During the first weekend of May, we decided to take our first group trip to Seoul. On the third weekend of May (a long holiday weekend for Buddha's Birthday), we went to Gyeongju on the east coast.
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Seoul
Our original goal for the weekend in Seoul was to party, shop, and tour. Retrospectively speaking, I can confidently say that we definitely got the party part down pat, but not so much the other two.
The beginning of our family weekend in Seoul got off to a rather inauspicious start. I left my apartment a little late to catch the bus to the train station (late being an hour and a half before the train was scheduled to depart (I live far away and it was rush hour)), and we ended up missing our train, but we were luckily able to get another one only half an hour later. I was silently thinking to myself, "I hope this isn't a bad omen for the rest of the weekend...” Luckily, it wasn't!
We had a lot of fun giggling and being silly on the train, as is our wont on any sort of public transportation in Korea. However, like all public transportation in Korea, trains are deaaaaad silent, and YOU WILL BE shushed if you make too much of a racket. So it was less like “giggling and being silly” and more like "barely suppressed giggling and silliness".
After arriving to our hostel in Seoul (mad ups to The Pencil Guesthouse on being such an awesome hostel), we went to a very tiny pizza place whose name escapes me. What I do know about that very tiny pizza place is that they serve the best damn pizza I've had in Korea. We also ate their New Year's Eve. Not sure how to direct anyone there, but it's in the Hongdae area...? Hah!
We went a little wild on Friday night, I must say. Highlights included going to my favorite microbrewery in Seoul (Magpie), my favorite dive bar in Seoul (Go-Go's), and my favorite hate-to-love fast food restaurant (Taco Bell)*. Getting back to our hostel at five in the morning was probably not the best decision, but we had so much fun staying out and dancing, there was seemingly no other option at the time.
The next day was spent sleeping in, and then sitting on the patio of our hostel conversing and drinking coffee. There were suggestions for going to the N’Seoul Tower, going to a water park, or any of the various other activities and tourist locations that Seoul has to offer, but the consensus was pretty much “I don’t feel like it.” Ultimately, we made our way to the Trick Eye Art Museum just a stone’s throw away from us in Hongdae, but once we got there, no one felt like actually entering the museum. We elected to go back to the hostel and chill out once more. I think everyone was getting cranky, and we were all in desperate need of a nap!
After dinner, we elected to go straight to the bars, because if we started drinking early enough, we would be in bed earlier, right?! Easily the highlight of Saturday night was playing beer pong. We noticed these three foreigners playing at a bar called Thursday Party (an American style club/sports bar hybrid). The whole weekend, I had been making a joke that my 20-24 year-old self was coming back into action. I even made up a song to the tune of "My Boyfriend's Back" and it goes like this: "The bro king's back, and you're gonna be in trouble". I, personally, thought it was brilliant. So, while Kate was the one who was really prodding us to play beer pong, I resignedly said, "Well, I guess I'm the bro king, and it's my job to play beer pong whenever possible."
Our game against Team U.N. (our name for them came from the fact that one was a New Zealander, one was Swedish, and ones was Swiss-French or some bullshit like that) did not go nearly as planned. We sunk our first couple of shots, but then totally laid an egg after that. After that devastating defeat, Team U.N. decided to leave the premises. Probably because they were desperately frightened of the Bro King getting warmed up for more beer pong. We decided that Daniel and I would play against Kate and Colin. Amazingly enough, Daniel made a behind the back shot, and I joked that he should start playing beer pong every day all day (from my experiences, Brits find the idea of drinking games confusing, to say the least**)
After a while at Thursday Party, we wondered back to the part of Hongdae we were at the night before. We spent some time at Go-Go’s again, and ran into our friend, Andrei, who teaches in Incheon. After that, we went to a convenience store*** a couple of minutes away from Go-Go’s to have a chill beer or two. After that, Kate and I went back to the hostel (Liz had left earlier), but I guess Colin and Daniel stayed out until the wee hours of the morning yet again. I guess they also got soundly rejected by girls for the rest of the night, haha!
The next day we got moving late once again, but this time actually made it to a neighborhood in Seoul that is well-known for its name brand shopping. After that, it was time to head back to Daejeon!
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Gyeongju
We had been debating a while as to where to go for Buddha’s Birthday weekend, one of the few three-day weekends we have during the year. We decided on Gyeongju on the east coast of Korea. It’s one of the most historical cities in Korea.
