One last spin...

30 May 2006

Seoul, South Korea

Cheongyecheon Stream--heading east/southeast

"One Last Spin..."

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Our last full day in Korea. Our hearts are quite heavy knowing that whenever we visit in the future it will only be a for a few short days here or there. It's unlikely that we'll ever again have a 'homebase' here within the city proper--so our days of exploring and wandering the wildest nooks & crannies of this city are quickly drawing to a close. :(

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We decide to return back to the 'stream' for our final trek. We'd walked at least 1/3rd of it already but we just weren't satisfied. One of those Green Tortuga things--if it's there you must overcome it! ;) We knew that there were some other interesting features along the stream and we just didn't want to leave without first seeing them.

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As I'd written in a previous post about the Cheonggyecheon Stream--it had been a meeting point for the community where the women would wash the laundry on the banks of the river while the children played around in the water and stream banks. So, we cheated a bit today--hopped the metro to the Dongdaemun Station and hopped on the 'stream trail' from there. This way, we would avoid the 6km walk just to reach the stream. As it turned out, it ended up being an 11 mile day anyway (according to my trusty McD's happy healthy meal Step To It pedometer we stumbled upon and pulled out for fun earlier in the day). Not bad for a day's work.

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Once we reached the stream we headed east--hoping to see as much and to get as far as we could before the sun faded for the day. Our first spot of interest was the laundry station. To memorialize this spot, they had built these concrete 'washboards' of sorts on the banks of the water, staggered at different heights where the rushing waters splashed up and over them.

rnrB displaying how to wash laundry in Cheonggyecheon Stream.

From here we continued east and noticed some more large fish in the rushing waters.

Here are 5 of the larger fish we saw in the water today. They appeared about 2' long and possibly a couple of pounds. Their coloring was rather neat--lots of pinks, greens and blues with scales that were quite pronounced and appeared to be 'edged' in a dark color. Interesting. Not a clue what type of fish they were--as usual.

Then further along the walk we see these massive gate doors beneath some of the bridges. These are about 7' tall double doors and open out. We think these are water drainage canals to allow street water to drain down into the stream. Korea gets hit with massive monsoonal rains each summer and we figure these were incorporated into the stream system to help alleviate the water burden on the street surfaces in Seoul.

trkr & rnrB showing off one of two Dolharubang statues on one side of the streambed. These fellows are native to Chejudo--an island off the southwestern coast of Korea. They're ancestral 'sentries' the villagers around Chejudo place in front of their homes/property to help ward off evil spirits. If you're interested, we hid a Dolharubang Letterbox here in Seoul last time we visited.

Then it was further along to the Wall of Hope.

This was really neat and truly a letterboxer's dream!!!

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The poem above reads:

"Cheong Gye Cheon is alive again,

Our stream long buried in darkness,

Is flowing again all clean and singing merrily.

Its newborn life and racing pulse

Fill our hearts with joy.

-

Seoul is alive again

We celebrate the restoration of our stream

And pray for peace, harmony and reunification.

The beautiful hopes and dreams of these 20,000 people

Are afloat

On this stream.

Oct 1, 2005

The Wall of Hope was a 20m long tile mosaic wall. It boasted 4"x4" tiles on it that had been decorated by 20,000 participants. Each tile was so unique, colorful, detailed--absolutely incredible!!!

Had we had a lot of time to explore I would have studied each individual tiles--they offered so many great ideas for letterbox stamps. Here's a traditional mask face that is quite prevalent around Korea. The detail was awesome!

Here's a rustic rendition of one of the city gates. I just loved the 'artistic' feel about this one.

Beyond the Wall of Hope was another stepping stone crossing area where the stream converged with another stream. This one was diagonal whereas the others have all been perpendicular to the side paths. To the left of the stone path are the riser-supports for the elevated highway that up until 2 years ago existed on this stream. I believe they left these three supports (each in different stages of disarray) to remind folks of where they'd been and where they were able to take this stream restoration project in such a short amount of time.

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Not long thereafter we passed by this mosaic tile photo account of what the area has looked like over the years. This was really neat!

Here's a photo of the view of the elevated highway taken in the Fall of 2003! That's the only thing we remembered about this area--so when we stumbled upon this incredible green spot last week we were in total shock!!! Where did they hide a 12km long stream in an urban jungle all this time???

Here's a view of the stream area as seen in 1961--it truly was a shanty town back then!

And here's a view of the area as photographed in 1896! It shows the women washing the laundry on the stream banks. I absolutely love the fact that they incorporated the historical views of this area in their final restoration project. They took so much effort in making this stream a wonderful place for the community to explore. I'm very impressed!

trkr's quite amazed that this pair of ducks isn't afraid of him. They sat there unstirred for a few minutes while trkr kneeled down to study them. I'm guessing these ducks are rather used to people now?

And finally--we had to head back home for the evening. We passed City Hall on our route back and the mood around the city was quite full of excitement. Tomorrow is election day and the candidates were all out shaking hands, speaking, dancing at large rallies--trying to vie for those last few 'precious' votes. It was a neat experience to get to 'feel' their excitement for their upcoming election. Along the way, we passed this neat 'spouting fountain' where the spouts would shoot their water stream in alternating patterns and make those really cool 'splooshing' sound when the pumps would press the water up. There was a neat lightshow that corresponded to the fountain and folks were encouraged to splash around in the water. Somehow I managed to snap this shot just between two large groups of school kids who were splashing around in the fountain. Just one more neat thing that Seoul has to offer its visitors.

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Well, tomorrow we're off to return to reality. :( Our whirlwind trip to NE & SE Asia has been awesome! We've experienced so many great things (& a few not so great things). We've learned as much as we could about this area as we could possibly squeeze into our time here. We've met people from all walks of life and hope to have assisted as many folks who needed it as was physically possible during this trip. We enjoyed an amazing couple week trip to Thailand and Cambodia--a region of the world I never personally expected to visit in my lifetime. It's been such an incredible experience and we realize that we are very fortunate to have been able to undertake such an adventure. We hope you've enjoyed our travel blog misadventures and have possibly learned a thing or two about these areas, letterboxing, geocaching or just international life in general. If you ever decide to visit this neck of the world, drop us a note and we'd be glad to offer some ideas in helping you develop your travel plans--so you can maximize your adventures in these places, too. Happy trails!

God Bless & see you on the flip side!

Ever the misadventure-errant I am...

daelphinus of the dvn2r ckr-s