1 Weekend in Seoul (August 2008)

We took the chance to extend a business trip to Korea into a nice but not very relaxing holiday. I and my colleague Marco went to Seoul on a Saturday; the flight distance between Tokyo and Seoul is just ~ 2 hours. We were not very lucky with the weather, but the trip was still great. And it was my first time flying business class :)

Saturday afternoon we explored some markets. We started at Namdemum Market. This was after knowing all the other markets, by far the best, liveliest and most interesting market. We found some nice things to shop and had a lot of fun just watching people.

At night we explored the highlighted nightlife of Seoul, but we had to face quite some disappointment. We were told that the nights are crazy and people partying until morning. What we found was one of the very typical US military guy meets Korean princesses type bar, which was interesting for character studies, but not real fun. After running up and down the whole Itewon (that’s the name – like Roppongi dori in Tokyo) without being too attracted to a bar we went to a second place slightly better, but still extremely boring. But the dinner was delicious.

Sunday morning we were picked up at 7 AM for your tour between the lands of North and South Korea – the so called DMZ (demilitarized zone). This is a 2km broad area – where joint projects are done and where neither the north nor the south roules. The feeling was rather strange there, very quiet and nobody was really relaxed, the fully armed military did also not really help to make me feel more easy.

On Monday the last day of our Seoul vacation we went to the folk museum. We had a driver and a guide for ourselves and felt like king and queen. It was quite rainy also this day. The museum was still cool as you can see in the below pics.