As a traveler I think the most important phrase is “Thank you.” That was what I learned to say before each country we traveled to. Even if you can't speak the local language and talk in English or gestures, it is nice to be able to thank someone in their native language. Second most important for me is “I'm sorry” or “excuse me”. That is very useful when on crowded buses or trains and you have to push by someone to get off. Third is probably “where is the bathroom?” or simply “toilet?” which gets the message across.
Anyway, here is how to say “Thank you”, in every country we visited, at least how it sounded to me. Please don't get too offended if I mangled your native language, I was trying 🙂 :
Taiwan (mandarin), China: Shi-shi
Korea: Gamsameeda
Egypt (Arabic): Shockram
Zurich – Switzerland, Vienna – Austria (German): Danke
Geneva – Switzerland (French), France: Merci
Spain: Gracias
Italy, Vatican City: Gratzie
Hungary: Kusonome
Czech Republic: Dekuji
Poland: Dziekuji (very similar to Czech)
Norway: Takk (pronounced like talk)
Denmark: Tack (like tact)
Iceland: this is the one I didn't learn. Supposedly it is similar to Danish (tack) but they add several syllables to differentiate from Denmark. Just saying “tack” is frowned upon, so I went with “Thank you” which everyone understood.
We had breakfast with Favid and Elizabeth before they caught the train back to their town and we packed up and headed to the airport.
Wagon wheel snack in Korea
Before I wrap up Korea, I want to relay a story David told me. In the US we hear about the movie “The Interview” and how it upset North Korea. That was minor in South Korea compared to a recent incident that we heard Little to nothing about in the US.
First some background. On the DMZ tour we learned there is the Kaesong industrial complex just north of the DMZ that about 120 South Korean companies invest in. They get cheap labor from over 50,000 NK workers to build their products while NK gets the economic boost. This was one of the purposes of the railway link I mentioned in a previous post, to ship the goods south from the complex. They have to use trucks now since the railway is closed.
Anyway David told us that the North Koreans love wagon wheel snack cakes, Choco-pies, or Orion pies as they are called in China. Basically marshmallow between two cookies covered in chocolate. They love them so much that when they work overtime in the factory complex they accept payment in wagon wheels instead of money. They got so popular that they became black market currency and NK banned them.
The incident started when certain nongovernmental groups in South Korea started sending boxes of wagon wheels over the DMZ with balloons, with anti-NK government propaganda in them, knowing that the NK citizens wouldn't be able to resist picking up a box of wagon wheels. This resulted in the NK soldiers trying to shoot down the balloons. The South Koreans seeing the North Koreans shooting, started to return fire. Thus a shoot out almost started over wagon wheels. Luckily cooler heads prevailed.
Anyway we made it back to our apartment in Beijing without incident.
Saturday we got a bit of a late start, but the weather was great., We met David and Elizabeth at 11am and walked to Namsangol Hanok village, which is a park with a restored traditional Korean village from about two hundred years ago. I guess it would be an upscale village because they had the emperor's father in law's house there.
Elizabeth and David and us in front of a kimchi hutStick tossing game
Anyway as we approached the entrance someone came up to us, I assume because we were foreigners, and said they had a free English guide service to allow students to practice their English. We agreed to use the guides and we were assigned two middle school girls, Crystal and Ji Won. I put a little pressure on them by telling them that both David and Elizabeth were English teachers.
They turned out to be pretty great guides. They had quite a bit of knowledge about the village and their English was remarkably good. They didn't have long canned speeches like most professional guides, and they were genuine. I asked a couple of tangential questions and they were able to answer those too.
David, Elizabeth, me and our two guides
Yanmei likes the design of traditional Korean houses, or at least those of royalty.
After that we had lunch at a French cafe. Most big cities had a sample of cuisines from around the world, but Seoul seems to have more, especially the chains. In certain areas it could be like any US city, with Taco Bell, Starbucks, Baskin Robbins, McDonalds lining the street. I assume this is because the US 8th Army is stationed there and they are catering to all the soldiers and families.
In a tea house
After lunch we went to Insadong which is a shopping district that also houses many traditional Korean tea houses. David and Elizabeth took us down a few narrow alleys to find their favorite tea house.
I ordered a citronella tea because I was suffering from a cold. Yanmei ordered ginseng tea. She felt the ginseng tea really worked and gave her a lot of energy. It also gave her a severe case of flatulence. Luckily for her Insadong was crowded and noisy, so no one could hear her. 🙂
We did a little shopping or browsing in Insadong. They told us that just a few years ago it was mostly locals at Insadong, but now it is becoming more touristy and they have have a lot of shops selling the tourist knickknacks.
By good luck, May 16th is Buddha's birthday, so they have the Buddhist Lantern Parade that day, which is one of the biggest parades of the year in Seoul. David and Elizabeth haven't seen the parade even though they've been in Korea for nine years. So our plan was to have a traditional Buddhist temple dinner then go watch the lantern parade.
Unfortunately either our information was wrong or the parade was early, because when we came out to watch the parade it had almost completely passed. We didn't get to see any Buddhist monks with lanterns, but we did see a fire breathing dragon float making Godzilla roaring noises.
The temple had lots of lanterns though.
It was so great to see some old friends in Korea. I'm really glad we decided to add this side trip to our journey.
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