Adventure to Korea's Everland!

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A few Saturdays ago we woke up early and decided to go to Everland. Everland! One of Korea's awesome amusement parks! Hooray! Problem was, Everland's a two hour busride away from us. But no matter! We still went, and had a fantastic time! The rides were great, especially the T-Express Roller Coaster of Thrilling DOOM! That's not the real name of it, but it was still intense. We didn't have enough time in our day to see everything in Everland, but what little we saw we were absolutely amazed with. So check out our Everland Adventure by clicking on the picture above, or check the sidebar for higher quality versions instead.

Martina's Jeju Trip: Day 3

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And here is day 3 of Martina's Trip to Jeju Island. In it, you'll finally start to see what makes Jeju Island so famous: it's utterly overwhelming beauty. Sure, the first two days showed you a lot of the fun stuff of the island, but now you'll see the waterfalls and coastlines that put the first two days to shame. As well, you'll see a traditional folk Museum and, for some reason, an orange display. Yes. A display of Jeju's Oranges. They're great, sure, but good enough to have their own display? Who knows. What we do know is that you'll surely want to visit Jeju after seeing this video. So click on the picture above to see Martina's Trip to Jeju Island, Day 3, or check the sidebar for the high quality QuickTime version.

Martina's Jeju Trip: Day 2

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Here's Day 2 of Martina's Trip to Jeju Island. The day started off with a hike up a mountain (is it just us, or do all Public School trips involve climbing a mountain of some sort?) on a very cold day, then led into a trip to the Teddy Bear Museum. Yes. There is a Museum just for teddy bears. You'd be surprised how many different kinds of teddy bears you could find there! Afterwards, they went to a Buddhist temple and, finally, went to Seogwipo Stadium, which held the Fifa 2002 World Cup and - more importantly - is where the scene is from in Boys Before Flowers when the four boys play soccer. After all was said and done, they went on this mysterious road that - if you turned off the engine of your car - would pull it uphill! Anyhow, click on the picture above to see all the fun of Martina's Trip to Jeju Island, Day 2.

On a side note, we just got back from an almost-three-week vacation in Canada. We documented a few things, and plan on making some movies that will especially be useful to those of you coming to live in Korea anytime soon. So stay tuned! And - FINALLY - the Eatyourkimchi feed on iTunes is finally 100% functional! You can now watch every last one of our videos on your iPod! Huzzah!

Martina's Trip to Jeju Island

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If you haven't been to Jeju Island, you're missing out on your Korean experience. Jeju is a tiny island located at the most southern point of Korea. It is known as the Hawaii of Korea, and it lives up to the name with palm trees, volcanic rocks, and gorgeous beaches. It is a totally different world, and you don't even think you're in Korea anymore...except for all the Korean people. Anyhow, Martina was lucky enough to go on a trip to Jeju Island with the entire second year grade of her school. They had only three jam-packed days of non-stop action in an attempt to see and do as much as they could. Of course, she documented the whole trip. Too bad she had to leave Simon and Spudgy at home! They got to enjoy some male bonding while she frolicked with her girls! Click on the picture above to see Martina's Trip to Jeju Island, or check out the sidebar for different formats.

What the Book!

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We're both English majors, so we love books. Love em! Unfortunately, it's not all too easy to find a good selection of English books here in Korea; the bookstores will have a few, but a big part of those few are the original books of popular Hollywood movies. If you want to read something with a little more depth, those bookstores may not be your first option. What you should be checking out instead is our new favorite bookshop, What the Book in Itaewon. It's a bookstore full of books written in English, used and new, as well as magazines. What's better is that they have a really useful website if Itaewon is too far for you, or you're just too lazy to go there. So, we've made a new video tour of What the Book, so that you won't have to be without good reading ever again! Click on the picture above or check it out in the sidebar.

Our Adventure at Seoul Tower

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We're currently enjoying vacation time, so we thought maybe it was time to visit all the touristy things. Yes, "touristy" is a word (it's not).

