Beijing Part I

Our days in Beijing were spent with classical sight seeing. The Forbidden City was number one and we easily spent four hours walking from one monument to the other, happily accompanied by thousands of other Chinese and non-Chinese tourists. This huge collection of ancient imperial palaces, gates, courtyards and gardens is right in the heart of Beijing, I believe it covers an area of more than 70 hectares so it's all very impressive! And very red!

The Great Wall doesn't need any introduction. We visited it at a place called Gubeikou, together with our couch surf host Ning. We didn't really want to join the infamous Badaling tour, where hordes of tourists invade this perfectly reconstructed part of the Wall daily, so Ning offered to drive us all the way to Gubeikou (a 2,5 hour drive from Beijing) where we had the original Wall (almost) all to ourselves. A fantastic alternative!

The Swiss Experience in Beijing

Disclaimer

It is important to mention that this post has been written by Benoit. I would like to apologize to Marieke's family and friends for the picture selection. Please note that she was completely against it and only allowed me to post certain pictures after hours of negotiation.

Thanks to my awesome JP Morgan colleagues, we were able to have the taste of a five star hotel during our travel! At our arrival in China, we enjoyed two nights at the Swissotel in Beijing. We experienced two entire days of a clean and quiet China. The management, impressed by our fashionable backpack style, decided to upgrade us with a deluxe room (bigger room, bigger bathroom, bigger mini bar -luckily I remembered the credit number of my boss :-) As you can see on the pictures, we enjoyed all the facilities of the hotel, even the pillow menu. For those interested: I ordered the 'Down Pillow' and the 'Swiss Pine Shaving' :-) After our stay in this hotel, I finally understood why my boss loved his business trips so much  while I was working hard (as always) in Geneva. 

I would like to thank my colleagues again for this wonderful present and want to highlight that I am proudly wearing the Borat!

Now I advise them all to get back to work,to avoid depression!

Pretending to be Leo on business trip...

Last post on Korea

So this is the final post on Korea! We're already one week in China right now but have been so busy exploring Beijing that I'm running behind on updating the blog....We left South Korea from Busan last Wednesday but still want to share some things we picked up on our way through this fascinating country.

First of all, we really regret not having met more Koreans. We tried to couch surf with them but all our requests were left unanswered. So most of the time we were staying with English teachers from either the UK, the US or Canada.

Koreans are obsessed with learning English; they learn it at school during the day but most of them have extra private tuition during the evening. The country employs thousands of native English speakers to teach them and almost every foreigner you'll meet in Korea is an English teacher.

Kids, especially in secondary school, don't have easy lives. Every single day after school they attend extra classes, especially English but also maths, sports or music until 10pm. The aim is to get into one of the four top universities in South Korea because this will ensure them a job with a leading company.

Walking through Seoul, we noticed a lot of ads for cosmetic surgery clinics. Cosmetic surgery, especially for women, is widely accepted because looking beautiful will help them finding a good or better job. Lots of them have their eyelids corrected, apparently they love the double eye lids of western women. For those who are not so keen on having their face cut, there's always face yoga. You can sign up for a weekly one hour class of face exercises to keep you young and fresh.

We could hardly believe it when we heard the following; but Koreans truly believe that sleeping with the fan on will kill you. Even though they're all super educated, it's a superstition that's hard to eliminate.

One last thing about Koreans: they are cool cats! Colorful and extravagant, especially in the way they dress. They love kitschy stuff and they're all the time and everywhere playing with their smart phones, iPads or Nintendo DS.

Couldn't help it, had to buy myself some kitsch as well....

Busan's Haeundai Beach by night

Busan street art

Busan street kitsch

Korean food, we'll miss you!!

Korean food....one of the reasons we wanted to come to Korea was to taste you! And you didn't disappoint, we even learned to appreciate your funny kimchi...

In Geneva there are a couple of Korean restaurants and we just love what they serve, especially Korean barbecue and bibimbap (a mix of rice, vegetables, egg and tiny slices of beef, served in a hot stone bowl). So we were very excited to try as many Korean dishes as possible!

Korean food is very healthy and tasty with lots of vegetables, small pieces of meat, interesting little side dishes and great fish and sea food. And as said before, we learned to appreciate kimchi, the national dish. It basically is spicy, fermented cabbage and you really have to eat it a couple of times before you appreciate its taste.

