Come Monday It'll Be Alright!

I have not been here in awhile, but I had my camera ready for some good, and not so good shots of what I been up to! We went to an artsy fartsy area of Seoul called Hyehwa it is a really neat neighbourhood full of restaurants and theatre related buildings including a Jazz school and some university's.



The fancy, way too expensive but really frickin good Italian restaurant we ate at! This is the top floor and it's an all around cool building, trees inside like this one and the whole outside walls are covered in Ivy! We had a "special pizza" and homemade pasta $40 bucks later and we were full....A place to go back to when were rich!

A Street in Hyehwa

My camera's firework option LOL

The Hangang river is the major river that divides up Seoul. We were having some frosty beverages and enjoying the fireworks in the +36 degree heat. People buy fireworks in the 7-11 store along the river and fire em off toward the river.

A view of one of hundreds of bridges crossing the river....This one is pre fireworks and the view from the 7-11

Ms D spots an pomegranate tree

First time I saw one of these!

Random statue of that dude from that movie, you know the one!

I like statues, but they're pretty quiet.

The night market

The two sides of the street and the surrounding area come alive at night with vendors selling everything under the sun! We took a stroll through last night and I bought flip flops for $10 bucks!

In between races before Ms D won the cash!

Outside the expensive but good Italian restaurant...again with the statues LOL

Me gettin artsy at the Wa Bar

And they're off

Of course I found a beer castle!

Outside the lounge at the horse track see the haze from the smokers there is 5 floors like this in total I'm guessing 30,000 people go to the races on any givin day

Itaewon "little America" I have a love hate relationship with this place. You can get everything you need there from America, like food or bigger size clothes, however it smells dirty and is pretty gross. It is over run by American military and migrate workers from every country you can think of. I had the pleasure of walking up "hooker hill" the other night, basically these trashy women have garage doors on 10x10 rooms and they stand out in front of em and try to reel in clients!

Funny food sign at the bullet train terminal which by the way I have not got to ride one yet but there supposed to go 300km/hour!

Women here have there own parking spots as indicated by pink lines. Why you ask??? well than they don't have to walk as far in they're high heels .....yes I'm serious!

This is Me and MsD happy on a super packed bus on our way to the river

I'm right at the front door where you get on. This is why I wish I drove again !

I was gonna pee on the floor to make my mark, but instead I wrote my name on the wall! Pub 210

Need I say more!

















Here's a fun game, spot the spelling mistakes!

WTF is a young walleye pollac??

If your in the subway station and see Teri run by chances are there cooking these little beauty's close by!

Silk Work Larvae

Odds and Ends
Were going white water rafting this Saturday! I'm pretty excited about that, gonna try to get some pics but water and camera's don't go well together!

I'm gonna try to send some Soju back to a few select people at home, not sure if it will make it and I'm not sure if said people will like me the next day!

Met a guy last night who told me lots of neat stuff about Shanghai, can't wait to go there in October!

Korean tv is very fun to watch, you thought our commercials were bad! ohhh ya and they play dirty movies at night!

Truckin

Riding the bus into Seoul can be a frightening experience! It's about a 40km ride from our suburb Bundang. This video is a pretty mellow ride, however there is some days you just get on the bus, shut up and HANG ON! Our bus driver talked to himself for a good part of the ride, I wish my camera had sound......

Paranoia Will Destroy Ya

Today on the subway was crowded
of course I get stuck in the car with
the coughers and the sneezers
I wanted nothing more than to get off the train
had to be there for 3 more stops
hopefully I avoided the
whatever flu they were coughing
Koreans don't cover their mouths when they sneeze
or cough, they just let er fly

I think we have a ghost in our apartment
here's why
Ms D and I had a nice chicken curry meal
I cleaned up and did the dishes(my turn)
was about 9:30pm when it was all said and done
ya I know we eat late, but she works till 8
anyhow the dishes were drying on the rack
fast forward till about 5:30am
CRASH, BANG , we wake up
WTF
dishes fell out of the rack that have been sitting there
for about 8 hours
We live in a haunted shoebox, with jumping dishes???? LOL

Supposed to enter a poker tourney this weekend
some fancy casino downtown Seoul
free food and drinks
well at least I'll get something for my money!
wish me luck......

Lazy + Sunday + Taco's = Happy Sean!

Today for some odd reason, I miss driving not sure why the public transportation here is phenomenal and cheap, but today I'm not in the mood for subway riding or packed buses that you have to stand up on, I just wanna get in my old jeep and drive! Notice I said my old jeep.... the one I had before I left, was newer but I did not care for it all that much! I spoke with 2 good friends on the phone last night, one quick call to congratulate the newly married couple..just married on the 8th ! Congrats once again to "The man and Sandra dee"

I was happy it's good to hear a good friends voice and to know everything is going AOK back home! It's alot better sometimes to talk than to email, the conversation could have gone on for a long time I'm sure, but I had to get off the phone as we were getting kicked off our rooftop patio!

