I’d read about visiting the DMZ a number of times before I arrived in Seoul. DMZ stands for the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, which is anything but demilitarized. It’s a wide strip of no-man’s-land that embodies the tension between these two countries, still officially in a state of war. Outside of that…
Two Seoul Neighborhoods: Buckchon Hanok Village contains many hanoks, but it has a completely different feel to it than Ikseon-dong Hanok Area.
Suwon, South Korea, a city with more than a million inhabitants, is a separate city from Seoul, but it’s been swallowed up in the post-Korean War urban sprawl, so that it’s in the same metro system. Getting to Suwon from the center of Seoul involves a very long metro ride: more than an hour, and…
Seoul Tower, perched on Namsan Mountain above Seoul, is visible everywhere, looking like some sort of 70’s version of the future. Built back in the 70’s for radio and television, it was and still is a communication tower. However, it’s also a destination for tourists and locals: a thing to do on a free weekend afternoon….
On my recent trip to South Korea, my left arm began to hurt. I dismissed it as a muscle ache, probably from carrying my luggage up and down metro stairs. Little by little, though, it got worse. I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t find a position in which my arm didn’t hurt. When my arm started…
Seoul is home to six different royal palaces, each built by or for a different king. Beautifully crafted and opulent, some are more intact and authentic than others. Authentic? The five older ones all include at least one tale of complete or partial destruction. All were burnt to the ground during the Japanese Invasion in the last decade…
The big gold-colored statue of a turd right next to the entrance was enough to tell me that Mr. Toilet House, the toilet museum in Suwon, South Korea, wasn’t going to be a disappointment! Mr. Toilet House Believe it or not, “Mr. Toilet House” is the popular name for the Toilet Culture Museum in Suwon,…
For those of us who do not know Japanese, traveling by train in Japan can be a bit daunting, to say the least. Here are some tips for Japan travel that will allow you to negotiate the Japanese rail system, including reading signs, without knowing any Japanese at all. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links….
A show that’s produced for foreign tourists can be an insulting oversimplification of local culture, or it can be an interesting peek into that culture. I wasn’t sure which I was getting when I agreed to go to a performance by Kyoto Traditional Musical Art Foundation at a venue called Gion Corner, in the famous…
I’m not particularly into gardens. I enjoy them, but don’t enjoy gardening. I visited a few gardens in Tokyo partly because I was curious about Japanese gardens in particular, and also curious as to how they are used by people in such a big city. But mostly I went to them because I wanted to…
If you read this blog at all regularly, you’ll know that I particularly enjoy visiting historic buildings: the more authentic the better. That’s why one of my goals in visiting Takayama, Japan, was to see the Hida Folk Village just outside town. (Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you buy anything through them, I…
Tokyo is best known for its big-city-ness: huge, new, shiny, crowded, and exciting. I found it overwhelming in terms of noise and crowds, and also in terms of choices: where to go, what to do, what to eat, where to sleep. Add to that my functional illiteracy—I can’t read Japanese lettering or say more than…
As I stepped off the train for my Himeji day trip from Kyoto, I said to myself, “I’ll look for the tourist information office first and ask how to get to the castle.” (Yes, traveling solo for so long, I did sometimes say things like this out loud!) While there are other things to do…
I chose to visit Matsumoto because I love castles. I’ve seen many in Europe, so this was an obvious choice in Japan. There are a few other things to see in Matsumoto, but the castle is the big draw, and, judging by the hordes of tourists shuffling through the castle with me, it’s a popular…
Kanazawa hit the travel sections in March 2015 with the opening of a new shinkansen (bullet train) line going there from Tokyo. It cut the travel time to less than two and half hours, which makes a Kanazawa day trip a viable option. I’d never heard of it before, but that coverage led me to add…
When I took a group of Dutch students to the US a few years ago, I insisted that we attend a professional baseball game, something they were distinctly unenthusiastic about. They said it was a boring game. I told them it wasn’t about the game; it was about the whole event around the game: the…
