I got Seoul but I saw some soldiers!

So my birthday was on the 12th which was a Wednesday and we went out for the regular Tuesday party and at 12 my lovely friends from work presented me with various cakes and sang happy birthday!

Surprise!

The Wednesday I opened my presents on the morning (thanks to everyone who sent things and gave me things, it made my day : D) and got a round of applause from my students for being alive this long which, because it's me, is quite an achievement. The absolute best news I had was that my brother was coming to Seoul with his friends in celebration of our joint birthday!!!

So on the Friday night straight after work I headed to the train station to catch the KTX to Seoul! I got there and on seeing Chris did the dramatic slow motion run toward him. I met his two mates, Dan and Graham (aka Widge). We headed back to the hotel and had a Cass (one of the few beers that is widely available alongside Hite and Max), no not a regular Cass but a lemon Cass (classy I know)! We sat outside the hotel and had a chat about what we were going to do and decided on going to Everland (an amusement park just outside of Seoul) the next day. The hotel was amazing and it was one of the comfiest best I have ever slept in.

The next day the journey to Everland was EPIC! We not only got the subway and a taxi (which I tried to tell the driver that we wanted to go to Neverland)but then two buses (one of which was 40 minutes long with only standing room available)! We actually ended up in waiting a while for a bus in Gangnam which has given us some negative feelings towards it despite the awesome song (if you haven't heard it, check it out - Gangnam Style)When we got there it was great, they were celebrating  Halloween (random) but enjoyable as they had creepy but funny music on. We went on a wooden roller-coaster which held the record for being wooden and having the steepest drop - it was AWESOME! There was also a wildlife area with beautiful tigers, bears and sea-lions among other animals.

 

 Me and Dan waited do long for the steepest drop we died and came back as zombies.

This water ride was made by the park attendants doing an awesome camp KPOP dance!!! We were mesmerized!













Some brotherly love being displayed there!

                                                                                     




The record-breaker! The steepest drop on a wooden roller-coaster in the world!

Everland offered a good display of, in my opinion, Korea's best fashion phenomenon - matching couples!!!! There were so many at the theme park that we nick-named them MCs. The winner of the day though, was the great effort here that Chris is discreetly trying to get in the background of this photo - notice the matching bow-ties!

My future pet !!!!

 We were absolutely cream-crackered when we ready to come away and so we got a taxi ride home -much easier than the way there!

There was time for a quick nap and then we were out hitting the town in Itaewon (the foreigner are in Seoul)! We ate at an Outback Steakhouse (very Korean eh?) and hit a few bars. Then we ended up in a club called Circus where a waiter could juggle like there was no tomorrow! They also had steps leading up to the bar for people to dance on and they poured drink into people's mouths! At one point they set the whole bar on fire!!!

A birthday shot!!

Amazement at Newcastle Brown Ale in Korea!!!

Chris doing his male modelling bit!

The next day, feeling a little bit fragile but not too bad, we headed off on a trip to the DMZ! We got in a little mini-van with our Korean guide who spoke excellent English and her English name was Eugene. On the way there we learnt that some mini-arches that were over the roads are called tank traps and are there in order to be blown up if any North Korean tanks try to get through. There are also barriers in the Han river to stop submarines. When we got to the outskirts of the tour area we changed to the official bus that was to take to the main DMZ. In this are it was quite strange because it is so close to danger area but they had a full on fair with rides and entertainers. We got on the bus and it took us across a bridge where we could see another bridge called The Cow Bridge, because to help North Korea the head of Hyundai (who is North Korean) sent hundreds of cows across this bridge to aid the hunger there. Our first port of call was a train station only just inside of South Korea that is completely empty!!! It  was like a post-apocalyptic scene; a station fully built and ready to go but completely deserted because of the severed connection between the North and South. 

North Korea

Us pushing the North and South together!

We then went to our next stop where you can see into North Korea, but you cannot take pictures to close to the barrier, there was a line you had to stand behind to take a picture. Eugene told us that the North Korean flag is a little bit higher than the South Korean flag because they each kept trying to get their flag that tiny bit higher than the other, but South Korea stopped this petty feud. We next went to a tunnel that connected to the tunnel that the North Koreans had tried to dig right into Seoul until they were caught. The South Koreans caught them because they had intelligence that they were digging a tunnel and so they drilled holes and put water in them so when the North Koreans set dynamite off, the water would shoot out. On being caught the North Koreans claimed they weren't trying to invade, but dig for coal...despite it not being a coal mine and it not being in North Korea but South Korea!

Just casually stood near a mine

 It was  a great and interesting trip that bizarrely ended up in an amethyst jewelers  (we think Eugene must have known the lady who owned it as it had nothing to do with the North/South divide).





On the Sunday evening we went to an amazing show called Nanta. It's primarily a drumming show but it is cookery themed and it is also a kind of comedy! The combination of being the only westerners and being on the front row resulted in two of us being picked to participate. Graham was chosen to take part in the competition between the left and right side of the audience (and obviously won- wooo blues!!!). I was picked for a more embarrassing role however, one of the characters got 'stuck' in a bin and asked me to help him get out which I obviously couldn't do! Just when I was getting desperate and calling for Chris (what else are big brothers for if not to help their sisters pull strange men out of bins), the main guy waved me away and was miraculously able to stand up quite easily - what a fool I was eh?!

So for me that concluded the activities and I left on the Monday morning and the lads stayed on until the early hours of Tuesday! It was such a great weekend! Thanks to Dan, Graham and of course my Big Bro!!!!
The celebrations don't end there as some awesome friends have been organizing a night out for this weekend :D! Thanks to everyone who has made this birthday so special!!!