Today we awoke with difficulty to a blaring alarm at 5:30am. Oh the humanity! Finally on our feet, we dressed, groggily, and then force-marched ourselves 25 mins in the pre-dawn chill to the Koreana Hotel. Our DMZ tour group was already waiting for us (oops) but with sleep still in my eyes, very few fucks were given.
Nestled in our warm minibus, we drove 1 hour towards the North Korean border; finally halting at Imjingak Park (gateway to the DMZ) as the sun peeked over the horizon. Being a little further north, with snow all over the ground, it was cold as fuck but yet another bright and sunny day.
After an hour wait while tickets were procured, we jumped on an official bus and drove over unification bridge, through road obstacles to the official army checkpoint. Here MPs boarded the bus and checked our passports, giving us the hairy eyeball for a few minutes until we were all allowed to pass.
Our first stop was the 3rd tunnel, thus named because it was the third found. Donning hard hats we walked down the endless (and steep!) access tunnel and finally found ourselves surrounded my North Korean handiwork hundreds of metres below the surface. We walked to the end of the low roofed tunnel, stooping all the way, and making good use of the hard hat. Say what you like about the North Koreans, those fuckers can dig!
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| Third Tunnel - the only shit I could actually photograph. |
Finally surfacing, calves burning, we jumped back on the bus and headed for the most interesting part of the tour - Dora DMZ observatory. Here there's an observation platform where you can see the North Korean side of the DMZ and watch their nefarious plots hatching first hand. It was great to look out at their propaganda village and other structures, but unfortunately I never saw a living North Korean person.
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| Spying on those dastardly North Koreans. |
The final stop on the tour was a supermarket for the South Korean village within the DMZ. Kudos to the poor buggers who live there, but it wasn't that interesting. We bought some rice snacks and left them to their patriotic duty.
By 1pm we were back in Myeongdong and looking for lunch. As we walked back to Insadong, we stopped at Lotte Burger for a Korean bulgogi burger and unfortunately it was pretty crap. We instead settled for coffee at Holly's (yet another coffee chain) but it was also pretty shit. Just not our day for food!
Anyway, after dropping our warmer clothes off at the hotel and kept walking to the Buchon Hanok Village. Our aim was to have tea and rice-pumpkin cake at the same tea house that Stephen from Watcher filmed from just days/weeks (?) before.
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| Tea Masineum Tteul - Yet another amazing tea house. |
Suffice to say both the tea and the cake were awesome, as was the setting. After we'd chilled for an hour or so, it was close to 4:30pm and we were all pretty beat. A leisurely walk back through Buchon and Insadong saw us back at our hotel for a little rest before dinner.
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| Views over Buchon Hanok Village |
Come 7pm, we were getting hungry again (like only ravenous tourists eating 4 meals a day can be). Ever since our ginseng chicken experience on day 2, we hadn't stopped talking about it. So the decision was made to revisit - usually a big no no for any trip. We walked the 30mins back to the restaurant and consumed chicken ginseng soup with gusto.
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| Gensing chicken soup - take 2. |
The chicken was as good as we remembered it, and this time around we ordered makgeolli to go with it. This stuff wasn't filtered like the makgeolli we loved in Jeonju. Instead it was very cloudy and huge on taste. A bit too huge for me unfortunately.
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