DAY 10: MORE IN THE TOURISM LINE

MORNING COMES EARLY - WHICH SUCKS
POSSLQ woke up before 7 am, completely cured of her disease and decided to share the good news with a cavalcade of grunts, bangs, and door-slams. A gentle request that she shut up or be killed, and I was back to sleep til about 9.

A quick morning trip to the PC Bang and the rest of the crew went out for porridge. I crawled back to the pad for a shower. We gathered up our laundry and dropped it off at a local laundromat and then headed into Seoul for a meal with Ed's father. These social events are multiplying at an alarming rate.

Ed has developed another evil power, the "circle of silence" in which things are decided and not communicated. One thing that came out of the circle of silence is that we are on the hook for another meal with Mr. Park on our last night in town. My liver is still in jeopardy.

We met Ed's dad for some bulgogi which was a delicious as it always is, and then we headed off to the Korean national museum at Yongnam. A funny scene at the ticket booth where Ed kept pushing money at the woman and she kept pushing it back. Finally the guy next to Ed told us it was free and we slunk away feeling silly for holding up line for free tickets. Turns out that since it just moved to its new location across the river, the museum is free until next year.

Well, that's a few days away, but we made it.

THE BIG MUSEUM OF KOREA
The place is vast and covers a lot of Asian history, all Korean history, adds a few things that are obviously made up, and according to Ed, who was at constant war with what the plaques on the wall were telling us, contains 'controversial' material.

While I personally was there at least 1,000 Koreans walked through all of this without the slightest hint of disagreement with the wall plaques. Eddie, however, too the time to deny that the Chinese had ever contributed even the slightest scrap of cultural content to Korea.
I fear Ed is developing a new evil power, the "cone of controversiality!" Fortunately the cone seems only to be active when anyone invokes the power of Chinese culture and that doesn't happen that much in daily existence.

Here is the "Temple of Inummerable Stories: From Top to Bottom":


top



bottom

After the museum we caught a cab up to the Geongye River and this allowed me to take some pretty cool pictures. If I come back to Seoul, and I hope to, I will bring my tripod and some time so I can really set up for pictures. Here is a day/night contrast of the Geongye River as well as some pictures of the excellent water and light show.


Geongye Day


And night



Water and Light Show

After the river we walked past an alleyway we had been down before. Again this provided me with a good opportunity to take a shot showing the contrast between night and day. Not the clearest contrast, which is really to be found in the northeast section of Seoul which is pretty grubby and dirty during the day, but still indicative.


Alley in Day (With bonus banner!)


Alley at Night (With bonus beauty!)

Finally, two photos.

One for the POSSLQ of a picture that might interest her brother:


for me it's unbearable

and one more of my obsessive shots of night vendors ;-):


Please note the woman who is, in expectation, choking herself even before she eats the food.



Tomorrow: pix from hicks in the sticks!