party_boy

LoL. I love the use of adjectives in your posts...quite entertaining. I get crazy mental pictures of three hot Korean stewardesses poking at your seat screaming at each other in Korean.

Swanhunter

A wonderful read so far. I love the way you use the little things to bring the story fully alive. The Thai airport announcement instantly transported me from London to Don Muang.

FLYGVA

I was on OZ on HKG - ICN and ICN - ORD (and vv). On this route you get the old C class for sure. But why did you have a power outlet at your seat? I had an adapter, but no power outlet (OZ FA to me and my seat mate : "Sorry Sir, no power in this seat").

Enjoyed your report and brought back some nice memories about my trip and my trip report about it, which I should finish

jpatokal

While in the TSA line -- it was rush hour at America's busiest international gateway, so they had condescended to open two (2) lanes, one of them reserved for crew and disabled pax -- I pondered how it would be possible to make LAX any more depressing. Maybe they could change the tiles from dirty off-white to dirty hospital green? Pipe in artificial sewage scent instead of the current eau du decay? You can't lower the ceilings any more, or take away more windows, or make the signage more confusing, or make the announcements less comprehensible, or give the staff more attitude... it's actually weird how a terminal this small (for Tom Bradley Int'l can't hold a candle to the FRAs, LHRs or even SINs of this world) can be so dysfunctional. But I eventually shoe carnivalled myself to the 5th floor Asiana Lounge and, while their own wireless didn't work, snarfed a signal from the neighboring China Airlines lounge and was happy as a clam with a geoduck-sized Internet hookup.

And oh yes: LAX, like other US airports, has no exit immigration. I'm still not sure if this is really smart, because it is after all a rather silly exercise (if you've already gotten in, why would there be a problem with letting you out?), or really stupid, because now the infamous green departure card is given to the check-in agent and you will be in deep doo-doo the next time if they wipe their hiney with it.

Some 40 minutes before the flight the lounge started emptying and I followed the crowd. I'd planned to pick up a bottle or two of California wine, but LAX's duty-free was equally depressing and didn't have anything for sale for under $25 (which equates to 12.5 Two-Buck Chucks at Ralphs). A mob roamed around gate 105, I snuck into the biz line and clambered aboard a plane that I already knew would be equally depressing -- I'd managed to find out that cocoon-style seats would be flown from Jun 28 on occasion and from Oct with more regularity, which entirely failed to help me now. On the bright side, I managed to avoid being squished near or (God forbid) between Mother Whale and her son Moby Dick, who not only were rather overly generously proportioned but started quarreling noisily while in the check-in queue, always a good sign when you've got 13 hours of flight ahead.

After a final circuit of LAX's many, many terminals we took off and were plunging into the fog within seconds of takeoff. What Asiana termed a "heavy snack" (what's wrong with "dinner"?) followed:

Prosciutto with asparagus, lobster medallion
Caesar salad
Seabass with duchess potatoes
Cheese & fruits
Apple tart

In a reverse of the previous attempt, the appetizer was downright tasty -- I especially liked a hollowed-out chunk of Japanese cucumber served with a dab of red tomato pesto, although the Caesar salad just isn't a Caesar salad without parmesan and croutons (or a decent dressing). The wines were the same as on the way to LAX, I kept to the California theme with a Kenwood Zinfandel and it was quite good indeeed. The main, on the other hand, was execrable, greasy seabass with hard potatoes and muddy overcooked zucchini. Cheese & fruits -- Camembert and, um, something -- were good though, as was the apple tart.

Ever noticed that your IQ goes down when you fly? I spent two hours watching "Big Momma's House 2" and actually thought it was a pretty good movie, and then surprised myself by falling asleep for three hours. By then it was time to eat some more:

Beef mixed with kimchi and rice
Croissants and muffins
Yogurt
Fruit platter
Tea, coffee and juice

Three cheers for chili and pickled cabbage for breakfast, although I felt a twinge of regret for my hapless seatmate Mr. Gomez, who skipped breakfast in favor of more sleep -- good luck doing so next to a piping hot bowl of kimchi.

jpatokal

We touched down in a pre-dawn mist so swirling, dense and theatrical that I half-expected zombies to lurch out from below the gates while Michael Jackson grabbed his crotch in the disembarkation lounge. But the funereal ambience was appropriate, as South Korea had just lost 2-0 to Switzerland, bringing their World Cup endeavours to an untimely end. Immigration and customs was ludicrously fast and I was in the Limousine Bus to the city within minutes, peering out of the window at the impenetrable fog.

