nanoomi

Chris Backe of Chris in South Korea fame, has been working on an iPhone app called Seoul Taxi. designed to make life easier for visitors and residents alike, the app concentrates on making your communications with Seoul’s many and varied taxi drivers something of a more pleasant experience. Chris was  gracious enough to give me a free copy to review.

Designed for iOS 4 , the app is specifically for iPhone and iPad Touch and gets scaled if you use it on iPad. I can understand the choice here, if you are going to a destination I guess you are more likely to take your phone with you. On the other hand the iPhone’s display is a little small for your average middle aged taxi driver. Having to hand one’s phone over to a taxi driver is always a dodgy proposition while in contrast holding up the iPad’s 10 inch display is fine for even the most far sighted of Seoul’s taxi drivers!

The app lists over 2000 destinations in Seoul including over 800 restaurants and close to 100 hotels as well as other destinations ranging from art galleries (who knew there were so many galleries in Seoul) to over 150 bars.

Now if you know where you are going and are strictly using the app to assist you in your taxi dealings, simply enter the name of your  destination and hit search, odds are you’ll get the info you need.

Once you have found your destination you are presented with a couple of options. Selecting “Taxi Card”will display the address information in big , bold, white-on-black Korean which you then show your driver. Being an iOS app, hitting the phone number will place a call to the destination – particularly good if your driver still hasn’t figured out where to go from the address and hitting the location address option will bring up Google Maps just in case the taxi driver still has no idea where to go.

one of the best features of Taxi Guide Seoul is being able to share the taxi card information. You are able to send the address to people via MMS message – handy if you are meeting a group of people and need to give them directions. Finally you can create your own cards for destinations you find that Chris and his developer HoodHot have yet to discover.

The big advantage of Taxi Guide is its ability to be used off line – visitors to Seoul don’t want to be paying expensive roaming charges.

However this means some features that would otherwise be standard in an app like this are missing. Any app that deals with destinations these days needs Foursquare integration. It just makes sense that upon arrival at your destination you would “check-in”. And for the legions of people intent on sharing every aspect of their lives, Twitter is also missing. Elsewhere, Seoul is constantly changing and apps like this need frequent updates. Future updates will have to be potentially large downloads, where as a “live” app might be able to handle the dynamic nature of Seoul more efficiently. A way around this might be to make users own notes able to be uploaded and shared beyond just their friends.

the only other quibble I might have is the price. while I scored a free copy for review, HoodHot’s other apps for other destinations in Asia range from $4.99 at launch to a whopping $9.99. I would have to say I would not be prepared to pay that much for an app that has no social media integration and lacks the ability to upload and share user created information, and especially when there are a number of (albeit slightly more complicated) free alternatives, such as Google maps and even Foursquare which provide address and direction / destination information.

Bimbo Rating ★★★✩  – half a star off for lack of social, 1 star off for price.

Recently my wife, Jo, had a great idea. Travel around and learn about the area from those that know it best. This is the result, a new series entitled, “Your Neck of the Woods.” In this first installment, we visit with YouTuber GreenEggsAndHamster near Mia Station.

For more travel videos and blogs, visit QiRanger.com.

Last year I was probably a wee bit early to see Yeouido in full bloom. And if truth be told this year I was probably a bit late.

Nevertheless I made it to Yeouido on a warm and slightly hazy Sunday afternoon to enjoy a stroll around Yeouido park, along with a bajillion other people there to enjoy the balmy spring weather and the end of the Spring Blossom festival.

A Bajillion People

I have very little patience with the Korean notion of a “Festival” with hundreds of stalls lined up usually around a big stage, and with lines everywhere – and this was no exception. This year’s festical seemed to concentrate on non-profit aid groups all touting for donations, which is all annoying really… but of interest was the Korean Red Cross teaching CPR. My understanding is that this valuable, life-saving technique isn’t widely taught in Korea, especially in schools where it would be most useful.

It was good to see the Red Cross giving demonstrations and lessons – even if they were more cute than practical:

Is he flippin’ me the bird here?!

Butu I was in Yeouido to see the blossoms, and the few that were around, still looked pretty cool:

There were other spring flowers too:

And the Magnolias (?) provide an interesting contrast to the construction going on behind them:

Yeouido is another place in Seoul where you can catch a bit of King Sejong action. (Sponsor of the SeoulPodcast ya know!)

I wasn’t the only one with camera in hand.

To get to Yeouido Park take the purple #5 line or the new #9 line and get off at Yeouido Station and take exit number 2 or 4 (number 3 is closed at the moment) and head straight.

