictures are of other vendors that were around

finally we met #3. #1 and #2 definitely look alike and people would easily say they are twins, but #3 looks different and not everyone would think she completes the triplets.

at the COEX mall, the three girls were hanging all over joseph. they LOVED him. they fought over who got to hold his two hands the entire time. eventually one would give up and hold their dad’s or mom’s hand instead.

they loved him so much they would hit his face =P

the day was finally over, but we invited the girls and their mom to come to lotte world with us on monday. which also meant they got to get out of school. hehe… i think in my family, joseph and i will be known as the couple who likes to take cousins out of school.

joseph’s first experience in the korean subway included the notice of some emergency supplies. but notice the number of emergency masks compared to how many there would likely be in the station during rush hours >_<

one of the things i knew about before we went to korea, but wasn’t able to experience 8 years ago, was the free wifi and tv access in all the subway stations and cars.

i read on some blog, that korean subway cars were eeriely quiet. likely because nearly everyone was either watching tv, on their laptops, or listening to their mp3/mp4 players.

we ended the nite with some beef galbi. my younger cousin bought dinner, since we likely wouldn’t be able to spend too much time with him. he’s been busy running my uncle’s furniture company, so he would leave fairly early and come home sort of late as well. as americans, we eat ALOT of meat, particularly beef. in korea beef is a complete luxury and can be very expensive. so this was a treat

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during the reprimand from the other day (re: day4 post) my cousin mentioned a tour bus that runs through seoul called “seoul city tour” they’ve got 4 different tours. palace, downtown, night and convention tours. we opted for the downtown tour since we thought that would be most interesting for us. the great part about this bus is that if you get a day pass, you can get on and off as you please at any of the stops your ticket is good for.

a completely no frills tour in a very simple bus. each seat is provided with headphones and a gadget that plays an audio tour of the various stops in various languages.  since joseph has never been to most of the spots, we went on the bus for the entire 2 hour roundtrip so he could hear more about each of the stops and then decide which one(s) we wanted to check out. he said he enjoyed it. i dunno. I didn’t get a headphone for myself, i somehow sat myself down at the only seat on the bus that didn’t have a headset. it was fine, for me it was more orienting myself of various places i used to hang out at and trying to remember what used to be where and when.

after the 2 hour roundtrip, we needed lunch. we’ve been trying to stick to korean food being that korean food in nyc is just so-so and in nyc every other cultural “food” can be found that’s almost if not just as good as the home country. joseph also wanted to check out one fast food chain for a quality check. KFC

but why KFC of all places? kfc was our non-chinese food choice in china. the chicken was great. joseph thinks it’s because the people who worked at the kfc took pride in what they do and chose select chicken to sell. this maybe true, but for me KFC in china was a nice (God-send) break from the chinese food (i’ve known since the china that i can’t handle eating chinese food for every meal for more than a few days without feeling sick and greasy). i know, i know. kfc is greasy too, but it’s a different kind of greasy. kfc korea wasn’t as good according to joseph. i couldn’t really tell. i’ve rarely eaten fast food in the last 4 or 5 years, especially after reading the book “fast food nation” so my fast food taste buds are happily long gone (in-n-out doesn’t count). but he’s probably right. you’ll know why in a later post.

at lunch we decided that we should go to the national museum. it was a great choice. the museum was cheap (~$3 for the both of us) and HUGE. it took us 2 hours to get through half of the first floor, and the museum has multiple floors. we didn’t get through the first floor after having been there for over 2 hours, it was time to go to meet up with family for dinner. (more on that later.) but the 2+ hours we were there was great. for another $3 you can rent these pda devices which will give you commentary on about 70% of the artifacts/museum peices. the stupid thing drove me nuts for the first 30 minutes because i’m not very patient. you have to walk up to a peice and then let the pda find the commentary in order for the it to play the specific commentary. i didn’t want to wait. i looked at everything but didn’t wait to listen, unless it picked it up almost immediately. (yes. sunggyuk ii geuphae)

we left the museum without seeing the whole thing. but for $3 who cares, 2-3 hours was more than our monies worth. plus family is more important, especially if you’re getting to meet some family members for the first time!

meet #1 (yoohyun/cris) and #2 (yoosun/kate) of korean triplet fame. famous in korea since triplets are rare and also because they were featured on tv shows that were played throughout the country. maybe i should’ve asked for their signatures =P jongwook, their dad, is my quiet gadget-loving cousin (blame him for my need of personal technology devices). the kids however, are definitely not quiet which we found out shortly after meeting them. at first they didn’t want to talk to us, scared to say hi since we weren’t so jovial when we first saw them and also scared since we were “foreign”. secondary to the meeting, was dinner of course. we had some amazingly good pork ribs - korean style, what else?

we ate till we were crazy full, and then tried to “trick” the girls into liking us by bribing them with some ice cream. it worked for about 2 minutes, and then they retreated to their parents and grandparents shortly after gobbling up the ice cream.

hmm..you might be asking, if they’re triplets, what happened to #3? yoomin/kelly spent the day with her other grandparents to help give her parents a break from the craziness of 3 kids at once. for those of you with kids, you know how difficult it is to have just 1 child, imagine having 3 all at the same time, all the same age, and demanding to be treated equally!

no pictures, but #1, #2 and their parents spent the nite at my aunts that nite, and my cousin and i had a few beers together while watching tv. at 7 yrs old, #1 loves beer too. she’s definitely family.

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