Beijing Post 2: On feeling like a celebrity...

Everywhere we went in China we were getting our photo taken. People sometimes stare at foreigners here in Seoul. But I've almost never had an experience where more than one person in a day tries to take my photo on on the sly. China, on the other hand, was a constant bombardment of people taking our photo. we must have been asked at least 2o times in 4 days to take a picture with a group of friends (one group happened to be Korean.. actually.. the rest were Chinese though...). This didn't bother us as much as the folks who would either casually video record us on their cell phones or the ones who would pose in front of us pretending they didn't see us in the background, even though the person taking the photo obviously wasn't pointing the camera towards the person posing. I took this photo of someone taking a photo of us on his cell phone. He wasn't even trying to be subtle about it.

Beijing Post 1: The Forbidden City and Tienamen Square

I guess I never mentioned it since I've been uber busy lately, but I went to Beijing for our long weekend for Buddha's Birthday/Children's Day. It was definitely my favorite trip out of the country so far and definitely a must see for Asia.



We stayed at a great hostel called Peking Downtown Backpacker's Association. It is probably one of the best, if not the best hostel I've ever stayed at. We had a 4 person room which was 75RMB for the night ($11.00 USD/ 13,000 KRW). Our room had a private bathroom, with shampoo and soap included. The beds were pretty nice... for a hostel too. But the best part about the hostel was the staff. They were so helpful with everything and always got us to where we wanted to go by writing directions for us in Chinese so we could give them to cab drivers, or explaining how to get around on the bus. Since we had a huge group (9 people), they were able to hook us up with with our own private tours that cost the same as the group tours.

Anyway, the first thing we did when we got to Beijing was to head over to the Forbidden City. We got there at 3:30 and it closed at 5:00, so it didn't give us much time to look around. But, worse than that was the crowds here. This weekend was also a long weekend for China as well, and there were so many Chinese tourists, along with other tourists in the city that everything was so overcrowded on the weekend. We purchased tickets to see a special exhibition inside the Forbidden City, so we felt really rushed to get there, and it was on the opposite side of the palace.

Here is the entrance of The Forbidden City.

We quickly made our way through and I really didn't get a chance to take in much or get to understand much about the Forbidden City. I guess I'll have to go back to Beijing to go again.... preferably not on a long weekend.

We finally made our way to the special artifacts exhibition. If you like jewelry and that sort of thing, then you'll really like this part of the Forbidden City. It was nice there too because there weren't many people in there. I could finally breathe again...

A crown in the artifacts exhibition

After we made our way through the Forbidden City, we walked to Tienanmen Square. I remember when I was in high school I wrote a huge term paper on the Tienanmen Square Massacre. I had always wondered what it would look like in person. Really, it's not at all how I pictured it... but then again, I'm sure a lot has changed in the past 20 years since it happened.

There were tons of tourists walking around the square. Most of them were Chinese tourists, visiting Beijing for the long weekend
. This is Tienanmen. The actual gate itself.


There were police (military?) everywhere because every evening at sundown they have a flag lowering ceremony.

Here is the flag lowering ceremony. There were so many people here I couldn't see anything! I'm still short, even in China....

Jogyesa Temple

This upcoming weekend is Buddha's Birthday, which is a huge event in Korea. To celebrate the holiday, there was huge lantern festival on Jongno, but unfortunately because of other plans I seemed to miss every event that went on. I was so disappointed that I went to Insadong/ Jogyesa temple Tuesday night to try to catch any remnants of the festival. First stop was Jogyesa Temple.
The place was totally decked out in lanterns. It was really a spectacular sight. I also sat in for a few minutes on a prayer service that was going on inside one of the temple buildings. I took this photo (from the outside through a window, don't worry). I sat right by this Buddha and listened to the monk's chanting. It was really sort of surreal.


These white lanterns are for the deceased.


After walking around the temple for a while, we headed to Insadong for dinner. we had a sort of more traditional meal of dwingchan jjigae, beef and kimchi and lots and lots of side dishes. Then we headed down to the chongyechong to see if any of the giant lanterns were still down there.


Evidently they had already been taken down. But, it was still really pretty down there. And even at 10:30 at night there were so many people!

Here's me!


Incidentally, on the way to the stream, my boyfriend convinced me to go to one of those photo booths... well.. here it's not really a photo booth, it's more of a store full of photo booths. He got so excited when we passed by that there was no way I could have said no. We paid 5,000 won and it took 6 photos. They had all sorts of hats and wigs to wear. Then, on top of that, once you took the photos you could decorate them and make them look ridiculous and cutesie. It was a little over the top, but it was so quintessential Korea that I guess it had to happen eventually. I feel a little more Korean every day..... And starting tomorrow, I'll be starting classes at a Korean language hagwon... so maybe I'll actually be able to speak with some sort of fluency instead of stammering over numbers and reading dialogues. ^^

First case of swine flu ‘presumed’ in Korea - INSIDE JoongAng Daily

First case of swine flu ‘presumed’ in Korea - INSIDE JoongAng Daily

Posted using ShareThis

A Revisit to Namsan

I went to Namsan for the second time this past Saturday. "Nam" means South and "San" is mountain, so literally this place is 'south mountain'. Nowadays it's not that far south, it's sort of in the middle of Seoul. But it is south of downtown/ the original historical center of the city. At the top of Namsan is Seoul Tower (or Namsan Tower). It's basically a space needle of sorts where you can go to get a great view of the city. Its actually not that tall, but it doesn't really need to be, since it's already on top of a hill.

