A Day in Seoul before Thailand

Our flight for Thailand left at 4:25pm on a Wednesday from Incheon ariport, so we decided to go up to Seoul on Tuesday night so that we wouldn't have to go straight from a bus to a train to the plane to get there. We spent over night at this jimjilbang (찜질방) close to the train station. A jimjilbang is a public bath, but also has saunas and a sleeping area, so you can relax there, get massages, bathe yourself and get warm place to sleep, all for like $10. Sometimes they're less, and the nicer ones are more.

This one that we stayed at ended up being really nice, and included a lot of things that jimjilbangs don't normally have: such as a gym, singing room, and a sleeping floor separate from the relaxing floor.



The next morning, we headed out around 10pm into the city. We walked around for a while, found some waffles for breakfast and headed towards city hall.


Near city hall, we came across some sort of ceremony happening in front of the entrance to one of the palaces. We quickly figured out that it was a changing of the guard ceremony and stuck around to watch the rest of it.




After the ceremony was finished, the barriers were taken down and onlookers were gestured in, encouraging and allowing us to take pictures with the guards.




Off to the side, we noticed a man perched on a cement barrier doing what foreigners refer to as the "Asian squat". This is something difficult to master unless you've been raised doing it your entire life. It's actually much more comfortable than a regular squat, and people are able to do it for hours on end without cutting off circulation or getting tired. They prefer this to sitting on the ground and will usually choose to do it over standing for long periods of time.


Our original desination in the area was here, in front of city hall, where we had heard they set up an ice skating rink for December and January. It was only $1 to go for 1 hour and that included rental skates! It was a great deal. Even though it was crowded and the skates were pretty old and dull, we had a lot of fun.



The city hall building is gorgeous and we decided to take a look inside after skating and before heading to the airport. The exterior is entirely made of class, and much of the interior is cover in real vines and plants. It was really cool to see!



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