We waited too long to purchase train tickets, and by the time that we actually did, everything was sold out for Thursday night, so we came to Gyeongju early on Friday morning. The only notable part of our train journey was when we accidentally got off at the wrong stop. I quickly asked someone if we were at the right stop, and they said, “No! Next one!” So we quickly jumped back on the train before the doors shut.
We had booked a room in a hostel with five beds, but there were four of us. Once we had arrived at our hostel, we found out that indeed there was another person already staying in our room. The hostel owner referred to him only as “Mr. Lee”, which for some reason struck us as slightly funny and mysterious...not sure why exactly…maybe because the hostel owner referred to him in such formal terms. For some reason, that referent started a plethora of jokes and stories among us. We decided to make up anecdotes involving Mr. Lee. For instance, I said that Mr. Lee had been a crack-addicted prostitute in L.A. until he discovered his true passion in designing shoes made from recyclable material (or something like that). The funniest inside joke we made concerning our fictional Mr. Lee was when we saw an older, drunken Korean man yelling at passing people and cars for no particular reason that we could surmise. Daniel said, “Looks like Mr. Lee is at it again, you guys.”
Once we did actually meet Mr. Lee late Saturday afternoon, he unfortunately didn’t meet our expectations. He was just some regular guy from California. He seemed pretty normal. The fictional Mr. Lee was a much more interesting character who had had a rough go at life.
For our Friday afternoon, we wondered around Gyeongju. One thing that Gyeongju is famous for is its tombs. It has these tombs that look like really out-of-place hills. The parks in Gyeongju were absolutely beautiful. There were a lot of people out having picnics and flying kites. We walked around and through the parks, and we also walked to a “traditional village”. Unfortunately, it was a bit misleading, because we could tell the village had either been extremely remodeled, or rebuilt just to attract tourists. After getting some dinner and drinking some coffee, we made our way to an artificially made pond called Anapji Pond. There was a cluster of people there, but the space was so wide open that it wasn’t that big of a deal.
After that, we just grabbed a few beers from a convenience store and drank on the back patio of our hostel with the other guests.
The next day, Saturday, we went to one of Korea’s most famous Buddhist temples. It took us a while to actually hike up the mountain to reach the temple, but it was a nice hike, and wasn’t that grueling. I’m just glad I didn’t wear my heels (but really, if I can count the times that I’ve seen Korean women hiking with heels…(albeit, usually not on really difficult hikes)). Of course, with it being Buddha’s Birthday weekend and all, there was an assload of people there. Everyone was in line to see an old and storied statue of Buddha. While we waited in line for an hour and a half or so, one or two of us would take turns holding our place while the other one or two went exploring the surrounding area. We laughed at ourselves for staying in line that long to see the statue for about one minute.
On Sunday, we had decided to go to a water park, but once we saw the ticket price, we decided to turn back. Since it was rainy, we basically spent the entire day in a coffee shop reading together, like introverted friends are wont to do.
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While writing about these two weekends, I feel like I haven’t been able to aptly translate what was so special about them. I think it had a lot do with the company. There is something really special about traveling with your best friends. These are people you already have intimate relationships with, and traveling together just brings you closer together in so many ways. Sure you can get annoyed with each other, but I think it’s hard for that to happen during such a short weekend getaway, haha!
To be a bit more...abstract, there have been times in my life when I feel wholly "in the present" and some major endorphins fire in my brain. Call it "the ecstasy of life" or "the infinite of a moment", but it's a feeling I used to experience a lot more when I was younger. There were definitely some points over these two trips where I felt myself approaching this kind of feeling.
* I'm happy that I haven't really eaten fast food in a long time (as far as McDonald/Taco Bell type places are concerned), but I was drunkenly happy to break my fast food fast with a delicious crunchwrap supreme.
** My favorite quote concerning this is a teacher from Liverpool during my EPIK orientation telling us, "We don't really understand you Americans and your drinking games. It's like...why would I want a to stand in the way of my drinking? Well, I guess we do have a sort of drinking game in Liverpool. It consists of drinking a beer at a pace of your own choosing, and then when you’re finished with that one, going up to the bar and buying another one." That's paraphrased, but you get the idea.
*** I can’t really recall if I’ve mentioned this phenomenon before, but it is common for people to pregame (drink before going out) outside of convenience stores. Many convenience stores offer seating outside (mostly because it’s not really culturally acceptable for Koreans to eat on the run…except maybe in Seoul or Busan), but many foreigners, as well as Koreans of lower socio-economic classes (I was TOLD that latter part, not sure if it's actually true), choose to just buy cheap drinks from the convenience store, and then just drink right outside of the store (public drinking is legal in Korea). (sorry for the parentheses overkill)
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