Pretty colors of cellphones at Yongsan Electronics Market
In the morning, we headed out to the Yongsan Elecctronics Market in Seoul. It wasn’t really what I expected. It is a collection of 20 buildings, and it wasn’t always clear how to get from one to the other. The first building we went into was about 6 stories high (I’Park Mall), and is in the same building as the subway station.. We came in on the digital cameras floor (yes, floor). At 10am the building was empty, and we could wander around peacefully checking out all the stuff we couldn’t afford. This mall was very comfortable, bright, organized, and easy to get around. The prices were about on par with prices in California, but they had some models that hadn’t yet been released in the US/Canada, and the salespeople were happy to show them off to us. There’s another floor of cell phones (fun for wandering, but not for shopping, as Korea is on an entirely different system). There’s another floor for computers. There’s even a section devoted to toilet bowl lids. (you won’t see that at Best Buy!).
Attached to this part of the mall was also a regular mall, but we didn’t check that out. We took a overhead tunnel to another mall, which was more in line with what I was expecting – a crowded random collection of different stores. Some closed, some open. Some I’m not even sure what they sold. I found a nice bench for Wendy and wandered around, but it grew old after a while. Somehow we managed to retrace our steps to the skywalk and the original mall and the subway station. All told we spent about 2 hours there. It was interesting, but it wasn’t really a highlight of Seoul.
Namdaemun Market, Seoul
We made not one, but 2 trips to Namdaemun Market – it’s that big. Of course, it’s Korea, so it’s well organized with info booths with English speakers. They have maps available, with bathrooms and banks clearly marked and all the buildings labeled and what they sell listed.
There is a large wholesale market with approximately all the plastic hair accessories in the world – and all in pink with lots of glitter. The cool thing (for me – not so much for Ian) is that there are actually people working on making the stuff right there. (And in an air-conditioned, clean, brightly lit building, not some sweatshop).
Also, there’s basically everything else you could possibly need to buy. We literally walked by a bust of a Native American, a knight’s armor, a Hello Kitty phone and a statue of a giraffe all in about 10 feet (3 meters). Luckily they have a whole section devoted to luggage, since we needed a new suitcase – to hold the giant pair of masks we decided to buy! It’s bright lime green and apparently a very good color choice since several people complemented us on our choice on our way back to the hotel with it! We can say for sure that it’s supser easy to spot in on the luggage carrosel at the airport!
Food Alley, Namdaemun Market
We ate lunch at a little stall in Food Alley. Yummy green onion and potato pancakes for me and something we couldn’t identify for Ian! Very cheap and as usual served with a smile. There’s a ton of choice, but unfortunately for me, most of it isn’t vegetarian.
Anyhow, there’s a crazy amount of stuff and people everywhere and we saw maybe 6 other tourists the whole time. Very fun!
Fruit for sale in Seomun Market, Daegu
From Busan we traveled to Daegu. From there it was easy to get to Haeinsa Temple by bus. Daegu also had a huge market - Seomun – which seems to sell a ton of different food, mostly. It was great for people watching and strolling.
Socks for sale at night in Daegu.
There’s also a great downtown area which was really alive at night. We found an awesome restaurant where they specialize in mushrooms and could easily set me up with something vegetarian and tasty for dinner. We had a lot of fun (window)shopping and people watching. There’s a pedestrian area and lots of people out shopping and hanging out with friends. Lots of street stalls selling fresh fruit juice mixed with ground ice – like a real slushie. Yum! Also, Koreans don’t wear boring white socks. Like everything else, socks are cute and available in a million different styles. Very fun!
Some of the woodblocks of the Tripitaka Koreana
Daegu is a convenient base to head out to yet another amazing temple – Haeinsa Temple. There are buses everywhere in Korea, and they all run on time, all the time, and are impeccably clean. Amazing. The road is windy and steep, and so it took an hour an a half to get there. It was well worth the trip! Haeinsa is a Unesco World Heritage site. It holds 81,340 woodblock scriptures called the Tripitaka Koreana and is one of the largest Buddhist libraries of its kind.
Us in front of the buildings that house the Tripitaka Koreana
The blocks are housed in 4 buildings with large windows made of slats of wood that allow for ventilation. Apparently in the 1970s they tried to build more modern storage with temperature and humidity controls and the test blocks started to develop mold, so they gave up on that idea and just stuck to the traditional storage! The buildings aren’t actually open, but you can easily see the blocks through the slats in the windows. You can see the slats which form the “windows” on the building we’re standing next to. It’s pretty amazing to think that they’ve been there for over 500 years, and we can’t (and don’t need to) improve on the technology built into these buildings that long ago.