For those interested in Korean drinks: we saw a lot of men getting wasted on soju, rice wine. We had a glass of it, it's horrible! When we were in Samcheok, we went out with our American couch surf host and his friends and we shared a bowl of makgeolli, another type of rice wine. It looks like milk and tastes a bit like cider. I loved it, Benoit hated it.

Just arrived from Manila, our first bibimbap! Best dumplings in South Korea..

Kimchi (the red)

Ice cold noodle soup

Busan fish market

Having our (raw) fish prepared in Samcheok

Busan fish market

Seoul street food

Great, what to order....Korean bbq

Their desserts are very cute!

Cat Café

Our last stop in South Korea was Busan, the country's second biggest city. It's a young, modern town by the sea, with great beaches, good night life and a lot of other fun things to do. If you happen to go here and you like cats, go drink a coffee at the Cat Cafe. The idea is as simple as the name, it's a coffee place full of cats; not some ordinary street cats but beautiful Persians and awesome Sphynx cats!  We were thinking this could be a great idea for Europe (maybe it already exists?) but not quite sure if customers would behave the same way as Koreans. We were looking at the kids and they are really nice and sweet, no tale pulling, no screaming when the cat runs away. Not quite sure if this would work for European kids:-)

Most awesome cat in the world! When I'm back in Europe, it's gonna be mine!

Skyping mom!

The Penis Park

Ha, I am sure to have all of your attention with a title like that. So this post is not for prudish readers and when you're viewing this at work, better don't click on the pictures, okay:-)

We spent one day in Samcheok, a medium-sized city on the east coast of South Korea.

There is not much going on in this place except for one special attraction: Haesindang Park also known as Penis Park. When we heard about the existence of such a place in rather conservative Korea, we just had to see it. We didn't read much about it before going there, we just knew it's a park full of phallic statues. 

There are really hundreds of them and it was very... euhm...special to walk from one penis to the other. Unfortunately, all the info provided was in Korean, so we had no clue what it was all about or why we were watching those monsters.

Later that day, we googled the Haesindang Park and found out that there's a myth explaining the origin of these statues close to the sea. So here it goes: 

Once upon a time, there was a young couple living in the fishing village of Samcheok. The day before their wedding, they went for a walk along the shore but a giant wave swept the girl away. Without having consumed the relationship, the girl became a frustrated, nymphomaniac ghost. The next day, as usual, the fishermen of the village went to sea but came back without fish. The day after, same thing happened. Nobody knew where the fish had gone to. Then one night, a drunk fisherman relieved himself in the sea. The next morning all the fish were back in the waters of Samcheok. So the fishermen started to believe that the nymphomaniac ghost had taken their fish as reprisal for her sudden death, but upon seeing the drunk fisherman's penis, she had released the fish again. So that's why they started the build larger than life penises to satisfy the ghost and keep the fish in their waters.

The Outdoor Craze

Korea is the ideal country for people who love hiking. It has a lot of national parks with excellent and adventurous trails. But Koreans are avid hikers and we got quite intimidated by them.

The first time we went for a hike, was in the mountains around Seoul. Only 30 minutes by metro from the heart of the city, you'll find great hiking opportunities and stunning landscapes. Already on the subway, we were joined by a dozen of scary looking Koreans. But once we arrived at the entrance of the park, there were hundreds of them...And every single one looked like he (or she) was ready to conquer the Everest. Dressed, from head to toe, in the most expensive outdoor gear, walking poles in hand, gloves, jackets, rain pants, impressive backpacks and some of them were even wearing face masks (to protect them from the sun?).  I wasn't really envying them, by 28 degrees:-) But my Converse shoes got me a little worried, I'll admit.


Anyway, we had come to hike, so we hiked. It was tough and we had some difficulties finding the right tracks, with everything indicated in Korean, but it was worth it! We didn't expect to find so many temples so high up in the mountains. Also the views on Seoul were quite spectacular!


Next day, we decided to rent bicycles in Seoul and again, similar scenario. Koreans are riding brand new 3000euro mountain bikes on the flattest cycling routes you'll ever find. Equipped with the fanciest cycling outfits of course!


The last 5 pictures are taken in Seoroksan National Park, our destination after Seoul. It is one of Korea's biggest national parks, on the east coast of the country. We only stayed one day but could have hiked longer because it's very beautiful and peaceful.