Day 2 - Seoul

It was dark and rainy. Haha, sounded like the beginning of a bad novel; nah; it was true today that it was dark and rainy - after we had our run outside at 5:35am. It was cold until we warmed up. Nothing better than running around a new neighbourhood to get familiar with it. We stumbled across a park not far from our hotel. The sidewalk surrounding the park is paved with cushioned material so our knees wouldn't be damaged. The park was big; even though we didn't go in but the fresh flower and plant aroma just permeated toward the sidewalk. Nice smell.

The COEX mall connected to this hotel is just like another big place; nothing exciting; a mall is a mall. Though, I noticed people are more technologically advanced. While waiting for my latte, this girl was studying using a portable video player; but not a DVD player or PSP, just a small 6" video player; she was watching a lecture. Cool. BTW, South Korea has the most broadband penetration in the whole world.

Tonight, my iron-wife found a nice vegetarian buffet restaurant for supper. It was nice; had a mixed of local ingredients like fungi, imitation meal cake, sesame balls, brown rice, pumpkin congee, steamed vegetable, to name a few. It had cost us W$24,000; that was about US$24.00. Not bad.

As we walked to the restaurant, I noticed the followings with the locals:
- office workers done around 7pm; they all come out of the office in mass. Men wore suits; very very seldom seeing a man in casual clothing. And they all wore black suits; seemed to be the "in" colour.

- taxi stopped in front of the office towers waiting for people; sometimes, the taxi parked in the middle of the Intersection waiting for customers; but they were considered enough to have leave lots of space for people to enter or exit the intersections.

- street hawkers selling snacks everywhere; most selling their goodies at the back of the truck with a make shift tent and the food in individual heated containers. Or, hawkers that have tents which you can sit down. I saw all arteries clogging agents being sold; deep fried dogs (hot dogs that is), tempera, katchup sausages and corns.

- the main streets do not have the nice food restaurants; they are all behind the main streets in the side streets; you have to look; but people seem to know where the food and restaurants are.