Hey Seoul Sista

Day 1 in Seoul: Our first day here was hard, hard, hard. We were all very tired after the trip – even though the flight was great. The weather went from cold to hot to cold in a minute’s notice so I was consistently dressed poorly and we made a number of planning blunders that cost us points. We got back to the hotel last night somewhat discouraged by our first day’s efforts. The key challenge to yesterday was a hike up a pretty large hill in the middle of Seoul. We left that until mid-afternoon, hoping for a cool, clear patch of weather, but when we went to start the hike, the path was closed. Apparently hiking in Seoul can only occur between the hours of 10 and 3 PM (who knew???).

Second frustrating Seoul fact… virtually every temple, shrine and national monument can be seen ONLY as a part of a tour group and the tours are divided up throughout the day based upon the language spoken on the tour. There is a strict policy against allowing any interlopers into a different language tour. So your ability to see anything – as part of the English tour – is limited to twice per day and you better time all of those perfectly or you are out of luck. Rainey and I talked our way into one Korean tour for the Secret Garden by telling the ticket seller that our plane was leaving and we desperately needed to see the Secret garden before we left. But that was our only lucky break., Besides that one nice lady, we were consistently turned away. This is us at the Secret Garden... a neat, ravine type garden hidden literally in the middle of Seoul. And the Cherry Blossoms are out at the moment, which are so beautiful. Weirdest experience: We had to go to a place called Dragon Hill, Spa which is a large building in the middle of the city that has been turned into part gym (with indoor pool and work-out facility),

part Dave & Buster’s (with video games and putt-putt golf), part spa with treatments and saunas. Sort of a Disneyland for Adults. Yesterday, an estimated 4,782 Korean people were there (talk about crowded). It is divided into women and men floors and not a single one of them had ANY nudity issues. They wander the halls naked, they sit on the couches and chat naked, they blow dry their hair naked… Emily was totally befuddled by the sight of that much female flesh in one small area. We had to stay there for an hour and try out some part of the facilities, so I opted for a massage. What an odd event. I was led into a room filled with beds and naked women… butts in the air.. no sheet or covering. I dutifully laid down and then got pulverized (like chicken getting ready to be made into a chicken fried steak) by a stocky – and very well-muscled - woman. At the end of the pummeling, she started wiping me down with warm clothes (which felt pretty good) until I realized that she was scrubbing out under my arm pits and between the crack in my butt… she left no spot un-shined. At that point, I broke into the giggles. We had a panic attack late in the day because we had left one of our mandatory eating challenges to do over dinner. Then, as we went from restaurant to restaurant asking for this specific dish, we were told repeatedly that no restaurant served that dish on Sundays. If you do not eat your mandatory challenges, you get ZERO points for the entire leg. I was freaking out. We finally left that area and took a taxi all across town to another, very busy restaurant section of town and started again. There, we finally found a place that would sell us the very-yucky boiled chicken in dishwater soup that we had to have. I almost cried with relief when they brought it to the table. That one was too close for comfort. My new mission is to finish our mandatory challenges earlier in the day from now on as my old heart cannot take that level of stress. This is exactly what you feel like after a day on Great Escape....