The JW Marriott Seoul looks like just every other JW in Asia, but the real surprise was lurking in the basement: the famed Marquis Spa, of which I'd heard whispered tales of awe on Flyertalk. I was actually sufficiently tired that I briefly considered just a shower in my room, but I forced myself to head downstairs, and, well, damn. Facilities available include a humongous gym complete with indoor running track and interesting torture machines that let you strap yourself in by your feet and then yank you up to hang upside down like a bat, an Olympic-sized heated swimming pool, a 5-meter scuba pool, a full selection of Aquagym water workout machines, an assortment of hot tubs and saunas (all available in male, female and mixed versions), a climbing wall, not one but three golf driving ranges, a solarium room, a whole bunch of full-body showers, and -- phew -- a resting room.

At this point my regular readers just might be saying "Hmm" -- what am I doing in a $300-a-night JW, when the last time I opted for a $20/night flophouse here in Seoul? Well, the hotel costs a scarcely believable 20,000 Marriott points as a reward (viz 15,000 for the somewhat less exciting Courtyard El Segundo/LAX), and while this alone still probably wouldn't have sufficed, my good friend Z. had, after a few rounds of plan changes, taken the week off and would be flying down to meet me.


But I had half a day to kill first, so I started off with an educational trip to Seodaemun Prison, the notorious detention center where two generations of Koreans were imprisoned, starved, tortured and executed during the Japanese occupation. Much of the complex is still in its original state, but parts have been converted into a museum where animatronic figures of Japanese interrogators cackle maniacally while electrocuting, waterboarding, raping, inserting pins under fingernails and just beating up hapless prisoners. A free English guide was provided, but her nationalist fervor seemed a little punctured when I pointed out that these techniques, including the infamous "coffin cells" where you're locked standing up inside a coffin-sized box for a few days or weeks, are still regularly employed by North Korea (and in all likelyhood on a much larger scale than Japan ever managed). One of the people enshrined here is a Mr. Kam, who at the age of 65 threw a bomb into a crowd of Japanese military at Seoul Station, killing and wounding over 30. Terrorist or freedom fighter?

I took refuge from the uncomfortable ambiguities of reality with a trek up neighboring Mt. Inwangsan, home to a giant construction site, a smattering of Buddhist temples and Seoul's best known shamanist shrine (pointedly omitted from the subway station's maps). Other accounts I've read of the place have involved shamanesses performing mystical rites in pine groves and old men dancing naked with pig heads, but the most exciting thing I could find was a Swiss-cheese rock with lots of pigeons and a motherlode of empty soju bottles.


Z. showed up in the evening and we decided to celebrate in style -- doggie style. Now Korea may have a mutt-munching reputation, but digging your teeth into one isn't as simple as going to the nearest McD's and asking for a Quarter Hounder; the habit is, technically, illegal, and the law is enforced just enough to keep pooches off the menu in places where tourists might see them. But with Google's help (the Marriott's mildly shocked concierge was less useful), we had some clues to crack Da Poodle Code and we set off into dingy alleyways near otherwise neon-sparkly Myeongdong to find our Holy Grail. The first round of searching for matching signboards was inconclusive, so we popped into a likely-looking stew shop and asked for bosintang. No luck there, but Z's puppy eyes melted the matronly keeper's heart and she dragged us by the elbow to another shop we'd passed earlier, which advertised puffer dishes in big letters, but served up dog meat soup on demand. It was getting late and we were the only customers, but within minutes a constellation of kimchi and a big steaming pot of meaty stew appeared on our table, and it was time to chow down.

I've never read an appetizing description of the taste of dog -- "stringy", "grainy", "gamey", even something about little hairs in the meat near the skin -- so I was surprised to find that, in a word, it was actually pretty good. The meat has a beefy taste, akin to veal, with perhaps a hint of lamb, and was nice, smooth and tender texturewise. Any putative smell was nuked by the presence of large quantities of garlic, chili, spring onion, sesame leaves and a tangle of herbs, and we finished every piece in the pot. Korea 1, ASPCA 0.

We spent the next four days poking around the less-explored reaches of Korea. Being a two-meter-tall blond alien in Korea gets you enough stares as is, but heading off to the countryside with a Japanese girl in tow really gets the locals interested; either you get dagger looks because they think she's Korean and you're stealing their women, or you get even worse dagger looks because they realize she is Japanese and you thus not only think Korean women aren't good enough, but are consorting with the enemy to boot. Z. took to claiming "Singaporean" as her nationality, but I insisted on the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, sometimes to my detriment:

- Miguk? (America?)
- Anio. Yurop. Pinlan.
- Ooh! Piladelpia!
- Anio... Pin-lan.
- Ooh! Disney-lan!

