Following a 12 hour flight from LA, we landed in Seoul, South Korea around 5:00 AM on Sunday. Because of the time change, we actually skipped Saturday and went from Friday to Sunday. We stayed at the Ritz-Carlton and it was as nice as you expect. We were given a few hours to unpack and shower and then we all met at 9:00 AM with Bill to start off on our first set of scavenges. We received our booklet of scavenges and we were off. The number one rule is that you cannot use the concierge to help you. The purpose is that you interact with the local people and "trust strangers in a strange land." Its hard to do when you are in an Asian country where very few people speak English. But we did it and it was actually quite fun. We did several things the first day including taking a tour of the Jongmyo Shrine and the Secret Garden, walked through Insadong and ate some samgyetang (boiled chicken and rice soup), and even went to the Seven Luck Casino (but no, we did not gamble - its very different than what we are used to).
As we walked to the Jongmyo Shrine, we came upon a small park where there were hundreds of men playing Go. I never quite understood how the game is played, but was more mesmerized at the amount of people in the park all playing the same game.
Our highlight of the day was going to a Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) game. We saw the LG Twins take on the Lotte Giants. And it was a zoo. The place was packed and we had to stand in the outfield. It was like nothing we have ever seen. You are allowed to bring in your own food to the game so everybody brought coolers of food. I saw people eating everything from noodle soup to fish and grapes. The crowd was divided almost equally with half rooting the for the Twins and half for the Giants. Both sides had cheerleaders and a guy that was the equivalent of an A&M yell leader. They had chants that were sung to the music from different 80's songs including Dancing Queen and different songs by Kiss. The crowds were rowdy and everyone was having a good time. When one team would make contact with the ball, its fans would cheer, but then the ball would be fielded and the batter would be out and then the other team would cheer. They cheered for everything.
We ended the night with a Korean BBQ that was actually pretty tasty. But we could have done without the red bean paste that was served for dessert. David ate it but it was literally smushed red beans with sugar.
The next day we took a train to Busan to a fish market. It was worth the three hour train ride. There were just a bunch of stalls with fish laying out. No coolers or ice but just fish everywhere. My favorite part of the trip were the octopuses. Before the trip, I had only seen an octopus in the Seattle aquarium. Vendors at the fish market had small buckets full of small octopuses. The octopuses were alive and would crawl (or swim) out of the buckets and onto the concrete. The vendors would continuously have to put them back in the buckets. I have a video of this but cannot get it to load. Our internet is too slow. I will try again later to upload.
Next stop...Manila, Philippines.
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