We decided to visit N Seoul Tower. Seoul Tower is located on the peak of Mt. Namsan in Seoul, a city of 10 million people. There you'll find a revolving restaurant, cafés, and an observatory deck, but if you're afraid of heights and don't want to go up the tower, you can still get a nice view of the city from the top of the mountain for free.

You have two ways to get to the tower:

A) For 7,000₩ you can take a 7 minute cable car to the top of the mountain (which is the base of the tower).

B) For free you can walk up a huge, huge, huge, windy stone staircase. It has benches along the way and its lush forest-like surroundings are nice for pictures.

We chose the cable cars, but be warned, unless you take a taxi or tour bus to the cable cars, they are a mini-adventure to find via subway. If you want to take the subway there (which we did) it will be a 10-15 minute walk.

Here are the directions:

1. Get to Myeongdong Station (line 4).
2. Take exit 3 and look left. You'll see a really wide road with a convenience store on the corner in front of you. Walk down this street.
3. You'll see Pacific Hotel. The road splits in two around the hotel so stick to the right side.
4. Eventually the road runs into a flight of stairs. Take those stairs up and you'll see the cable car building on your right. Can't miss it.

While you're at Myeongdong Station, make sure you check out the huge shopping area across the street. You have to use the underground subway path to cross and the signs will lead you. It's very funky. Anyhow, the whole day was such an epic adventure day for us. The cable car ride was well worth the wait, and the view from the top of the tower was fantastic. Make sure you bring your cameras when you're there. We sure did. Click on the picture above to see our Adventures at Seoul Tower, or check the sidebar for different formats.

Our Favorite Korean Café

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We posted a couple of videos a while ago on Insadong and its Cookie Makers. Quite possibly, Insadong is our favorite place to go outside of Bucheon, and we're not talking about the tourist area which is a long cobblestone street filled with cheap wares.

How do you get to this secret area? It's a bit complicated.

1. Walk along the busy cobblestone street, all the way to the end, keep going and you'll see a small set of lights.
2. Cross at the lights, turn left once you cross.
3. Turn right onto the second street. It looks kind of like a tunnel because it has high walls. At first, it looks like nothing, just a narrow street with some high schools hidden behind high walls, but if you keep walking, you will be rewarded. The area is SO unique. Tiny shops and restaurants all different from one another, with quirky workers and decorations.
4. To get to our favourite café, you keep walking past the restaurants until you have to cross a busy little street (there are no lights).
5. Once you cross, keep walking and turn left on the first tiny street.
6. You'll pass a couple other big looking coffee shops, but you'll soon see the 커피 선반 café on your left. It's across from a hat shop.

Why do we love this place? Here are a few reasons.

Décor:
The café is covered in Polaroids of people and things, and the owner has a small guestbook filled with people's polaroids and their comments. The tables in the back rooms are scribbled on by guests leaving happy comments and drawings. The walls are coated with little love notes to the café. They are delicately written on paper napkins with the many encouraging pens hanging around on the tables. If you're there, try and find our napkin!

Comfort:
The napkins are printed with cartoon doodles of the café's owner and workers. Sometimes the employees wear Mickey Mouse ears or hot pink construction hats. Why? No reason needed. You can stay a long time and no one is going to kick you out. In the back room, there is a secret upstair attic (only 4 steps high) which can only hold two snugly people. If you're hungry they serve dessert (homemade fresh waffles, ice cream) and freshly made pressed panini.

Coffee:
This place takes its coffee seriously. They roast their coffee on location (it's a bright red roaster) and have a wide selection to choose from. If you order a cup of hand dripped coffee, it will NOT be served with milk and sugar. Trust me, this coffee doesn't need milk and sugar. If you get an expresso based drink, it will be perfect! Nothing burnt, bitter, or weak about it. Just perfect! If you want some beans to go, it comes with a hand-drawn picture.

We love this place, really love this place, and we'd be there everyday if it weren't so far from Bucheon. If you're ever in the Insadong area, make sure you check it out. Click on the picture above to see our video tour of Our Favorite Korean Café, or click on the sidebar to see it on YouTube.

