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Planes, Trains & Tentacles
Sunday 17th of February 2008 06:39 PM

As many of you will know I'm traveling again, so I thought I'd dust off the old spam-o-tron (let me know if you want to be added or removed from this list because I'm running off what I had from my last trip).

The first stop this time is Seoul Korea, this has been a hell of an experience In true traveling form Jay and myself managed to get lost the moment we got off the bus from the airport Woo go us. Turned out we were a meager block from where we were supposed to be.

After standing in the cold looking like complete lost tourists (which we were) we opted to call for help, and after some confusion we made it to our place of stay, a cozy little place called the Happy road guest house.
Now in Korea unlike most other places I've stayed hostels tend to be peoples homes that they had added a few beds and let people stay. This was unltimately CHEAP!!!!! A measly 10,000 won (a bit over $11) per night gave a roof over our head a bed showers and all.

Our first day out took us to a palace dongdaemun market and (with much thanks to Tash giving Jay bad ideas), dinner at a traditional Korean seafood restraunt. Jay had received an email pointing out that you can get live octopus on a plate here, and this sent him on a mission.

A visit to a tourist information center and a chat with a somewhat disgusted yet friendly and helpful young Korean girl had an escort to this place down a small alley full of Seoul's finest seafood restraunts.
Once seated the nice guy asked what we wanted, Jay jumped at the chance to repeat his desire to eat squirming tentacles, despite his supprised look the waiter seemed to know what he wanted. Me not so keen tried to order chicken, crab anything else however the language barrier left me with the trusty, "I'll have what he's having".

A short 5 - 10 minuted later and we had our plate of squirming tentacles and a nice hot boiling broth on the side cooking the rest of the octopus, some oysters and some greens. Jay not being one to welch on a challenge picked up his chopsticks and proceeded to wrestle with the slimy suckers trying (unsuccessfully) to detach one from the plate. After some time our audience (the staff at this particular establishment) suggested he pry them off the plate on to a spoon using his chopsticks as a lever.
This proved successful After some chewing he swallowed and didn't die. I assumed this was a good sign and gave it a go myself. My description of this particular experience .... errr slimy, odd (when they latch on to the inside of your mouth) and well calamari like.

The rest of dinner continued with more prying and eating and eating of the soup and cooked portions of the octopus (including a ink leaking head). All in all if your here give it a go!

Day two we visited the local theme park (Lotte world), and caught the train looking for American town but ended up a whopping 2 hours from Seoul and in Chinatown. It was significantly colder here I'd estimate -1 or -2 degrees, we climbed some hills and had some fantastic dumplings and pork buns, then headed home stopping for blood sausage on a stick from a random street vendor after the 2 hour train ride back into town. And we kicked back and had a few beers at "Barcode" a bar across the road from the hostel.

Day three was a leisurely bus tour stopping at the National Museum, Itewon (the American/tourist town we'd been seeking the previous day) and Seoul Tower. The view from Seoul tower was awesome you can see the city sprawl as far as you can see (through the dense smog) with gaps for the mountains scattered here and there. The sunset lite up everything giving a gorgeous view.

At the bottom of the tower I'd realised I'd lost my bus ticket so Jay and I set out on foot to the bottom of the mountain, this took about an hour stopping to pump some iron at one of the public workout stations about half way down the mountain. We had no problems finding one of the many subway stations and got back to Hyehwa for dinner of bugoggi pizza at pizza hut. We finished the day with some beer and pool at Barcode.

Now I sit at the airport awaiting a plane to wisk us away to our next destination - Germany

To sum up Korea
- The beer is tasty and cheap (about $2.50-$3 a pint at a bar, or $2-$4 in a plastic bottle at the local convenience store)
- The people a friendly enough.
- Haggling is the done thing at most markets.
- Calculators found at almost all checkouts help shop operators tell us tourists what we need to pay.
- Trains are cheap, frequent and an time efficient means of getting about
- Accommodation could be nicer but hey it's cheap :)

Have fun and enjoy random meat.

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L337 H4x0rz Eat my shorts
Thursday 19th of October 2006 12:41 PM

Today I spent rewriting the main index file on my website because some clever kiddie decided to hack my website.

This was not appreciated and has taken me the best part of 3 hours to return it to some resemblance of it's former self.

Were I at home I could simply replace the files with the local copy I had. However as I'm not at home I had to rewrite the main index from scratch and remember how everything (i wrote about a year ago) actually worked.

The source of the hack appears to be a bug in a software my host runs which mean I wasn't alone. Hopefully the my server will be inclinded to update their management software to something more recent which includes patches for this particular vunerability.

Any way I think I'll take this opportunity to make a backup of sorts incase this kid decides to have another go.

Have fun and remember it's ok to hurt script kiddies

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Arnie runs this joint
Tuesday 17th of October 2006 04:58 AM

So as you should know I'm in California now I'm staying with Alf a friend from highschool.

Spending 3 - 4 days on a train was quite an effort but I managed it. I ordered a pizza to be delivered to a train station the train went through which I though was prety cool.
I met a cool girl named Ashley and we hung out for the last day of the trip.
For some reason Amtrak (the american interstate train network) sold the track to a freight company so now freight trains get priority and almost every train is now late.
Given this The second last day concluded in salt lake city almost an hour ahead of schedule which was prommising yet the next day we managed to lose all that time and arrive 6 hours late.

Any way it's all over now and I've finaly had a shwer and have on clean clothes!

I now need to work out what I'm gonna do whilst I'm in California.

Have fun and enjoy that $7 an hour minimum wage.

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Can trains be any more annoying?
Monday 16th of October 2006 04:51 PM

I've finally made it to California alive and kicking.
The train trip was well painful and arrived 6 hours late!

Anyway I'm knackered so I'm going to sleep.
I'll post a better blog and reply to everyones emails tomorrow.

Have fun and remember freight trains suck

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Move Allong Move Allong
Thursday 12th of October 2006 09:27 AM

Well I've left New York and am still alive for all thoe who woere wondering (you know planes hitting buildings and all that)

I'm now staying with my mate Dave in Red Lion Pennsylvania
I've finally got all my photos to date You can find them at http://www.cliffsville.net/index.php?Page=Stills

The plan is to move on tomorrow but I'm waiting on an email from Chris to see if he'll meet me in Seattle else I'll just head straight to San Francisco. The train trip either way will be about 3 days which is intense.


Have fun and watchout for bed bugs.

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