Seoul - beautiful hotel, service needs some work

Seoul. I’m here and exhausted, but at least I’m in an absolutely gorgeous hotel, the Weston Chosun Seoul. There is music in the bathroom, a doorbell, plugs for both European and American standards, an electronic notification when the newspaper has been delivered, even an espresso machine in my room... I have had many close calls, but this might be the nicest, most modern hotel I have ever stayed in. I left Laurel this morning (after having slept with all the lights on for a grand total of 2 hours) in a huge rush because I had gotten up a half an hour late. Poor Edit was probably waiting for me downstairs; I woke up at the time we planned to meet. I rushed out and tried to make sure I had everything (nothing has been missing yet) and Edit and I got in the cab to the airport. I didn’t sleep in the cab, but I wanted to; I had a coffee Edit had gotten at the hotel for us so I couldn’t yet. We checked in with no problem and did some window shopping; I was exhausted and passed out pretty much the second we sat down. And then on the plane (intermittent with dreams about crashing, as always) I was in and out of sleep for the whole 2.5 hours.

When we arrived in Seoul it was cloudy out and once again it looked as though we were about to land on water because we couldn’t see a thing. For some reason, our phones were so far from even remotely working that we needed to rent local ones here. Then we took a limo-bus to the hotel – which was about an hour away – for $10 USD. Of course, I was immediately asleep. When we arrived at the hotel I got the sense that we were being treated like misfits, but this was most likely because we looked like them. Everyone else was in suits and skirts and had an air of elegance about them. Not us, and especially not me; I wanted to try a free drink sample and almost caused the glass it was in to shatter on the floor. Real smooth. Even though it was 2 pm, apparently Edit’s room wasn’t ready yet so they needed to give her a new one, once she insisted. (Really people? Last I checked we were staying at a 5 star hotel!) Edit thought maybe it was because we are women? In general the people at the hotel were just snobby. Maybe we weren’t dressed nicely enough (suits and skirts are the way to go here). Who knows. Again, once I got in my room I was out in lala land until Edit came to find me 3 hours later. We walked through the luxurious hotel, it’s 5 restaurants, full gym and pool, and a nice sauna where we saw many butt-ass naked much older women with floppy boobs. I’m hoping to take an aerobics class here during my stay. Outside the hotel isn’t much less in standard than the inside. The Westin is surrounded by many other high-end hotels, as well as countless malls with all the riches you could want inside of them. We took some time to check out the grocery store we would potentially survey (my favorite part of the survey, of course) and I got lost in a sea of homemade baked goods, kimchi, ice cream, chocolate, and organic aisles. Yes we would be back here to look at prices! We found that the basics of Korean might actually be more difficult to learn and remember than Chinese, though Edit’s all ready to have fun with the language. She likes it. I keep forgetting how to say everything. But, I’m already convinced that the food is better than Taipei. We went to an organic noodle bar for dinner tonight and I got Shanghai something or other with hot spices, noodles, cabbage, onion, garlic etc. I split a roll of sushi with Edit too. Delicious! I’m becoming an expert in my own personal way to use chopsticks. I’m really not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. After lots of half-work, half-chatter boxing I’m ready for bed now. The streets are quiet and I want to use the gym tomorrow. Goodnight 

What's that Smell?

In general, (but mostly as a result of the type of food they cook) to me, Taiwan smelled badly. It smelled a combination of dirty and horrific, almost like what you would envision burning flesh smelling like. On many occasions, it really curbed my hunger and desire to eat. I had to be at the right place (NOT surrounded by that smell) and somewhere that had pictures of what I was about to eat before I could order. A part of me wanted to order something unusual just to say that I ate it, but then I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to eat it and would be totally grossed out. Intestines, frog legs, livers, brains, you name it, they sold it. Anyways, Taipei was a great city that both Edit and I really enjoyed and it was awesome to see Laurel. It was time to move on to Seoul.

Laurel was around for such great fun!

Laurel came to visit me and I was soooooo psyched. She stayed at no extra charge and it was awesome, besides that I wish I could have spent more time with her. We went out one night and met up with a guy she had met during her travels; he was also staying in Taipei. We checked out the night markets; some of the food looked absolutely disgusting (like squid and fish on a stick) but some of it looked great (the dumplings). I didn’t have the courage to try the street food though. I didn’t want to take the risk of potentially getting sick while fully across the globe. There were people at these markets who were, like in the US; clearly selling illegally; at one point we almost got run over by some people with wheelbarrows who were just plowing through crowds because the police were looking specifically for menaces like them. We also took a stroll through
Snake Alley, and I wish I could honestly say that I drank snake blood like most surveyors past, but I didn’t. I didn’t even get any pictures of any snakes! There was no one out in snake alley and I had no one brave enough with me to drink the blood also. And, in order to obtain the blood, a snake would have been killed for my sake and I didn’t really want to make that call, so I reluctantly passed.

