The many sides of South Korea

We are on deck 9 of a 10 deck ship, which has its pluses and minuses. We have found two of the minuses. First up everywhere is below us, erm obvs, but each time we go to a restaurant, bar, theatre, exit the ship, it’s all below us and what goes down must come back up again. We are sworn to not using the lift and other then on the day of our arrival, have used the stairs and not the lift since. I count this as good exercise, however on returning from our first trip in Taiwan, climbing from deck 2 to deck 9 was a bit of a puff. When I jokingly said to Nick “come on Puffing Billy” his response was fairly curt and went something along the lines of “you just wait until you get to 76” of which my response was something along the lines of “at this rate, I doubt I’ll make it”. However, we heroically continue to use the stairs on every occasion.

Likewise, the other downside is that we are below the outside restaurant and walk/run track. It took me some time to work out why I was hearing someone running above me. There is also a midnight ritual from the staff who gather together all the furniture with much scraping of legs on the deck, always guaranteed to wake me if I wasn’t awake already. The plus side is that we get the best views being so high on the ship.

Each floor has a picture so you can ensure you’re on the right floor. Ours is a lovely picture of a girl in full-on Day of the Dead costume. We’re always happy to see her as we think she’s lovely, but also because it means we have finally got to our floor.

I’m not sure about The Day of the Dead, but in my case I have finally become the Day of the Walking Dead. I have had a staggering 26 hours sleep in seven nights and quite frankly I have become a walking zombie. My sleep or lack thereof is legendary and I can easily bounce back from sub three hours sleep. I can even do that after three nights of said routine, but when this lack of sleep goes on for a week, action needs to be taken.

After we’d securely despatched the sick lady at Jeju we set off again but the weather was still really bad, with high waves crashing into the side of the ship. At one point the force of said wave sent one of our internal sliding doors flying back and forth twice into the opposite wall at such force and speed, the light switch casing came off from the light switch on that wall. The door flew back at such sped, it became wedged in the recess and dislodged a socket. Looking on the bright side, at least that’s one less thing to rattle. At that point I admitted I needed the security of bed as I was feeling seriously queasy even with my trusty bands on. There was not a chance we could make it to any of the restaurants and there was even less chance I could get any food from a buffet back to a table in one piece, so I told Nick the only answer was for room service. I always get hungry when travelling or when queasy from motion so opted for a pizza, my view being it was either kill or cure.

And cure it did. After lunch I announced that I needed some serious sleep if I was to function and am delighted to report I got a staggering 4 hours sleep.

We brushed up and trotted off to dinner in La Terrazza restaurant. Having dined in this style restaurant but on another Silversea ship, we knew the volume of food they provide and so were ready to turn down the antipasti. It’s vast and to me, it’s a meal in itself. You can also have a starter, soup, main and dessert. Get real, we’re barely doing anything so to have that volume of food would have resulted in absolutely no sleep at all. We even turned down the Prosecco or Champagne option on arrival. What? Are Nick and Gabs growing up? No, of course not. The truth is we’ve got a really big schedule for tomorrow and so want to focus on that.

We chatted to the restaurant staff and they had had a similar near accident in the kitchen earlier on when the sea was rough. They had just caught one of the fridges in time before it came crashing to the floor. We agreed we were all grateful the sea conditions had calmed down.

When we returned to our suite after our meal, maintenance had been in and fixed our door and socket, blimey, what service. We had seen Deepu just before we’d gone out for our meal and said it could be fixed the next day as we would be out all day, but no, it was fixed in an instant.

On arrival into Incheon, we had to present ourselves to immigration. Thankfully we passed the test, got our landing permit and set off on our tour.

The first stunning site of Incheon is the vast Incheon Bridge spanning 21.39 km and is the seventh longest bridge in the world. The route into Seoul meant we drove over this stunning, sweeping bridge. Also what hits you in the distance is the vast tall packed in forest of skyscrapers. They are, as my step-mum used to say “cramajammed”. How some of the residents ever see day light from their apartments beats me as they are virtually on top of each other. What immediately gets to us as we step outside is how spotless the place is. The port is modern and feels geared for people rather than a commercial port. Ahhh and the cold. It’s 3 degrees this morning and cloudy, but the weather for the day promises temperatures up to 10 degrees and sun. We’ve done better than we expected as this time of the year can be wintery snow showers, so I reckon we’ve got away with it lightly. However we could see snow on the mountains during our drive into Seoul. Just beyond the mountains we were told sat North Korea. Not that we could see it from that distance.

