Jennifer and I decided to join fellow teachers Ashley, Sarah, Amber, and Sumi to head into Seoul this weekend and hit Insadong. Regrettably, Jen and I didn't manage to get in to Xanadu Travel in Itaewon, to process our Chinese entrance visas for our December trip, so we'll have to go again next week. Oh well.
Still, it was quite fun to go into what is essentially an entire street devoted to arts and crafts in the bustling heart of Seoul. Insadong is rather interesting: at the extreme north end of Insadong-gil, you have a series of old palaces and temples built by the Joseon kings. At the south end is the recently restored canal, of which I have spoken before.
We wandered about, collecting knickknacks and postcards. Jen picked up a pair of KimChi pots, in miniature. Our coworkers like to joke that we both have rather odd obsessions: I love architecture, and so love dragging people to see things like Hwaseong or the palaces and the like. Jen likes Kimchi. More accurately, she really likes the Kimchi pots.
We dropped in to the only Starbucks in the world that doesn't use the Roman alphabet, and more particularly, English, on its sign. The front door literally has Hangeul-ization of Starbucks (Seu-tah-buk-seu) on it. Ironically, inside, the signage is still half-English and half-Korean. The Christmas blend remains the same.
We also ventured around into various little arts stores to look at craftwork and things. It's a bit sad that a lot of what someone might think are neat little originals are also on sale at the discount stores halfway down the street. Mass production of touristy things must be going on at breakneck pace behind the scenes.
Still, it is interesting to note how much human beings love to shop. It doesn't much matter what culture one is from, we still end up going to markets and browsing. I was struck by the similarities in this when I bumped into a few Korean couples haggling over prices over the same set of bow and arrows I picked up (suction cup tips and all) from a street vendor, by the group of elderly women all hamming it up for a photograph (flashing the peace sign and all), and by the sheer number of people doing the same thing as us: happily browsing away.
Homo oeconomicus? Hardly. But we do really love our shopping.
Cheers,
Chris
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