Traditional Korean Dinner (Restaurant)

We went again to a traditional Korean restaurant with one of the Koreans from the test range. Just a note, we don't go to real Korean restaurants without a Korean escort. This sign had all the English we would see of restaurant materials.Here is our food. They put it on the floor next to the grates that will be over the heaters for us to cook our pork ribs. Of course we sit on the floor (on very thin pillows) with our legs crossed under us. Hard duty for old men like me. Also there are no rest rooms, so I tried not to drink too quickly.

These are the side dishes. Apparently for most big Korean meals, eaten at a long table by a relatively big group (more than 4 based on what I've seen, a limited sample to say the least), there are always a variety of side dishes. The fish there in the middle is cold and has the skin on, but is cooked. Squid and shrimp (both cooked, in the restaurant last Sunday night was thin strips of raw beef, but tonight everything was cooked) to the right, middle forward is apples in mayonnaise (I think this is at every Korean dinner), left corner is some gelatinous thing I couldn't identify even after tasting. Above the apples in mayonnaise is crab in kimchee seasonings, they said it was soft shell, but it was hard shell. It is shrimp and crab season now and next week I will be hosting a crab and shrimp boil. Mushrooms and gralic got grilled next to the pork ribs.
The waitress cuts the meat into smaller slices (except for the part near the bones) and turns the meat for you. Our Korean escort was impatient (and had the hots for the waitress) and cut the meat himself sometimes. He used scissors just like her.
One of the side dishes was a hot seafood soup that had this in it. After eating it I don't know what it was. It looked like a small brain, but tasted like a clam or a mussel. The engineer from California wouldn't eat it and he's eaten everything so far. I ate a couple. I'll post and let ya'll know if it kills me.

The waitress let me take her picture. She was working like six of these tables and had almost no help, although a 12 or 13 year old girl did start helping her later, but she kept up with our food all night without complaining (well, no complaints I could understand).
Here's the stuff that is most likely to kill me. This is soju, originally a rice based liquor, but now more based on sweet potatoes. It is the Korean form of Vodka and not bad. I am using a few old man tricks so I don't drink too much or get two wasted. I doubt I'll be able to avoid it for the whole trip though because the engineers have in their minds that one night (probably next Thursday) I will be the target. If my tricks work that night I will brag about it.
The restaurant is a family one. In spite of the fact that a lot of the adults in the rooms were drinking heavily the kids seemed to be having a good time, too. They seem amazed to see non-Koreans, but mostly friendly. These two girls were at the table behind me and kept trying to dodge my camera.
As we were leaving the grandma of this family was nice and bowed to us. I asked in English if I could take the picture of the entire family, but the grandfather said no, although in a very friendly way. In the end he made a big "X" by crossing his forearms in front of him. It was funny.
This is the entrance/exit where you leave/get your shoes. These kids were teasing one of my engineers when I came out. As we left the building they were singing some phrase over and over. I hope it wasn't naughty.

Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore

Saw this today coming back from lunch. My Korean host was showing me around a castle compound from 1600's that had been destroyed in 19th century civil rebellion and we were passing peasant houses now behind the gates and I saw thisfish drying on the line next to the family's laundry. I'm pretty sure the plant in the background is kudzu.

Ill let everybody assimilate that previous post

then I'll post again on dinner at a "traditional" Korean restaurant (you sit on the floor), Mak-ju, So-Ju and the Korean problem with illegal immigration

But before I go to bed here's a typical picture from my days here in lovely TaeAn

Rick warned me

Here is the first thing I saw when I gotto my room in the Thema Motel, Thema Hotel, ot Thematel (the literature varies)Yes, that is velvet for the duvet cover and satin pillow covers (with a sanitary linen coverlet). Big screen TV in right corner of picture. Channel 2 has 24 hours of soft-core movies that might be on Skinemax late night, only all in Korean. There are 3 boxes of tissues in this room and a 4 pack box of foil covered latex items (only 3 in the pack, I found the missing latex item in the bedside trash just before I tried to go to sleep) along with various oils, scents and lubricants.

The bathroom floor was wet when I walked in. Apparently that is how the maid service cleans the bathroom, they just hose everything down with the hose from the bathtub, which (in case you didn't guess) is a full sized hot tub with Jacuzzi jets and a full scratched up bottom. The glass enclosure on the right of the picture is the shower. It looks like this those dispensers have shampoo and a skin softener. That is a bar of soap in the soap dish. I made the mistake of lifting it to examine it. Of course there was a hair. Short. Dark.

