Random Musings: Travel

Korea

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 13:58:45 GMT

Okay, I have been good about uploading photos, and not so good about the stories. The last time I posted anything was back in Korea, and now here I am in China, 3 cities later. I have had a great deal of good memories created on this adventure and I have learned a lot. Each city we have gone to has had it's own vibe.

Seoul

I didn't get a great sense of Seoul. As a group, we really didn't get enough time there to experience anything as a "culture day" wasn't really built into the plan. We had one block of time in an afternoon to see a part of old Seoul, but that was about it. We had zero time to go exploring ourselves. Seoul is a big, big city with a ton of people in it. They are a very wired culture and do a great deal of their "off time" on the internet.

We had some great food in Seoul. We capped off our visit at a Korean BBQ place and it was fantastic. The beef just kept coming and we ate so much and didn't realize that there were other courses after the meat...DOH. The BBQ's are right at your table and the servers would just keep throwing them onto the grill and then used meat sissors to cut up the thin marinated steaks into pieces.

The Koreans we met were very health focused. Everything was "good for you" or "bad for your health." At the tea house, it was what was good for you. At the BBQ place, the lady would come by and remove the "flavor crystals" (burned bits of meat) off of the meat so you didn't get cancer, etc. Very very health focused.

After two whirlwind days, our motley crew of Microsofties gathered ourselves up and made way for Tokyo.

Morning in Korea

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 21:24:07 GMT

Well, I'm finding myself still waking up at 5 AM every day, even when I'm in a messed up timezone. It's good to know the body is consistent.

After we finished working yesterday, we were taken on a tour of Insadong, which is a older part of Seoul near the old palace. It was an interesting mix of merchants and people and buildings crammed together. Many of the shots in the new photo album are from there.

We then went to dinner and had some fantastic food. I wouldn't be able to name it if I tried, but suffice to say it involved beef, and spices and rice.

Rick's first trip to Asia

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 04:49:33 GMT

Okay, so I am not the world's most travelled man. As I hate flying, I tend to avoid travel as much as possible. However, I finally got to the point where I could no longer hold off, and so for the next 14 days, I will be going to 4 different Asian cities using 7 flights to do so. Good Times.

The journey began yesterday at 1 PM from Seattle. The flight was 10 hours long to Tokyo. Thank GOD for BitTorrent and the fact that I loaded a TON of TV shows on my laptop. I would have gone insane otherwise. So 10 Scrubs, 3 Smallvilles, and 3 West Wings later, we landed in Tokyo. We then had to fly to Seoul, then wait in a big long line to get allowed into the country, then find our car and take off to the hotel.

More later...I will rill this out when I have time.