After my last post, I’m sure many of you are wondering why Dave and I choose to stay in such a polluted country (we both ended up with chest colds after that sandstorm, by the way…). Well, there are plenty of reasons.
- The cost of living is low and salaries are high
- Suzhou is a gorgeous city where there is lots to see and do
- Living in China provides challenges that make life a lot more interesting
- Working in China as a teacher, I’m able to make a huge impact. It’s a great feeling
- The holidays……3.5 months per year, to be exact….
In addition to summer holidays, I also get 5 weeks for Spring Festival, a week for National Day and several small holidays throughout the year as well. Tomb Sweeping is a yearly cultural holiday that takes place in March/April. I had 3 days off, so Dave and I decided to hop on over to Seoul.
It only takes about an hour and a half to fly to Seoul, but when you add in train-rides to Shanghai, plus the drive from Seoul’s airport to downtown, we really didn’t have a whole lot of time to see the sights. Still, we made the most of the 36 hours we had!!!
As always, we found a hotel close to the metro line, and found our way around the city that way. Metros are great because you can get from one end of the city to another in so much less time than it takes to drive. Unfortunately, Metros are also terrible in Asia, because their maps sometimes look like this:
Many people go to Seoul for the shopping or the vibrant night life, but Dave and I aren’t big into either of those things. Instead, we head for Namsan Park and Mountain, where we were able to see Seoul Tower and a beautiful panorama of the city.
A ‘bonus’ sight Dave and I saw while on Namsan mountain were Seoul’s Love Locks. The idea is simple: if you love someone, get a padlock, engrave your names onto it, lock it to a bridge and throw away the key. This action is suppose to signify that you are bound to a person forever. Of course, 1 or 2 of these locks wouldn’t really be noteworthy, but all around the world, couples are creating mass displays with their ‘love locks’.
Sure, it’s a romantic idea…but it’s also become a bit of a problem in some parts of the world! Paris once had the world’s most famous collection of love locks, but officials had to remove the locks off of Pont de Arts bridge because the weight of them was going to cause the bridge to collapse! The problem was so extreme that the additional weight on the bridge was the equivalent of 20 elephants!
Love Locks have been around for ages, all over the world. They were made most famous in Paris, but their origins trace back to China and Siberia as well. Seoul has quite an impressive display, and officials there were prepared there. They created places for the locks to be placed that were actually designed to hold the weight. The displays were lovely.
I spent quite a bit of time looking at those locks….they were really quite impressive. They seem colourful from afar, but up close, you can see that there are actually quite a few old and rusted locks among the shiny new ones. I guess displays like this don’t happen over night!
When we were done at Namsan, we decided to visit one of Seoul’s many parks. We chose 1 park specifically because of its many Geo Caches. Dave and I each found a couple, and we enjoyed a lovely walk among the budding trees.
There were some interesting sculptures in the park as well.
We spent both our evenings in Seoul enjoying fantastic Korean food! I wouldn’t say South Korea is the best place to visit for vegetarians, but if you like meat, this is the place for you! Meat is grilled fresh right in front of you, and when it’s done, you wrap it in a piece of leaf lettuce, along with Kim Chi and whatever other little dishes they give you. It’s some of the freshest, healthiest tasting food I’ve ever had!
I’m a little sad we didn’t have more time to see some of the rest of South Korea, but I can say without a doubt that Dave and I will be heading back that way again some time soon. Korea is absolutely lovely. The people are friendly and helpful, the service industry is WAY more customer service based than China’s and the city, in general, is very organized!
In fact, I saw something on our last night there that even puts Canada to shame! I noticed a stack of free post cards at our hostel and picked one up. It turns out that the South Korean government provides postage-paid postcards so that visitors can alert officials of any problems they had in the city! A program like that would be INVALUABLE in cities like Shanghai or Beijing, where your first experience is often being ripped off by a taxi driver!
Stay tuned! I’ve got plenty more planned for my next few posts!