Seoul Travel Diary #7 - Home and Certified

Back home in Australia now where the weather is considerably more tropical than what I described in my previous post! I nearly melted getting back off the plane, after a fairly quick aclimatising to Seoul winter.

My last day in Seoul was pretty out of the ordinary. I took an organised tour to the DMZ - basically the border of North and South Korea. It was an eye-opening experience to see first hand the very real tension between these two countries - separated by ideology and history, but unified through family links and hopes for the future. We visited the new train station which will open shortly and join the north and south via rail link, as well as one of the tunnels dug by the north to infilltrate and invade the south. The tunnel was perfect for what I'll generalise as the North Korean soldier's size, but not too comfortable for tall Aussies!

All up the trip was very successful, and hopefully wil be the start of many more trips with Moket. And don't worry, I won't blog about every trip from now on :) Thanks to James, Bill and John from Adobe who looked after me so well over there, and who of course made it worthwhile by passing me in my instructor certification exam :) Bummer to go all that way and fail! And to the Korean guys I met and ate fire chicken with, much thanks also for making it a very memorable visit.

Now, back to work in Australia!


The fence and razor-wire go along the whole southern bank of the Hangang River, with these small guard posts every couple of kilometers - and aren;t the soldiers in there happy about their posting!


A South Korean soldier guarding the Imjin rail line - second last stop on the southern side of the border.


There's the first North Korean guard post on the other side of the DMZ. Through the coin-operated telescopes, you could see the 2 guards with their machine guns standing on their platform looking bak at you.