Stream along the hike up to Haeinsa temple.
Haeinsa is also in a beautiful natural setting, surrounded by trees. It takes quite a while just to reach the temple complex from the road – probably about 20 minutes. The path takes you through a forest, and past streams bubbling over rocks. It’s very peaceful, and we spent quite a while wandering around and soaking it all in.
A subway station in Busan.
The subway system in Busan is like all the others we used in Korea – fabulous. The trains run very frequently and the stations are well organized, announced in English (and Korean, and Chinese, and Japanese) and everything is, of course, spotlessly clean. Naturally.
Notice the arrows on the yellow strip at the edge of the platform. They show you where to line up. There are two arrows pointing in at angles on the sides and one that points out from the subway cars in the middle. The idea is that there are 2 lines of people funneling onto the subway from the sides while a single line exits in the middle. And it works! People really do line up and follow the arrows!
Just in case...
Of course, while you’re on the subway, you might get thirsty, so they have vending machines for drinks. Of course, you might get bored too, so they have vending machines for books. Awesome.
From Gyeongju we traveled to Busan, a bustling port in the south of the country with plenty of US sailors everywhere – the USS Reagan had just docked, with 5,000 sailors on shore leave! Plus there were other USS ships in port at the same time.
Downtown Busan - shopping in the evening.
We had an amazing hotel room for $30 US (or 2 cents in every other currency), and were right downtown, central to everywhere. Which was lots of fun because Busan at night is ALIVE. Lots of street vendors, the stores are open really late, lots of pedestrian areas and great people watching! We did some great shopping in a huge market with great people watching.
We ate dinner on the street – they set up carts and give you your food on a plastic plate that they put inside a new plastic bag for each customer. I had some vegetarian sushi (you get a huge amount for about $1US) and a potato and green onion “pancake” – yum! Ian ate some, um, interesting food, and when he showed interest in something else (pig intestines stuffed with blood, pork and vegetables – lovely), the lady of course gave him a free sample which was half a regular serving and refused payment – that’s happened to us all over Korea. People have been amazing.
Bell hanging from one of the temple buildings.
Beomeosa temple is simply awesome. It’s actually accessible by subway and then a connecting bus – so it was really easy to get to. Like most of the temples we saw, it’s set in a huge park. To reach the temple you first walk through a beautiful treed area and then you emerge into this clearing and there it is. It was built in 678 AD, and is impeccably maintained. We spent several hours there, enjoying the serenity and the beautiful buildings.
We stayed at the Goodmorning Haotel Motel, which was possibly the best value hotel we’ve ever gotten of all 51 countries we’ve travelled to. For $30 we got an exceptionally clean room, big tv, nice towels, bathrobes, huge shower with floor to ceiling glass windows to the main room – all the toileteries we could wish for – and a great location just off the main subway line.
We had a lot of difficulty finding it. The directions were completely wrong in the guidebook. It’s actually just a 5 minute walk from the subway. (Thankfully we had an amazing parking lot attendant who ran all over asking people where it was, and then patiently walked us back there. By that time it took us 30 min. to walk back to it – we were that lost! He then refused to even let us buy him a drink even though it was approximately 1million F/C).
So, to get there: Take the subway to Yeonsan-dong, Exit 1. Turn right almost immediately. Walk 2 short blocks. Turn left at the Japanese restaurant. You will see a Family Mart 1 short block ahead on the right. It’s just past there, on the right, one and a half blocks from the turn. It’s a big white building with a big poem on the side.
Please do us a favour – if you ever use these directions please drop us a note so we know!
The outside of the building at Sarangchae Home Stay. The bathroom is at the end.
We stayed at Sarangchae Home Stay. We stayed in a tradiditional ondol-style room – basically this means the small room had a thin mattress on the floor, a fan, and nothing else. Just a 30 foot walk from our room, the shared shower facility was clean, but very very small with nowhere to leave dry clothes – the setup just didn’t make too much sense.
Finding the hotel is a little difficult – we managed to hug the walls of the park, and there was a little sign pointing us there. Our GPS helped us find it in the evening, when we came at it from a totally different direction in the dark.
The owners were very helpful with planning our day – especially given how little time we had there. There was free fast internet in the common room. Again, eggs, toast and jam were provided, and there were lots of travellers to swap stories with.
Entry to Sarangchae Home Stay
There is a convenience store just down the street. The location is very quiet, and extremely convenient to the park and buses to get out to the sights around Gyeongju.
Our Ondol room at Sarangchae Home Stay
