Korea Trip Part Won

AHAhaha, did you see what I did there? Anthony and I took a week long break from Japan and went to the beautiful country of the Republic Of Korea.

Monday we wake up, no Mercy in sight because we left her at a co-worker's house. I always feel bad leaving her because she has been abandoned quite a bit. I think she's getting used to us finding her a babysitter while we go travel. I think she's realizing that we're not going for good; that we'll come back. Well we get up earlier than we need, but it's good to make sure everything is packed and secured. We drive to the base to mark ourselves present for the flight. We have to be there two hours early, not because it might take that long to get through security, but because... I don't know, it's the military? I'll spare you the oh-so-entertaining hours of waiting and get to the first funny part. As we're going through "security" the "TSA" agent gawks at my amount of electronics. Seriously guy? Maybe he was just impressed at the organization of it all. We carried 2 Kindles, 1 3DS, 1 iPod, 2 phones (although they remained off for the trip), 1 MP3 player and the cords for each (except the phones). To me it doesn't sound like much for two people. Then he wanted to check the sizes of our deodorant. Don't want Korea to smell too nice I guess. What was really hilarious is that both our deodorants fit inside a Ziploc sandwich bag. We ate lunch on the plane and landed in only a few hours. One thing that I really dislike is the way that customs is dealt with on these kinds of flights. They wait until everyone is off the plane, and corralled into a "gate area" to tell us how to fill out customs forms. I could have just gotten it on the airplane and filled it out. That's what happens on commercial flights. I understand that people who are moving to Korea for military duty have one thing that they have to fill out differently, but as a visitor I don't need to know about it. 

The first thing we do it check into the hotel and go to the BX for towels and sunscreen. Going to the BX for dependents in Korea is a hassle because they need a "ration card" which is a way to curb on bootlegging. I understand it, but its always so funny when we walk through as visitors. The door men almost never know what to say about it. They act as if I'm not supposed to go in at all even though I have my husband (and service member) with me. After seeing the BX we left base to look around the shopping street. We stopped at a suit maker's to have a Willie Wonka (Gene Wilder style) suit made for Anthony.

For dinner at Sakusaku, a very delicious "chicken & hof" place. I made the mistake of getting the spicy chicken. Now, there is spicy, Indian spicy, Korean spicy, and hell on earth. I'm pretty sure the waitress was laughing at me.

Tuesday morning we ate at the local 24-hr place. Both Anthony and I ordered Waffles and... lets just say they weren't up to par with Waffle House. After we got out stuff together and cried over how ALL the cool musical acts do a USO show in Osan, we made our way to the train station. The Korea Rail is similar to the Tokyo but it is far more confusing. I'll not go into it now, but I'll be bitching about it later. I like that the KR uses cards that you can reload or return for a deposit refund. We got on the train for Suwon and in just a little while we arrived. The first thing we saw was a mall that housed an Outback. 

The one thing I really wanted to do was go to a historical landmark, so we decided to check out the Korean Folk Village. It was a 30min free =) bus ride from the train station to the village. It is a 243-acre replica of a village from the Joseon Period (1392-1867).

There were shows to watch, like trick horse riding, and local crafts to buy. We saw traditional Korean totems that are designed to scare bad spirits away. I think they just look hilarious. I got close and personal with a cow who had a ring in his nose.

Those things are freaky to me on a cow and on a person. We walked through villager's houses, land owner's houses, a nobleman's house (where we saw a traditional marriage ceremony) and the Keum-Ryeon-Sa (Buddist Temple). We saw farming tools, a pharmacy, and a museum that explained some Korean traditions as well. The temple was a bit of a walk away from everything, so I wasn't surprised when we didn't see anyone there.

The bees were EVERYWHERE! I'm not sure if it was bees or bees and wasps, but neither Anthony nor I felt comfortable. So. Many. Bees.

When we walked down from the temple we visited the government office which had punishment devices in the courtyard and a jail to the side. People could try out the punishment devices if they wanted. Anthony tried to flog me, but I wasn't having it. While I was waiting for Anthony to take a look at the jail I noticed a red and white spotted spider on the steps. It was flat on the vertical part of the steps but it must have felt the other tourists walking near the stairs because it jumped BACKWARDS onto the ground. You have no idea how bad that freaked me out. I've only seen cricket spiders in Virginia, but this thing was smaller and scarier. We visited a farm area which has chickens, a horse and some geese.

Jerk Horse

Towards the front of the park there was a special sweets demonstration. A woman took honey and covered it in cornstartch and began to spread and twist it into a figure eight. She counted the rings in English: 2, 4, 16, 32 and so on. When she was done the honey rings looked like threads of fabric. She wrapped them around some nuts and we had to buy some. The candy tasted like a Mary Jane and was great cold. Its not so good after left out for a while, though. The honey gets too hard.

When we got back to Suwon we found a love motel for $40 per night. While we were at the village we had to carry most of our things. The lobby area was small which worried me because the last small lobby we were in also came with a small room. Boy was I surprised! The room was big.

The bed wasn't soft, it felt like a box spring. There wasn't much in the way of privacy with the toilet and shower. It was mostly a glass room and the door had about 1/2 an inch from the ceiling and floor. The interesting part was that we were given a goodie bag of lube, condoms, massage lotion, razors and toothbrushes. Then we walked around the mall and decided on Outback for "lunch." I was served dessert first, and when I asked for a to go box (several different ways) I never got one.

What else would I be eating at Outback?

I think our waiter was new. We walked to the movie theater to ask about The Dark Night Rises movie in IMAX. They had an English representative (super awesome). Not only did he tell us about the seats available for that theater, he was able to tell us about open seats in other theaters as well. Why don't they have that tech in the US? Or maybe they do now but movies are too expensive for anyone to want to go. Later we walked along the shopping road. 



We considered a few places, but Anthony said, "Its Miller Time," so we went to a restaurant/ pub named Miller Time. It was dark, cool and there were pictures on the menus. Anthony ordered the duck platter and we got a free Miller Time beer glass! I thought that was pretty cool. It was a lot to do in two days, which is probably why we slept so good, even on the stiff mattress that we had. 

Stay tuned because there is still more Korean vacation to recount for you.