New Picture from re-visiting a previous spot

I wrote about a visit to the resort, which is what they call a huge rest area  Ocean Park Resort on the highway from Seoul to Taean in a previous post, here.  Well, we stop there every time we go by it, in either direction.  It is huge as I say in the previous post and is a good place to watch people.  And the grilled corn is great.  I guess it is really roasted, not grilled, here's how it is cooked (right in front of your eyes).

The lady running the establishment, which is in sort of a food court running down the middle of the resort, takes out a previously shucked corn, and puts the holding stick in it and then thrusts into this little hut of fire jets that roar out on three sides while she holds the corn in there and rotates it.  I guess the machine there is for busy times when the place is packed and you would just shove the corn onto the spikes and they would rotate into the flame channel.

This time we got there just before lunch time and it was not a big crowd, just a few busses full of school kids on a field trip.  It was strange to see some western faces, but there were chaperones and students who were "white" like us and they really stand out.  I guess we do, too.  Between dinner and the bar Thursday night (more on that in a later post) we were walking through Taean and some of the teens would shout English at us, "where are you from", "hello", etc.  They were practising English because they are all taught it in school, but don't use it all that oftern outside the classroom.

And finally, what visit to the rest area Ocean Park Resort would be complete without a mention of the plumbing?  This is one of the 5 rows of men's urinals in the bathroom on the men's side.  You can see the proper toilet stalls on the far wall.  The stalls are polished wood.  I'll probably post on the variety of toilets int heis country sometime in the future.

Arriving in Seoul and a tour of a typical South Korean Hotel Room

We left Atlanta at 1 in the afternoon (12 Noon FWB Time) and arrived in Seoul at 5 PM the next day.  Since it is late and the traffic is horrible and it is a 3 hour drive (on a good day) to Taean where we work we stay the first night in Seoul at a Hotel near Highway 1. 

These pictures are from the Hotel Oskar.  We got there about 7PM and after bouncing through Seoul Rush hour traffic we got out of the car and I got my first real smell of Korea.  Everyplace smells.  Korea has a very distinctive odor (I tried to write aroma, to be polite, but that's not right, Korea smells) which is unmistakable.  On my first trip I thought this was the smell of drying fish, but it is not because there is no drying fish during Spring, that is a fall season event.

Anyway here is a tour of some of the things you see in every Korean mid-price hotel room.

The first thing you see in a Korean Hotel room is the entryway.  This is a little anteroom, just a little bigger than the width of the door.  Slippers are for walking in the room, which is straight ahead and there is a set of plastic slippers on the left (on the cute star mat) for walking in the bathroom.  Needless to say you take your street shoes off here and put on slippers depending on which part of the hotel room you will be in next.  In Korean tradition you don't walk on the (almost always wood) floor in your socks but with slippers.  They even give you disposable slippers at the airport when you send your shoes through x-ray.

Also, in every Hotel room is a water dispensor, like this one, hot water (and it is always HOT) on the left and cold water on the right.  Instant coffee with about 99.99999999999% sugar is provided in little tubes which you can see on the tray on the bottom right of this picture.

The tray of hair care (mostly) products.  Always, brushes, combs, hairspray, hair gel, facial lotions, q-tips.  Every hotel room (well, except for the very, very expensive ones) has this basket of goodies.  Notice also the plug strip on the left.  A good hotel is one that has this and internet access (Hotel Oskar did not) and mediocre ones make you move furniture to find a plug.

And, because I knew it had to be somewhere, I found the thing every single Hotel Room in Korea has.

747 Nose Cone

Interior and exterior views of the nose cone of the Boeing 747 that Korea Airlines flew from Atlanta to Korea.  I was fortunate to be placed in the first class cabin, but I wasn't in "first class" because they only operated Coach and Business Class on this flight.  Still Business class in the First class cabin was very nice.  The seats were the "lie flat" type and unlike the first trip I slept pretty well.  Did not get any food pictures, though.
The Korean gentlemen next to me photographed all of his food, which was strange because he only ate the Korean menu items.  Also strange was the fact that there was an empty seat next to his wife, we were sitting in Row 1, but he sat next to me the whole flight.

Catching up

The pink towels are in almost all of the hotel bathrooms, they are thin, diaphonous and seem to have to real particular usefulness.  I am told that before the Olympics that this was all the towel you could ever expect in a Korean Hotel room.  Thankfully I am here post-olympics.

Welcome Facebookers

This is my Korean blog. Below you will find posts from my first trip in the fall of 2007 and above current (well, kind of current) posts for the 2010 trip.

Back to South Korea

The return of the pink towel can only mean one thing. I'm back in Korea and ready to blog on my (non-work) adventures. Watch this space for more photos and words as I return to the land of Kimchee and pink towels!