Back to the driving, I would prefer the jeep but right about now even this looks appealing

This was the HOTTEST freakin chicken I have ever eaten in my life! it's called "fire chicken" and lemme tell ya they aint kidding! The little noodles beside it are called Dok

Dok is the Korean work for rice noodle and them little beauty's were even hotter than the chicken!! I think it's the starch that let's the heat stay in your mouth!

The Seventeen Hour Turn Around

Pretty cool eh! Well we were all at the rock show, the past weekend and saw these little orange balls of light way way up in the sky......besides my first thought of North Korea attacking and my second thought of UFO's I realized what they were we had to get one!

Ms D and I went for a walk to find the mini hot air balloon vendor....he was not hard to find and after spending ten bucks (thanks T) we came back with a hot pink mini balloon. It is basically a cross between very light cloth and a paper material, shaped into a balloon with a metal coat hanger like ring around the bottom. Two wires form a cross in the ring, it comes with a 2 inch by 2 inch chunk of parafin wax witch you fasten to the wires...hold the balloon up, light the wax on fire, watch for drips and as it burns you can feel the air inside the balloon warm up till it floats away! They actually go pretty high in the sky! A very nice Korean lady took these photo's and asked if she could email them to me...She did obviously and it was very nice of her! Ms D took a video of the same event maybe she'll post it!

After all that excitement and a very long day at the concert, we (8 of us) were on our way to find a hotel, as the pentaport rock festival is about an hour outside of Bundang. The only way back at that time of night is by taxi. The cost is about $100 and they won't crowd all of us in one car, so hotel it was followed by a $3 bus ride in the morning......Surprise there was a cabbie standing by the main road, said he would do it for $60, we were like well there is eight of us can you get another cab in on it for the same deal? Sure as shit we rounded up two cabs and made it back home. Oh ya by the way we were home in 23minutes as the cabbie did between 140kmh and 175 kmh the whole way back! Ms D asked me at one point, Sean how fast are we going? I was like 155 LOL The other cabbie with the rest of our group was actually a little bit ahead of us.

True story! Speaking of true stories, you can read this guys blog !!

Must Be The Kimchi

We went to a rock'n'roll show this past weekend out near the airport(more pics of that later)
Two things I encountered surprised me, and maybe even irritated me. First I know the picture quality is not that good but what the sign basically says is they are concerned about the spread of the swine flu here in Korea. I was thinking well that's good they are trying to prevent it from spreading......so I get in line, ticket in hand and the little Korean comes up takes my ticket and my temperature.....cool I passed I think to myself....then I notice they are only checkin the white folks as they come in, not ONE Korean got his/her temp taken. As the sign clearly says "health workers will be checking all visitors" So this other guy in our group and myself go ask why they are not checkin Koreans too.......He looked at us and pointed away from there and said "entrance" In other words he did NOT want to talk about it and was pissed we even questioned him about it. There are several schools here in Korea closed down because of swine flu cases and I heard one schools cause was because some Korean kids brought it back from the US on their recent vacation. Also if they are so concerned how come NONE of the bathrooms provide soap for handwashing? not just at the concert I mean almost every public washroom everywhere here!
For a country where the statistic in 89% of Korean males smoke as of 23 years old. I was very surprised to see an anti smoking campaign set up in the subway! I think I'm the only male who doesn't smoke here!

Deeper Shade Of Seoul

We went to see the Seoul fish market in the suburb of Noryangjin. It is about a kilometer long under a covered roof full of nothing but stuff from the ocean. You can pick what you want and they will cook it up right there for ya! Well we were a little overwhelmed with the millions of living items for sale, wondering if there was any left in the ocean, it was seriously disturbing seeing all of that so we never bought a thing! Anyway they also don't let you take pics so I turned my flash off and tried to be sneaky about it....Some are not the best quality but you'll get the idea.
Koreans will eat anything as your about to see.......


I believe these are dried fish for making broth

A picture of Gangnam's giant street computers available for public use. I took this after we left the market

See the black towers down the whole street! All computers

Street vendor

The two barbershop poles on the roof together,spinning opposite directions is a sign for a rub and tug or a place where men go NOT to get their haircut

random street sign see any accident potential?

Street vendors close to the market!

Green bowls of garlic

I actually bought that bag of peanuts!

See I told ya Koreans eat anything!

Fish that didn't make the market!

Kimchi pots

All the umbrella's in the back ground are little old lady's (Ajuma's) selling stuff!

Getting closer

While walking you also have to watch out for motorcycles on the sidewalk!

I told her look a bird, then I snapped the photo!

Ahh smells like.......fish!

Ahh I forgot this is another reason we didn't buy any fish! If you saw the floor of the place you would know what i'm sayin!

Take yer pick!

Crabs!

Octopus! Apparently you can eat it live and it's better tasting than cooked

I tried it cooked but was not to crazy about shoving a just hacked off tentacle in my mouth!

Shrimp prices are cheap! that translated to about $20 a kg

Sea urchins and such

Do ya see the alley at the other end? LOL

Monster tower you can pay $5 and ride to the top to look at the view of the city!