North Korea, only a Tae-Kwon Do standing military policemen with a threatening stare and gold sunglasses away. Go ahead, try and pass him, I dare ya.

Last Monday evening Mong and I took off on another adventure. Not that exciting, but interesting. We took the bus up to Seoul with his friend Hyunsoo and his girlfriend Haerin and that night we stayed at Mong’s cousins’ apartment. Early Tuesday morning we left (early as in 5.30am) and took the subway to the bus station where we hopped on a bus to go Caribbean Bay, the largest water park in Korea, and I’ve heard in Asia also. It was pretty cool, especially the wave pool. But I wouldn’t go back…there are just wayyyyy too many people and it was 65 bucks for the day pass! What a rip off! There were about 10-15 different giant slides…only 3 of them can you go without a tube…the rest you have to use a tube, which is still fun though. It was also cool beasue there were warm pools and massage pools and steam rooms and saunas, which is why it’s so expensive I guess. So we were there from open to close, 8 to 8…pretty tired after that and my feet were like mush from always being wet. Oh, some interesting things. At the water park most of the slides and pools required that you wear a life jacket even though only one pool is deep, the wave pool. Strange I though, as the slides have 3 inches of water in them and when you crash into the pool after the slide its only about 3 feet deep. I can understand for small children…but 6 foot tall guys? Oh, and the wave pool makes sense that everyone should wear one because its deep, people are smashed in there shoulder to shoulder by noon (earlier in the am we could have a little free space), and the waves are pretty darn big and real life. IT was probably the most fun thing, besides the people in it. The first wave that comes is really big, the swell that is, and when it crashes its pretty big too... if you are able to catch it just before it pulls you, floating in the life jacket, it will take you with it for a good 30 feet…sometimes more, and juts you forward. It was super fun. So everyone is always wearing a lifejacket… the other thing, is that it’s required that everyone where some kind of hat on their head. They want swim caps, to keep hair from getting all over I suppose, but cant enforce that girls in their bikinis put on a swim cap. So, most people wear baseball type caps. I turned my hat around backwards once in the wave pool to try to take a good underwater picture (Hyunsoo had one of those water proof camera cases), but I got whistled at by the lifeguard. Oops.

The next day I went to the DMZ without Mong…he has to go on a south Korean tour, I was on an American company tour. It was a pretty cool tour, but we got shafted as it POURED the entire time. Well, literally, until we got in the bus to go back to Seoul. I was so bummed! I really wanted to see a North Korean soldier, or at least get a decent photo of the tiny north Korean town inside the DMZ and their huge north Korean flag, but it was so foggy from the rain. First, I went to the place where I had to get on the bus. The weirdest thing was, I go in the building and I see this guy standing there with dreadlocks. I had seen him before; he was on our boat to Jeju island, who we ironically ran into at the hostel we stayed in the first night. That was the first ironic encounter, and then randomly, 2 weeks later, we were on the same tour of the DMZ. Bazaar no? I talked to him a bit on the bus. He had graduated from college, worked in chemical companies for 7 years, hated his job, quit, and decided to travel Asia. So he was in Japan for 7 weeks, went to Korea for 4, then sometime this week he’s headed for the Philippines, and then maybe Malaysia he said if he doesn’t start to miss his girlfriend too much.

