Taking my soul to Seoul

It was confounding to spend an afternoon in the beautiful grounds and palaces of Geongbokgung after a morning in the Dee Em Zee (Demilitarized Zone).



There were so many signs of hope in the DMZ, the curiously half functioning Dorusan Station, with its North Korean side fully equiped but closed while waiting on its first passengers to take the train right on through to the other side.




There was the convoy of orange construction trucks (number plates removed) heading back South and across the line on a Route already leading to China, Mongolia and beyond.


There was the boxy Red Cross van tootling through the many checkpoints, looking like something mislaid from and still in search of its MASH episode, apparently on a mission to rescue injured flood victims in the latest catastrophe of the unfortunate North. In the distance, from the Dora observatory, where we could stare through 500 Won a minute binoculars I saw 3 tiny figures.



It was hard not to gawp. I felt embarrassed at the ghoulish nature of our visit, like slowing down at a car crash. How Miss Horton (Empress of St Hildas during my incarceration there) would have dished out detention for this display of vulgarity, although the memory of that hard-won bit of etiquette didn't stop me from swinging my tourist binoculars from one land mine sign to another. Part of the morning was spent on an endurance exercise, tramping down a lengthy shaft to reach a watery infiltration tunnel 95 metres below ground, only to then scuttle bent over like a lamp stand along its bumpy route to the North Korean border. This was one of the many tunnels built as invasion options from North to South. From time to time a newly flushed out enemy emerges, to perish in the traffic like road kill on the Newell Highway. Looking across to North Korea from the Dora observatory the only movement I saw in the city visible to us was a few people walking. There weren't signs of cars. It all seemed horribly sad and pointless, and the footage filmed within my memory of family reunifications after 50 years of silence, was heart-wrenching to watch again.

In spite of my best efforts, dodging motor-bikes, step-through scooters and grandmothers hauling over-sized rickshaws of discarded stuff behind them, I was unable to find a single shop in Seoul which could sell me a USB key. But I did do quite a tour of the neighbourhood, trudging down ever more doglegged alleyways, up into tiny aortas of lanes which ended nowhere, often greeted as I went by the falsetto Allos of giggling bands of children.



Along the way I noticed miniaturised supermarkets everywhere, crammed to the rafters with jumbled mess while the owners sat outside in the full din of passing buses, watching television on the footpath. Everyone smokes. There also seems to be quite a trade in motorbike modifications in 'Downtown'. Instead of a pillioned baby boomer girlfriend, there's an iron frame bolted to the back. It's one of the curiosities of 'old'cities to me that they're so fully inhabited. You wouldn't drive through most of Brisbane on any old day and find much evidence of community living, people nattering along the laneways, or playing cards on a footpath table.

I'm really glad I spent even such a short time in Seoul. I liked the soughing (how DO you say that word?) pronunciation. I liked the ancient and mysterious palace walls lining so many of the long thoroughfares of speeding traffic.



I liked the mountains looming in around the city and the wonderful island drive across the sea from Incheon airport.



And I liked the way that taxis were so cheap and plentiful that I, and probably every other tourist as well, easily got about with only a bundle of 1000 Won notes and a cheap city map as my tools of navigation. I also ate all kinds of mystery dishes, being gently guided away from choices my Western palate might baulk at, although I have to say I'm already longing for my normal fruit bat quota of seeds, nuts, fruit peelings and apple cores. Eating what tasted like oat soup with vinegar cabbage was no substitute.


Lastly, one of the great pleasures of travel has returned to me, in the form of yet another screening of Legally blonde, on the movie Channel in my hotel at 6:00 am. I couldn't tear myself away until it finished. The work is a masterpiece of over-statement and kitsch goodwill. I love it.