2 April 2019
Dong Demon
Walking to and around the Dongdaemun culture park
I am almost certain last time I came to Seoul I went to Dongdaemun and called it Dong Demon. Because I am childish. But also does it really mean Eastern Demon? Dong means east. All I know is that it is the suburb with all the huge clothing markets and fashion malls that stay open until 5am, every night. It is also where the amazing architectural wonder of the culture park is, and even before I google that, I am certain it will have been designed by Zaha Hadid, who continues to design new buildings despite dying a few years ago. Surely her greatest ever achievement? I guess Jimi Hendrix manages to put out a new album every year so why not.
After visiting the alien invasion craft I found another bit of the ancient great wall of Seoul, they should just go ahead and reconstruct and light up the entire thing, the bits that do exist are all quite new looking, they arent fooling anyone, just make it a great tourist walk with ice cream shops and cafes all the way around. I loved the one in Xian, China.
After a predictable dinner, I found myself in a very nice part of town, called midtown I think, very clean modern and Japanese looking. I suspect it is a newly constructed youth orientated area to make the adjoining University more attractive. I further suspect that until recently it was a kind of red light district, but the christian parents of University students successfully petitioned the government to knock it all down and build over 900 coffee and cake shops instead. Now that I finished that story I realise I didnt take any photos of the actual area. Oh well.
I am back early tonight, so I can go to bed early, and get up early tomorrow, and go up a mountain a bit further away, that means I have time to channel surf the 100 or so tv channels in my hotel room. There are a few English language movie channels, but they are all extreme violence. This leaves baseball, golf, or k-dramas. So far when scanning the k-drama channels I am 10 from 10 of close ups of people crying in slow motion with sad piano music playing. Great stuff.
Its a street full of motorbikes and blazing sunshine. Actually its a street full of factories making paper and paper related products. Forklifts constantly reverse out into traffic without looking, trying to kill pedestrians. I am not a fan of forklifts driving on the road, how can the driver see over his payload?
I passed through a large market, very clean and modern looking.
It may have been clean and modern, but there were literally millions of dead fish staring at me. It had absolutely zero smell though, not sure how they have managed this trick, perhaps all the dead fish are plastic? Perhaps I have lost my sense of smell?
There it is, the Dongdaemun culture and art fashion park. Which really was designed by Zaha Hadid. Theres a guy taking a photo of that huge statues ass.
I took plenty of photos of the place last time I was here, so no need to repeat that. Admittedly that was years ago with a far inferior camera, but back then it was Seoul fashion week and there were models parading about.
This time I learned that the whole place is built on an ancient palace and part of the ancient city wall. They left a few piles of rocks, grew some nice trees, and then decorated it with a huge red suitcase.
These are all plastic flowers with an LED light in them. It is a temporary exhibit, and ends soon. I probably should have checked it out after dark to see if all the lights were working, I think it made for a nice enough photo at dusk.
I had a predictable dinner in the basement of a fashion mall open until 5am. The place has been modernized since I was last here, it is a very nice food court now. Anyway, my predictable dinner was bibimbap, some kind of wild mushroom variety, it was delicious and so was the miso. I eat bibimbap at least once a week in Melbourne also. In other news, once again my camera seems to have taken a flash photo without a flash?
DOOTA is the name of the place with the good food court in the basement, if you are ever here at 4am wanting dinner, this is your place.
I passed over this sewer in the afternoon, but I am back again at dusk with these weird clothing wholesaler buildings each side, so I decided it was worth another photo.
Unfortunately I missed photographing this hill by a few minutes. A few minutes prior the sun was shining on it making it red with all the reflections off the windows. It reminds me of a Japanese regional city for some reason.
And just in case you did not get enough great Seoul wall earlier, here is a bit more! You can never have too much wall in a day.
The last photo of the evening comes courtesy of an overpass, which allows for a long exposure to get some STARBEAMS. Good times. Tomorrow... more mountains!