And here was the tour: first, we went to the Joint Security Area, which is half in North and half in South Korea. After the war, they would share the area more or less, until the “ax-murder” in the 70’s. The N. Koreans had set up 4 guard posts in the corner of the JSA area, conveniently situated around one S. Korean guard post, in the corner. There was also a large tree obstructing the view from the 4 N. posts and the rest of the JSA and other posts. SO, a group of around 50 S. Korean soldiers went in to cut it down, with American backup in case anything should go wrong, but eh N. Koreans attacked them and killed 3 or 4 S. Koreans with AXES. The tree was cut down at a later time. The camp where soldier stay in this area is named after one of the captains, Captain Bonifas, American I believe, who was killed from the axes. So, at the JSA, it is now separated, but it is operated by the United Nations and is where N and S Koreans hold discussions and such. I got to stand about 5 meters from the North Korean border. I was inside, in the official room where the cease fire was decided on. The American captain giving our tour, told us, that is the door to North korea. These houses, small rooms, are painted blue on the outside, I don’t know why thogh. You will see them in the pictures. They also made us stand in straight lines, no umbrellas allowed, nor camera bags, in the RAIN. So, everyone was drenched to the bone. Literally, I looked like I had jumped into a pool. Lucky my camera still works. We couldn’t even take a camera bag, so everyone put theirs in their shirt. All around the JSA, there are S Korean Military Police soldiers located everywhere. They are rather intimidating…they stand in a Tae-Kwon Do stance with legs spread and hands in a fist, for easy punching and strong reaction if anything happens. They have to be in very good shape to do this, as well as tall. They where ray ban gold aviators to block their eyes, so they are more stern looking. They cant move and inch or open their mouth. The coolest thing about them, is that Mong was one of those. He told me only 2 % of army soldiers get to be Military Police. He was MP at that exact location, in the JSA, his barracks were in Camp Bonifas. I wish I could have been able to go with him…he could have explained so much. Plus I didn’t learn this all till after the tour, that he was stationed exactly where I had been. And he was one of the MP that got 100,000 pictures taken of him. Our American captain tour guy told us that if we tried to walk a centimeter past the guard in front of the door to N korea, he would physically block us with no reservations. That was interesting.

After that we made a stop at a nice lookout area, in the heaviest downpour of the day. We had the option to drive by, or go out, I yelled to go out, I didn’t care about the rain. This had a nice view, but the darn rain really messed it up. The captain said here, you could usually see N Koreans watchin us with binoculars from their posts, but we couldn’t even see any posts.

Next, we went to another good lookout, where we could take pictures and could see a view, but we had to stand 30 feet behind the concrete 4 foot tall fence …therefore, it was nearly impossible to get a good picture. This was the best view…only about 200 meters south of the border, so we could see N and S Korea. Let me explain something for those of you that don’t know. The DMZ, demilitarized zone, is a 4 km wide zone from east to west coast of the Koreas. 2km is in s korea and 2 km is in n korea. The actual fence that separates the Koreas, which is in the middle of the 4km wide zone, is constantly being checked. There are 3 fences I believe, but it was hard to tell. There is the official border fence. Then, I think about 50 or so meters to the north and south there are 2 more. The north checks their fence and the south checks their fence, but I don’t think they can go to the real fence. Or maybe they can, who am I to say, but I’m pretty sure they don’t stay 2 feet from each other checking the fence. On the south side, the fence has small white rocks wedged into the wires, every few feet or so, pretty tightly. But, enough that they will fall if someone tries to jump over it, say. Mong said he would check the fence by walking by and gently shaking it, and making sure no rocks were on the ground. That’s what the captain told us too.

The other thing about the DMZ, is that thre are 2 small towns located inside it…one on the N side and one on the S side…only about 500 meters from each other. After the war got to a cease fire in 1953, the S Korean town, which they call the Freedom Village, built a large flagpole and raised a large S Korean flag from it. The N Korean town, which they call Propaganda Village, responded by building an even larger pole and an even larger flag in the center of the town. It’s the largest flag pole in the world, or so the tour guide and some placards said. That’s how it got its name. That, and the fact that the town used to proclaim the goodness of N Korea and Kim Il Sung and blast it through a loudspeaker so that Freedom Village could hear it. Interesting, eh. Search for a pic in Google, since I couldn’t get one of the flags, but it’s pretty incredible. They are both huge, and so close, but the N Korea one is obviously much larger.

After that, we went to the “third tunnel” which was the third tunnel the S Koreans had found that the N Koreans had been digging to try to launch an attack on Seoul. When they found it, it was around 400+ meters south of the official border, and over 1600 meters long. It’s 2 meters tall and 2 meters wide. The N Koreans splattered coal on the walls to try to fake it as an old coal mine. It’s the largest one yet, found in 78. It’s about 75 meters BELOW the surface of the ground, pretty deep. We couldn’t take our cameras in. In fact, we were only allowed to take pictures of about 40% of the stuff we saw, so I have a lot of pictures of models and photographs from the mini museums we went to. Google it, I guess. After we came out of the tunnel, the rain had stopped and we had to go home. LAME. Well, if you go to Korea, I definitely recommend a DMZ tour, with USO---one of the cheaper programs, yet I am pretty sure every company does the exact same tour because of all the security risks. And go in the spring or fall so it won’t rain or snow. Winter = snow. Summer = rain.

