Ansan Asia Town: An Itaewon For Asian People!

While hundreds of North American and European expats flock to Itaewon every day for their fix of food from home, hundreds of Asian expats are doing the same thing in Ansan. Ansan is a city about 90 minutes from Gangnam, but it's still connected to Seoul on subway line 4. We'd heard this was the home of "Asia Town" (a funny concept considering that we're IN Asia) and that this was the best place around to get some authentic Asian food.

The culture was noticeable from the minute we left the train station, as a group of Natives were putting on a concert for a small crowd.

We immediately felt like we were in a different place. It was a little run down, but in an exciting kind of way. Nobody really looked Korean anymore, and we overheard different accents being spoken all around us.

We crossed the road away from the station and entered the "Asia Town" food street, which stretches for about 5 or 6 blocks and makes for a sizable international district roughly the same size as the "core" district of Itaewon. It seemed like every store on the street was named "World Food" or "Asia Mart". The shops were full of things that I didn't recognize- import items from the Philippines, India, Vietnam and all over Asia- comfort foods for many, I'm sure.

This Asia Mart even had a row of basic-looking long distance phones outside in case ET would like to phone home.

There were a few Halal shops, too.

The majority of shops seemed to be Chinese. In fact, there was one street where there was nothing but Chinese on any of the signs. Even the local Hana Bank sign was in Chinese only. It was about 1000% more Chinese than Incheon's Koreanized Chinatown, which we visited last summer.

An Indonesian restaurant (I counted 3 in total).

A Uzbekistan restaurant.

One of many Vietnamese places.

Cambodian food.

Food from Myanmar.

One of the restaurants with the best reviews online was an Indian place called Kantipur, so we decided to have supper there. It was really good! We ordered a set for 2 people, which came with delicious tandoori chicken, 2 samosas, 2 sweet lassis and...

...a choice of curry with 2 large baskets of naan. At just over $10 each, this was an amazing meal and we were stuffed for the rest of the night.

There was a small strip of love motels clustered behind the Chinese street, so we chose to stay in the one with the nicest room pictures displayed outside- Best Motel. For $35 a night and a free upgrade to the nicest class of room, we were optimistic.

When we stuck our key in the power grid, everything in the room turned on, including the TV which was already tuned to a hot porno. You know you're in a nice place when!

The room wasn't bad- we've had much worse- but it was so small and they tried to crowd way too many amenities into the space. For example, the computer desk didn't have space for both the keyboard AND the mouse, a sauna room was stuck into an already-crowded bathroom, and the toilet could not be sat on without pressing your forehead to the wall in front of you. Strangely there was also a phone next to the toilet.

The room also had some usually-rare amenities like free kim and shot glasses, a random basket full of charcoal and a VCR. We wondered who on earth would still be using a VCR, but when we left the next day we realized why. There was a wall full of VHS porno tapes by the elevator. If for some reason the porn provided on your TV wasn't enough.

We walked back down the Chinese street in search of a meal for brunch when we spotted a cluster of used clothing stores. Most of the clothes still had their tags and were brand names! I was pretty pleased to get a nice pair of shorts for $3.50.

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and the streets were much more colorful and lively than they had been on Friday night. There was many produce stands set up, selling hard to find items like dragonfruit, mangosteen, and mango. Inside, the stores sold lots of different international beers, and I bought a liter bottle of San Miguel (a favorite from our vacation in Spain).

For lunch, we hit up a Thai restaurant called Pad Thai. It was a little hole-in-the-wall with only about 10 items on the menu, but the food was fast and fresh.

Best spring rolls ever!!

A delicious plate of Pad Si Woo. Grand total of around $5 each for our meal.

We rested our legs at a park for a little while. There, this obnoxious sign was displayed by local government near the washrooms: "Your trivial behavior is representative of your country".

This "no spitting" sign was displayed in the park where the older Chinese men were gathered playing mahjong. I'd like to see a sign like this on every street in Korea!! And maybe one over each urinal in every men's washroom. Why do Korean men always need to spit 3 times before urinating? What is going on in their throats?

Before leaving the Asia Town area, we spotted another interesting food item for sale: large cuts of dog meat! It's not that hard to spot dog restaurants in Korea if you can read Hangul, but I'd never seen the meat for sale before. And do the dogs on the box HAVE to look so cute?

Next, we decided to spent the afternoon drinking coffees and window shopping in Jungang, Ansan's main commercial district.

