KOREA 2014: DAY 8 ~ SEOUL: DMZ, Myeongdong, Dongdaemun

24 OCT 2014

First itinerary of the day: visiting the DMZ. There are a lot of day tours from Seoul which you can find and book online or via your hotel reception but congratulations for finding my blog, I have a good tip for you to follow:

Book from VVIP Travel. They are basically the main/largest agency that eventually conducts the tour. All other agencies/hotels will arrange the pick-up for you and all of the tourists will gather onto the same bus from VVIP Travel and that is where you incur additional charges. 

Guideline:

A half day tour (without JSA) should cost you 40,000KRW and a full day tour (with JSA) should cost  you 130,000KRW

I personally booked my tour via this website:

http://www.dmztours.com/seoul_dmz_tours.htm

and got an email reply from Mr Choi rather quickly =)

Question: What's the main difference between the half day and full day tour (with and without JSA)?

JSA tour is the only part of the tour where you will actually get a glimpse into North Korea itself; and get your passport stamped with the special chop. Note I did not do the full day tour so this is simply knowledge from my research before making the decision and from what my tour guide informed us about. Basically on the half day tour you will not see a single North Korean.

We felt that we didn't need to do the full day tour and to be honest we felt that the time period was a bit too long and draining (cough ahjumma) and that we didn't feel the need to endanger our lives doing the JSA tour considering we are still in the middle of war.

There's a lot of things to note and preparations to be made prior visiting the JSA and a good place to start would be here: http://www.visitseoul.net/en/article/article.do?_method=view&m=0006002001004&p=&art_id=40660&lang=en

Back to my day; breakfast was donut and iced coffee purchased the night before:

And then we went down to do our check-out, leave our luggage behind and await our driver to pick us up. He was early and I caught him going to the reception to ask for me and told him that I was the customer. We were then ushered to a mini van where a couple was already present. We then went over to two other hotels to pick other guests before arriving in a bus.

So this is basically what happens; all sub-agents and representatives will pick up their guests and load them on the buses; we had two in total.

Our guide was a South Korean ex-marine; CK and he utilized both his connections and military experience to provide us a fulfilling, exciting and aggressive tour. I liked him. A lot.

First stop: the purchase of tickets.

And this is the main reason why you need to get yourself on one of these tours instead of trying to visit the place yourself. CK told us that some of the China visitors actually spend the night there so they are first in line to purchase the tickets. The second bus was slightly delayed so we had to spend about half an hour there waiting before we could board the bus again to pass the security area.

We took a toilet break and walked around a bit before heading up the bus punctually. There isn't much there but there is a park on top of the hill and an amusement park



Anyway after we're done with the ticket purchase, we're good to go through the security checkpoint. On a tour bus, a soldier will come up the bus and all of us are to hold up our passports flipped to the page with our photo ID and hold it up against our faces. Note that no phototaking is allowed.

After going through the checkpoint, we are off to visit the DMZ area with the first stop being the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel. It is a rather physically exhausting journey down and up the tunnel. You first have to deposit all your belongings in the locker and note no phototaking is allowed. Once in, you will have a long walk downhill; at a 12degree? angle so walking down with 3inch heels was a bit of a killer on my ankles. Once you reach the base, it is a straight flat walk within a narrow tunnel which barely allows single flow of traffic in both directions and anyone above the height of 160cm will have to bend down. Some of the taller caucasians found it a bit too painful and hence turning back midway. Reaching the end, all you're awarded with is a dead end with a tiny peephole within a concrete wall where you can look into part of the tunnel which belongs to North Korea and it looks...the same as what you've been walking through the whole time. Thing to note; the powder stains left behind on the rock walls due to the dynamites.

And these cute figurines are found outside the building:



These triangular signs are for land mines; these areas are still constantly being searched for more of those lying around left behind from the war times.


Getting a picture with this sculpture and the signage is hard due to the large amount of people; bad luck on us having meet kids who were on a school trip this very day.


CK then led us to the exhibition room where you learn about the history of the war. Really interesting read about how North Koreans try to escape to the South, assassinations, murders etc.



Then, we were led to the back entrance of the theatre (secret that CK shared) and once the people exited, we charged in and occupied the front rows =) The documentary was short and it was very educational. I will confess that I did not know much about the history between North and South Korea so this was enlightening. I was also able to make the link between this and Busan's UN war memorial. If you don't know this; North and South are still at war as we speak, they merely signed a cease fire treaty. These infiltration tunnels we can visit are barely a few out of hundreds of possible holes dug by the North Koreans to launch an attack on South Korea with Seoul being the main target.

After being fed with loads of knowledge, we were quickly herded onto the bus and made our way towards the Dorasan Station; a train station which eventually aims to have a train travel up to North Korea. As a momento, we are all allowed to pay 500Won (50cents) for a ticket as a souvenir and gain entry onto the tracks and should the train station ever operate, we are allowed to use this same ticket for a one way trip to North Korea =) Exciting much?

Here are pictures:














Note that CK was being a strict captain screaming at us and I swear I RAN up the bus hahaha....

