A city with Seoul!

Last weekend, we had a three-day weekend, as the celebration of Buddha's Birthday was on Friday.  It was definitely a special day:

Shop door in Insadong, cute

Not ones to let a three-day weekend go by without making some sort of plan, we decided this would be the time to go to Brian's homeland, Korea!  For those of you that don't know, Brian's mother, Joan, found out she was pregnant soon after Brian's father, Randy, deployed to Korea with the US Army.  I believe, as the story goes, Joan sent Randy a telegram to inform him of his impending new role... and moved to Korea shortly afterwards.  Brian was born at a military hospital in Seoul, and lived in Korea until he was about 6 months old.  He had never been back to Asia until we were on a flight moving to Hong Kong, and this was certainly his first trip back to Korea since he was six months old.  I was wondering if the smell of kimchi would bring out any strange behavior, but, alas, it did not. 

Randy & Joan circa 1975

Joan & Brian - doesn't she look like Lisa (with Brian's nose??)  ;-)

Downtown Uijeongbu, 1975

This trip wasn't so much about seeing the sights in Seoul as it was trying to find familiar buildings from when the Olivers originally lived there.  We had quite a few pictures from 1975, and the address "Sam Dong 117".  Joan & Randy lived north of Seoul in a town called Uijeongbu, which was where the military base, Camp Stanley was and still is.  On our first day there, Brian and I took the train up to Uijeongbu, and immediately checked out a map:

Sam-Dong.  Check.  Basically means "District 3"

Next, we had seen a very distinct church in a few pictures, so we decided to try to get as high as we could to try to find this building:

Uijeongbu, 1975

You might be wondering why we didn't just google map it... we tried, but the map couldn't find this address... so, we thought either the address was wrong, the address had changed over the years, or possibly the building had been torn down.  Things had changed a bit, you see:

Uijeongbu, 2013

This was actually the building we climbed to the top of.  We took the elevator to the top floor, and then found a little staircase that took us out to the roof... was this something I would have done without my dare-devil husband?  Probably not.  But, it was kind of fun to feel like we were on a spy mission.  We got to the top of the building, but, unfortunately could not find this church for the life of us!

Feeling disappointed after our mission failed

What we did find was a sort of shady "spa" on the top floor.  It was for men only, and the owner definitely was not happy to see me there.  He slammed the door, and we got the hell out of there. 

all I got a picture of were the sandals outside the door...

... and the name of the shop, which roughly translated into "Station of Sour, 24-hour"... okay.

We walked around a bit, and stopped first at a bakery for some snacks.  We had brought the iPad with all of the pictures on it, and I thought "heck, let's just try".  So, I pulled out the iPad, and started trying to communicate what we were doing.  The people didn't speak very much English, but they understood what we meant.  They were very excited, and RAN to get their friend that spoke English.  She confirmed that that address no longer existed, but gave us the number of the local real estate office thinking they could help.  Really sweet, kind people that totally went out of their way to try to help.

We next walked toward the base to see if we could find the church.  While we couldn't find that, we did run into a very cute little old Korean lady who was also very excited to see us.  She kept pointing to our noses and saying something over and over again.  I later confirmed that, yes, she was telling us we had big noses, and, yes, that is a slang term for Americans.  She was too cute to be mad about it.  Okay, and it is kind of true anyways.  ;)

We stopped for lunch feeling pretty bummed that we couldn't find the apartment, the church, or anything at all in the pictures from Brian's parents.  We picked the right place to eat lunch though... there were pictures all over the walls of all the GI's that eat there.  Turns out this place had been open since 1965, and the owner just happened to be there.  We enjoyed our Korean lunch (Brian had a pork-a-palooza), and then "Mr. Lee" insisted on taking us to try to find the church and the apartment.  He was probably in his 70's, and, while helpful, a bit senile at times!  ;)

Brian and his pork

This was the restaurant we ate at

Mr. Lee and my husband... fast friends

First, Mr. Lee thought that the church had been knocked down, and that a barber shop had been built in its place.  So, we went to the barber shop to confer.  I didn't get a picture of all the Korean men getting their hair dyed black, but it was pretty funny.  I have never seen so many men coloring their hair!  There was a lot of conversation in Korean, but then they determined that that was not right.

