The Bizarre Bear, and Other Pictures: Korea Picture Tour pt2

This one is a bit long; no real over-arching theme.

DMZ, cool giant fish market, da bear, another pretty palace, Korean food market (cool), Texas&cool architecture, and a tacky lovers' ritual at Seoul Tower

Sarah and I also went on a tour of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) together. It is really scary if you are rightfully scared of North Korea, which legally (according to them) could come marching it at a moments notice. Very much a worthwhile experience.

Rice fields look different in Korea.

Looking toward the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The white bridge on the middle left is where the South Korean POWs came over when the cease fire began.

This is a graphical representation of a tunnel that the South Koreans discovered in the 70s. Me and Sarah got to walk down there (but no pictures allowed). This tunnel was dug by the North Koreans to invade the South, it is one of four discovered, but there are thought to be hundreds.

Probably the coolest place, but not a cool picture. This is where we actually get to see into North Korea from the South. I believe there is a picture of President Obama looking over this wall.

Afterward I went to a fish market.

Colorful fish market!

It's huge!

I thought this was another cool picture.

I went on a last palace tour the next day. I was pretty tired of Korean palaces.

Can someone explain this to me?

And the actual palace:

Brown. Very...brown.

Green.

Ooo. More brown. And brownish green AND brownish red.

Okay, I do think these pictures are pretty nice. I'm just reminded how bored I was when I was here.

And it was a paid tour. I paid for the boredom.

But at least I got some nice pictures I guess.

My favorite picture from my last palace day.

Back to my comfort zone: a bustling food market after the palace.

gotta love it

I ate this. It wasn't too bad, though not too good. But it cost me 300 baht/$10 US Whhaaaaat???

Everything's bigger in...Korea

I do have a soft spot for architecture:

Cool building, grainy picture.

 Later we went to Seoul Tower. The area around the tower and the tower itself is know as a lovers destination for...Asia apparently.

This bizarre bench is especially made for couples. In the back you can see thousands of padlocks with love notes attached to them.

Here is a closeup. It was impossible to show the sheer scope and breadth of the number of padlocks around.

 These lovers' padlocks had all different languages written on them. Obviously Korean was the most common language, with English there as well.

But the interesting thing was that I think Thai was the second most common language to see.

Just in case you are geographically challenged, Korea and Thailand are NOWHERE NEAR each other, so this is rather bizarre. It is, however, partially for some cultural reasons that I will not comment upon now.

Tacky, no?

Jeff says that Seoul is considered the romantic city of Asia (really???), and Seoul Tower the most romantic place in the most romantic city in Asia.

Honestly, all I thought about it was that Seoul is the ugliest and least exciting metropolis I've been in; and Seoul Tower the least beautiful overlook of a city I've seen. I didn't even put a picture of it here!

That concludes my pictures of Seoul and the surrounding area. Anyway, interesting pictures. Probably should have edited this post shorter, but whatever.