Day 3 - Peanut Buttered Roast Squid

On Tuesday we had the first of our exciting adventures somewhat outside of Seoul. Cindy drove us south to the Korean Folk Village. The KFV was interesting. I was looking forward to seeing some open, green space, but the paths were all well swept earth. In fact, we were able to observe the sweeping process. The sweeper was not willing to pose for photos. While exploring and learning about the past of Korea we made a few discoveries.

1. Korean children travel in large, color coded packs and have a cry remarkably like, "Hello, hello, hello, hi, how are you, hello, hi." Occasionally this is punctuated with a cheerful, "F**k you," as they practice new words.

2. These same children are very bold about crossing rivers on stepping stones, but far more timid about crossing on narrow wooden bridges. If an adult American crosses the narrow wooden bridge the children will fall back in awe and applaud. This actually only happens if the adult American is female.


3. Mushroom pancakes are actually omelets and are very good.

4. Sausage soup contains tasty bits that are best left unidentified just in case they are entrails.

5. Wicker brides were an important part of a Korean man's life and as such could not be passed on to future generations.

6. The best unexpected flavor ever is peanut buttered roast squid. It is crisp and sweet and buttery and chewy and comes out of a cool little machine and you can choose body meat or leg meat and ... They eat it at the movies here instead of popcorn. Seriously. It really is good.

Sadly, our afternoon did not fare nearly so well. We planned on heading to Namdaemun market, but our directions lead us instead to Dogdaemun market. Not so big a deal. We were also short on cash so were hoping to find a money exchange or one of the many ATMs that took American cards (so we were told). We had neglected to bring our passports, so the money exchange didn't happen. We tried 2 ATMs in Dogdaemun and both of us were informed by both of them that our cards no longer worked. Frustrated and huffy, we walked through the wholesale toy market to calm down before heading home. The wholesale toy market was cool. Tony especially liked the Bricks (pirated legos).

On the way home we messed up one subway transfer, but caught it before we were carried too far out of our way. We also tried 2 more ATMs with no results. This was getting to be a problem as we needed 57000 wan each for today's trip to Panmujong. Cash. Not $57 American (the rough equivalent). Ian came to our rescue and Cindy played banker for us as well. As long as we don't go too crazy we should be fine. Just be warned if you're ever in Korea: American debit cards work in the ATM machines, with plain old American ATM cards you're SOL.

We came home to a magnificent pasta dinner courtesy of Cindy. This morning we had to get up and on the subway early to catch our tour. More on that tomorrow.