Anne and Col in....: September 2006

Dongdaemun

Dongdaemun market is the only place in the world you can get EVERYTHING. Granted...we haven't been that many places in the world, but when you see everything you could think of buying in one place you feel it's a legitimate claim. Everything of course includes these hot glasses!

And...these haute glasses! Watch out Paris Hilton, there is a new trendsetter in town. Well, not so much in town as much as in the Far East, but she should be worried anyways.

David and Leigh trying on wedding bands, and by bands we mean massively huge dragon rings.

Baseball? Who needs a baseball field when it can be turned into a massive outdoor flea market!

Tiffany's in Korea is slightly more diverse than in North America. Here they specialize in diamonds and suits! Who would have thought, I wonder if it comes in a blue box? Oddly, they did not want me taking this picture...I wonder why?

After a hard day of ggagga chuseyo'ing (discount please!) we met up with Lisa, one of the Korean teachers at our school. Everybody is all smiles because we just found out that the buffet here at Marche Korea is 25,000 Won (aka $25), all you can eat as well as all you can DRINK! Draft beer always tastes better when it feels like it's free!

Oh how we enjoy buffets.

Sidenote, incase you were wondering how they deliver pizza in Korea the answer is seen below. A fleet of mopeds willing to brave any sidewalk crowd or road traffic to get the pizza to your door on time! (Incase we forgot to mention, moped drivers can drive anywhere they want, from sidewalks to streets and anywhere inbetween.)

Noraybong!

After only a month away from the Princess singing room we decided to return for round two. The vocals were intense and once again we belted it out to such classics as "Stop" by the Spice girls, "bohemian rhapsody" by Queen and the ever popular "Wonderwall" by Oasis.

We *heart* singing....almost as much as people love hearing us sing!! Riiiiiiiiight...

Sebastian enjoying the sweet smell of rock...or the scented mikes...you choose!

The tough decision of what tune is worthy of being selected! Many songs in the blue section of the book (aka the English section)...but only a few are choosen.

What out tambourine man! Anne plays a mean tambourine (a nice relief from her singing!)

The Lipsett's doing what they do best!

We sang to a sold out crowd...of 7!

Oh Noraybong, we will see you again!

random weekend adventures!

A random weekend is never complete without a few random ice cream (or should I say yummiest fruit yo urt in the world!) slogans. At home an ice cream shop wouldn't be able to have the slogan start loving myself - it would have to be start loving more of myself! Here, it's frozen yogurt - so apparently you can eat that and love yourself.

In Korea most people share dishes when they eat out. We were going to get one each, but then we thought we stand out enough already! So instead we ordered the largest one on the menu...and it was some yummy yogurt!

Granted, we haven't been to too many other countries, but we feel pretty confident saying there aren't many places where you can find such unique sculptures on the sidewalks!

Oh yeah ice berry!! Does it ever make you fresh! Another random slogan...

Mmmmmmmm, giant frozen yogurt awesomeness. How we love thee.

Needless to say, we *heart* dessert!

the top of the world!

With Adrians brother, Sebastian, in town we decided what better way to get over his jet lag than to climb the lovely Dobongsan mountain. It was a brisk 4 km up, 4km down.

After the paths disappeared, the rocks led the way to the top!

As you can see, the scraped knees, hands and bruised buttocks were worth the incredible view from the top! (Or at least very close to the top!)

After the hike we all decided it was time for some much need Galbi. Sweet, sweet galbi :)

The tender meat in all it's glory!

The only way to eat galbi....stuff it all in at once!

Bikes on the Han

The two things that matter most to Koreans, Kimchi and biking...well maybe not, but we decided that we should venture out for a wee little 38 km bike ride to explore what The Han has to offer and no it's not just pollution and dirty waters! The Han is a river that divides Seoul into North and South sections. It's pretty nice to have this bit of break from high rises and busy streets.

A picture taken along the Han before the bike adventure began! We angled it so you couldn't see the dead fish floating in the background.

Our trusty biking partners, Hilary and Adrian "pedal to the Korean metal" Lipsett, with Colin along the Han!

Do we look tired? Because we are! And only 12 km's into the ride...

The mighty rings! Ahhh the 1988 Olypmics...yes Canada...Calgary wasn't the only city to have an 1988 Olympiad...the summer games were held that year in Seoul. This was the destination at the half way mark of our ride, where our legs were like jello and our shorts blackened (note we all - minus Adrian wore our nice white shorts...)

Back at the start of our route - when we finally arrived back - we found this building to be enticing. This is the tallest building in Korea - 63 floors. It is appropriately always referred to as the "63" building. Original Korea, original.

All in all, a great day of rented biking and site seeing. Good times.

Crooner's Paradise!

We started off the goodbye weekend for Nathan and Lydia at Noray-bong. The song books came out in our private rooms and the tunes were belted! As you can see Nathan and Lydia found something they were pretty excited about!

Snap back to reality, oh there goes ... Colin and Nathan?! The boys decided it was time to mix it up a bit and they layed down some killer white rapper rhymes!

Following the rappers, the girls stepped up with a little Barbie girl...Oh Oh Oh Yeah! It was 1996 all over again...kind of matches some of the Korean clothing trends we have seen here...

The next logical step after singing for 1.5 hours was to head to a hof & Soju bar....mmmm soju. As you saw in our previous post....it's not the most pleasant stuff! But amazingly when it is in a soju bomb...you can't really taste it, but you sure can feel it! The bomb basically means a shot of soju is dropped into a mug of beer....mmmm, mixed drinks!

The bombs began!

After the bombing and a few shots, we thought it would be a good idea to test the boys ability to catch grapes in their mouths. Judging by the grape stains on their shorts in the morning, they didn't exactly succeed.

This is our lovely boss Sebastion who keep the soju flowing like wine (and not vodka like wine that soju really is!) Here we are doing a shot that will ensure that we live until we are 100. Well, I'm not sure if we will live that long, but we definitely felt like we were 100 years old in the morning!