October 5,

Of course, I didn’t sleep well… I have never been able to on an airplane. It would have been nice to have stretched out in business class, but that was our seats on the overly delayed flight that we cancelled. Oh well, business class for another time, maybe. We moved forward an hour, so it’s 0655, not 0555, when the captain announced we would be landing soon in approximately 40 minutes. It was an okay flight. A bit of turbulence, so the “seat belt fastened” sign stayed on the whole flight. The whole flight we were not given anything for free– not even water on the seven hour flight! We touched down at 0734. So we had made up 30 minutes – we took off 50 minutes late and landed only 20 minutes late.

    Welcome to Seoul, South Korea!!!

We disembarked and went through security. No issues here. We were each given a sticker in our Passport. So I have 3 ¾ pages left… should be fine. Then we collected our bags and did an exchange of the last of our IDR plus a bill from Singapore. We were able to use a credit card to get single tickets to leave the airport by 0840! We caught the Airport All Top Rail to the train station/subway. Here we were looking for a baggage storage, an ATM to get some South Korean Won (KRW), and then a convenience store to buy some 3-day transit passes. We were both really tired but we could not find an ATM, and felt like headless chickens! To boot it started raining outside.

We decided to eat. We chose a local looking shop in the station. (I was so punchy I did not get the name of the place.) There were five items on the menu. We chose an Ox Bone Soup – seolleongtang; and Jeonju-style Bibimbap, which is a bowl of warm white rice topped with namul (sautéed or blanched seasoned vegetables) and gochujang (chili pepper paste). We were also served three little dishes of Kimchi, a pickled veggie, and pickled lemon slices. It was very delicious, making the morning better. It cost us 25,000 KRW, which was $17.69.

Now we found a baggage storage place that was more expensive than the lockers, but the lockers were all full. They took a credit card. We set back out for the 3-day cards, and much needed cash! Finally, we asked an information booth about the cards and he directed us to it. We used a credit card to buy the cards. But to charge them up we need KRW!! More wondering. We still could not find an ATM that would take a foreign card! So we asked another worker lady. She had a “walkie talkie” and couldn’t get a right answer. She took us to the information booth, where she and someone conferred a bit… Finally we had an answer – off in a side halfway, behind some stairs… like over the river and through the woods! HA–HA… we found THE ATM for foreigners. Jeff said he felt like we were in Japan, because we had trouble finding ATM’s there also.

Anyway, it was noon now, and it was still raining, but letting up. We got the cards and charged them. We decided to catch the subway to the Korean Museum, but we were running out of time. We had pre-booked an Architectural Tour for 1330, so we diverted onto another subway and went for the tour. We arrived at the DDP- Dongdaemun Design Plaza – at 1315 and checked in.
The tour involved the amazing building-structure, built in 2013 on the site of an old, abandoned stadium. The DDP was designed by an Iranian architect, Zaha Hadid. It is a big, free-formed, smooth, oval, and silver paneled building. Our first thought was of the silver bean in Chicago, but this is way bigger and very irregular shaped. The guide told us there are over 42,000 panels covering the exterior, each having its own shape and are therefore numbered! The panels were originally going to be made in Germany, but the company could not produce them fast enough for the “hurry-hurry” Koreans, as the guide told us. A Korean company stepped up, took on the technology – making them from scratch, and beat the German estimation almost by half the time! The other thing that stood out from the building was a free form stairway that was made from plaster with fiberglass. The steps were bamboo… from Germany?? Not because they don’t have bamboo here in Korea… I guess they wanted some component of the building to be German!?! Whatever! It was a good free tour of a cool building.

Anyway, we finished the tour and went back to the train station, got our luggage, and went to our place, Petercat Hostel. It was after 1500 so we could check in. We are on the sixth floor. It has a poor view; it’s only a small room; and it’s a wet bathroom… but it has free washing machines and dryers. Tomorrow is South Korea’s Thanksgiving Day and it was all we could get reasonably in this area. We unpacked and went out for supper, going to Damsot, a rice pot place. We had a Steak rice pot and a Salmon rice pot. Both were great, and the rice got a little charred in the hot metal bowl. It cost us 34,000 KRW, or $24.

We went back to our place and barely managed – but did – stay up and talk with my mom and her husband. Then we crashed at 2130.