So Long Seoul….

We had baked beans on toast this morning, I think the beans had a very high sugar content, so I balanced it with spicy Korean soy paste. A very tasty start to the day!

There are many convenience stores near our place. Nice to CU, 7 Eleven etc. You have to go to each one to get what you want, because it is impossible to get everything you want in one place. CU is great and very friendly and helpful. 7 Eleven is just on another level. When we see the man we groan and wish it was his female colleague.

He isn’t happy, he seems very depressed. The first time we stood by the counter for ages and eventually had to shout hi,in as pleasant but assertive way as possible. The next time he was asleep, not just a quick doze but utterly dead to the world. We could have left and tried somewhere else, but it was at the end of a tiring day. So, we woke him. Us smiling apologetically, him with zero emotion on his face. How dare we shop in his shop!

Again last night it was the same! He literally hates his job!
On the flip side the owner of CU ran after us with a packet of Doritos, free as part of an offer. The polar opposite!

We had a great tea with vegetables from the market, we are really finding our feet. It’s always the way when it’s the last day or two, everything slots into place and makes sense. We got to the National Museumof Korea in super quick time, in fact before it opened. It seemed like everyone in Seoul had the same idea, as the queue literally snaked on and on. We sat on the steps, waiting and waiting, but it seemed endless. The weather isn’t suitable for hard-core queuing.

We just waited, but it got worse, not better, so it seemed a good time to write my ‘blog’

Yesterday, on the way to see the Nanta performance, a monk stopped me on the street, gave me a gold looking trinket, grabbed my arm and put a bracelet on. It felt like divine intervention, the gods forgiving us for the restaurant debacle. Thanking him profusely, I started to walk away. But he stopped me, wanting a donation. I am so stupid, I fell for it! Saying I had no money, which was true because we were about to go into the bank. He then got a little pocket book, lists of names with the amounts they had given. Handing it all back, sadly! It wasn’t divine intervention, but a naughty monk on the make.

I also remembered seeing our first homeless people here, in a partially closed underground. We hadn’t seen anyone before, considering it’s a city of over 10 million. The percentage of homeless is 0.0026 percent. The thing that struck me was that even in a situation like this, how orderly and self-contained they seemed. Along a wall, their neatly folded cardboard boxes, which they slept on. Perhaps because it wasn’t so apparent as other places we have visited, it seemed more shocking. I thinking sound patronising so I will stop there.

The queue just didn’t stop, half an hour later. We carried on sitting on the steps, hoping at some point it when calm down. But every time we looked up, it had grown longer still!

It wasn’t going to change, so we went up and started to queue.

The Koreans really know how to queue. It was like watching a carefully  choreographed production. Way beyond anything in the UK! In Korea, there is something called the waiting culture. There is even the belief that if something has to be queued for, it has to be worth something.

Anyway, after all that, we got in surprisingly quickly, much quicker than expected. Phew!

The queues may have been because their special exhibition about Oceania was free that day.

Being quite nerdy, it was very interesting seeing artefacts that you wouldn’t normally see, or if you do, not the range.

Several robots cruised along each level, offering help. We did try but to no avail.

We saw more Buddha’s than you could shake a stick at!

This wasn’t all of them, so many from different eras and places.

We went to the special exhibition called Mana Moana, Arts of the Great Ocean, Oceania. It was fantastic!

There lots of immersive exhibitions, where we watched paintings coming alive in front of us on a 60 metre wide and 5 metre high panoramic screen. Visitors are invited to a fantastic journey into paintings. Digital videos projected on a massive panoramic screen. We watched Rivers: A Prosperous World Unfolds in Nature. It was so  vibrant and colourful.

I don’t think we saw the whole of the museum, but we gave it our best shot. Moving from one country to another.

Then onto India…..

For my last ‘blog’ for some unfathomable reason my tablet or app weren’t behaving. Sitting in the airport, on our way home, I didn’t have the patience with it. I tried several times and drew a blank.The museum was great! We went to market and I bought veg from woman who had studied at Birmingham University, she was so happy to meet someone who had studied there too. Walking out of the shop, she followed me, waving and smiling.The owners of where we were staying insisted on taking us to the train station. It was a bit of a journey to say the least. Initially gridlocked, which was so lucky as I had left my phone in the room. Pete was able to run back for it, the man was do lovely about it all. He got us to the station, parked in the car park, got our luggage out of the boot, took two rucksacks and gesticulated for us to follow him. He showed us the lift to the platform. Would not accept any money at all. After much thanking on our part and head bobbing on his, he left.So the holiday has ended, our trip probably not everyone’s idea of a break, but storing up all these great experiences and the people we have met on the way, this is what makes it worthwhile!