We made sure to take a ton of pictures with the Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world until Dubai opened up the NEW tallest building in the world (at the turn of 2010?) most of these pictures were at the start of Edit’s and my “vacation” days – we had a few days to just hang out and relax so we took a bottle of wine to the NYC tribute statue (a replica of the statue of liberty) and sat on it due to the lack of tables in the area. We broke out our glasses and very obvious bottle of cab and started drinking in public – which we later found out was very illegal! We wondered why people were staring at us. Those stupid foreigners. Laurel was so accustomed to drinking in the streets in Korea that she was sure it wouldn’t be an issue at all. Our “illegal” drinking in the street became much more obvious when I dropped my first glass of wine on my lap. Smooth. Now we really had people just staring at us wondering what the hell we were doing. After buying sunglasses while tipsy, we went to the Hyatt hotel and took prices over glasses of vino while making stories up about the people around us, especially a sad looking woman sitting in the café alone, whose lover must have stood her up. That night we made it out to some Japanese hot springs where we bathed in numerous pools of varying temperatures (between hot and cold) and we took rice wine shots in between. Edit and I had ordered a bottle of rice wine a few days before. We tried, really hard to like it but it just never worked. It really just is gross, fyi.

During one of our free days, we went out to Wulai which had indigenous people and beautiful waterfalls. We just walked for hours. On the way back we took a ride to the tea fields - we stopped for a pot of tea and to hang out with a woman’s pet rabbit who humped her hand when she was trying to feed it. But on the upside, the views were spectacular; you could see straight out to the Taipei 101 – (not a huge surprise since it is the tallest building in the world!) We were going to get something to eat in these roaming, very local hills but nothing seemed to spark our fancy. I’ve just come to the conclusion that I don’t like real Chinese/Taiwanese food. We went all the way back into the city to get dinner at a place that was recommended and it was a real let-down. There were very few swanky restaurants with semi-normal food – high quality restaurants weren’t an American luxury last I checked? (I hope never to see intestines and brains and livers on menus again). The place we ate at was small and had a fast-food atmosphere to it. We were not impressed.

High level of service and availability

So far, Taipei was a pretty cool place. The people were so friendly. We had no permission problems; everyone just wanted to help out. The level of service here was just unbelievable. There was a person at every corner trying to help which was both awesome and severely annoying at the same time. If you needed someone they were there, but if you didn’t want someone watching, no luck on that. At one of the grocery stores, the manager even seemed amazed at what we were doing and wanted to know everything about it and where we were from. She seemed, basically; completely honored to have us there. One day I bought a nice pen as a realtor gift. When it came time to pay, I handed my credit card to the lady at the counter and suddenly she sprinted away with it. She didn’t have a machine with her. Coming back, we watched her as she started sprinting back to us to return my credit card to me. It was utterly hilarious. The people at the hotel were great too. The breakfast staff knew both Edit’s and my (last) name and eventually knew our room number as well. (Not to mention that the complimentary breakfast was amazing! Everything you could imagine was available – from tradition Chinese dishes to western cuisine). When we would leave in a taxi to go out, the doorman would give us a business card with the hotel’s information and address on it in Chinese symbols so that we could communicate how to get home. We may have been screwed otherwise! The business staff did everything they could to help out with our phone calls (even though it was a bit frustrating that they couldn’t finish everything we asked of them). When the phone calls took too long, they helped us hire a translator who came to the hotel. He was in Edit’s room. When I walked in I was shocked. He was very tall and thin and nearly jumped at me with all his anxiety. He had a serious stutter, and he was completely wound up like he was worried that we might yell or hit him if he did anything wrong. “He-he-hello Ms. Basleeeerr, ma ma my name is ……………” I was absolutely and completely shocked that a guy with a stutter worked for a translating company, but… hey; he ended up getting our work done quickly and efficiently so we couldn’t complain.


Also, availability in Taipei in the stores is just awesome. International brands were available everywhere which made the survey much easier. In one store, I asked for the price of CK sheets and the lady told me but said “they are made in Taiwan”. It almost seemed like the expected quality in Taiwan to be different than that of the US because they were made in Taiwan. Little does she know that products sold in the US are also actually made in Taiwan!

