Trips: part II

South Korea

So Oct 1^st is a national holiday in China. People get a week off (though strangely they have to make up some of the days on weekends---imagine telling American kids they have to go to school on Saturday…) to celebrate the nation’s founding. This year was an even bigger deal because it is the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. For weeks leading up to the celebration, Beijing would close down the roads around Tiananmen to practice for the parade, one day would be the kids practicing, the next would be some floats, the next the tanks and missiles…BUT, unlike in the US, you can’t just camp out the night before and watch the Macy’s thanksgiving parade. In Beijing, they blocked off the parade routes which was much of the center of Beijing. Everyone from work seemed content just to watch the whole thing from home, it’s a better view anyway.

Tiananmen square was still lit up at night even in the week after the parade.

Beijing also tightened up its security, going so far as to stop all flights coming and going to Beijing for a day during the holiday. And they also mandated all people using trains and buses going to Beijing to have their IDs and a permit (something which caused me some issues—see earlier blog).

Anyhow some friends and I decided to escape the madness/lockdown in Beijing, and we headed for the place with the cheapest plane ticket from Beijing---South Korea! To be honest I had never really thought about visiting Korea, I wasn’t sure what there was to see, but man, I soon discovered there was a TON of things to do there.

So in our 7 day vacation we visited Seoul, Busan, and Jeju Island. We took planes, trains, buses and even a ferry within the country.

Here are some snapshots from the trip:

We visited the DMZ (demilitarized zone) between North and South Korea. It's a 4km wide swath of land separating the two Koreas. Here we could look through the binoculars and see the flags of the 2 countries facing each other. The North Korean flagpole there is the tallest in the world. They both also had "propaganda villages" which had speakers mounted on the both sides blasting propaganda at each other up until a few years ago.
Here is one of the fences between North and South. People leave signs and messages expressing their hope for reunifications. We also got to go inside some incursion tunnels or "tunnels of aggression" which were dug by North Korea to invade South Korea. So far 4 have been discovered and it's estimated that there might be 20 more out there...

The weirdest thing for me visiting the DMZ was how touristy it was. You basically had to take a tour bus and you were bussed from site to site with a guide, and people hawking memorabilia. oh capitalism.. I wonder what the Northern side is like...something tells me it's not the same.
Here is Gyeongbokgung, one of the big palaces in Seoul. It was beautiful with a garden attached and 2 museums! As I was repeatedly told, it was a lot like the Forbidden City, though smaller, and maybe better maintained (it was after all recently restored.)

On Jeju Island we hiked up Hallasan, a volcano. This pic is of the top where there's a crater. It was a steep climb and we had a time limit since they close the route a few kms from the top at 12:30pm and we didn't get there until 10:40am. By the time i climbed the 9.6km ascending 2000m up, I was tuckered out.
The beaches on Jeju were nice, it made me miss bonfires at Corona Del Mar though... I also was bitten 50 times (literally) by something in the water and had a wicked allergic reaction (luckily no throat closing up though...)
Jeju Island is also home to some lava tubes which are formed from... you guessed it... lava! specifically lava coming from volcanoes which flows under the surface and eventually cools leaving a tunnel. pretty cool! This pic is from Manjang Cave which was ginormous and is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Another pic from Jeju island. It's so pretty.
Some hungry kids eating a delicious Korean BBQ meal.
This is from Busan, which is the second largest city in Korea after Seoul. It's a port city and thus fishing is a big part of its economy.
here is the Jagalchi Fish market in Busan. It really big and has lots of seafood, some of which I recognized and much which I did not. We actually saw this eel-like creature with a sucker mouth which we unknowingly ordered later at a local restaurant. We eventually deduced it was lamprey eel which is a parasitic fish which sucks the blood of other bigger fish...eeew.
A ocean-side temple in Busan.

Check out this kimchi flavored chocolate...

Anyhow, been back in BJ for the last few weeks, enjoying being home and catching up on work (and blogging!). I'm leaving soon for another trip to Yunnan in Southern China where I both get to work with this NGO which is bringing doctors to do cleft palate surgeries, and I get to visit some physicians and hospitals which collaborate with my lab!