Check Out Joy’s post about the blooms in the Southern part of Seoul

For a humble Kiwi like me, more used to rural tea rooms than roadside diners, sitting at the counter at Johnny Rockets is more like being in a movie than a restaurant. For American expats in Korea Johnny Rockets might be more of a slice of home and a chance for a decent, hand-pulled milkshake than anything else.

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This deva carries the pagoda in one hand and a deadly weapon in the other – bow to all four, including 다문천왕 (deo-mun-cheon-wang) before passing through.

Yongjusa (용주사, 龍珠寺) is unique among Korean temples for having a 홍살문 (hong-sal-mun), or a gate typically found at the entrance of a royal tomb:

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Once buried under tons of rock and dirt, this exhibition of (mostly) authentic relics from Korea’s Silla Dynasty is given new life – and exhibit space – decades after they were first discovered. Dating back to the 4th and 5th centuries, they tell the stories of kings and queens, burial rituals, and the handing of power from dead to living. Since the tomb’s excavation in the 1970s, there hasn’t been much seen by the public.

Located at the National Museum of Korea in central Seoul (which is celebrating their fifth anniversary this year), the free-to-enter museum already offers more than enough to see in their permanent exhibits to fill a day. This exhibit won’t take you more than an hour, so it’s worth stopping by some of the other exhibits or parts of the museum.

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The classic color scheme returns – it’s time for the Seoul Design Fair once again. Open until October 7th, this three-week-long festival emphasizes design and creativity at every turn. Called the Seoul Design Olympiad last year, the name changed due to some questions by the better-known holders of the Olympic name. While it’s worth an afternoon to inspire the creative souls, the issue of being overwhelmed by the scope of the festival continued for the third year in a row. It’s possible to see it all in a day, but comprehending it and taking in the sights and sounds is a different thing altogether.

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Author’s note: this post is rated NSFW (Not Safe For Work) due to some nudity – this IS a body painting festival, people. Please go elsewhere if you’re looking for pornography – this is tasteful and beautiful art.

As one might notice at a body painting festival, there’s plenty of paint, a touch of nudity, and some awesome artwork. Taking the human body and using it as a canvas is definitely interesting, but I had yet to see this interesting artistic technique up-close and personal. The Daegu International Body Painting Festival was the answer. There was quite a bit of excellent art; in fact, it was hard to narrow the number to less than twenty pictures for the sake of this post.

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And this is one of my (new) favourites:

ISO: 400, Exposure: 1/4 sec, Aperture: 3.5, Focal Length: 18mm

It was Sunday night and I wanted to grab some images of the newly restored Gwanghwamun when it rained for about 10 minutes. Once the shower had cleared Admiral Yi was reflected on Gwanghwamun Plaza.

Not to be outdone, King Saejong was also reflected in the rain puddles:

ISO: 400, Exposure: 0.8 sec, Aperture: 4.5, Focal Length: 30mm

And in another piece of interesting reflection, King GoJeong’s memorial was reflected in the glass of The Kyobo building:

And of ourse I got the gate:

ISO: 400, Exposure: 1/6 sec, Aperture: 5.0, Focal Length: 35mm

ISO: 200, Exposure: 1/2 sec, Aperture: 5.0, Focal Length: 18mm

Who knew I had such a steady hand?

Here are some more images from Sunday:

ISO: 400, Exposure: 1/6 sec Aperture: 3.5 Focal Length: 18mm

This is another favourite. The one sixth of a second exposure and high ISO allow for a fair amount of light to hit the mirror. The result being that the sky looks much lighter than it does to the naked eye. (And I think that is a result of refraction of the city lights.)

ISO: 400 Exposure: 1/10 sec Aperture: 5.6 Focal Length: 40mm

ISO: 400 Exposure: 1/4 sec Aperture: 5.6 Focal Length: 55mm

ISO: 800 Exposure: 1/10 sec Aperture: 5.0 Focal Length: 35mm

ISO: 400 Exposure: 1/5 sec Aperture: 3.5 Focal Length: 18mm

Looking back towards The Kyobo building from Gwanghwamun – again the lighter sky effect in play.

All of these were taken without a tripod – I always feel like a dick in the subway carrying one – and I am surprised the half second exposure of Gwanghwamun came out so well. The joy of digital photography of course being that I had more than one go at pulling that shot off. It’s also a testament to Sony cameras. Say what you will about them, those of you in the Canon Clique, but in my experience they perform really well in low light conditions – even Sony’s point and shoot offerings.

In case you didn’t know, we were recently in Toronto for three weeks for our summer vacation. Oh, how we missed Canada! Funny thing is, when we were in Canada, we missed Korea as well. We felt kinda homesick, in a reverse homesick kinda twisted way. Luckily for us, since we were in Toronto there were two different Koreatowns for us to visit to get our fix for Korean culture.

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