for W3c validation

I’ve been back for a week and have gotten over my jet lag. Asia absolutely rocks. I’m just saying. Jerry and I spent 4 nights in Tokyo and 10 days in Seoul. We had two close friends from college teaching English in Seoul, so that was the main reason for the trip.

Tokyo was a little bit overrated — I was expecting New York and I got Bangkok. We did go to a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome which was pretty cool. Side note: there was not a SINGLE ATM inside the dome and the vendors don’t take credit cards — not sure what kind of business are they trying to run, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense. If it were me, I’d make getting money as easy as physically possible and put ATM’s all over the place. But that’s just me I guess.

Here are a few highlights and notes from the Seoul portion of our trip:

We took the subway about an hour from downtown and did a day of hiking.

Sidenote: Koreans are HARDCORE about their hiking gear. When Jerry and I got off the subway, we were surrounded by people with Northface jackets, K2 gear, hiking sticks, boots, backpacks, visors, and even couples with matching outfits. The entire walk from the subway to the hill was filled with stores of all shapes and sizes selling gear.

I technically set foot in North Korea on our trip to the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone). And, by the way, the Korean soldier in the photo below stands in that position ALL DAY. I don’t know how they do it.

And, yes, we did the Shot Challenge at Beer O Clock in the Sinchon neighborhood.

The challenge is 10 shots throughout the course of the night. We finished in about an hour and a half, but some people have done it in a few minutes (or seconds).

Overall, it was an awesome trip and good to go off the radar for awhile and not think too much about work. Asia did swallow my rain jacket for the 2nd straight time though — my Nike jacket that replaced the rain jacket I forgot in Hong Kong in 2008 is lost and never to be seen again. Unless China wins out and I do an extended trip JUST in China, I can tell you with 99% certainty that my next Asia trip will include Laos. I’ve heard great things about it from everyone who has been there — and not really sure how Jerry and I missed going there on our Southeast Asia trip a couple years ago.