Friday morning we took the subway to Seoul Station to catch the high speed rail going south. By the way the Seoul subway is even more elaborate than Beijing's, but still easy to use.
We got on the KTX train going south to Osong station and beyond.
If you zoom in on the TV screen you can see the speed in the top left corner
We got off at Osong station, 150km away about 45 minutes later. We were met at the station by my old friend David Farr. David has been a friend of mine since we were little kids, and now he and his wife Elizabeth are ESL(English as a Second Language) teachers for Korea University. We got a mini tour of the Jochiwon campus of Korea university, then went for lunch at a local traditional Korean restaurant.
Yanmei and I in front of kimchi pots at the restaurant
After lunch we looked around the Jochiwon area. It is a good contrast to Seoul, small town and farming countryside instead of a massive urban center. They were just starting to flood the rice paddies, but hadn't started planting yet.
David Farr and I at a Buddhist temple
In the afternoon we caught a train back to Seoul. David and Elizabeth came with us to be our guides in Seoul for the weekend. They've been living in Korea for nine years and used to live in Seoul.
After dinner we decided to do something regular and go see a movie. We picked Avengers 2 (part of which was filmed and takes place in Seoul). The theatre we went to had assigned seating and we actually bought the tickets before dinner so we could pick any seats we wanted, we picked the middle towards the back. The movie was in English with Korean subtitles. Even a Hollywood movie can be a cultural experience. Avengers has been out for a while so not many people showed up, but those that did sat directly in front of us and behind us. Remember they could have picked any seats they wanted and they would have seen the ones we picked when they picked. Later Elizabeth said it was Korean culture. They wanted to clump together to be part of a group instead of sitting away from others as we would do in North America.
Seoul is only a two hour flight from Beijing. Neither of us had been to Korea and we both wanted to go, so we booked a flight. This will be a short but full trip. We arrived Wednesday night and just took a taxi to our hotel and checked in. The hotel is located near Myeongdong which is a good central location in Seoul.
Thursday we had booked a DMZ+JSA tour. The DMZ is the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea and the JSA is the joint security area, which straddles the border and is guarded by both North and South Korean troops.
We went to three sites along the DMZ border. First the Dorasan train station. The station is the last stop on the railroad that links North and South Korea. Unfortunately since 2007 NK no longer accepts rail traffic, so the train only goes south. There is a fairly significant military presence there.
Soldiers on the left, tourists on the right
After the train station we went to the Third Infiltration Tunnel. It is called that because it was the third tunnel discovered being dug underneath the DMZ from NK. It was discovered in 1978. Unfortunately they had a strict no photo policy inside the tunnel. It is 73 meters deep and through solid rock. We had to wear hard hats and it is a good thing because we both hit our heads on the low cieling. We were able to go as far as the first barricade beyond which the tunnel is supposedly mined.
Tunnel down to the 3rd Infiltration tunnel
Bonus picture below.
Not a picture of the tunnel, this is the Thurston Lava tube from Hawaii 🙂
After the tunnel we went to the Dorasan observation post which is on a small mountain had has a good view across the DMZ to NK. Unfortunately it was not a clear day so you couldn't see much detail.
Finally we went to the JSA. We stopped at Camp Bonifas before the DMZ where an armed US soldier from the United Nations JSA Battalion checked our passports (we had to send scans of our passports 3 days ahead to be cleared for entry). After we entered we had to sign a form saying we understood and would follow the rules, such as no pointing, waving or gesturing, no leaving the group, no communicating with NK personnel, etc. Then there was a short presentation on the history of the Korean War and JSA.
Since the JSA is on the border, you actually go through part of the DMZ to get there. We switched buses and drove into the DMZ with our army escort. Again we were not allowed pictures but before the DMZ there is a tank wall, a mine field and electrified razor wire.
JSA
The picture above needs some explanation. The blue buildings are UN buildings and the grey buildings are NK buildings. You can see our US army guide just above the shoulder of the guy in the red shirt. The soldiers with the white band on their helmets are South Korean, and they are standing rigidly motionless. Between the two UN buildings in the center you can see some gravel, then a line, then concrete. That line is the border between NK and SK. He's hard to see but there is a NK guard In the door way of the larger NK building in the distance. The middle UN building with the open door is where negotiations are sometimes held.
Yanmei is on the right side of the South Korean soldier, which means she is officially in North Korea. Technically I guess that makes it two bonus countries.
Me in North Korea. The flag and recording devices in the middle of the conference table mark the border.
For me this was one of the most interesting days of the trip so far. Really good tour and there is a lot of stuff I left out too. This is not something we are used to in North America. There is a lot of history and still a lot of tension behind everything that is going on here.
It's actually pretty interesting living in an apartment instead of a hotel. It gives us a feel of what it is really like to live in Beijing. Of course Yanmei already knows this, but for me it is new. Similar to Taiwan the bed is very hard, like a box spring with no mattress. Even Yanmei doesn't like the hard beds anymore. To make it a bit more comfortable we moved the pillows from the couch to the bed.