Shot through the mirror... the consultation with the barber

Next, we stopped at a shop... I think the owner was Mr. Lee's friend.  They looked and looked at the pictures, did a lot of talking in Korean, and finally...

Conferring with the shop owner...

 ... the shop owner took us to his car, where he punched the address into the GPS.  No dice.

GPS says... address does not exist...

 And then we were walking again...

We stopped at another one of Mr. Lee's friend's places... when Brian asked what they did here, the answer was, "you know, poker, smoking...".  As you can see from the pictures, there are no books on the shelves, and it was a big open room with just one computer.  We are not sure what this place was, but pretty sure it might have been Korean mafia.  They determined that one of the shops in one of the pictures was a pharmacy, so this guy is pointing out his friend's contact information.  This guy had been a pharmacist in town for 40 years, so he thought this guy could help us...

 So, next, we took a taxi with Mr. Lee across town to visit the pharmacist...

 Unfortunately, the pharmacist had NO idea where this place was.

Please, can you help us??

By this point, we had spent 2.5 hours with Mr. Lee, and, to be honest, we were getting a little weary.  We had seen a map that pretty clearly showed that "117" was no longer, but Mr. Lee wanted to keep trying.  After the pharmacy, we told Mr. Lee bye-bye and thanked him for his help. He was such a kind man, and wanted us to come back the next day to try again.  We just smiled and waved.  :)

We did find one thing that Joan and Randy should recognize:

Camp Stanley!

 We returned to Seoul, and the lovefest with the Koreans continued.  We walked through this park, and I kind of noticed that there were a lot of old men there:

Pretty consistent demographic

 When we came out of the park, there were even more old men... one of them came up to us and said "This is where the old men hang out.  They have great coffee."  He insisted that we have a cup, and insisted again that he pay for it.  Very kind people!  And, darn good coffee too!

Old men drinking coffee!  ;-)

 

My favorite old man. 

We had an amazing vegetarian dinner that night at a place that served "temple food", or food like monks would eat at a monastery.  I'm pretty sure that they don't consume the QUANTITY that we had, but the food was quite nice.

Gorgeous lotus flower lamps at the restaurant

 Check out this spread!  This was only part of it!

And there was a dance show afterwards!

After dinner, we went to a bar, which they call "Hof" in Korea... funny that they adopted this German word for "garden".  :)

Brian says "I like Korean beer"

The next morning, we wanted to do a few touristy things... but we didn't get far before my husband got pulled aside by some school kids wanting to do a survey about "K-Pop", or Korean pop music.  He even did the "Gangnum Style" dance with them!

 

After the interview, we took the subway to the part of town that was made famous by Psy, Gangnum.  Gangnum just means "south of the river", and it is the part of town with lots of rich people and glitzy buildings.  Like this:

I couldn't resist...

We also stopped by the Korean palace... very similar set-up to what we had seen in Beijing, but to be honest much, much smaller and not nearly as impressive!

 

 

That night, we did a food tour of Seoul with 6 other Americans visiting the city.  It was super fun, and I loved trying all of the different food and drinks... although by the end of the night, I was about ready to be done with kimchi!!

Tofu & Kimchi - one of the many kimchi dishes we had!

All in all, it was a fantastic trip.  We have fallen in love with a few places in Asia, and Seoul is definitely one of them.  It reminded us a lot of Japan - the people were very kind and friendly, and the city was very clean.  But then there are parts that also reminded us of China - the palace & architecture definitely share some similarities.  As always, I just feel so lucky to get to be seeing all of these places with my best friend.  We are going to keep trying to see as much of Asia as we can, and sharing as much as will fit into our blog with you!!  Big hugs from us to you!

Good night, Seoul!