(Korean has no "f" sound, so they use "p" instead. This means that you can play a round of golpeu, watch pupbol on TV and head for Maekttonaltteu to get your paseuteu pudeu fix.)


After a token 37-minute, 300-km-per-hour trip on Korea's KTX high-speed train to Cheonan, the rest of the time we used ordinary buses and slept in the kind of hotels where you pay your money (in advance) to a pair of hands behind a frosted-glass window, corridors have mood lighting and vending machines retail personal lubricant. Let's compare one to the Marriott point by point:

Don't get too excited by that last point though; this is heavily-censored softcore Korean porn we're talking about, so it's slightly less interesting than watching a National Geographic documentary on the mating habits of frogs. Korean motels also don't really seem to have cottoned on to the fact that truly dedacent indulgence requires a bouncy bed, not one that feels like the sheets are nailed to plyboard.

On my last visit to Korea, I was bowled over by the similarities to Japan, and while Z. (who hadn't been to Korea in 8 years) was going through the same phase, this time my eye was more drawn to the differences. The relative paucity of temples and shrines and the omnipresence of church steeples. The remarkable total absence of pachinko parlors. The way hangul writing has supplanted Chinese characters far more thoroughly than kana ever managed in Japan. The overwhelming dominance of chaebol superconglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai; one of our motels had a Samsung airconditioner, Samsung TV, Samsung DVD, Samsung refridgerator, Samsung water cooler and looked out onto a block of Samsung apartment blocks.

A random, annotated list of sights along the way:


Independence Hall: The closest South Korea gets to North Korea, this super-patriotic exercise in nationalism sprawls out over acres of land near Cheonan, dotted with hundreds of fluttering South Korean flags and the phallic pillars of the Juche... oops, I mean Monument to the Nation. On the other side of a gargantuan Korean-style gate filled with turgid socialist-realistic sculpture are no less than seven "halls" (vast museum complexes) describing Korean history in tones that make Fox News sound like pinko liberal comsymps. The "Hall of Japanese Aggression" was obviously done by the same people behind Seodaemun Prison, complete with animatronic torture puppets, while the "Hall of the Social and Cultural Movement" manages to make even Korea's modest achievements in jazz music an exercise in throwing off the shackles of imperialist colonialism. Yow.


Suanbo Hot Springs: Kind of depressing as far as hot spring towns go, especially as it was off-season and there were very few other people around. We lucked out though in finding the newest hotel in town for a cheap price (perhaps partly because their spa was being repaired), and the hike up to the nearby Park Hotel was made worthwhile by the views from its outdoor tubs. Still kind of forgettable though, there's got to be a better spa out there somewhere...


Gosu Caves: One of Danyang's top sights, this is a cave in Korea, by Koreans, for Koreans, at least based on the size of the walkways squeezed into the cavern -- claustrophobes and dieters steer clear. There are 1.7 km of metal walkways laid into the mountain, looping crazily left, right, up, down and sideways. Late in the afternoon we were the only ones in the entire place, except for a couple of very, very bored-looking attendants. A second test of courage came when we tried the dongdongju ladled out from bubbling metal cans in the souvenir shops outside. Imagine fermented milk mixed with Sprite and tinted a delicate shade of peachy mud; as with dog soup, the biggest shock was that it wasn't as bad as you'd expect.


Guin-sa Temple: Buried in the mountains near Danyang, this stupendously huge temple complex houses the headquarters of the million-strong Cheontae (Ch. Tientai, Jp. Tendai) school of Buddhism, which holds (among other things) that all things are absolutely unreal yet provisionally real simultaneously. Revealed to the founder in a dream in 1945, they've been pouring concrete ever since and the still-expanding buildings already house, among many other things, Korea's largest lecture hall and cafeteria. This was no empty exercise in megalomania either, gray-pantsed devotees were busily buzzing about on an ordinary Wednesday and the courtyard housed more pots of kimchi than I ever hope to smell in my life. We ate our share for lunch -- as this is utopia, it was provided for free -- and scurried off before their hypnotic vajra-in-expanding-circles logo washed our brains. (Maybe it already did; I couldn't help buying a strip of stickers and now one adorns my rollaboard.)