Left is kitchen, right is bathroom, 2nd right is bedroom
The apartment is pretty nice, I'd estimate about 500 sqft, maybe a bit more. It even has a clothes washer, although no drier, so we hang our clothes everywhere to dry.
Kitchen
The TV has a lot of channels. There are at least three video game channels and two channels that always show games of Go. I've found I can watch NBA playoff games live in the morning (we're 12 hours ahead) but with Chinese announcers. I discovered one channel that plays Hollywood movies undubbed from 6pm to midnight. Since there is no Internet I watch that channel a lot. Finally saw Rocky V, and a pretty good movie called Doubt, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep. Yanmei recently discovered an English news channel.
Bathroom, washing machine but no dryer
We live in a pretty dense apartment complex. On the first floor outside there are restaurants, convenience stores, phone shops, etc. Since the weather is nice the restaurants set up tables and chairs outside. It always seems pretty active, even at say 9:30pm on a Tuesday night there will be people out drinking and eating on the patios.
The common hallways in the building have sound activated lights. I understand it makes sense to have the lights go off when no one is there, but sound sensors don't seem ideal. When we come back late at night we have to make noise to make the lights come on. Usually it takes stomping our feet loudly.
There is a morning market that sets up across the street every day. Originally Yanmei liked this, but then we found their produce wasn't good quality so we stopped going there. About a block away is a WuMart, which is a lot like Walmart, they sell just about everything (except deodorant). We ended up doing most of our grocery shopping at WuMart.
WuMart or Walmart?
We also bought a rice cooker there. After using it twice it didn't work very well so Yanmei wanted to return it. One of the things Yanmei likes in the US is most companies have a good return policy. In China they generally don't have this, but WuMart had a sign that said you could return within 14 days, so she wanted to return it. We took it back and she ended up in a heated discussion with two people at the customer service desk. BTW, this is a $15 rice cooker, not a big ticket item. Finally she told me they didn't believe it wasn't working and wanted to test it. So they actually got some rice and water and set about cooking a batch of rice! We didn't want to watch rice cook, so Yanmei gave them her phone number, and we left. They called about half an hour later and said it was working fine and said we were using too much water, so they wouldn't accept the return. So we just abandoned it at the store, no refund.
For some reason deodorant isn't common here. I wish Yanmei had told me that, I would have brought extra. She said Chinese don't have that problem, but based on some of the taxi drivers or the crowded subway on a hot afternoon, I have to disagree. 🙂
The nearest subway station is about a mile away. We take the subway almost everywhere we go. Since we don't want to walk a mile we take an unlicensed taxi every time. These are lined up outside the apartments waiting for customers. They are regular cars with a red LED light hanging from the rear view mirror that indicates they are for hire. It costs 10 yuan for a ride to the subway, which is about $1.50, so worth it. Where we are there do not seem to be many licensed taxis. Downtown there are a lot of taxis but they are almost impossible to flag down. They all use smartphone apps like Über. If you don't have the app you are not likely to get a cab. I should also mention all the taxis have seat covers which block the use of seatbelts in the back.
The Beijing subway is very good. It seems less crowded this time, although still busy. Yanmei said the price is more than double what it was 2 years ago, so that may explain it being less crowded. All bags have to be scanned, and some stations have an airport style metal detector with guards with wands. One time we went at rush hour and it was crowded so they just let everyone through without scanning anything, which makes me wonder what the point is. As an aside I feel the same way about airport security. Suddenly at Christmas because it is busy and people are running late we no longer need to remove our shoes, jackets or laptops, and we use the old metal detectors instead of the body scanners. So why do we need all those checks the rest of the year?
Some of the lines have screens in the tunnels that play ads. They must sync the refresh rate of the screen with the movement of the car because the images appear steady while the car is moving.
Subway ad in tunnel while moving
All the stations are announced in Mandarin and English. Amusingly I can understand the Beijing subway announcements better than I can understand the BART or TTC station announcements, which are usually garbled or at much too low volume.
The city is huge. For example it took us two hours and two transfers to visit one of Yanmei's friends who lives on the other side of town. We live near Huilongguan station on Line 13.
Based on purely anecdotal evidence I feel like there may be a real estate bubble here. There is still a lot of construction going on and many of Yanmei's family and friends already own second apartments. I don't know what the prices are like, but when everyone starts buying investment properties it can be a sign of a bubble. Also I think the stock market is in a bubble too. I heard on the aforementioned English news station that the Shanghai stock index is up over 110% in the last 12 months, despite the Chinese economy having its slowest growth in a decade. They also said over 45% of the listed stocks have P/E ratios greater than 100! That is a recipe for trouble, see the dot com bubble. We'll see, maybe everyone is buying properties because they doubled their money in the stock market.
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