And there is my pink towel I am told that in the DongMun, the old hotel they used to use here, this was all the towel you got. Of course there are hairs in this as well.

I couldn't unpack because there are no dressers, no drawers, no wardrobes, nothing that might indicate the occupiers of the room intended to stay more than an hour or so. There are two hooks for hanging jackets and shirts, and a shoe horn to put your shoes back on (you took them off and left then between the inner an outer doors.

So I am getting ready to go to bed in this STD factory when I go to throw away an old bookmark in the trashcan under the bed stand when I find the aforementioned latex item, which was in a condition that showed my room had been occupied earlier in the day and utilized for its apparent main purpose (not housing engineering managers in town to install radars, apparently). Probably it was no more than 1 to 2 hours before I got here.

There were no sweet dreams that night.

Surpise!

When friends had previously worked in this part of Korea, they had made certain exaggerated (I thought) claims about an old hotel called the Dong Mun. But the new hotel we are staying in is supposed to be light years better. Well, I guess I misunderestimated Korean Culture. The "towel" pictured below was only one of the surprises I received when I checked into the Thema Hotel TaeAn. Strap in and hide the kids, the next post is going to be PG rated and delve into some seriously alien stuff (to me anyway).

OK this is different

The drive from Seoul to Tae'An took about 4 hours. It is "interstate" all the way and Korean Highways have the same type of signs and numbers as the US, a blue shield with a red toop and the road number inside of it.

We missed one of our turns but were able to recover. Overall it was like any interstate in the US. Crowded (but maybe 10 times worse) in and around the city of Seoul, and then plesaent in between. Saw lots of factories and farms and country side. Korea is basically a bunch of hills and mountains and valleys. All the valleys have towns or farmlands and most of the hills are lush and green even at the end of October.

Here is the rest area where we stopped. Yes, they call it a resort and there were about a million people in there on a Sunday afternoon. The bathroom may be the biggest men's room on the planet. I mean it. If you took all of the men's rooms in the Superdome and put them all together they wouldn't have the area or numbers of toilets and sinks as this men's room has. I doubt that all the Stuckey's on the planet toether don't have that many toilets. The rest of the resort was taken up with food stalls. Hundreds of individual foodstalls. I had sweet and sour chicken and sweet potato sticks. Those were just like potato sticks, but made from sweet potatos.

The reason the rest are is there is because it is at the base of this:
The second longest bridge in Asia. 7 Kilometers and more. The exit to this rest area is a sprial corkscrew down to the parking area.

On to TaeAn and the surprise I should have been prepared for, but wasn't.

Day 2 in Seoul

Breakfast was bacon, eggs, fried rice, black sesame flakes, smoked duck, smoked salmon, 2 different kinds of caviar (black is much better than red), bamboo leaf dumbling rice thing, japanese seaweed soup, potatoes and some purple thing that looked like a potato but wasn't. I could imagine Morimoto whipping that up on Iron Chef Battle Turnip or something.

Then we were off to Itaewon before heading out of town. Itaewon is sort of the international seedy clubbing and shopping area where American GI's hang out after hours. We went in the day time so we didn't see any barfights or have to dodge the working girls on "hooker hill". When you are shopping there it helps to be the first (or last, I'm told) customer because it makes bargaining easier. Take your time, negotiate, walk away several times, pay in cash.

After about noon it got kinda crowded, but unlike yesterday there were lots of different types of faces, black, white, arab, Chinese, you name it. There was even a guy with an Alabama golf hat. Tourists were definately here as was Outback, MacDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks. It was a relief to see something that was non-Korean. Also all the shop keepers spoke english and they had a little bit of everything, even Shawerma.

Parking in Seoul

I think this is a good idea for parking in big cities:

We saw lots of these as we walked around. It's like a ferris wheel for your car.

Update Promise

I have to drive my mech tech to Incheon Airport tomorrow, which means I have to get up early. I promise a major update coming soon, but it might not be tonight.

Random Picture of Life in Korea

Can you tell what this is ? Leave me a comment.

Day 1 in Seoul

After 14 hours of flight, and hour and a half at the airport, exchanging money and trying to get the rental car (note to self, when requesting a Navigation System in the rental, must specify ENGLISH), and 2 and a half hours to the hotel, I had light meal (Bulgogi and kimshee) and a glass of wine (Chilean Cabernet is popular on KAL and at the hotel) and went to bed.

