Saturday 2nd July - Dongdaemun Design and Culture Museum, TrickEye Museum, National Folk Museum and Nanta. We ended up at the Dongdaemun museum by accident as we'd got it confused with another museum. Still, it was an interesting site. It used to be a sports stadium but that's been knocked down for a Teletubbies-meets-Star Trek collection of buildings. It's still in the process of being built though, and the parts that were open didn't really house very much. The TrickEye Museum, however, was brilliant! The main feature is a series of paintings where parts of the painting spill over the frame and onto the wall so you can pose next to them and interact with the painting. It was a lot of fun!

The Folk Musem has three main exhibits: Korea through the ages, the typical life of a Korean a couple of hundred years ago, and comparing Koreans after the war to how they are today. The second exhibit was the most interesting. Whilst we were looking at it a young Korean girl came over to us and starting talking about what we were looking at. Prompted by her mother, she told us all about the traditions back then and now they still practice them now, and thanked us for our time and left. We're guessing that she was taking the opportunity to practice her English. We then bumped into her and her mother again outside by some statures, where she told us the statues were the animals of the Korean zodiac and helped us find the animals for our birth years. She was a very sweet girl!

In the evening we went to watch a show that Lindsay really wanted to see when she was here before but didn't get a chance to - Nanta! It's kind of Hell's Kitchen meets Stomp, with lots of slapstick thrown in. The actors play chefs in a restaurant kitchen preparing food for a wedding. Over the corse of the show they beat complicated rhythms using a kitchen sink, knives on chopping boards, a whisk in a colander and lots of other things. They also chop vegetables and cook them on stage on gas burners. It sounds bizarre, but it's very well executed and there are lots of laughs to be had throughout. The actors must be exhausted by the end of it though as they are frantically drumming for the best part of 90 minutes!

Sunday 3rd July - nothing. It rained heavily again today so we just planned a bit more of the rest of our time in Korea.

Monday 4th July - Intangible Culture Gallery and Bongeunsa Temple. The museum was recommended to us, but they thought it was a museum. It was just a small gallery demonstrating some old Korean crafts. It was nice enough, but the explanations weren't in English so we didn't really know what was going on. The temple was much better. In contrast to Jongyesa Temple, it was set in beautiful grounds and it was very serene. There must have been some Bhuddist festival going on as there were white lanterns hung everywhere. There were lanterns strung up between two buildings, and you couldn't see the sky above you for lanterns.

In the evening we went for a walk. Starting at Insa-dong, we walked through the digital garden, which had lots of interactive things that we couldn't get to work; along the newly-built stream running through Seoul; past City Hall, which was completely covered up ad they are renovating it; past Namdaemun market and up to Namsan, which is a hill in the middle of Seoul with a tower at the top where you can look out over the city. Unfortunately there was a massive queue for the cable car and we were too tired to face the walk up the hill so we called it a night and left.

Tuesday 5th July - Changdeokgung Palace and the Olypmic Park. Unlike the other palaces we've seen in China and Korea, this palace didn't follow the regimented layout that they usually do. Instead, it has been designed to fit into the natural environment and so is a more sprawling complex. It was lovely to walk around was so big that at times you couldn't see or hear any other tourists. There is also a massive Secret Garden, but you have to be part of a tour to see this, which we didn't realise and we missed the two tours for the day.

Seoul hosted the 1988 Olympics and the Olympic site has since been turned into a lovely park, with lots of trees, lakes, statues and a river. You can hire pedal buggies to go round it, so we did. There is also a museum about the Olympics, which goes through the history of the Olympics with interesting facts about each Olympics, as well as going into more detail about the Seoul Olympics themselves. Unfortunately several of the exhibitions rooms were closed when we visited.

Wednesday 6th July - DMZ and Panmunjeom. As you probably all know, the DMZ is the de-militarised zone between North and South Korea, where both sides face each other in a stalemate. A peace trey was never signed between the two sides, so technically they are still at war with each other.

The tour takes in several sites related to the war before entering the DMZ itself. First was Imjingak Park and Freedom Bridge, where prisoners of war were exchanged. The bridge is completely blocked now though. The fence is covered in barbed wire and strewn with ribbons where people have written messages for loved ones stuck on the other side. Then we went to the Third Infiltration Tunnel. This is one of four known tunnels that the North have dug in an attempt to launch a surprise attack on the Seoul. It is believedthat there are more tunnels yet to be found. We went down intothe tunnel itself, but there's not really anything down there to see. There are several blockades along the tunnel to prevent the North getting in, and we were only allowed as far as the first blockade.

We then went to Dora Obsevatory, where you can look at North Korea through binocular. You can also take photos but you have to stand a few metres back from a wall just under five feet tall, which makes a decent photo pretty impossible. We could see the two villages inside the DMZ - the Freedom Village of South Korea wherenabout 200 people live, and the Propaganda Village of North Korea, which is just a show village where the 'villagers' leave every night to go to their real homes. Both villages are completed by a massive flag pole, with the North Korean one dominating. Next stop wss Dorasan Station. This fully functional train station, complete with platform barriers, toilets and a shop, is linked up to Pyongyang in the North, but no trains actually go there. It's all set up and ready for the reunification of Korea. We went out onto the platform and, as there were no trains, jumped down onto the tracks to get a quick photo. Just as we finished a guard came out and gestured to our camera. Guiltily, we heaved ourselves back onto the platform and smiled sheepishly at him. The guard then said "may I help you?" and mimed taking a photo. Not only was he offering to take a photo off us, but he pointed back at the tracks indicating that we could go down there!

After lunch we headed to the DMZ proper. From this point everything got a lot more serious. We were about to go to the actual line separating the North and South, where talks are held between the two governments. Crossing through checkpoints we arrived at Camp Bonifas for a briefing on the Joint Security Area (JSA) that we would be visiting. We were given badges stating that we were UN visitors before being put on a different coach driven by a soldier and taken to the JSA. After being assessed to see if we were appropriately dressed (apparently we need to maintain the dignity of the UN) we were taken to the line itself. It was incredible. In front of us were the meeting halls, which weren't much more than steel sheds. On our side were five South Korean guards. Across from us, on the North Korean side of the sheds, was a large building with a lone North Korean soldier standing guard. Every now and the. He lifted up a pair of binoculars and surveyed us. Amazingly we were allowed to take photos here. We then trooped into the main meeting hall. It held several tables and chairs, with the main table in the centre being watched over by a guard. This table straddles the dividing line so in just going around the table we crossed into North Korea. We were allowed to take photos in here, including the guard, though we had to maintain a distance of 50cm from him if we posed with him. One of our group forgot this and got too close and she was very firmly pushed way by the guard. This was our last stop so after handing back our visitor passes we were driven back to our coach.

Thursday 7th July - arrive in Sokcho. We have left Seoul now and headed east to Sokcho and Seoraksan National Park. We have taken the most luxurious bus we've ever been on! The seats are so wide that there are only in each row instead of four, and as well as reclining they have footrests that lift up too!

Bye!
Lindsay and Chris