Insa-Dong

Last night Kris and her husband suggested I take a day to look at Insa-dong, a market street that's popular with tourists. It was touristy all right, but it was also pretty charming.

I don't know what's up with those sculptures, but they made me laugh.


I bought some of those red bean cakes, and I was happily strolling and munching. I'll recreate my thought process for you here: Mmmm yum yum yum. Squishy cakes, squishy cakes. Hmmm... that's not squishy. Is it a bean? *crunch* ... OH FUCK ME IT'S A NUT. 

 Sigh. I hate having food allergies. I can't accurately express how much I hate it. And it doesn't help to be in a country where I can't speak the language well enough to ask about ingredients. But it makes me wonder about people with deadly allergies. How do they travel? When they do travel, do they just have to bring their own food everywhere and double-vet every restaurant? I was able to walk it off with only a few minutes of misery, so I guess I'm sort of lucky that I don't have it as bad as I might.

I went to an actual Korean restaurant today, and not Paris Baguette!

Mmmm, bulgogi.

Next I went to this sort of cultural museum a short walk from Insa-dong. It was pretty cool.

These guys are sculptures of scholars and soldiers that guard tombs. They all have different faces; it's pretty cool.

This is, no joke, a four-foot sculpted stone penis. There was even a plaque nearby about phallic imagery in Korean art. This one has some, uh, decorations on the shaft (ribbed for her pleasure?). There was a more realistic-looking one nearby.

Inside the museum was really cool. They had videos of cartoon people projected on all the walls to make it feel like you were really in a market. Each projection had its own sound too, right down to background noises and dialogue. All the recordings overlapped, but if you got close to a certain scene you could hear what they were saying. It was a really cool effect.

The plaque says "ornamental knives for women's safety." Damn. Rapists, nowadays you get maced. Back then the women carried switchblades!

Some of the dioramas had music or other sounds to go with them. This one had, I am not making this up, Captain Jack's theme from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Well, it's the weekend. I've spent all week exploring the city, which has been cool, but I've been doing it all alone. Drew, Eun-mi, Kris, and Sunghun (her husband) are working all day, and Harmuni and Eun-hyuk don't speak English. I never used to get lonely, but I'm pretty starved for human interaction right now!

I'm hoping Drew will be going out with his friends this weekend, and I'll be able to tag along. With any luck I'll soon be able to regale you with accounts of drunken shenanigans.