On the last day, we boarded a surprisingly spiffy mugunghwa express-only-in-name train and clunked our way back to Seoul's Cheongnyangni station for three hours and then some, replete with quadrilingual announcements for every single halt along the way. "...komapsumnida. The next station is Dongbanggwangjangmakgeollisoju. Kono eki de o-ori no kata, juubun go-chuui kudasai. Xie xie!" It had been getting increasingly hazy throughout the week and by that day, when crossing the bridge from Seoul to Incheon, the haze was so bad you could barely see across the bay. ICN was its usual busy self and, after our respective check-ins, we adjourned to the OZ lounge where Z. was delighted to find copious supplies of tomato juice, vodka and Tabasco, and proceeded to make sure we'd be properly bloodied, sedated and dehydrated before we boarded our planes and flew our separate ways.

mosburger

Delightful insights once more from jpatokal. We want Korean nightlife escapades!

TrayflowInUK

You ate dog? You are now my hero.

twyatt

This is an awesome post....I can't wait to hear about the rest of the trip and places you visited. This is well written and it takes the reader through these airports and experiences.
I think that when you visit ICN you should pay a visit to Panmunjom and the inter-Korean DMZ. I would be interested to hear your observations. I was there twice; once in 1999 the other in 2000, except I was on the D.P.R (North) Korea side both times.
I'm looking forward to reading about the remainder of the trip.

jpatokal

I'm almost disappointed here: first I skewer American culture, then I go eat the family pet, and instead of being labeled the antichrist I get called a "hero" instead? Sigh. Maybe I need to troll a little harder. But thanks for the kudos anyway
I have no plans to go to the DMZ, because I already went there. (Scroll down past the Canada stuff.)
Ask and ye shall receive!

jpatokal

"Arrrrgh", was my first reaction when I stepped aboard this gorgeous, cocoon-seated, huge personal flat-paneled top of the line Asiana plane with new business class -- this was the plane they were supposed to fly me to LAX and back with. The seat's control panel has more buttons than a Japanese toilet and to top it off not only did I have the best seat in the house, but there was nobody next to me (biz was half-empty today). Why, oh why, couldn't they rotate this plane to one of those flights where I actually needed to sleep? I drowned my yuppie crocodile tears in a glass of Piper-Heidsieck and waited for dinner -- choice of steak, monkfish or bulgogi Korean-style beef -- which was served up shortly.

Roast beef roll, maguro tataki with black pepper, smoked salmon
Beef steak with black pepper sauce, potatoes and vegetables
Cheese and fruit platter
Lemon tart

I congratulated myself on being smart enough to skip the bulgogi, as this was quite possibly my best Asiana meal yet. The tataki (grilled on the outside, raw on the inside) tuna was perfect and the black pepper complemented it surprisingly well, and the roast beef wrapped around veggies was darn good too. The smoked salmon was, well, smoked salmon (again), but at least a mustard-y dipping sauce was provided, artistically presented in a hollowed-out tomato slice. The steak was regretfully well-done, but it was still very moist and tender; the potatoes were a tad overcooked; and the broccoli and carrot had been boiled to death in a British prison canteen. The same Cali wines were still on the menu, so I tried a random Burgundy and regretted it. (Why is it that French wine is so bad most of the time?) Today's cheeses were cheddar and a Korean Camembert, which was mild but not unpleasant, and the lemon tart, while inoffensive, would have been unidentifiable without the menu. All in all, competent but not quite Michelin three-star.

The theme continued with Asiana's entertainment system, which turned out not to be on-demand after all. Both the Club and J-Pop audio channels flaked out some 30 minutes into the flight, and despite their best efforts (including pressing all the buttons on the controller and lots of makeup-crackingly pained smiles) all the captain's stewardesses couldn't put it together again. While not in the least sleepy, after the lights were dimmed (why? it's 6 PM and the time difference is two hours!) I dutifully tested out the flat bed, which was miles better than the previous crapp-o-seat but not quite up to SQ Spacebed caliber. The incline is noticeably steeper, and the footrest is kinda awkward if you're tall, it doesn't even bend fully out of the way if you don't want to use it... but I would still have hacked up a miniature octopus and eaten its still-wriggling tentacles raw to have gotten this plane for the flights to/from LAX.

I have one last request for Asiana: I understand that flights across Indochina are often a little bumpy, but please don't scare your frequent fliers by using the word "severe" to describe turbulence that isn't (on three separate occasions, natch). Singapore Airlines, for example, correctly reserves this word for when the wings start clapping pattycake and the only thing stopping you from turning into a wet spot on the bulkhead is your seatbelt. If my red wine stays in its glass, it's "mild", and when the stewardesses start shrieking "we're all going to die", you're allowed to use the word "moderate". Thank you.

party_boy

Like the incident on, I believe Virgin earlier this year?

party_boy

C'mon you're not going to get a rise out of us. We have to live the crazy culture on a daily basis. You're just visiting. As for eating Fido, it's not THAT difficult. Actually I found it quite good. You know you're eating pretty weird when you eat Porcupine or LIVE Monkey Brains. I'll give major props for that. (I've done the Porcupine, but not the monkey brains.)

jpatokal

Yeah, dog is very much a taboo thing -- meat is meat, period. In my book shiokara (pic) is far and away the most vile thing I've actually eaten, with silkworms in the runner-up spot, and live octopus tentacles get an honorary mention for sheer weirdness (but not the taste, which is very mild).

