Our Seoul and Tokyo Adventure: Day Seven

The most curious thing about Korean currency, in my opinion, is that the largest bill in circulation is the 10,000 Won note you see below.
Now before you go thinking that I must have a lot of money in my wallet to possess a note of the highest denomination, I should tell you that I had about ten of them in my wallet today, and that still doesn't make me rich. You see, at current exchange rates, 10,000 Won equals about CAD$10.80 or GBP£5.40. Imagine if the largest Canadian note was a $10 bill or the largest UK note was a fiver! Such small denominations necessitate having a rather large wad of bills on you if you intend on shopping or eating out, especially in a society in which cash is still widely used over credit. Banks will issue cashier cheques for denominations of more than 100,000 Won that you can use in most places if you sign the back and provide identification--this type of traceability is supposed to counteract money laundering and bribery. Although the Korean government has long been reluctant to issue a note worth more than 10,000 Won, 50,000 and 100,000 Won notes will finally come into circulation in 2009, and everyone's bulging wallets (many Koreans actually carry 10,000 Won notes around in separate envelopes because a stack of bills is often too thick to fit in a regular wallet) can finally relax. Anyway, today we drove into Seoul so that my mom could have lunch with some of her friends (the end of the year is a very popular time for get-togethers) and Bob could visit a place that he's been curious about. It's called the Techno Mart and depending on your shopping inclinations, it's either heaven or hell: seven floors of all things electronic, with each floor divided into a mind-boggling number of cubby-hole-sized shops, each with their own sales staff, prices, and rounds of bargaining.

Techno Mart isn't a place to face on an empty stomach, so we headed into the basement food court for some ban chan

and three orders of bi bim bap.

I've been to the Techno Mart with my parents once before, many years ago, and let's just say that I didn't enjoy the headache-inducing shopping experience, but since I was here last, they've introduced several levels of non-electronics shopping, so my dad and Bob disappeared up the elevator into the electronic unknown while I wandered through the other shops. I was delighted to discover that a branch of one of my favourite shops, Kosney, had opened on the ground floor, and with an over-the-top name (trademarked, no less) that makes no attempt to hide its belief in shopping as life activity:

The rooftop views from the Techno Mart were pretty spectacular, making the most of the building's location right next to the Han River that divides the city. Actually, I didn't really think about it until I looked at this photo again while writing this post, but this could be some sort of alternate-reality Vancouver photo as well--looking from the south end of the Granville Bridge, with Burrard Bridge in the distance, and all the condos of the West End as well as the North Shore mountains in the background. Just multiply the condos by a zillion, add in some hazy pollution, get rid of Granville Island, and replace Stanley Park with another zillion condos!

When I met up with Bob and my dad an hour and a half later, Bob looked a bit stunned and giddy. "This place is crazy," he said with mesmerised eyes before sheepishly pulling out something from his coat pocket. My dad had bought him another Christmas present! (Hint: it begins with a lower-case "i" and holds a lot of music.) Anyway, they both seemed very happy with their purchases (my dad bought a new calculator--I don't really know what was wrong with his old calculators, but both of them seemed to have gotten caught up in Techno Mart fever) and I left the Techno Mart empty handed, which was just fine with me! We met my mom and took a taxi back to the hospital where my dad used to work, since that's where we had left the car. When my dad started working there, the area around the hospital was pretty undeveloped, but the presence of such a huge teaching hospital encouraged other businesses and residential development, and the area is now very desirable and busy. New apartment buildings are still going up on whatever land is still available--here's the view from the hospital parking lot:

As we drove home (with Bob at the wheel once again), I had to get a photo of this apartment complex--something about the giant playground mushrooms in front of the buildings lent an even more hallucinogenic sense to the view.

We made a stop at the E-Mart on our way home, and Bob's job was to push the cart (and do his best not to get too full sampling from the dozens of food and beverage stations in the grocery store).

Although Bob pushed the cart, my dad always likes to hold onto the corner of the cart as well, which can, um, make pushing the cart a bit challenging!

We passed by Bob's and my new favourite fish, gum teh, but we didn't buy any because we already had some at home waiting to be made into dinner.

You may have noticed that we haven't been eating very much (any?) red meat since we got here, and my parents don't generally eat much beef, preferring fish and vegetables. This doesn't mean that our mouths didn't water at the sight of all the marinated bulgogi beef on display, though!

The bakery sample counter suckered us into buying two loaves (buy one, get one free) of the "most popular" bread in the bakery for breakfast for the next few days.

This is the view from my parents' living room window. The small yellow square almost in the centre of the photo is the E-Mart sign. When they first moved to Suji, their apartment was one of the first new ones to be built, and this view was of mountains and sky. In the years since, a bit of development has occurred, and while it is still technically a mountain view, it's also gotten a whole lot more urban!

Dinner was gum teh, ban chan, and some pieces of delicious fried tofu, coated in an egg batter and dipped in a sauce of sesame oil and soy sauce. As I've mentioned before on these pages, I've really missed good tofu, and we certainly ate a lot of it on this trip!

After dinner, I did some laundry while my parents did the dishes

and Bob used my dad's computer to start his i-Tunes obsession. Based on this recounting of tonight's events, can you tell who's the king of the house?