South Korea

Seoul

A few days ago I arrived in South Korea on a ferry from China and spent a couple of nights in Seoul. As with any capital city, Seoul has the obligatory tower, in this case the imaginatively named N'Seoul Tower. Its not very tall but has the advantage of being on a large hill in the centre of the city and the views were impressive.

Dinner

After the tower, I spent some time wandering around a large outdoor market where a large variety of interesting food was on offer. I felt like trying something a bit different and ended up ordered an octopus leg from this stand.

I wasn't sure quite how it would be prepared and I was hoping that I wouldn't be given the thing to eat whole. I was relieved when the poor cephalopod's limb was finely sliced and cooked on the hot stones on the left of the photo. It was pretty tasty but I was still hungry and eager to try something else so I soon got tempted into another street eatery by a smiley salesman and was quickly shown round what they had available. My curiousity got the better of me when I was shown the plate below (Jo, you may want to stop reading here):

The pile of pink things are snakes. I really couldn't resist so I quickly struck a deal for a large beer and a plate of serpent cooked with chillis:

The dish was good but not great. I'm glad I tried it but wouldn't do it again. Had the things been alive and wriggling when I saw them, there is no way I could have eaten one.

DMZ

My last day in Seoul was spent visiting the DMZ from the South Korean side. These tours are very popular and unfortunately, I wasn't able to get on a tour which went right to the centre of the zone, as I had done in the DPRK. I did see quite a few other things though, including Dorasan station which sits just below the DMZ itself on a line connecting Seoul and Pyongyang.

Jeju-do

I am currently on a large island off the South of the peninsula called Jeju-do. Its essentially a large volcano and there is a lot of good hiking to be had and many interesting things to see. Yesterday I visited the largest lava tunnel in the world.

This morning I somehow made it out of bed in time to see the sun rise over a smaller volcano called Ilchulbong. This is a very popular thing to do and I had the company of about 30 or so Koreans. I'm not really sure why this is done but it was good fun and must be the first time I have seen a sunrise in a long time.

I went up again during the morning...