Forced vacation

I just got back from a forced, all-expense-paid nine-day vacation in Seoul, South Korea. My other option was to stay in China and get arrested for over-staying my visa, so after careful consideration, I went on the trip to Seoul.

Anyway, it wasn't really all-expense paid. I got $15 a day to offset the cost of meals. Not that you can pay for even one meal in Seoul for that amount of money. The cheapest meal at "On the Border" was $22. Donuts were about $5 each. I bought stuff at the grocery store and cooked my own meals all week (for health reasons). Two chicken breasts cost $10, so I didn't eat chicken. I was happy with my kitchen in my little guest housing unit.

Back to my trip. I was supposed to get some work done while I was there (which requires Internet), and maybe even update this blog. But there was no Internet in my room. I could go stand in the stairwell and get enough bars to operate, but it is hard to type while sitting on the cold hard stairs. I could have gone to a coffee shop, but walking a few miles up and down hills with my computer to get to a coffee shop was not my idea of a fun day. So I didn't do that. I took my iPad, but you can't really do much work or blogging on those things.

My favorite part of Seoul is downtown (Myeongdong). They have excellent shopping in Seoul. I hardly ever shop in China because there's nothing here I want, except groceries. There were lots of interesting things to shop for in Seoul. I even bought clothes in Asia, if you can believe that. I bought two sweaters at the Forever 21 shop there.

Seoul is full of beautiful, well-dressed people, even though somehow I didn't capture any of that with my camera.

The awesome, modern city of Seoul had one thing I didn't like at all: the subway system. Oh, it criss-crossed all over town, and the trains themselves are fine, but the stations must have been built fifty years ago. There were not many escalators, and at one station I had to ascend nine stories to get to ground level. To switch trains, you may have to walk a quarter of a mile or more (unlike other cities where you climb a flight of stairs and there you are). Some days I stayed in my guest house apartment just because I couldn't bear all the hills and stairs at the subway station. My feet hurt.

Though as a Texan, I am prone to exaggeration, I must tell you that I am not exaggerating about the number of flights of stairs or the distance I had to walk. They had signs telling you how many meters it was to the transit station (they might as well have listed them in kilometers) and I did my math. And I used to be a math teacher, so yeah, I can figure it out.

And by the way, all those people on the subway? They are looking at their Samsung phones. Samsung rules, in Seoul anyway (pretty popular in China too).

The above photo (in Itaewon neighborhood) shows you an example of the steep streets everywhere. Whoever established the city of Seoul didn't go to city planning school ... everyone knows you build a city on flat ground, not on hills. (May I congratulate my home town of Pecos, Texas, for excelling in this particular skill. Not that they had much of  a choice.)

Seoul is a town I could live in ... if I had a car and didn't have to navigate all the subways and hills. (I do not plan to move, I'm just saying it is a lovely city. Too bad they have a saber-rattling leader up north who keeps them on edge all the time.)

Here I am in a coffee shop, reading a Kindle book on my iPad. (I said "here I am," like I was in the picture or something, which obviously I am not.)

Here I am (there I go again) at Dunkin' Donuts, drinking coffee and reading the Kindle book. I read a whole book that week. Dunkin' Donuts had the cheapest coffee in town, not to be confused with "cheap" coffee ($3.50, if I remember correctly.) They also had free Internet and a lovely environment overlooking the streets below. Starbucks didn't have free Internet or a view, plus, you know, their coffee is seriously expensive.

I went to the park near the river (the river is pictured in the top photo). I actually took a boat ride on that river one day. I love boat rides. A woman at the park was selling cotton candy in two forms: the original style and in cups. Cups? Never saw that before. The woman was adamant that her face not be in the picture. So it's not.

It was a beautiful fall day on the Saturday I was in town, and thousands of people, mostly families and young couples, were out enjoying themselves at the park. 

Sorry I've been absent from the blog for so long. Since I got back to China (with my new visa), I have been working overtime to catch up on things I didn't get done while in Seoul. But I'm back with Mimi, and my next trip is a whole two weeks away, so all is well here.