And re: the monkfish, I don't know how it looked because I didn't order it

party_boy

Fido is really taboo in western cultures. I agree that meat is meat. My point was that there are a lot of more interesting things that people eat on a routine basis.

Actually I've had Shiokara before. It was bad, but not THAT bad. In China, they have a subculture that eats raw cow intestines that havne't been cleaned. It's simply chop open the cow stomach and start eating. THAT is something I don't think I'll ever try.

Keep up the trip report. I enjoy it.

jpatokal

It's one of those travel writing cliches: "It was a dark and stormy night, and as Dirk Grunto stepped off his steel-plated Conquistador turboprop, the humid, fetid, jungly-bungly tropical air of Singabangolumpur socked him in the face like the right upper cut of a pissed-off bargirl." While no longer literally true -- thanks to the invention of the jetway, these days the first smell of a new place even in the tropics consists mostly of plastic, engine grease and industrial-strength detergents -- there's a kernel of truth in there somewhere, and in Bangkok's case said kernel does still sock you in the face, or at least the nostrils, when you step out of the air-conditioned terminal into the outdoor taxi scrum. Yup, I was in the tropics again.

Tonight the queue lottery gave me a gangly, spectacled Thai-Malay chappie with a steely determination to get me to my destination as fast as possible while saying as little as possible. I tried pulling my usual trick of breaking a 500-baht note at the tollbooth, but he dug a hundred out of his personal stash, paid the toll with that, and then proceeded to shuffle money on the dashboard like a three-card monte dealer with a coke habit until he had a pile containing precisely 480 baht to give back to me -- all while driving at 140 km/h on the Uttaraphimuk Elevated Tollway. I reflexively clutched at the non-existent seatbelt, then sighed, said a silent prayer and placed my fate in the gentle, loving hands of my insurance company. With no further prompting on my part, he picked the right exit, executed the three U-turns necessary for the optimal route to Phayonyothin Soi 7 and delivered me to the hotel doorstep in one piece, well earning a 29 baht tip, that, for the first time, prompted a smile and a genuine-sounding thanks.


I spent the night at Reflections, which was as crazy as ever (see that first picture with the hammock, sand and palm trees? that's inside room 404), although rates have over doubled since it was written up in the New York Times and who knows where else -- I had to pay nearly $50 for the night. I was awakened early by a tropical rainstorm (darn you, Dirk Grunto!), and after a leisurely breakfast sauntered over to the Skytrain station for a zip into the city. For all the newspaper coverage about Thai political distress, the economy sure seemed to be hummingly along nicely: the little mall next to Ari station, completed last year, had a couple of walls knocked out and was busily being reworked into a part of a new, larger shopping mall under construction next door.

But neither could compare with my destination, namely Bangkok's latest shopping extravaganza, the stupendo-humongo-bubbaliciously big Siam Paragon. I was prejudiced to hate it -- Lord knows the last thing Bangers needs is more shopping malls -- and the early morning emptiness in the two luxury levels filled with more Prada and Jimmy Choo than a year's worth of Sex in the City did little to dispel this. But then I discovered the huge Kinokuniya bookstore on the 4th floor, and the funky True netcafe-slash-flower shop below it, and the section of 30-odd shops devoted to high-quality Thai fabric, ceramics and art, and by the time I'd made it into the basement I was ready to forgive all. Rarely does any shop with the word "gourmet" in its name deserve the moniker, but Paragon's Gourmet Market does -- I counted, among other things, 4 different types of dragonfruit, 16 varieties of rice sold by the kilo, and three shelves full of different kinds of eggplant. I stocked up on raw peppercorns, kaffir lime leaves and various other hard-to-find green curry ingredients, snarfed down a quick Isaan meal of sticky rice, deep-fried beef and papaya salad next door, sampled ginger sorbet and a Thai-style coconut crepe, and washed it all down with an utterly improbable yet supremely tasty beetroot-passionfruit drink from Soontra (18B a pop at most Skytrain stations). One last bag of freshly roasted corn-off-the-cob from the street, and it was time to loosen my belt and head to the airport.