Korea's Insadong: Cookies and Culture

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A couple of weekends ago we went to Insadong in Seoul to do a bit of Christmas shopping and soak in some culture. Yes, we do have to do Christmas shopping this early (because shipping stuff overseas will take a long time). It's a really interesting neighborhood as it combines both traditional and modern Korea. The video we made was of the most touristy area; a long cobblestone street lined with shops and selling all types of traditional Korea goods. Clothing, ceramics, tea, handmade paper, artwork, jewelry, calligraphy supplies, art supplies, linens, fans, hats, and delicious street snacks. If you're visiting Korea on vacation, this is the place to go for some great souvenirs. If you follow the street until it ends and cross the road to a smaller less busy street you will find the real jewel of Insadong. A special area filled with gorgeous coffee shop and clothing stores, all oozing with their own personality. As you continue to snoop around the area, you'll find the houses have be rebuilt to look like traditional Korean homes, but these houses cost millions! It is a gorgeous neighbourhood and you're guarantied to get some amazing pictures. We'll post another video about this area when we get the chance, but for now, check out Insadong's best shopping zone here.

For now, actually, we actually have TWO VIDEOS. The first is a montage of what Insadong looks like, including its streets, its signs, its musicians, and its robots. The second is a clip from Insadong that we had to make into a movie entirely of its own. There are a few booths around Insadong with a couple of guys making and selling cookies. While they make these cookies they talk in three different languages and explain what's going on (in this case, Japanese and English for us Japanese and English tourists). It's really quite cool, so we included the movie as well. Click the picture above for our Tour of Insadong, then click on this picture here for our video on Insadong's Cookie Makers. Both are in high quality QuickTime format, so if you want to see them on YouTube check the sidebar for both movies.

Korea's Coex Aquarium

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We were looking for things to do over the weekend apart from lesson planning. We decided to go to the Coex Aquarium as a result. It didn't require a lot of planning or effort. We just hopped on the subway, took line 1 to Sindorim Station, then took line 2 to Samsung Station, which you've seen us take before, and we were there. The Coex Aquarium is actually inside of a mall, rather than being an independent building itself. The Coex Mall, by the way, is completely awesome, if you're looking to do some good shopping. It's monstrously large, very, very easy to get lost in, and home to many funky and interesting stores (as well as an aquarium!). Tickets on a Saturday afternoon cost us 14,000 won a pop, and we took a solid two hours to walk through the entire shebang. Mind you, we were taking a lot of pictures and making a lot of videos along the way, so it might take the average stroller half an hour to an hour instead. Speaking of which, we made a video of all the fishies, while Martina took a lot of pretty pictures of the fishies as well. Click on the picture above to see our video tour of Coex Aquarium (check the sidebar for the YouTube version), and make sure to check out Martina's Flickr Tour of Coex Aquarium as well.

On the Korean Subways

We really like the movie "Lost in Translation." Any foreigner in Korea will easily be able to relate to it (or at least parts of it), and it's got an absolutely killer soundtrack as well. We strongly recommend watching it if you haven't already. Anyhow, the whole point of this Lost in Translation plug is that we keep on wanting to make artsy fartsy movies over its soundtrack. We have our first installment today. We were on Line 2 of the subway the other day, (the same subways from the Spudgy's Car Accident post, in which we show you how Awesome the Subways are here in Korea) and we started shooting the scenery outside. We cut the footage up, shifted it around, and slapped on Brian Reitzell's "On the Subway" from the Lost in Translation soundtrack. It's nothing special, but at least you'll get to see a bit more of Korea. Click on the picture above for the video, or click here for our View of Korea Through Subway Windows video. YouTubers can get this view here.

National Museum of Korea

This past Saturday we went with Sasha to the National Museum of Korea in hopes of soaking up some Korean Culture. We promised her a fun day in Seoul for Saturday, and had lot planned out, including bus tours and street festivals. Unfortunately, it's still Monsoon Season in Bucheon, so our plans were all but thrown out. Simon was exceptionally mopey, and just wanted to stay home and hide from the rain. Fortunately, Martina and Sasha insisted, so we replanned our day and decided it would be best to go to the Museum instead.

