Seoul Tower & Korean Folk Village

Last weekend Jagjeet and I decided to go to Seoul Tower, located on the peak of this enormous hill, which we decided to walk up. It was actually a pretty cool walk despite the fact we ended up circling the mountain in its entirety before we clued in that we weren't actually gaining any height. After a further gruelling half hour or so we finally got to the tower.

I mean, it's pretty cool-looking at all, but we paid 10,000 won to get to the top of this thing and it didn't occur to us that the visibility might have been less than stellar. We essentially paid ten bucks to experience a 30 second elevator ride and an extremely disappointing view of Seoul. It's about half the height of CN Tower too, so it's really nothing special. Verdict: don't bother.

The Korean Folk Village in Suwon was not too bad. There was a group of us that went and it was pretty nice, lots of good little Korean thingies for presents etc. Also there was an awesome Korean game that consists of a plank of wood that two people jump on and try to make the other one fall of. It's like a see-saw that you stand on, with the added excitement of possibly breaking your face upon your defeat. This theme of innocent childhood games turning into potentially crippling experiences is a common theme in Korean culture.

So basically we hit up two of the most touristy places we could think of in Korea. Neither of them were all that stupendous, but there are some reasonably mundane photos for you to look at if you're clamouring for some more photos. Also, it was Taylor's birthday last night, so we decided to go to a dance club called Crazy Duck which is apparently pretty popular with foreigners. Well, I liked it.. and I'm foreign.. so 100% of the surveyed population agrees with my hypothesis, at least. Photos below (see Seoul Tower looming in the distance in the first one):







Right.. I should probably explain what the deal is with the fenceful of locks. At Seoul Tower you can buy pairs of stylised padlocks, which are supposed to represent everlasting love, and you lock the padlocks together on a fence and then you keep the key for yourself (supposedly as a memento of the beautiful moment, or if you break up and want to remove the lock at some point?). It's pretty sickly but I think Koreans are into that kind of stuff. Some people bought about 20 of them and arranged them into a heart shape on the fence. It's pretty bad. More photos, from the Korean Folk Village: