Thursday, September 23, 2010

메리추석요!

Merry Chuseok!

Chuseok is Korean Thanksgiving, which I've been enjoying over the last couple days. Koreans traditionally dress up in the Hanbok (see cute kid to left), eat with their families and pay respects to their ancestors. Being the dedicated Korean that I am, I decided to do a little touristing.

Wednesday I went to the traditional Hanok Village - well, as traditional as you can get with about a million Koreans and a gift shop. We saw lots of reconstructed Korean houses, a really skilled tightrope walker, many Koreans, and lots of reconstructed Korean houses.

Thursday was the Seoul tourist piece de resistance: 남산타워! (North Seoul Tower.)
This is a tower on top of the mountain in the middle of Seoul, which overlooks all of Seoul.

The story's simple: walk up large mountain staircase with many Koreans, wait an hour for an elevator, see all of Seoul, walk back down mountain staircase, see the sunset over Seoul, return home happy after Shabu Shabu. It was a fun day.

More photos after the jump.

Me in traditional Korean warrior garb. Fierce!

The windows of the Seoul tower observation deck were labeled with cities in the direction of the window. Turns out I'm 7170 km away from home, give or take a Georgia Strait.

And a fitting end to the mid-week holiday:

2 comments:

  1. I wouldn't have thought that they made fierce traditional Korean warrior garb in Giraffe size...

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  2. Sounds fascinating Steve, so glad to hear your enjoying the culture of a different country. I found it interesting in China as well.

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