SOUTH KOREA SEOUL PART 2SOUTH KOREA/ SEOUL Our second day in Seoul was like visiting four or five different cities. We spent most of the day on foot with just a few short trips on the subway. We have never visited a place like Seoul where withing a few meters you quite obviously step from one type of district to another! Our first port of call was a short walk from our hotel and was named Bukchon Hanok Village, A charming neighborhood with well-preserved traditional Korean houses (hanoks), obviously now a popular tourist destination as it was full of quirky shops with western names like the one below which was my favourite! It is a great place to visit but sadly quite small as it is clearly shrinking under the pressure of new modern development.
n Seoul you just kind of look at the map and head toward an area you might like to visit and on the way you kind of know that you will come across interesting new surprises and oh boy this was no exception. There is a massive main intersection near Bukchon Hanok and to head north we crossed over the busy road and into a grid pattern of main streets most of which were pedestrian areas called Myeongdon. I had heard South Koreans were into beauty and beauty products but this was quite a shock. It was quite literally an area the size of a small town that was geared up to sell you anything to make you young and pretty! I have never seen anything like it, with the stock spilling out onto the streets with women enticing you in with their products. And they were doing great business even though there was so much competition the lines at the till were constant. The Korean obsession with the face is very noticeable and until you visit it is hard to comprehend how virtually every female wants to change their facial features and one in five have with surgery!. A lot of this is the perception that to get on in the work place or life you really need to look more western or K Pop so you need a different eye shape or a pointier nose, maybe more rounded lips and definitely whiter skin. K-Pop is the look in the video Gangnam Style one of the worlds most played music clips. Although Gangnam is a trendy district of Seoul it is more synonymous with the look of the pretty girls in it. And to look pretty, you have to have double eyelids, you have to have your v-line face, you have to be slim, but you have to have big breasts and sadly delete out you natural Korean features! What a strange world we live in! At one point in conversation on our trip I heard how it is very common for parents to provide plastic surgery as a reward for good collage grades!
Lotte World Tower
Lotte World Tower Seoul's Tallest Sky Scrapper and even taller than the Taipei 101 at 555m. The Metro station is right below the tower and leads into a massive shopping centre. It is certainly not as pretty as 101 was but still pretty memorable as the view from the top shows the staggering amount of tower blocks that stretch as far as the eye can see. Seoul really is a mega city and is still growing as countless cranes dot the skyline Outside the Lotte Tower there was a small grassy park and at one end was a free concert by wannabee Korean music and dance bands. This was right up my street as I have always liked Bop and Freeze and Korean Body Popping. I sat myself down in the sun and had a whole hour of "Korea Has Talent". Wonderful. Cheonggyecheon is a 10km stream that runs through the heart of the city. It was quite a surprise when we came across it as it is rather like a well maintained canal. I had to look it up because it really is a feat of engineering. Years ago it was a stream used as a sewer but it was covered over in concrete as the city expanded but in 2003 a project to excavate it and move the road to a flyover was started. In 2005 the new beautified pedestrian area was opened and over the years has become an important feature of the city. It has brought a new natural diversity threading it's way through the city and on the hot summer days the cool water even reduces the ambient temperature. We fell upon it near it's start in the financial district where it winds it's way through the towering sky scrappers. It was just getting dark and were intrigued to see candle lit areas lined with cushions where people could just sit and chill. There were cycle ways, restauraunts and one of the few places we saw bars. It really is an oasis in the concrete jungle. We headed just off the waterway into what can only be described as the out and out night life area. There is enough electricity burning here to burn off an icecap. It is an absolute joy to explore as it is unlike anywhere we have been before. The hundreds of restaurants modern and old mostly specialise in cooking at your table. In the more modern establishments which are often three or four floors high you sit at tables with what looks like a giant vacuum cleaner over a gas grill. The meat is brought to your table and cooked at your leisure. It is such a great social thing and makes a great night out for a group. The older places have a large steel box in the street which is full of burning charcoal. If you sit down at a round table, the centre vessel is filled by shovelling the glowing coals directly from the street box. The smell and drama of it is intoxicating. Obviously we had a go!
Keywords:
Bukchon Hanok Village,
candlelit seating areas,
Cheonggyecheon stream,
Korean body popping,
Korean nightlife,
Korean plastic surgery culture,
K-Pop aesthetic,
Lotte World Tower,
Myeongdong beauty district,
Seoul skyline,
social dining experience,
street charcoal grilling,
traditional Korean houses,
urban oasis
Comments
No comments posted.
Loading...
|
