This guy was totally snoozing in the middle of all the hubbub at the hanyak market. I mean, he's right next to the busy street, buses passing, horns honking, etc.
Piles o' herbs at the hanyak market.
Up and out fairly early - despite the possibility of jet lag - Mary and I stopped first at Namsan to visit Seoul Tower. It’s the best place in the city to really get an idea of how gigantic Seoul is. Nam mountain is smack in the center of the city with a stubby tower perched on top. From the tower, you can view sprawling megatropolis in every direction. Mary was awed, I was validated. We ate a Pull Hyang Gi, my favorite Korean restaurant; Mary was a trooper saying, "I liked a couple of things." Day 2
Three letters: DMZ. I must say that I was a tad disappointed. Seems that in the ongoing posturing between the two nations, the South Koreans are constructing a huge building on their side of the demarcation line that will rise higher than the enemy’s building on the other side. Thus, the old pagoda/building had been demolished which meant we were not able to go up into it and view the truce village from that vantage point. We were still permitted to enter the building straddling the border between the two Koreas, but even that was a tad mundane as none of the North Korean soldiers were hovering around that day. It was like going to the zoo and all of the animals refused to come out into the open. I joked that perhaps we could lure them out by tossing cans of Spam over onto their side. Yvonne suggested they would have to post a sign: "Please don’t feed the soldiers." Heh. Mary was still impressed, however, and that’s what really counts. Day 3
Up and out early, we dove into Namdaemun market. The longer I’m here, the more daring I become. We wandered into little alleys no wider than we are, where we had to scrunch up and step over ajumas preparing kimchi in near darkness in huge metal tubs on the slimy, grimy concrete floor. Doors lining the alleys led to little concrete rooms where old broken down freezers sat decrepit and meat lay on tables for preparation. It smelled atrocious and it was possible to imagine people being born into the market and never leaving it, never knowing cleanliness. One hundred and eighty degrees later, we ate lunch with Yvonne at the Mexican restaurant on Yongsan post. Mary and I both had hot fudge sundaes. Shopping was in order. So we traveled to Itaewon where Mary was easily swayed into ordering a custom made suit. I was pressured into buying a stuffed animal, which goes to show you how gullible I am to peer pressure, ‘cause I never buy stuffed animals. This one IS cute though: it’s Baloo from the Jungle Book and his little paws rest naturally on his pot belly. I gave it to Dave. Then we met Andy and his friend for dinner. Andy is someone Mary has known since she was a little kid. I wasn’t introduced to him until junior high and haven’t seen him since high school. He’s here in the Army. I must admit, I was a little tense walking around town with two obvious military types - anti-American sentiment, you know. But, no one said anything to us. I thought I’d be a nice little ambassador to the culture and take them for Korean food and a cute teahouse, but I felt they would rather have just eaten western and done western things. Sigh. Day 4
Up and early AGAIN to meet my friend Catherine so we could all go to a lecture she organized. The topic: Korean traditional medicine. The speaker: Dr. Kim Young Oak, who is apparently quite well-known and controversial in this small nation. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard with several Masters degrees from universities in Taiwan, China, and Japan. He taught at a prestigious university in Seoul, but was later banned from teaching there because he was considered a rebel. He wrote a bunch of books, made a lot of money, then went to medical school. He is both a western trained physician and a traditionally trained Korean doctor. He couldn’t help mentioning that he also loves the arts and writes screenplays. Can you say narcissistic, boys and girls? His arrogance nearly discredits him, in my opinion. Nevertheless, he had some interesting things to say about Eastern medicine versus Western Medicine, and I’m still processing it. He said that a tradition only remains if it works, and so it is with Oriental medicine; it’s practiced so widely today because it works, despite the strong influence of Western thinking and Western medical practices functioning in Asia today. The Eastern way of thinking about the body is that the body is a whole and the mind is not separate from the physical. Therefore, to treat someone with herbal concoctions or acupuncture, it is necessary for the doctor to spend a lot of time talking with the patient as well as examining the individual to learn of their "type" or special needs. This is in contrast to the Western way of only diagnosing the affliction, but not looking at the person too. In this way, Western doctors treat people like objects and neglect personal needs and differences between individuals. It was very interesting, and he was very convincing. I would like to try this kind of medical treatment, but like I said, his arrogance made him suspect and I don’t know if I’d go to him. I mean, he really liked himself. After the lecture, we toured the medicinal herb/concoction (hanyak) market. It was in a poor area of town and was amazing. Smells of different herbs, stacks and stacks of plants and things like centipedes lining the sidewalks, and people milling about everywhere. It wore us out. So when we tried to visit a palace afterward, we were too pooped to really get into it and decided to call it a day. Whew. Decided to sleep in this morning and take it easy.
past
index