But all was good because we were rewarded entry to a forbidden place where we could enjoy a short movie clip and beautiful view at the theatre at the Dora Observatory.




CK said it was to make up for the bad view due to bad weather. Enjoy these pictures..to be honest I don't even know which parts are North Korea. Sorry.





Final stop of the DMZ was a shop where we could get our hands on souvenirs. I bought a pin and HM and KH bought some stuff as well and....a huge juicy red apple! HM said the ahjumma helped her pick the nice ones =)





CK gave us a final treat en-route back to Seoul by passing through a small road within the unification village, showing us the houses of all the rich people. Basically, the people who fought in the war are given this area and a lot of land to produce goods which are specially sold to the government. Rich farmers who don't pay taxes.

Back in Seoul, CK brought us to the Ginseng shop where we didn't get anything. A lot of China tourists do buy as far as I know; thing to note: there's a different between Korean, Chinese and American ginseng =)



Dropped off at cityhall, we felt that there weren't anything appetizing and we were slightly worried about leaving our luggage for too long at the hotel so we headed back to pick up our luggage and ended up with lunch at a restaurant just across the road. We saw the display set downstairs and decided to head up the elevator with our luggage to an empty restaurant (it was about 3pm in the afternoon) and was served shortly after with our mouth-watering food.

It was slightly spicy but the chicken was tender and the sauced soaked well into the meat and noodles. This flat transparent noodle was a tad bit sticky and chewy; I liked it a lot. We ordered this size (medium?) to share amongst 3 girls.




After finishing up the meat, we ordered burnt rice and enjoyed the savoury rice soaked in the yummy sauce; the korean way.


We then escorted HM to her dorm for the night, parking our luggage there as well. One amusing encounter, the boy who came down to help carry our luggage up to the room looked exactly like Henry; HM had the same sentiments when she was checking in. It was hilarious we kept laughing non-stop once we got into the room. Anyway rest time for HM and shopping time for KH and me; we literally wandered up and down the streets of MyeongDong aimlessly.

MCM was apparently having some Fashion week event and EXO was due to come down later in the evening. We did pay a visit to the shop and spent some time on the higher levels...the bags are really quite pricey and tbh the backpacks were a huge turn-off for me; I was looking at their limited edition collection of small studded handbags.



Myeongdong up on the streets (and underground but I did not visit it) is a hell hole for CDs especially when you are a scrooge like me and you want the best buy. General rule; those above the ground will never give you value for money BUT I wouldn't be too sure that those underground aren't pirated (really no offence here but it's like how I try to stay away from non recognizable record shops anywhere) So yes, I ended not buying a single piece of music CD because the prices I found at the bigger shops were more than what I pay for in Singapore so...



BUT we did make away with a lot of cosmetics ranging from your necessary face masks, nail polish, CC cushion, eyeliner and I even got my hands on the snail cream from tony moly =)

Just as we were about to pick HM from the dorm, we came across a huge crowd and apparently it was EXO; so we waited a while and guess what? We saw NOTHING as their stupid blacked out window passed us right in front of our face...for all I know EXO was inside the car staring at me and fell in love with me. Yup. One sided love. EXO fell in love with me ok? bwahahahaha =P (Sorry can't help it)

And then it was Dongdaemun shopping time! Tip: Drop at DDM History and Culture Park Station instead of DDM station. You will alight right at the basement of this iconic building; 

Yes this is the place featured on a lot of Mnet and advertised in the Big Bang "Explore Korea" video as well. I must say it is quite a pretty design. This is also where you will find your SMTown Stardium outlet:






We had dinner with HM before she returned back to her hostel. First stop; getting caffeine into the body!

First stop: Lotte fittin'The building is found right opposite the DDM Design Plaza and it catered for the teenagers. There you will find the YG hologram theatre together with loads of YG items...BUT note that me and KH were too late so despite taking the lift up, we did not manage to see anything.The lift however did provide us some form of entertainment. Standing in front of the door and waiting for the arrival of the lift, I was looking up at the screen which was showing a camera taken footage of us standing and all of a sudden; SEUNGRI APPEARED! ta-da! I actually squealed and somehow managed to be fast enough to capture it haha I really freaked out cause I swear I thought some guy crept up from behind us haha....so fun and interesting!

The rest of Lotte Fittin' consisted of various brands particularly from aspiring korean designers so if you're into those it's a nice place to visit =)

The rest of our night was rather...uneventful as we visited various shopping centres and came out empty handed. Why? Nothing caught our eye, those that were branded were mostly winter clothing and by 3am, the shops were busy preparing for wholesale pick-up so it was rather messy with bags lying all over the floor. We even sneaked naps in between because we were exhausted. Maybe it wasnt a good idea to do an all-nighter after a long day? KH claims that it was because there was nothing exciting to keep our adrenaline pumping.

Also one thing to note; street food is NOT cheap. The same variety found at Busan and Jeju at the road side carts were almost 50% lesser.

I guess as a rather brand-conscious and picky person, this wasnt the place for me.



We managed to catch the first train out and began our "new day" half dead back at Myeongdong ;-)