Asia Holiday 2014, August 17 (Old Seoul Song)

The horror of my first night in Seoul was even worse on the second night, something which I wouldn't have imagined possible. I asked at reception if they had a softer pillow but apparently they only have one size fits all - rock hard. I had to resort to my makeshift pillow but it was so uncomfortable, and I was still as sick as ever, that I was waking up almost exactly every 40 minutes. By about 4:00am I was seriously considering if I was even going to make it to the end of this holiday when I had the idea to bunch up the quilt and use that as a pillow. It was a little bit uneven, but at least it was soft and it got me through the rest of the night.

I was feeling a bit better in the morning but didn't have an appetite for much breakfast, so instead I took care of some tasks I really should have done one or two days ago, first visiting the pharmacy to buy some tablets - 12 tablets for 2000 won was pretty cheap - and then searched for a legitimate pillow at a couple of department stores. Afterwards I had a hard time deciding if the shopping experience is worse in China or South Korea. Both of the department stores I visited were empty, upmarket and had way too many staff. The staff are all assigned to one small section selling like four products each and not allowed to leave that zone, so once again it's really awkward and uncomfortable if you just want to casually browse around, poke at things, check prices and so on. I found a few pillows scattered around the bedding section, but they had crazy prices ranging from 50,000 won up to 200,000 won.

I put the pillow search on hold for the morning and set off for the War Memorial Of Korea. There was no entrance fee which was great, inside the main hall there was lots of exhibits to look at and read about, but I found the video presentations to be much better and more interesting. The route through the building started with some very ancient Korean stuff, but then got a bit better and more recent when the focus became the 1950 invasion by North Korea. I didn't know a lot about the Korean war going in, so I was able to pick up quite a few new facts. Once I was finished with the indoor tour there was also an outdoor section with a lot of planes and tanks on display. Overall it was a good way to spend a couple of hours.

The entrance to the War Memorial.

Somewhere near the entrance.

Drums of war.

Won't get invaded once these guys arrive.

I travelled to the Olympic Park area next, getting an ice cream and a banana milk drink on the way out of the train station. The ice cream was refreshing but the milk didn't take too well. My first stop at the park was the Seoul Olympic Museum. I had reasonably high hopes for this place, but once I got inside I found out there was only a few small rooms to walk around and that was it. Only one room was actually dedicated to a brief summary of what happened at the games, while the others provided some background about the Olympics and about how Seoul won the bidding for the games.

The entrance to the Olympic Museum.

Vancouver is bottom right, don't know the rest.

This was one of few highlights of my visit.

Similar to Beijing, the aftermath of the Olympics is a great big park (and lake) area with lots of tracks perfect for running. There were a few monuments around the place, with the biggest and most recognisable being the terrific World Peace Gate, which doesn't really look like a gate at all, and certainly wasn't keeping anybody out. The various other buildings and stadiums that hosted Olympic events were quite far away, a minimum of at least a kilometre, so I didn't see any of them.

World Peace Gate.

The park entrance.

Munjeong was close on the subway network so I was off to find Munjeong-dong Rodeo Street. The rodeo street had nothing to down with cowboys, it was actually a street with some outlet stores including Nike ! When I arrived I discovered that the street was not very long, probably less than fifty stores in total across both sides of the street. The Nike store was rather pathetic as there was barely any stock in the store and the prices seemed no different to normal, despite big SALE signs at the entrance. The South Korea national soccer shirt was the best item, but their current design is not very good - at least they don't have collars like teams in the Premier League keep trying to bring back in fashion !

Not quite Rodeo Drive.

Since Itaewon had it's own mini map in my tourist booklet I thought it was worth a try to finish the day. There was a couple of places listed as shopping centres on the map, but they were both just more collections of crappy small stores that would have been better described as "indoor junk markets" - clothes, handbags, jewellery, sunglasses and watches basically. I got some cheese quesadillas from a Taco Bell which would have been a highlight, but most of the cheese leaked out of the bottom and into the paper bag instead. Running parallel to the main street was a terrific international food street with dozens of great restaurants, my timing wasn't great though as I'd just had some cheese-free quesadillas and it was still only late afternoon. I found a few cheap magnets before getting back to the station, so the visit was a bit of a mixed bag overall.

If I had been feeling better if you have gone to a baseball match for the evening, but given how I deteriorated during the soccer match the previous match I thought it would be safer not to risk it again. On the way home I searched around the market next to the hotel and found a small cushion pillow thing for about $10, it didn't seem totally soft but it has to be an upgrade from the horror I've had to put up with the last two nights...