I loved the buildings in Jungang! They're so old school Korea, with signs advertising each business on every floor- signs that seem to swallow whole buildings! The signage is so loud and you see so much that you almost take in nothing at all. You almost never see buildings like this in Seoul anymore, but I think they're great. Busy building photos:


The shops in Jungang were mostly just smaller versions of the same stores we see in Seoul all the time (Korean cities are very same-same), but there were some fun independent stores like the one in the above photo- News Total Fashion Shop. The clothes were the same as we usually see at the market in Suwon and since we'd just been there last week we didn't buy much, but if you're in the area I highly recommend this shop for a funny t-shirt or three.

On one street we saw a small poop-shaped bread shop, but sadly, it was closed. Now how am I ever going to get to try poop bread?!

For supper, we found an all you can eat buffet place that was only 6,000Won! Unfortunately, after our excellent meals in Asia Town, this Korean food did not impress, but it was fine. Everything tasted fine. And for the price, it was a real steal. There was soup, bulgogi, sushi, and you could even make yer own bibimbap.

Above: the world's most logical way to serve peach ice tea.

By 7pm, it was time to think about heading back to Gangnam. We'd been dreading it all day because the train to Ansan had been SO busy. On the way there, we had to stand for almost an hour, and we felt so tired. We'd walked around all day on Saturday and our legs were killing us and once again the subway back to Seoul was super crowded. It felt like torture! I would love to go back to Ansan again before we go back to Canada, though I won't be going again until we find a good bus to take us there instead. But what I wouldn't do for some more of those spring rolls right now...

Where There Is Grass...

...there is an ajumma picking that grass for lunch.

On Any Given Day

On any given day, Korea is weird. It's just a different culture. People think differently, react differently and have different opinions than you'd expect. We're so used to it, that it almost never registers any more. But, today, when Mel and I were talking with each other about our days, we realized not only how weird it is to be a teacher sometimes, but also how weird our everyday lives have become. 6 things from today:

1. As my afterschool class was wrapping up, I quickly went over the vocabulary my students needed to know for their homework. One of the last words was "pet" (as a verb). I petted Daniel's head and asked the kids if they knew anything else you can pet. Ryan had an answer. He leapt up and rubbed his crotch: "I can 고추 pet!". The crowd loved it. Ryan's six years-old.

2. In the same afterschool class, Ryan tattletaled to me that Daniel was speaking Konglish. Konglish is a weird sub-language of Korean. It's basically just Korean mispronunciations or misuses of English words like, for example, "fighting!" (used sort of like "go, go, go" or "hurrah"), or "handpone" (used instead of "cellphone").

Ryan, I am much more concerned about your classroom 고추 petting than I am about Daniel's Konglish!!

3. Tomorrow is Teacher's Day. Of course, there is no such a holiday in Canada (unless you count the last day of school, which I'm sure all truthful teachers consider to be their special day), but there should be. Teachahs are important, yo.

Melodie and I are both in positions at our schools that nobody cares about. She doesn't give her kids any substantial grades, so she doesn't need to be bribed with gifts. I don't have a homeroom class this year, so the same goes for me. However, I was surprised to receive some stuff from my afterschool students: flowers, chocolates, a bag full of bread and juice, cards and a $50 (!) gift certificate to Coffee Bean. The best gift, though, had to be from little Wanny. Every day he pokes his head into my classroom during my prep hour to say good morning. It's really cute. Anyway, today he runs in with a single, opened sheet of Pororo stickers that he brought from home. "Happy Teacher's Day!" he said. When you're 4-years-old, a sheet of stickers is very valuable! I will stick them somewhere very nice.

4. Today, Melodie was teaching her class about giving suggestions. In a game, she asked for a suggestion about what she can do if she's hot. One boy yelled out, "Take off your clothes!" He was thirteen. Totally appropriate.

5. On her way home from work, Mel was crossing the road from her school to get to her bus stop when a car stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. The driver's side window rolled down.

"Do you believe in Gaw?" the driver asked.

"What?" Mel replied.

"Do you believe in GAW?" the woman repeated.

Cars behind them started to honk. Mel's students, who were crossing with her, were watching everything. The driver offered Mel a book. Mel started to take the book, but the driver held it firmly, waiting for an answer to her original question.

"I'll take it," Mel stammered, as the car drove off and she walked away with a 64-page book about God the Mother. Koreans LOVE God! 9 times out of 10 if someone approaches me in Korea, and they're speaking English, it's because they want to talk about God. And this is the third time Mel has been approached about God the Mother. The last time, the women who approached her even had a DVD player with them on the street and expected her to watch a religious video right there on the sidewalk. Yeah, no problem, got some popcorn too while we're here?

6. For supper tonight we ate at a Mexican restaurant and my quesadilla had PINEAPPLE in it. I should start stopping people in the roads and questioning them about THAT.

A Barbed Wire Tour of Inwangsan

Thursday was Children's Day, and all the teachers at my school got the day off. Interestingly enough, next Friday is Teacher's Day and not only do we need to show up for work but we need to do a performance in front of hundreds of our peers. I think they mixed up the names of those two holidays.