I woke up sore all over, see previous post.

I met my colleague for breakfast, which is a buffet at the Hotel and very international in the variety of dishes. I ate smoked salmon (almost Lox, but not quite) with cream cheese capers, onion and no bagels. I had to use a sourdough roll. Scrambled eggs, rice, bacon, smoked duck, and angel hair, cold in tomato sauce with mush rooms and Caviar. Lots of caviar. They had kimshee on the buffet, but I had had some last night and did not want to have more for breakfast. I did not have the japanese sea weed soup or the "snail porridge", whatever that was.

Here is the outside view of my hotel. I am not going to try to write the names of the areas or neighborhoods in Seoul because I can't spell them and they were all in Korean(except for Itaewon), the written language in South Korea is actually called Hangul.

Went for a walk down toward the convention center, COEX, in the neighborhood where the 4 Season's Hotel is on a hill. Found lots of back alley restaurants and street vendors but in over 5 hours of walking only saw 2 and 1/2 western faces. Very homogenous culture. It made England look like a positive den of diversity!

We were looking for a brew pub or three we had found in Ron's guide book, but pubs don't open in Seoul on Saturday until 4 pm. So we ended up at this place:
Jacksonville! Even though there were almost no westerners anywhere near us most of the shops and restaurants had signs and names in English. And they were for the most part ridiculous, like this one. I had thin sliced pork and octopus in red pepper. Here and in a couple of other restaurants/bars I had trouble ordering a coke. Still don't know why.Yes, that is me with a red pepper coated octopus tentacle, along with standard bowl of rice, kimshee on my right and a random bowl of soup broth with bean sprouts. So far nothing has risen to the level of flingy-lingy hot.

Wandered around a bit more admiring the architecture and getting caught in flash crowds (mostly when trying to cross a street) we finally made it to the Irish Pub that was in the guide book. They were having a Jack Daniel's festival.

In fact nearly every restaurant we saw had some kind of festival going on. The 4 restaurants in the hotel had a festival board so you could know what festival was going on where. The Tivoli bar was having a scotch festival, the western restaurant/breakfast buffet was having an espresso festival, the Japanese restaurant was having a wood mushroom festival, etc.

Going back in to the hotel we saw this:
Apparently Saturday in Seoul Hotels is wedding day?! Not sure. I expect there are going to be lots of unexplained things.

The rest of our engineers had arrived and we ending up eating at the hotel again. I had a BLT and a coke. This hotel does know how to cook bacon.

Stay tuned. The next day I go shopping in Itaewon and drive down to TaeAn. Exciting, huh?
I wonder if I can find grits in Itaewon?

2 Days in Seoul

Because of the difficulty in getting flights I had to stay in Seoul 2 nights, waiting for the rest of the engineers to get in-country before we headed to TaeAn. I had to drive an Opirus (basically a luxury edition of the Hyundai Sonata) from the Incheon Airport into the heart of Seoul at rush hour on a Friday. Fortunately my Arab genes kicked in and I embrassed the chaos and made the 30kM drive in only 2 and 1/2 hours. Basically the rules of driving in Seoul are the biggest vehicle wins, and if you are both the same size, bravest wins. I was pretty brave, but I kept showing signs of weakness.This is the room at the Seoul Palace Hotel. It is a nice hotel just south of the Han river that runs through Seoul. 4 Restaurants and a buffet breakfast, you can't beat that with a stick.

When you enter the room there a slot for the (old school) key and the lights come on. There is a control panel on the right side of the bed where you can then reduce the lights. It took a while to figure out because the button labels were in English, but didn't correspond to where the lights were. The bed felt like a sheet of thick plywood over a thin box spring. But the pillows were good. Extensive mini-bar, but I'm too cheap.


Huge flat screen TV, but not HD and only 5 channels. One was BBC, others Japanese or Korean. I watched part of the ALCS Game 6 on the Japanese Channel.

But the piece de resistance was the toilet.
Yes, it is the finest Korean robotics applied to the bidet. The controls are labeled completely in Hangul so the only English word was 'Auto'. I pressed that and boy did I get a surprise. Evidently it was invented by women because if I didn't finish my business fast enough it gave a high pitched ear splitting alarm. That's incentive. Also, the little spigot that sprays the water comes up and salutes you when you come into the room and put the key in the slot.