Travelog the fourth, I guess?

Yeah okay, so here I am, blogging up a blog. I said I probably wouldn't but then I got bored, and with only 700won to my name, (my cashcard isn't accepted here and I can't cash my travellers cheques till monday... sigh, banks!? Is there anything they can do right?), I haven't really had much option to go and do anything.

So I shall provide you with some commentary. I've been in Seoul for four days now, (wow... that's flown by...), and all in all, I'm enjoying myself. My first thoughts of the city were negative, as I travelled along in the airport bus from Incheon (the main airport, built on a island several miles away from Seoul in the Hangang delta) I despaired at the state of the city. The whole place seemed too modern, a swarm of characterless skyscrapers arranged around a grid of wide boulevards, (there is a road in central Seoul that is fourteen lanes wide... FOURTEEN LANES WIDE! There are roads in Britain that even that long). 'Oh lord,' I thought, 'what have I let myself into? This place is a soulless urban sprawl, devoid of any culture and dedicated purely to coroporate capitalism...'

Like, to put it in a historical context, Seoul has been a really unlucky city. The whole place has been razed to the ground several times, during feudal wars, during the Japanese invasion, during the Mongol invasion, during the other Japanese invasion and most recently, during the Korean war, (the city changed hands four times during the conflict and by the end of it all, less than five percent of what stood pre-war was still there - many historical buildings were deliberately destroyed by the communists). So when the South Korean government actually managed to establish itself they had a blank state to work from. The rubble was cleared away and a grid of wide roads was ploughed down, archetectural developement was strictly controlled, (South Korea was ruled by a fairly nasty right-wing cabal untill the 1980s, and they insisted on building huge monstrous buildings to celebrate state power and scare their pliant populace). Yeah... I had this same problem with Valencia, I just can't stand cities designed by fascists, I do get a real palpatable sense that every brick layed down was layed there with the peoples' worst interests at heart, nothing looks friendly, the roads are all designed for tanks and there's no real individuality to speak of. And, well, yeah... a lot of Seoul is like that. But it gets better if you branch out from the mainroads...

The first place I stayed was a private guesthouse. I was actually staying in a room of this couple's house and it did feel homely, there were antiques everywhere and well-stocked book shelves, and there was a free breakfast in the morning, dumpling soup.

Breakfast was an interesting experience. I came down at 9am and I joined one of the other tennants at the guesthouse. She was from Texas and she was a faith healer. Now, I think faith healing is a despicable line of work, essentially, you are lying to desperate people and taking their money, and in many cases encouraging them to forego actual medicine, (to this lady's defence, she did say that she didn't touch actual diseases, but insteaded focussed on 'spiritual diseases' like depression or bankruprtcy), I mean, ugh, really, its an awful thing, even if you did actually have religious faith it seems to me to be a completely immoral and sacrilegious thing to do. By specialising as a faith healer you are claiming to be given powers by God that other people don't have, (erm, sorry, that's not how Christianity works...), and even if that were the case, it would be downright sadistic to insist that people pay for your services.

Part of me would have really liked to have harrangued this old lady, accuse her of being a charlatan and a thief, an exploiter and hypocrit... but then she was really nice. Like, really friendly and everything. She talked about what brought her to Korea, (thankfully, she is the only faith-healer in Seoul), she talked about her grandkids and actually gave me a couple of really good tips about what to do on my travels. She excused herself early from breakfast to go and watch the VP debate. She was strongly supporting Sarah Palin.

She was in stark contrast to some Americans I met the next day. They were all in their late-teens/20s, and were all 'Liberals', one of them was actually a Daily Kos contributor. And they were all the biggest bunch of twats. They thought they knew every fucking thing in the whole wide world and spoke about anyone who disagreed with them with such contempt. They talked about how much they hated travelling around the world and being associated with the stereotype of Conservative America, and I was thinking... 'Wait a minute. I met a stereotype of Conservative America, and she was fucking nice. I strongly disagreed with everything she said, but she behaved with civility and genuine friendliness. You're all a bunch of arrogant cunts. Don't sit there talking about how you are the Real America and how all the world would love you if they got to know you, because no they fucking wouldn't and its god-damn arrogant to think they would."

I think this is a major reason why a lot of the world hates America. Because America always seems to god-damn angsty about how much it hates itself. One half is forever whining about how much it hates the other half. Just grow up.

Anyway, that's a bit of a jump. I met those Americans at the hostel I moved to after the guesthouse. And this hostel is really nice. Its also in a non-conformist part of Seoul, but unlike where the guesthouse was, which was non-conformist in its traditionality, this part of town is non-conformist in its... modernity? No, not modernity, because all of Seoul is modern... I don't know... in its coolness? Yeah, lets just say that. Its unique in its coolness. The streets around here are narrow and semi-pedestrianised, there are four/five storey buildings surrounding everything, and every floor is filled with businesses, (various shops, restaurants and bars - all of them quite idiosyncratic). The place quite near to a couple of university campuses to its all quite youth-orientated. Overall... yeah, its cool.

The company here's pretty good as well. I was hanging out with some Xianggungren (Hong Kongers) last night and this Australian guy and I went for lunch a few hours ago. It had to happen eventually, I've finally met a bearable Australian!!

So yeah, my early opinions of Seoul have been more or less negated. I haven't done much sight-seeing yet. I went to the Royal Shrine yesterday, (photos on the Facebook!), but I'm basically waiting untill I can cash my travellers cheques before I properly go looking around.

The last couple of nights I've been sleeping in a communal area with the windows and doors open. I've been bitten to hell by mosquitos. My arms and hands are quite disgusting to look at. Sigh, I remember in Spain Cassy and Sarah were getting bit all the time and I survived intact. Maybe I need to surround myself with nubile female flesh? For my own protection of course...