But back to Children's Day. It was on the 125th day of 2011 and of all 125 days it must have offered us the nicest weather yet. We decided to go hiking at Inwangsan, near Seodaemun Station in North Seoul. As the Buddha's Birthday holiday is coming soon (another day off next week!), a trail of colorful lanterns led us to the temple at the base of the mountain.

This simple gate marked the temple entrance.

With 25 degree temperatures, the hike up to the entrance had us red faced and tired, but then we were met with our arch nemesis STAIRS, of which weaved through some modest residential homes, the temple, and a bell. Beyond these buildings was the real beginning of the hiking trail.

I'm pretty sure that we did this hike ass-backwards. It seemed like many times we were faced with the decision of taking random trails that led left or right, but with no signs in Korean or English we just kind of chose whichever way looked the most promising. The first place our sweaty asses came to was a spring (to refill water bottles) and an exercise park. In case you like to lift some weights and just go into complete cardiac arrest.

Before long we came to a really big, flat rock where we relaxed, snacked and enjoyed the view.

Inwangsan is a cool place to hike because the rocks are NEAT. It's kind of hard to tell from the picture but the rocks at the top of the above photo looked like they were really defying gravity by not rolling straight down the hill.

After leaving our rock, we chose a trail going left, but were quickly greeted by the first of many bunches of barbed wire on this trail. Soooo, we turned around and found another trail going straight up. At least I think it was a trail... upon reflection it might have just been a path formed by water runoff. Either way, on our way through, we came across a little family of mountain kitties. They were looking a little ratty, but they weren't freaked out by people the way Seoul city cats usually are.

At the top of the trail/water runoff route were were greeted by two fences (one electric!), barbed wire, and a tall cement wall. We took our chances walking the perimeter.

The fence led to another trail where we could see the real top of the mountain, complete with stairs and everything. Problem is, we hadn't the foggiest clue how to get there. It didn't look too far away but we were obviously in the wrong place and there was no way for us to get there. Instead, we followed a path in the opposite direction, which led to the cool gravity-defying rocks we'd seen earlier.

From the rocks we could see much of the Insadong area from above, including Gyeongbukgong palace.

We weren't really sure how to get down from where we'd gotten ourselves, and we wound up basically rolling down another water runoff trail and found ourselves walking along an old fortress wall until we met up with this cool rock. It's called a skeleton rock, but we thought it looked like Castle Grayskull.

From there, we met up with an official trail, and got ourselves back down to the area with the spring water/exercise machines that we'd seen earlier. From there, we took a trail in the opposite direction from where we started our hike. We quickly found ourselves at one of Inwangsan's main sites, which are really just more rocks- ones where mothers traditionally prayed for sons. The touristy sign says they prayed for fertility but, c'mon, we all know they were praying for a boy.

We followed the trail along a little further and found this Buddha sculpted into rock. Meh, I've seen much nicer. Also, the entire exhibit is surrounded in fence and barbed wire.

Now, my Korean is far from fluent, but I'm pretty sure this sign next to the Buddha is asking people to NOT leave pig heads at the monument. We don't see too many signs like that in Canada.

Since there were no pig heads to eat, we hiked back down towards Seodaemun Station. We'd spotted a restaurant there that we'd been dreaming of since our hike began: BBQ Chicken pizza!!!!!! The loyal reader might remember on our annoying trip to Busan several months ago
one of the few trip highlights was this amazing BBQ Chicken pizza. BBQ Chicken has hundreds of franchises in Seoul, so we were sure that we'd be able to get this pizza whenever we wanted, but we were wrong. I can't tell you how many fried chicken places we've gone into in the past few months looking for this special pizza, only to see it absent from the menu. WELL, the pizza IS available at the BBQ Chicken in Seodaemun. While we waited for our order to arrive we were so nervous that it would be different, but it wasn't. It was perfectly, deliciously awesome. It had SAUCE. It had real pepperoni. It was $9! We. Will. Be. Back.

The day was young, so we went to nearby Samcheong-dong for coffee. We wanted to drink our coffees outside in the sun, but finding a cafe with a patio is not easy in Korea, because Koreans don't like sun. In fact, you will probably see as many umbrellas on a sunny day as you would on a rainy day in Seoul. Eventually we found a place (Coffee Factory) which allowed us to trade $7 each (that's almost a full BBQ Chicken pizza!) for basic coffees and a seat in the sun.

Samcheong-dong is an area that we'd been to once before, to see a hanok village, but we'd somehow missed the main touristy district on that visit. We were so surprised at how busy the area was. Maybe this is because of the holiday, but it was seriously more crowded than the busiest day of any of my trips to Disney World. There were clearly some cool, and quirky places to discover in this neighborhood, but after the peace and quiet of hiking, we felt invaded and annoyed. It was time to go home.

