Seoul Part 1: Shaking Off the Jet Lag

So, this blog started off with 3 posts in rapid succession, and then completely dropped off for two weeks.  The reason was that I was on vacation in Seoul for the last two weeks and was busy having a pretty good time there, so I didn't really want to scribble out little nickel and dime posts on my phone when I could just get back to New York and make some sense of it all before posting it.

Of course, I brought the X100S and took lots of photos, but I have to admit, it wasn't as many as I probably could have taken if I'd flown solo -- I was with the wife and in-laws, so I didn't really want to hold up the pack because I'd seen something down an alley (there are lots of those in Seoul) and had to run over to grab it.

Anyway, I learned something pretty important while travelling with my camera: I am not a very good travel photographer.  A travel photographer brings out the beauty and color of a destination and really make you want to get on a plane and see it for yourself.  A hard look at the stuff I was photographing there made me realize I was just taking the same photos I would have taken back home -- they're just pictures of life as it's lived there; the only difference is the backdrop and maybe a few mannerisms.  That's not to say you shouldn't travel just because it's all the same.  To the contrary, it's to say that life is beautiful, and I think you should get out there and see as much of it as you can.

I struggled a bit with whether I should really go into the photography bit or if I should write a vacation blog post.  I settled on the latter just because I like vacations, but as I mentioned before the photos aren't exactly vacation photos, so you'll have to keep that fact in mind.

We flew out of JFK with the overly cautious Asian parental flight plan of "try to arrive 3 hours before your flight, and just for good measure, leave the house a half hour earlier than you think you should" so we had a lot of time to kill.  Thankfully, mom-in-law has flown to Mars and back on Asiana and used her status to get the two us into the travelers' lounge to kill some time and smuggle cans of orange juice back out for the upcoming flight.

The flight itself was about as good as you can get being stuck for 14 hours in a 550mph aluminum can in the sky.  I've never been as excited about airline food as I have been on Asiana.  The bibimbap they serve is better than some that I've actually paid for in NYC, with a cute little instruction card and the gochujang being presented in a little toothpaste tube.  On the way home, they served ssambap in a similar fashion.

We got in after dark and went straight to bed. The next day, we went to Namdaemun Market because I'd read that you could get some nice deals on cameras there.  The place, named for the Namdaemun gate that sits in the middle of its main traffic circle, is very similar to the street markets of Hong Kong, where you can buy cheap clothing, bags, greasy street food, and other stuff.  Right outside one of the exits is a row of camera shops selling all sorts of used cameras, from old accordion folders to Leica rangefinders to medium format Hasselblads and Mamiyas to DSLRs.  I was in search of a Voigtlander Bessa R2M.  More on that later.

The street food is an incredible hodgepodge of various things skewered on sticks, battered, or both, and plunged into week-old oil.  Our favorite was the yachae hotteok, conveniently located in front of the row of camera shops.  Normally, hotteok is a pancake kind of thing filled with brown sugar or honey, flavored with cinnamon.  Yachae (vegetable) hotteok is filled with vegetables and sweet rice noodles.  We'd always seen a line of at least 15 to 20 people for it, and finally found it reasonably short on one of our numerous visits to the camera shop, and jumped on.  When you ask for one, they pull it from the oil still dripping, give it a quick shake, and hand it over in a fold of wax paper.  Price: 1000KRW, currently less than $1 USD.  There's just enough batter on the outside to form a light and crispy crust to hold the soft stuff inside without it spilling out with every bite.

Then we went to COEX Mall in Gangnam, normally a cacophony of blaring Kpop, young people, and neon colors, but currently under major renovation and reduced to a maze of blank hallways and people just using the inside as shelter on their way from the subway station to wherever it was they were going.  It's slated for completion by the end of 2014, but for now it's eerie being inside a giant shopping mall with no shops.  Anyway, we were a bit disappointed but we were really there for the COEX Aquarium, which is still open.

Yes, the mall is large enough to house a decent-size aquarium.  Whenever we travel, we always make a point of visiting the local aquarium if one exists.  I'm not sure what it is about fish we find so fascinating.  Maybe it's the colors and shapes, or their ability to truly move freely in a three dimensional environment.  Anyway, the aquarium at COEX is one of my favorites I've seen so far.  It's a linear trail so you only ever have one direction to go in, and the slight narrowness of the path itself along with the openness of the exhibits creates a tendency to keep people moving forward instead of bunching up at key points.  The experience is smooth but not rushed.  The animals are all healthy and well taken care of.

 

Also in Gangnam, down the road from COEX, is GomTV Studio, home of the GSL Starcraft 2 tournament held 4 times a year.  Starcraft 2 is a real time strategy game, and it's been rather popular in Korea, with the matches commentated and broadcast on TV as any sport would be.  The matches are 1 on 1, with the players playing inside soundproof booths and the happenings  in the game projected on the big screen.  There's a live audience of about 40 in attendance in cheap plastic chairs.  To our surprise, roughly half of the audience that day was female.  Normally, you'd figure this was a guy thing.

However, that day Lee Young Ho, a.k.a. "Flash" was playing.  He's one of the old-timers, having made a name for himself as one of the best Starcraft 1 players of all time.  He has a large following of fangirls.  Sharon had been afraid of being the only girl there, but was both relieved and fascinated by Flash's female following, translating for me some of the things they were saying.

At some point, a mild anxiety spread over the girls, who were sitting in a cluster to our left.

"He's not in his booth."
"Where did he go?"
"I don't know.  He just disappeared."
"He went to the bathroom."
"Oh."

Sure enough, Flash came back from the bathroom and walked past us down the aisle back to his booth.  The girls' heads turned in unison to smile at him as he walked past.

Unfortunately, Flash was not his usual self and played poorly, getting dropped from the tournament that day.  Between games, we made our own early retreat as we hadn't completely shaken off the jet lag, and the curtain was slowly inching its way down for the day.

And the same is happening right now as I write this post.  I'll pick this up again tomorrow but for now, here's the Google Plus album of the rest of the photos I took on the X100S, including stuff I'll be discussing in upcoming posts, and some in-betweeners that I won't.  Hopefully, the link works without anyone having to sign in or anything.  Let me know if there are any issues with that.  I'm new at this.