Our drive from Incheon into Seoul took 90 minutes. Our guide for the day was Hans Kim. He gave us the standard overview. 52 million people in South Korea. 3 million people in Incheon. 10 million in Seoul. No-one knows how many in North Korea as everything is secret. Seoul is the largest city, Busan (where we head to next) the second and Incheon the third in South Korea. Incheon area is all reclaimed land over the last 30 years. Spring officially starts on the 3rd March In Korea.

During our drive into Seoul, we drove past some waste land with a variety of artillery tanks and service personnel. Our guide was sanguine about the North Korean situation and reassured us South Korea could handle itself.

It became evident that our guide wanted to remind us of Korea’s finest: K-pop, Psy’s Gangnam Style, Parasite, Hyundai, Kia, Samsung, LG, K-beauty, the list went on. And as we drove in the direction of Seoul, it became more and more evident that there was a culture of wealth. Shiny, massive businesses incorporated with temples, tiny individual shops, convenience stores. No pollution, no smoking or vapes in public, no noise, but the volume of people and cars was phenomenal. There was a strange calm about the place. No hassling from people or cars.

Our first stop was the Seoul city wall, built  in 1392. It stretches 19 km and took a staggering…98 days to build. Can you imagine anything in modern times being so quick to be built? We walked a 2km stretch of it and it was explained to us that the reason why it was built so quickly was that several local communities built a section each, thus speeding up the process. This was an often steep climb as the wall followed the natural undulations of the hills.

There are five palaces in Seoul. Four of them were closed today due to National Liberation Day weekend, so we were going to visit the fifth and only one that was open today. Our second stop was the Seoul city wall museum which went into minute detail about the building of the wall.

This is where I decided to use the loos and nearly fell at the first hurdle. There were so many options for flushing it. Little, medium, plentiful water flush. Well, that’s what I thought all the signs meant anyway. I panicked and just used the handle.

We stopped for a traditional Korean lunch at the restaurant Arirang. For the meat eaters it consisted of traditional Korean dish bulgogi, (thinly sliced, marinated ribeye or sirloin) served with steamed white sticky rice, kimchi, and various banchan (side dishes). The beef is savory-sweet, marinated with soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, and fruit. For the non meat eaters, we had bibimbap, thinly sliced vegetables creating a salad with a raw egg in the middle. Hot sticky rice is then added to the dish (to cook the egg) and all vigorously stirred. It looks a right mess but tastes excellent. All washed down with local Korean beers. We were given a lesson in how to remove the caps using a dessert spoon and a specific flicking action with your wrist. Nope, we never did achieve it. Thank goodness for a good old fashioned bottle opener.

After lunch we had a walk around Gwanggang market with its 5000 stalls consisting of food being made to eat on site, sweets, fruits, cloth, hanbok (the traditional Korean dress). The food stalls are all regulated by the government and yet again, we noticed how everywhere felt really clean and the smells were awesome. The market was, as expected, busy. From what we could work out the Koreans seem to go for fads. There was a donut stall which had a long queue of young people all eagerly waiting their turn to be served. The obligatory social media selfie had to be done once they got to the front of the queue or once they got their booty. Likewise there was a food stall which was crammed, simply because the owner had featured on Netflix. Bizarrely Starbucks is their new fad with the franchise growing exponentially and young Koreans spreading the word on social media.

Next stop was the Gyeonghuigung palace Museum swiftly followed by the Gyeonghuigung palace, the secondary royal palace of the Joseon dynasty, often used in times of emergency. I think by the time we got to these final two visits, we were pretty touristed out, plus the weak heat from the sun had largely gone. However it was fair to say that the palace was in remarkable condition for something of a largely wooden and clay structure built in the 17th century, although there has been ongoing restoration. As we’d driven around the city, we’d seen a number of other palaces and they were all of a similar look and feel. Dark wood with mainly green paint work. The palaces don’t have glass, but have latticed doors with paper to shield them. Not exactly conducive to protect royalty from the elements. We learned that to the entrance to the palace there are two levels on the path. The king’s path is in the middle and slightly higher than the entrances for his subjects. Also, lining the route were granite plinths depicting the station of the king’s subjects so he could always ensure his subjects were present.

It was then finally back onto the coach and a 90 minute drive back to the ship. Nick kept stopping me falling asleep. Back in port we had our passports checked twice. Why? Who knows. Basically one guy standing near the entrance checked our passport but then another behind a desk checked it again.

More security and scanners and then finally  we were allowed back on the ship. Nick was super excited that I suggest he use the lift. What a treat. What we actually wanted to do was collapse in a heap, instead, we had the speediest of showers, glammed up and waltzed down to Silver Note restaurant.

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