Home featured a viewing of the new American Idol, before a trip back down to Gangnam for supper. We tried a place new to us, called Pasha, which serves Turkish food. At first we were put off by the prices (18-20,000 Won for a main), but when the service started we saw that the portion sizes were humongous. We ordered a delicious mixed grill (served on swords), and enjoyed the excellent free soup and salad bar. We. Will. Be. Back.

Before going home for the night, we made a pit stop at Skin Food. Mel wanted to try some BB Cream, and I wound up getting some good stuff too. I bought some beer shampoo, but also spotted another interesting item: Makgeolli body wash! Shopping at this place was making us hungry again, so it was time to go home and get ready for school the next day. Luckily for us, there was only one day of work before we'd be free for the weekend again. May is a good month.

Top 12 Finds at the Hello Kitty Exhibition Show

For the last few weeks, there have been ads in the subway cars for a Hello Kitty exhibition show at the SETEC building in Daechi-dong. We all know that my heart belongs to Domo, but Hello Kitty is still a pretty funny and notorious character, so we decided to check out the show.

We each paid our 5,000 Won admission and entered. We were delighted to immediately find a variety of cardboard cutouts to pose with.

We had no idea what the show was going to be like because the SETEC website just redirected to a website that sells Hello Kitty stuff when we tried to research the event. Turns out, that information was representative of what the show was all about: it's a gigantic Hello Kitty product sales floor. The show was divided into two sections. The first part that you come to is an exhibition of products that are not for sale and are to be admired from a distance (we were scolded for touching the t-shirts) and then in the second part you can buy most of the things that were showcased in the first section.

At first we thought they could have been a lot more creative with this event, for example at least have a big Kitty character walking around for me to pose in pictures with, but that wasn't really what the show was about. This is shopping bidniss only. There was, at least, a small golf game (seen above) to promote a line of HK golfing clothes and accessories.

A line of goth Kitty products were also showcased. I blame Twilight.

Alright, on to the merchandise! We all know that Hello Kitty is like the Krusty the Clown of Asia- she'll slap her name on anything to make a buck- so some of the products that we saw were really ridiculous. Here are my top 12 favorite products from the Hello Kitty Exhibition:

12. Hello Kitty snowboards. If you want to be a macho man on the slopes.

11. Hello Kitty Korean Red Ginseng Kid Tonic- even just the product name alone makes it sound like something you should NOT feed your kid. A tonic? Not unless there's gin, thanks.

10. The Hello Kitty Toilet- you know it's a good list when a Hello Kitty toilet only makes tenth place. PS: We already own the toilet brush in the above photo.

9. ROCKS! Hello Kitty rocks! Plain, white rocks with Kitty's face painted on them. This actually exists!

8. Hello Kitty water, served in a bottle that has BREASTS.

7. Everything in this Hello Kitty car makes the list, particularly the Hello Kitty GPS device.

The Kitty car's headlights even had eyelashes.

6. Hello Kitty toilet paper!! 24 rolls for $25, but they throw in two bonus rolls with your purchase. Small pink Kitties were printed on each square.

5. Hello Kitty lunch bags. No fancy ziploc strip or Kitty graphic on the bag, just a plain plastic bag.

4. The Hello Kitty cleaver. This would make such a cute murder weapon!

3. Hello Kitty tofu. Because when you think Kitty, you think unflavored tofu shaped like Kitty's face.

2. A Hello Kitty VAULT! With three styles to choose from, and (at 30% off) only $400, it was very tempting to buy one of these. And if I had bought a Hello Kitty vault, the first thing I would have secured in it would have been...

1. HELLO KITTY PADS! Girls, when it's that time of month nothing beats the absorbancy of a Hello Kitty sanitary napkin.

Sadly, with a wedding to pay for and an education to fund, we didn't have the extra spending money to buy special vaults, rocks, pads or even Hello Kitty brand magic beans, but Mel did wind up buying a handsome red HK umbrella. When we left, we were happy to each receive a decent sized free gift bag with some Hello Kitty pencils, paper and other little things. What a nice touch.

SO, if you're in Seoul and you're a Hello Kitty fan... or if you're just on the rag and need supplies, head on over to the SETEC convention center before May 8th. It's right outside Hangnyeoul Station, exit 1.

No IV's Gonna Stop Me From Buyin' A Waffle

A rather common sight in Korea is seeing hospital patients, dressed in their gowns, dragging their IVs down the street as they go for a walk. We spotted this guy buying a waffle. I hope it makes him feel better!

I urge you to watch the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJtoNxcRhe0