seoul layover

I forgot to write about our 9-hour layover in Seoul on the way home from Thailand. I think they intentionally make long layovers there, so people visit Seoul. We (Lance and I--Jared and Jane stayed in Thailand an additional day) took a 6-hour tour of the city. If you're ever stuck with this long of a layover, it was really easy to do. We found the tour desk near the exit doors and booked it there, it was really cheap, maybe $20 and included lunch. I'm pretty sure the government is running it to get more people to visit there again. We had 7 or 8 other people on it with us. Hae Suk was our guide. She was nice and tried to teach us some Korean on our 1-hr ride into the city (the airport isn't actually in Seoul, it's on an island outside of town). She taught us how to say a few Korean expressions. The best one (if you're an Arrested Development fan) was annyeong haseyo, which means hello. I had to laugh each time she said it, though because of the show (you should watch it, it's hilarious).

Once we arrived into the city, we went to lunch at a Korean restaraunt. I had a beef soup dish, which was tasty. I'm not much of a fan of kimchi, though. We took our shoes off to eat at our table, which was ok because they had heated floors. We then drove to the Deoksugung Palace (they normally tour a different palace, but it was closed the day Lance and I were there). As we were parking, we passed a group of protestors (around 20-30 people) with signs that were just standing on a sidewalk repeating everything a man was shouting. It seemed very calm. Our guide told us they were protesting because they had lost their jobs. We parked and then walked into the palace and in front of it was a large group of riot police, here's a few of them. They were getting ready, in case anything got out of control. It seemed like overkill to me because the people protesting were barely doing anything and they had at least 40 riot police on hand.I really liked the design of all the buildings in the palace. They were so simple and used natural colors, a huge difference compared to the palace in Bangkok. One neat thing we learned about their living quarters was that underneath each of the buildings was a huge fireplace. This provided the heating for the home and since no one wears shoes inside thier homes, they needed heated floors. The chimneys for the underground fireplaces were piped 20-30 feet away from the building itself.We caught our flight out of Bangkok at 2am and arrived into Seoul at 6am--Korean time, we slept a couple of hours and didn't have showers, so we look pretty awesome here. This day was the longest day I've ever had, after spending a full day in Seoul, we flew 9 hours to Seattle and then were home at 10am the same day. We also went to this river that runs through the city for about 4 miles. It's called the Cheonggyecheon Stream. It had a really nice walk-way, it would be a good place for a run. Oh, do you notice the jackets we're wearing? We were lucky to borrow some from the tour company. Mine fit perfectly, but Lance is wearing a woman's jacket, he has it pushed off his shoulders, otherwise, the arms would be 5" too short. I only laughed at him for a few minutes. At least we were able to stay warm, it was around 40 degrees here, compared to the 80 degrees we had in Thailand.

This picture makes me miss Lance. :( He's in Reno working at a ski resort and I haven't seen him since we got back. Maybe Lance is ok with that, but I miss him, it was fun sharing a room with him for a couple of weeks.

The last place the tour took us was Insadong, which is a shopping street. I actually found a neat wall hanging from a local artist, so I was glad we had this stop, too.