NEW Singapore After my visit to Pulau Ubin in Singapore, I spent most of the rest of my very short stay visiting with my foster daughter, Krislyn, and her Singapore family. But Krislyn and I needed time for a good long chat, and decided to check out Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay. Disclosure: This article contains…
I had mixed feelings about visiting Hiroshima and initially decided not to. I know a lot about the atomic bomb attacks on Japan. Back in the early 90s, I attended a three-week intensive workshop for teachers about nuclear issues. I learned about the science of the various kinds of nuclear weapons, the mathematics of radiation…
Nikko, Japan, nestled in the mountains north of Tokyo, is a small town, but is home to an incomparable assemblage of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Sprinkled around a national park forest above Nikko town is a collection of Shinto and Buddhist shrines and mausoleums that are breathtaking in their beauty and workmanship. Most of them date to…
Much of the time that I was in Japan I felt like a bumbling fool, and shoes were a big part of it. The Japanese have a lot of rules regarding footwear. Basically, you are expected to go barefoot in Japan pretty much anywhere inside. That was more difficult for me than you’d think. Disclosure:…
When my new friend and fellow blogger, Betsy Wuebker, posted about her visit to Pulau Ubin, near Singapore, it couldn’t have come at a better moment. I was on my way to Hong Kong but had just heard from my foster daughter, Krislyn, who lives in Singapore now. It turned out she couldn’t come visit…
My less-than-a-week in Hong Kong was a stimulating, perhaps over-stimulating, series of strong impressions. Here are some of the strongest ones: Housing in Hong Kong I booked an Airbnb room for my trip to Hong Kong, so I stayed in a residential neighborhood of Kowloon: the section of the city across the bay from central…
Hong Kong isn’t just one island; it’s a collection of islands and a piece of the mainland. I already posted about two destinations on Lantau Island: the Big Buddha and Tai O. The other island I managed to visit (besides Hong Kong Island itself) was Lamma Island. Lamma Island is the third largest island of…
People who go to Lantau Island in Hong Kong usually go for one of two reasons: to use the airport, or to visit the Big Buddha. But there’s another, somewhat less-visited tourist destination on the island: Tai O village. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you click on an affiliate link and make a…
Stepping off the bus onto a concrete plaza on Lantau Island, I followed the signs reading “Big Buddha.” A distance of about a city block down a paved walkway, very wide, and edged with neatly-kept landscaping, was another plaza: a big circle. Signs pointed the way toward the Po Lin Monastery, the cable car, and,…
Victoria Peak, the mountain that looms over the skyscrapers of Hong Kong, is one of Hong Kong’s top tourist attractions. Although I usually prefer the more off-the-beaten-path destinations, I couldn’t resist going up there. I’d been there before and enjoyed the views. The ride up Victoria Peak While you could take the bus (cheaper) or…
On my recent visit to Hong Kong, I went to Hong Kong Park because my Lonely Planet guide mentioned an aviary that sounded worthwhile, and, since I was in central Hong Kong anyway, I thought I’d go check it out. It turned out that Hong Kong Park is a destination in itself, with an oddly…
The hanging monastery outside of Datong, China, a UNESCO world heritage site, is breathtakingly beautiful, yet also in a way, sad. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you click on one and spend money, I will get a small cut of what you spend. It will not affect your price. The monastery was built…
Everywhere we’ve gone so far, there have been very few foreign tourists like us. Most of the tourists — and in some places all of the tourists — are Chinese. Sometimes they’re in pairs or families, sometimes in groups. When they’re in a group, even if it’s just 5 or 6 people, they hire a…
Note added in December 2019: I wrote the following article years ago in Hancheng, China, and I see now how terribly judgemental I was about toilets in China. I’ve added some tips and comments to update it a bit. My message now is: be aware of how you communicate and behave around the issue of…
When I started teaching a class in intercultural communication this past year at the teacher training college, I didn’t actually know anything about it. Or rather, I didn’t know any of the theory, but I’d had a whole lot of practice. I had plenty of anecdotes to share, for example, about differences in expectations and…
In my last entry, I mentioned how it seemed to me that the Chinese have wholeheartedly embraced conspicuous consumption. Visiting the Forbidden City the other day emphasized that for me. You could say that the emperors of pre-revolutionary China were the originators of the concept for this part of the world. They represent the ultimate…