Seat belts, nazi symbols and language barriers

It’s amazing how many seat belt comments I have gotten on survey. One taxi driver yelled at me NOT to wear it even though we were going fast, weaving through traffic during congestion during rush hour time. I really don’t understand these taxi drivers, do they really just have that much faith in themselves?

We were in a grocery store one day when I noticed a cup of noodles that had the nazi signs on it! I was in complete disbelief so I took a picture. Little did we know… the smart Laurel informed me that the backwards nazi symbol was actually a sign of Buddhism. What a coincidence…

Edit and I went to AIG because we needed a quote for car insurance. So, we take the elevator all the way up to the top and walk in to the really nice office where we are greeted by two girls who became giggly when they realized we spoke English not Chinese. “Hello, we would like to speak with someone about car insurance?” OK the girl says, and puts us into a conference room and brings us green tea. A few minutes later, in walks a man who says “Hi, you have a meeting with Carl ****?” Edit and I look at each other and start cracking up. No no no, CAR Insurance! Unfortunately, this guy wasn’t able to help us but he told us where to go. That’s language barrier for you! Chinese symbols are just amazing. It’s so intriguing how people communicate with symbols; their details are so intricate so it’s unbelievable to see people write them quicker than we would write a word made from the alphabet.

Shi She!

Is “thank you” in Chinese. I can speak Chinese! The first week of being in Asia was great. I fell asleep super early and woke up around 6 to go to the gym, eat breakfast, and get ready for the day. Of course, this didn’t last that long; after the first week I was struggling to find time to work out because it wasn’t happening in the beginning of the day.

One day in the morning at breakfast, there was one man (European) who walked in with three asian girls. There was no doubt by either Edit or myself that these girls were prostitutes. It was disturbing.

So, umm… half of the public toilets here are nothing but holes in the floor, and you can flush it. Literally you stand over it and pee. Disgusting. There were little pictures outside of the stalls that would tell you which type of toilet you were entering and I made sure to stay far, far away from the ones with nothing but holes. Though; a part of me did want to snap a picture of it. I wasn’t really quite sure how OK that would be though. Aside from the holes in the ground, they have a system where you can stick your hand in front of a symbol and the sound of water and a toilet flushing blares from your stall. This is “courtesy” sound effects which I think is hilarious. Throughout Taiwan, there is an insane amount of motorbikes everywhere. At a green light, you would wait for 30 seconds while only huge motorcades went by and cut off all the cars. So dangerous; one day when it was raining I actually saw someone fall while making a turn at an intersection.

Reporting from the future..

The first thing I noticed on arrival to the airport in Taipei was all the masks. About 60% of all the people I saw were wearing them, and there was a disease control area which checked your temp if you looked or felt bad. Later in the trip, it was so funny to see young couples walking around holding hands. Think of Carrie from Sex in the City walking around with Big with a mask on. The romantic aspect of it just doesn’t jive. The taxi ride to the hotel was long so I passed out in the car towards the end. I was done for, but was still feeling that travel-wired. Though I was psyched to get into my room and take a good long nap.

But, that didn’t happen. I arrived at 8 am and was informed by the really nice man that my room wouldn’t be ready until possibly 2 pm. At this point I felt bad for anyone who came even relatively near me because I smelled. I just really wanted a shower. So, what did I do? I had him direct me to the fitness center where I took advantage of my dirtiness and my overtired wiredness and went to the gym, for almost an hour and a half. The only thing that kept me from continuing was that the man came back to find me to let me know my room was finally ready. It felt so wonderful to finally take a shower. I reserved my nap for later after I had sent some emails.

Edit arrived and we spent a good hour chatting. We decided to nap (which I had to drag myself up from) and meet up around 7 to go find some dinner. The concierge directed us to the street which had long stretches of “typical” Asian cuisine so we walked down and checked out menus determined to find one with some English, but no luck. We picked a place to walk into and although there were no English menus, the waiter spoke English. The funny thing I noticed about the Asian culture is that if they see a white person, immediately they are going to think there is no way they speak Chinese so if they speak English, you will be greeted in English. That prevents the whole awkward “do you speak English?” conversation which kinda makes life easier! There was a wait, but we decided we would wait. One very large beer later, we were sitting down to Japanese barbecue. It was awesome, like fondue, but with a grill and no cheese! Our waiter cooked raw chicken, shrimp, beef, ricecake, squid, and vegetables for us, right at our table, on the grill. He mixed on different toppings for everything. It was delish.

That was it. We were done, and went home to bed. I was in bed passing out by 12:15 (which was so strange to think that while it was 12:15 am here, it was 12:15 pm at home!) So, ultimately I come to you from the future 