We ran into a bit of a snag along the way. We took the subway to Yongsan station and wanted to transfer over to another subway that took us to Icheon station, where the Museum was located. Unfortunately the subway to Icheon was part of a special train that we still don't know how to take, so we were stuck at Yongsan station. Luckily for us (for Simon, especially), Yongsan is home to an eight-floor electronics market bonanza. Simon was lost in it for an hour or so, walking around and looking at electronics that he couldn't buy (re: not yet, at least), while Sasha and Martina had a coffee and did a bit of shopping of their own for bags and such.

We finally decided to take a taxi to the museum instead, which only set us back a couple of bucks anyways, since taxis are so cheap here. We didn't expect much from the museum, especially because of our first museum experience in the Gyeonggi Museum which was a little bit boring. We were pleasantly surprised. The architecture, to begin with, was breathtaking. We were also really happy with the contents of the museum itself, and not just its pretty design. The exhibits of Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Vietnamese art and life were really interesting, and the Buddhism exhibit was really stunning. As well, we left the museum when the sun was beginning to set, and wandered around the museum's garden, which was also stunning. Altogether, we really enjoyed the museum, and would definitely go there again. We took a lot of pictures of our day as well, so click on any of the pictures in this post to see our gallery, or check out our National Museum of Korea gallery here.

Miso: Korean Traditional Music

Martina’s Vice-Principal gave us free tickets to see some traditional Korean music, in hopes that we could better appreciate Korean Culture. It was to be played at Chongdong Theater in Seoul, which is roughly the equivalent of the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto, only smaller. We went with Martina’s co-teacher and her friend, another co-teacher, after spending two hours getting our cell-phones and the internet set up. We’re not joking. It took that long. The co-teachers translated everything for us, but in a very Lost-In-Translation kind of way; the man at the store would talk for a few minutes, the co-teachers would nod and hmm their part, and then translate everything for us in under 10 seconds. “He says that this phone is expensive” - for example, would be all the translation we’d get after seeing the man wave his hands at times, laugh at times, shake his finger, and so on. I’m sure we missed out on a lot of what he was saying, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is this: we have two cell phones and a one-year contract. The cellphones cost us $40 each (though in Canada they go for $325), we pay $12 a month, each, and every minute costs us 10 cents. Text messages cost us 2 cents. Here are our phones! Click on the picture below for the video.

Once we got our cellphones and internet set up we hopped on the subway and went to Seoul. We got off at Seoul City Hall Station, which is right beside Chongdong Theater - where our musical was going to be played. We weren’t really looking forward to seeing this, because we saw a bit of Korean traditional music performed at our weeklong conference. It was alright, but nothing really interesting. This, however, was lightyears ahead of what we saw at the conference. It was far more intense and much better executed. We left the theater with out mouths hanging open - we were floored. We bought the DVD of the performance we loved it so much. Below you’ll see a clip of one of our favorite parts. It’s amazing, and worth checking out.

After the show all of the performers ran outside and performed again, an encore of sorts, only this time with everyone around them. After that they let us take pictures with them. Click on the pictures below to see the full-size versions

Altogether it was an awesome experience. Martina profusely thanked her Vice-Principal the next day, even though he could barely speak English. Martina waved her hands around and got her point across nonetheless. If you want to know more about the musical we went to, check out this link. Make sure to check it out while you still can. And, heck, even if you miss it, it's a great part of the city to get lost in and just wander about.

Palbong Mountain

The weekend of July 5-6, 2008, Martina and I went on a retreat with her teachers to celebrate the completion of exams, which is why we couldn’t update the site this weekend. Anyhow, we were told that we would be doing a bit of hiking on a small mountain. It turns out that this was the steepest and most dangerous mountain we have ever been on, Mount Palbong - which sounds intimidating and Lord of the Rings-esque. There were parts that were so steep that we had to drag ourselves up with rope. It was intense, and the sweatiest workout we had in years. We were panting, huffing and puffing, but by the end we got atop the 350+ meter mountain and took some really, really pretty pictures. We took a lot of pictures, so click here to see pictures of Palbong Mountain or the picture above, and click here for the movie.