That evening Mong and I went to Namsan tower, a big satellite tower, the tallest in Asia. His friend and girlfriend went home that night, back to Masan. It was cool, we got to see seoul at night from above, and it was HUGE. I read somewhere, that by exact city limits, Seoul is the largest city in the world. Mexico city and Tokyo have the largest metro areas, but Seoul isn’t far behind with 25 million…the city alone has around 11 million…which is insane. That’s about a quarter of the population, and half the country lives in the metro area. Pictures aren’t that good because of the reflections on the windows though. Then we went to the night shopping market…got some last minute gifts and mong got some jeans.

Thursday we had planned on going to the War Memorial Museum, but didn’t. We had slept about 3-5 hours the last 3 nights so we slept in late and then I was starving so I ate about a third of a baguette and 5 puffed rice cakes (about 7 inches wide, like giant rice crispies). An hour or so later, we had lunch…not much, just some ramen. Then for some reason I randomly got sick….no idea where it came from, but I threw up the ramen and just felt sick still so we ended up staying at the apartment. After some sleep I felt better, then Mong’s cousins fiancée came home who speaks more English than I knew. She is an internal medicine intern…so she works 24 hour shifts for 5 days straight and a total of 24 hours in the week she is NOT on call…from noon sat. to noon sun. Fortunately the hospital is only 10 min walk away. We talked a lot that night, I showed her pictures of Redding (thanks to my German friend posting them on facebook, thanks Sandra!) and our house, she is really really nice. Mong went back to the night market that night to find something else so she and I just talked. Till Mong’s cousin came home from work at 2am. Geeze…how do these people live???!!! Shes on call all but 24 hours a week and he works 8am to 2am shifts 4 days a week…sitting programming internet to cell phones. Wow.

Friday we left in the morning and took a bus to Kyongju, the original capital of Korea….a very old town. There is a lot of old stuff in it, it was pretty cool…but lame that they capitalized on the tourist industry in such a small town as EVERYTHING had an entrance fee. They even charged double on the bus that took people to the big Buddha on a shrine on the mountain side, that is blocked behind glass, and you can’t even take a picture of, nor look at it for more than a minute cause u get shooed out. I enjoyed the walk in the trees more than the Buddha. So, instead of paying another 3 bucks each for a 15 minute bus ride HALF way back to the town (after that we had to take another bus, about 1500 won, 1.50$, back to the town), Mong mentioned hitchhiking and it sounded good to me. We stood at the exit, trying to look as foreign as possible, and stuck our thumbs up. Only about 5 cars drove by till one stopped! It was a Korean truck (they have large cabs and low beds…usually fisherman drive them…kinda goofy lookin but I was surprised how nice and comfy the interior was). Every car had laughed at us, but this one smiled and stopped. It was a family, mom, dad, a 10 year old daughter and a 7 year old son. They were really kind, and the little girl kept looking and giggling at me, and then asked me, in Korean, why are your eyes blue? (like I said, my Korean skills are next to none, so mong translated for me). It was really cute. I told her I was born from the sky in the daytime and she was born in the nighttime, she and her brother thought that was pretty funny. They dropped us off at the largest Buddhist temple in Korea, our midway stop back to town (it was right on the way and only tourists were driving through, that’s why we hitchhiked). Then we ran into them again at the temple so we took some pictures together.

After that we went back to the main part of the town and looked at the old ice house, a giant cellar with grass growin on it, an astrological observatory town built a long time ago, and old tombs of kings…which are giant perfectly symmetrical humps of ground with perfect green grass growing on them. When I post pictures, you’ll know what I;m talking about. We also ran into a massive lily pad pond, with huge lilly pads…it was so cool and pretty. I post pictures tomorrow or so…as soon as I can. Enjoy!