Travel to Ulsan & back
We had to do a performance in another city in Korea. Seoul is
in the Northwest corner of the country, and Ulsan, our next city,
is in the Southeast corner. We had to travel by bus for about 5
hours. I asked the bus driver if I could sit up front on the little
fold-down jump seat so that I could try to take pictures from the
bus. He said yes, so that was my seat for the whole trip. The driver
had all kinds of little good-luck charms and some religious symbols
all over the dash of the bus.
Leaving Seoul we passed the Seoul Tower on top of Mt. Namsan.
You can ride to the top and have a good view of the city, but I
didn't get the chance to do it. We also passed Seoul Station and
the Olympic Stadium built for the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.
It was Buddha's birthday so the temples were all decorated for
the celebrations
We also passed a little man pulling a wagon full of cardboard.
Seoul has many bridges, but I never got the chance to get good
photographs of them. It's impossible to do them justice from a
moving bus, but I always tried.
Along the way we passed villages as well as larger cities with
block style apartment buildings.
Driving through the mountains it was interesting to see how they
had stretched a mesh over the steeper portions of the roadside, and
then planted the mesh with wisteria to help prevent erosion. Notice
the access stairway and the ditch alongside.
We also passed some rice paddies as well as some fishing villages
which had little huts on the water.
And of course a few other interesting bridges.
Ulsan is a very industrial city. Our hotel was full of executives
from all over the world. And our room had similar escape equipment
in it, but this time instead of fancy rapelling gear, we had a knotted
rope. Hopefully we wouldn't have to use it. The instructions were
in English, but they described the equipment that we had in Seoul rather
than the knotted rope. We did have a gas mask this time, though.
In Ulsan as well as Seoul, there are flowers everywhere. In one
of the parks there is a little structure where you can sit and look
at the water, the waterfalls and the flowers. It's quite lovely.
Notice the shoes on the steps leading up to it.
Outside our theatre in Ulsan was a funny little sculpture of some
ice skaters. The theatre here is a 2,000-seat house. We only had
one performance but it was sold out.
I was very relieved to go into the theatre and find that I had
all of my basic crew members that were with us in Seoul. It made
everything so much easier for me. They already knew what had to
happen with the staging, and all I had to do was to set cues on
the lighting console. This time they put everything in submasters
for me, so even that was easy. I even had the same two followspot
operators. It was great.
Ulsan is a big industrial city. The main industry is the Hyundai
ship-building facility. They were the company who presented us there
(the theatre was the Hyundai Performing Arts Center), so before we
left town they arranged for a tour for us. This place is enormous.
Think of the largest ship-building facility you can imagine and
then multiply it by 10. There are 26,000 people working in this
facility. They told us that the cafeteria goes through 240 pigs and
20,000 chickens a day. A lot of the dancers didn't want to go on
the tour, but everyone was awestruck by the end of it. They asked
us not to take photos so I don't have but one that I can show you.
The bus trip back to Seoul was long and uneventful, but we all
had a good time and arrived back safe and sound.
One of the things I really love about Seoul is that there is sculpture
everywhere. Almost every large building and every small park has
sculpture. It's quite wonderful and most of it is very interesting.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Korea and hope I get to go back
someday.
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