Westerners in Asia and Seoul Subways

It's been a while. Been busy. Was entertaining a British friend of mine (originally from Manchester, now in K.L.-Kuala Lumpur) who has basically been ruined by Asia. You see, once a Western guy comes here he can hardly go back to life in the West...you'll know if you're here. Two other Aussie brothers I know had the same thing--they both work for investment banks in Seoul and Shanghai and speak the respective languages, to life is good for them, too. (Same effect for Korean women who go to places like Vancouver, they can't bear to leave that place either.) Anyways, his business partner (an Aussie) was in town with him too...first time...so we went out for a few nights. Also, some American and a Dutch friend of mine and some Koreans wanted to go out too...and then a couple of nights for business...like I said, been busy.

We went to DaeHak-ro and had 서피동파 (seo-pi-dong-pa; seo=west; pi=(pi)zza; dong=east; pa=(pa)-jun, a Korean kind of omlette; together they are western pizza/eastern omlette) and 동동주 (dong-dong-ju,a kind of immature makkoli, or rice booze). Man, was it goood. The dong-dong-ju, it looks like porridge but tastes light (the porridge look is actually ice crystals held in the mixture, no idea how they make it so consistent).

On the way out I almost invariably take the subway. It's fast, clean, convenient and is unaffected by the recent torrential downpours (it's monsoon/typhoon season here now). It's interesting, some stations are a little micro-city with shopping areas (some really large), links to office and apartment buildings, restaurants and almost everything else. They all have a few things in common: lockers (which I wondered about before, but now I've used them a few times to store things I bought--and at about $1 a day they're a pretty good deal), payphones (something you don't see a lot of overground), washrooms (some are better than others), a lotto booth and usually a little convenience store, gift shop, flower shop and/or food seller.


Amenities: lockers, PC bang, escalators.

I don't know why, but many of the subway stops here are spruced up a bit. They have things like (below) lighted signs on the air conditioner units, aquariums (they call them fishbanks here) and posters for the Seoul Subway Corp. that show scenes totally unrelated to subway travel.


Subway Art: an air conditioner, a fishbank and a Seoul Subway Corp. poster

There's also art shows sometimes. There was one for international children's art this weekend at Hyehwa station: I saw 2 good ones: one was from China and another one (aptly named Snow in Canada) was from my home country. Ahhh...a little piece of home.


World Children's Art: China and Canada

That's it for now...later.