National Holiday

August 15th is a National Holiday in Korea, they celebrate liberation from the Japanese, so The Bat had a day off. We spent the day at Gyeongbokgung which, because of the holiday, was free entry for the day. Bargain.
One of The Bat's students had volunteered to be our guide and we spent a very interesting day with him. I took many photos but cannot upload them yet so I'll share some other links to this fascinating place.

Our boxes arrived on Monday evening. Many thanks to John at DS Logistics for his personal and efficient service. If you are shipping to Korea I highly recommend them. I spent Wednesday morning unpacking and met The Bat for lunch and coffee before she had to go back to work.

This morning my task has been to get us connected to the internet at home. With slight trepidation, armed only with a map and the address: 2-5 Hanangno 2, Yongsan-gu I left our appartment to get a bus and metro to the Korea Telecom office I had guessed as being closest to us.

The 461 Bus took an especially round-about route and then ended up going a fair way past the metro station Daebang that I was aiming for. I won't be using that bus again, but at least with the air conditioning it was comfortable! The metro was only two stops. Emerging from the station with no idea which direction to go I headed left and soon discovered I was on the correct street. Local maps of the neighbourhood did not mention the KT office, so I blindly continued in what turned out to the correct direction and, as I had hoped, it was a prominent and modern office block with a large corporate logo.

I was politely ushered into the plaza waiting area and presented with a numbered ticket for the queue by the doorman. After waiting only a few moments I was seen at one of the three desks by a lady who spoke enough English to be able to be able to help me fill in the form she provided. Less than 15 minutes later I walked out with an appointment for the engineer to call tomorrow to install the Megapass Premium service. It's 45,500 Won (roughly 25 GBP) a month including modem for 13Mbps upload speed which seems like good value. Amazing service, all this based on my passport and our address. By the way, there's a link to a currency converter on the righthand pane which converts Won to GBP or other currency.

Just spotted on another blog The Marmot's Hole those killer fans have hit again. It is very hot and humid at the moment and also during the night making sleeping difficult. We were thinking of buying a fan but maybe not...