Mandarin Kvetchin: Beijing and Seoul- the final stretch!

Hello Everyone,

This is going to be our last post as we are getting home tomorrow. It's hard to believe how fast these two months have gone and harder to believe how much we have actually seen and done.

Over the past two weeks we have been to Beijing and Seoul both of which have been great. Beijing was chock full of cool things to see, eat and do from Tianamen Square to the Forbidden City to the Great Wall of China. Tianamen Square is the largest public square in the world and it's hard to miss the enormous picture of Mao looking down at you from the entrance. Behind the square is the forbidden citywhich is filled with palaces that were mostly originally built in the 15th century and rebuilt multiple times due to several fires since then. It was an impressive area.

The Great Wall was the most impressive sight in Beijing and definitely lives up to its name. We lucked out by going to a less popular part of the Wall and pretty much had it all to ourselves, which in a country of a billion people is a pretty rare occurence. We hiked up and down the wall winding over and around the surrounding mist covered mountains. It was beautiful.

We also hit up a market filled with food stalls with several things fried and on sticks. It sounds like the state fair, but there was much stranger food. We were brave enough to eat a few of the more bizarre foods specifically starfish, seahorse, and scorpion as well as candied fruits and assorted dumplings. Eat your heart out Andrew Zimmern.

There is no better way to end a long trip than seeing some good friends and Seoul provided just that. Nathaniel and Wolfish have both been incredible guides here. They have not only shown us multiple cool neighborhoods and sights but have also given a thorough gastronomic tour of Korean cuisine.

We also met up with my (Gabe's) friend, Rudy, who is from Seoul and showed us around downtown Seoul. We checked out a hip bar south of the River and then headed over to a Noribong (karaoke bar) after. It was an enjoyable night.

The next day we took a tour to the DMZ or the demilitarized zone between north and south Korea, which is monitored by the UN. It's the point designated for negotiations between the two countries since the start of the armistice of the Korean War. It's an important part of both history and current affairs. Although it was a semi-intense trip, seeing the DMZ was an incredible cultural experience. We stood in North Korea for all of 10 seconds!

Yesterday, we experienced a completely different sort of Korean culture and hit up a Jimjabong or bath house. The bath house was three floors with multiple different types of steam rooms, saunas, and hot tubs. There were cold rooms at 10 degrees celsius to sweltering rooms reaching up to 110 degrees celsius and everything in between several with different themes. Our favorite was the room filled with pine and smelled like camp but at 70 degrees Celsius. The bath house was incredibly relaxing and none of us have ever had a shvitz quite like it.

Anyways, that's about all for now. We should be back in the land of 10,000 lakes tomorrow afternoon. I hope you all enjoyed reading our blogs.

Signing off for the last time,
The Wolf Pack