Gyeonggi Provincial Museum

We were really upset on Wednesday after hearing a presentation by one guy who we thought was cool. We spoke with him beforehand and he seemed like a nice guy. When he had his presentation yesterday we were thoroughly upset. He lived in Vancouver for a while, and his dislike of Canada fueled many of his jokes. The audience loved how Canadians are non-committal in their conversations, how most of them do pot, and how they always have a stupid glazed look on their faces. We spoke with other Canadians after the presentation and we were all furious about the speech. If we ever see that guy again we’re going to thoroughly scowl at him, and mutter and point.

Luckily, on Thursday we didn’t have a big presentation day. We went to Gyeonggi Provincial Museum instead. It wasn’t really fun, but it was relatively awesome compared to the boringness of this week. We drew self-portraits (Simon’s is exceptionally awesome, by the way), learned how to make proper shadow puppets, learned about famous rodents, and much more! Apart from the silliness and the fun and games, we saw some really really cool ancient Korean papers. We love books, as you all know, and even though we couldn’t understand a word of what we saw we still knew that these books, with their browned pages, were awesome. We made a movie of our adventures and took a lot of pictures as well. Check it out.

Our Sunday Adventure

On Sunday, we went with my (Simon’s) co-teacher to Ganghwa-Do, a mountain with many Buddhist Temples, and Aegisbon, which is a mountain in South Korea that overlooks North Korea. It was a great follow up to our highly disappointing Saturday, in which we were supposed to meet our friend Jen in Seoul but didn’t. We were picked up at around 9AM and then were driven north for about an hour. When we finally arrived at our destination, we had to climb up many stairs on a steep hill until we finally reached the temples. They were impressive. They didn’t have the breathtaking splendor that I expected, but after I rid myself of my romanticized and unrealistic idea of Buddhist temples I was really able to appreciate what I saw. We would have liked to stay longer, but my co-teacher and family were pushing ahead. They’ve been here a few times already, and have seen this all before.

Afterwards we drove around for nearly an hour trying to find a place to eat. We settled for a place that served a new kind of Soon-doo-boo (or, at least, new to us). It was a big communal pot of soup, as opposed to the personal sized bowls we usually get, and it was really, really delicious. Martina liked it more than the usual soon-doo-boo, while I still preferred the original.

Finally, we went to a place called Aegisbon (or something very similar to that spelling). Before we went there, we were stopped by army men with big rifles in their arms and huge knives on their chests. They directed us to a place (just by pointing, rather than personally escorting us) where we had to fill out forms. We personally didn’t fill them out - my co-teacher’s husband did. The sheets were all in Korean, so we couldn’t fill them out anyway. Once these sheets were filled out we handed them back to the knife- and gun-wielding soldiers who let us pass. We parked our car shortly up ahead, then walked up the longest and steepest hill we have ever been on to make it to the top of a mountain. This mountain was the northernmost point of South Korea. From it, we could see North Korea. We put a coin in those coin-operated bincoculars to see what it was like. The picture you see above is what we saw. Looks like a quaint little village, right? WRONG! It’s a deserted village, built by the government to trick South Koreans into believing that life in North Korea is good. How shady!

You’ll see all of this and more if you check out our pictures and videos. Click here for the Buddhist Temples video, or click here for the North Korean video or click here for the pictures.

We're Going to Seoul! (Plus Bonus Picture)

We’re going to Seoul today to visit our friend Jen Kreisz, who we met in teacher’s college. She’s in Sinchon, which is a very hipster kind of area, and loaded with foreigners. We’re going to meet her in Itaewon, which is another big foreigners’ hub, and then hanging out for a bit. We’ll post pictures and videos when we get back. Then, on Sunday, we’re going with Simon’s co-teacher to a historic Buddhist temple far away from here. Again, pictures and movies to come.

But for now, we thought we’d share this picture. It’s of a chocolate bar Martina had on Friday night. For those in the know, “Crunk” means something completely different in English than it seems to mean here. Ha!