A Walk Through History

Before I talk about what I am doing in Korea, I'd like to say Happy Canada Day!

Today was our first touristy day. We began by eating out at a delicious restaurant. In Korea, eating out is a little different than Canada. Firstly, you don't each order your own meal; everyone orders a collective meal and you share it with everyone. Secondly, There is about 40 dishes on the table at a time (thats a bit ofan exaggeration) but still, there is hardly anywhere to put your arms when your struggling with metal chopsticks, which are surprisingly much harder than wooden.

After eating, we went to a 1930's themed movie set which is used for movies and dramas that take place duing the Japanese conquest of Korea. The setting is a remake of a street in Seoul and is quite large. It features street cars, restaurants, a hospital, shops, and many other places. When we finished exploring the 1930's Seoul, we ended up at a modern courtyard with a bunch of houses that resembled 1890's houses for the rich. Each house featured a different trade such as metallurgy, woodwork and instrument making. Some houses had people working with the materials and some just had views to the finished products.

When we left the 1930's, we went even farther back at Aiin's World. Aiin's World is basically a suped-up version of Dicken's Village. It has miniature models of all the exciting places around the world such as Buckingham Palace, The Louvre, the Great Pyramids of Giza, Machu Pichu, The Collesium, The Forbidden Palace and so on. It has a total of 60 models, but I was a little disappointed to find there was none for Canada. We hoped they would show the CN tower or something of the sort but the North American section was filled with Washington and New York models.

After this we went to a fish market located on the water so that boats can deliver fresh fish constantly. This was definitely the most interesting experience of the day. The market was quite smelly, somewhat of a fishy smell. It was also very noisy, with people trying to speak to me in Korean from every direction. There was a very interesting variety of food available, although it stayed uniform from vendor to vendor. Basically, each vendor conisted of flatfish (which is apparently eaten raw), tiny shrimp, clams, live crabs, quid and octapus. There was also the occasional shark or eel.

After the fish market, we went shopping at a typical Korean mall. Rather than being large with only a story or two, Korean malls are built up with smaller ground-space but at least 10 stories high. Apparently it is not uncommon to come across a 15 story mall in Korea. After shopping around for a while, we wet the a famous restaurant called "Hong Kong Jam Pong" which sells Korean-style Chinese food. We ate spicy seafood soup with clams and squid, noodles with vegtables, pork and squid and pork battered in tempura, all of which were delicious.

After a long day, we went home and here I am typing this blog...