A Weekend in Seoul

I went to Seoul this weekend with two of the other teachers and had a great time. We left after school on Friday evening. It took a little over two hours to get there. The train was really comfortable because we bought our tickets the day before and had seats. If you don't make reservations, you pay a slightly lower price and end up standing. The train was a lot like Amtrak, except that they allow people to stand in the aisles. It was going on 10 PM when we got to Seoul, and we went to Itaewon, a district just off one of the US army posts that’s the foreigners’ area in Seoul. We ate at Kentucky Fried Chicken and then walked for an hour, not really going anywhere, just taking it all in. Then we caught the last subway of the evening to another part of the city where we stayed at one of the public bathhouses for the night.

The public bath house, or jjimjilbang, was an interesting experience. The first floor is a locker room. You change out of your clothes and into a t-shirt and shorts that they give you. On the 2nd-4th floors, there are sauna-like hot rooms that are supposed to treat various illnesses, video rooms, restaurants, exercise rooms, etc.--something for everyone. The hot rooms are really hot. The coolest hot room was 104 degrees F. The hottest was 158F. I opened the door to that one but didn't go in. Down in the basement are the public baths, which are separate for men and women. First, you sit on a little stool and scrub up and rinse. Then you rinse again at a shower. Then you soak in any of 5 huge hot tubs. The sleeping rooms are on the fifth floor. There was room for men, a room for women, and a room for snorers! I thought that was funny. The sleeping rooms have thin mattresses on the floor--and bunks above them to create another floor for more thin mattresses. I chose a bottom bed so that the lights wouldn't be shining on me all night, since it's dimly lit in there all the time. All in all, it was pretty cool. For $10, it was a clean, safe, comfortable place to stay the night. It's hard to beat that.

In the morning, we ate breakfast at the bathhouse. I had the spiciest ramyeon I've ever tasted. Then we went back to Itaewon to go to a Western grocery store and stopped at McDonald's for lunch. Of all the things we saw yesterday, I was least impressed with Itaewon, because it was so Westernized. From there we went to Dongdemun, the fashion district of Seoul. We literally walked for miles through malls and clothing markets. I wasn't really interested in shopping at Dongdaemun, but it was amazing to see the blocks upon blocks of shopping malls. Then we met up with a Korean friend of the other teachers for dinner at a traditional hole-in-the-wall Korean restaurant, which was very good. After dinner their friend took us to the store where he works in one of the huge malls, and we gave him a little business since he works on commission and isn't paid much. I bought a very purple scarf. Since all the clothes were Asian sizes, I knew I wouldn't fit in them!

We caught a taxi from Dongdaemun to the train station and made it just 10 minutes before the train left at 7:55 PM. By a little after 10 PM, we were back in Sapkyo and walked from the train station to our apartment buildings.

It was a good weekend! I'm looking forward to going back to Seoul, but I think if I want to do things like see the gates or the palaces, I might have to break away from the other teachers for a while. They don’t seem to be interested in anything other than shopping and eating.