d-Wizz Hankuk Travel Diary [2005]
Day 2 (2005-07-28) / Day 3 (2005-07-29) / Day 4 (2005-07-30) 
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Day 3: 2005-07-29 (Friday)
In the morning, I was treated to a large Korean breakfast (한식: han sik meal) at Lauren’s house. After this, I went with Lauren to Bupyeong in his car to recharge the Korean pre-paid mobile phone my sister had loaned me, and also to get a map of Korea in book format. Recharging a pre-paid mobile is a much more difficult task in Korea than in Australia, because they are not very popular. Most mobile phone shops (and there are literally dozens everywhere) do not offer recharge services. After many attempts in Dongam and Bupyeong, we eventually found a store where I could recharge. I put W60,000 on the phone.
The map was much easier to find, and much cheaper. I browsed the wide selection, ranging from small A4-sized fold-out maps through to 1” thick ultra-detailed tomés with every nook and cranny of Korea cartographed to the nth degree. Narrowing this down to about four A4 sized books, I eventually settled on a 160-page “Korea Road & Tour Guide”, with about ½ of this covering Seoul in 1:13,000 maps, plus maps of all the major cities and every province in Korea. For only W7,500, it looked like very good value. Bonus map of Seoul’s subway system inside the back cover too! Unfortunately, everything in the book (including the subway map) is in Korean, but I thought I would learn Hangul a bit better that way.
We returned to Lauren’s house and had ramyun for lunch. At 1530, I set out to meet 주진오 (Joo Jin-Oh) at Sanseong. This was a rather complicated journey involving two transfers. Getting on at Dongam (154), I rode line 1 to Sindorim (140), where I changed to line 2 (233) and went to Jamsil (216). Here, I transferred again to line 8 (814) and this took me to Sanseong (821). I was due there at 1800, and I was only a little bit late. Jin-Oh took me to a restaurant where his brother and wife work together. We sat on the floor and enjoyed bulgogi, a popular Korean meal based on pork with the obligatory rice, kim-chee and Korean vegetables. The pork was cooked on a mesh plate on the table with a gas flame heating it from above, which we all ate from directly. The meal was once again very tasty, and not very spicy at all.
After dinner, I headed off back towards Incheon, but on the way I called James (김재홍: Kim Jae Hong), and we made plans to meet together. He told me to go to Dong-daemun, but I went to his home station instead and I had to come back. The mix-up took about 30 minutes to sort out. We wandered around Dong-daemun, had a light meal and then we went to James’ house. James showed me some things on his computer and I showed him some things from mine, thanks to the new USB stick I had just bought.
After that, we both went to sleep.
Day 2 (2005-07-28) / Day 3 (2005-07-29) / Day 4 (2005-07-30)
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