I actually went to Namsan back in February, but I didn't have my camera on me, so I never got around to posting about it. Saturday afternoon I went again for the second time, and this time I made sure to bring my camera (the new spiffy one). The first time we took a cab half way up the hill, then walked the rest of the way up the hill. On the way down, we took a bus (one of the yellow ones) to the bottom of the hill. This time around we decided to take the cable car. We got a round trip ticket, but I don't really think it was worth it. I think maybe it's worth it to go one way, just to say that you have done it, but really, for the minute long ride it's not worth the 7,500 won, when you could take a bus one way for 900 won.



Around the base of the tower the fence is covered in locks. It has become a tradition for lovers to place a lock with a message onto the fence. I think this is actually a really cool idea.


After walking around the base of the tower, we then headed up to the top. I keep finding more and more uses for me to use my combined digital and optical zoom. Here is Chunghwadae (The presidential "Blue House") from atop of Seoul Tower with the 48x zoom. A little fuzzy from the glass, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.


I was even able to locate my house in Sindang-dong from the tower. Pretty incredible actually....


If anyone is interested in visiting Namsan, to take the cable car up the mountain, go to Myeongdong exit 1 and walk straight and up the hill for about 10 minutes. The cable car building will be on the right after some nice looking restaurants. The cable car is 7,500 round trip, but be aware that it's only about a minute long ride. To go up to the top of the tower, the price is 7,000 won for a regular adult admission. There are combination passes that include dinner at the top and the prices actually sounded fairly reasonable considering that you'd be eating on top of Seoul. It'd probably be a nice place to go for an anniversary or something like that. Anyway, if you're visiting Seoul, this is a must see, since it is one of the most well known places in the city.

An Evening At The Ball Game (aka: My Camera Is Awesome)

Sunday night, me and a few friends went to see a baseball game over at the Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Olympic Park (get off at Sports Complex station on line 2). We went to see a game between the LG Twins (home team) and the Kia Tigers. It's been a long while since I've seen a baseball game and though I'm not sure how much of the actual game I watched, but it was still fun for me. In case you're wondering, the Tigers won, 8-2.

The game started at 5pm, so we arrived at about 4:20 to buy tickets. There were plenty of men and women outside the stadium selling tickets that they said were real, but we didn't trust them. We went up to the ticket counter and stood in the long line and got our tickets. We were going to buy the mid range tickets (a whole whopping 12,000 won) but by the time we got up there, those seats were all sold out. So, we got the cheapest seats which were only 6,000 won each.

At the stadiums here, you can buy all you want outside the stadium and bring it in. There is no one checking bags as you go in the door. We each bought some beer and water (service-uh), and my friends picked up some Burger King and we headed in side.

It didn't take long to find the yellow section, but we quickly realized that we had no assigned seats (no one does) and it wasn't going to be easy to find a seat (nevermind four seats together) We wandered all around the yellow section, but we found nothing. There was no division between the yellow section and the other sections so we walked all the way around the stadium looking for some seats... or at least a good place to camp out and sit, as many people were doing. But, I should have known going with my friend Alicia, we were going to find seats. She is usually very quiet and always does whatever everyone else wants to do... unless she's out in public and she wants something done. Then she won't stop til she gives up. She walked us all around the stadium til she found some people who had spread out with their bags and food between them. She went over and asked them to move their things. They looked annoyed (which is really rude, as far as I'm concerned, when there were probably hundreds of people like us wandering around looking for seats), but they moved their things... Well, almost all their things, but they refused to move the chair they were using as a table to hold their KFC chicken. Then they pointed out to us that there were seats in front of them that they were using to hold their backpacks (how much stuff do you REALLY need to bring to a baseball game anyway??). They moved their backpacks and we got 4 seats together, in the green section, which was maybe the 9,000 won seats... or something, I forget. Either way, we were around left field, but they were decent seats though.

We had originally planned on rooting for the home team, which is the LG Twins. We realized once we sat down that we had sat with the Kia Tigers fans. There is almost an invisible line that divides the fans of the two teams in the stands. I felt as though it would have been a little uncomfortable to root for the Twins among so many Tigers fans... so I just decided to become a Tigers fan instead. It's not like I really care who wins anyway, but it's more fun when you cheer for someone...

First thing I noticed at the stadium was the crazy fans. Everyone has these inflatable sticks which they pound together and wave and sway with the various cheers that are recited for each player each time they are at bat. If I go again, I need these things!



While I was watching the game... I swear... at least... for some of the time, I spent much more time playing with my new camera. My Canon Powershot SX200. I decided this would be the best time to test out the 12x zoom. My camera also has a 4x digital zoom, which I sort of forgot about. So, anyway, I found that when you zoom out, it stops at 12x, the end of the optical zoom. But, if after it stops, you push it more, it moves into the digital zoom mode. Now, granted, I wouldn't want to use the digital zoom if I were doing anything important, but boy, was it fun to play with. 12x optical zoom x 4x digital zoom = 48x maximum zoom. Do you know how close you can get to the players using this? Well... let me just show you. And let me emphasize that these photos were not cropped, or edited at all, these are the original photos.

Just some shots to give you an idea of where I was sitting.

Maximum zoom: 48x
Pretty clear... I think, at least

30x zoom... I think

The cheerleaders (yea they have cheerleaders at baseball games here) were in the stands along the 3rd base line. This is the full 48x zoom. See if you can find where they are in the photo:

Kara

I don't know much about this group, but they have two of the biggest songs out right now. They're catchy... as is most K-pop... ^^