KTX To Seoul

For Sonar (Chinese New Year) I hopped on a train with some poker buddies to hit up the casino in Seoul.

This was my first time leaving Daegu since I arrived on December 5th. We caught the 8:30 AM KTX train to Seoul station thursday morning. A KTX is much like a normal train, except its on higher ground and it reaches higher speeds. At times we were going 290 MPH. Nuts!

On the ride, while flying through the country side, I saw the non city version of Korea. Tons of mountains, and very good scenery. Korea really is a beautiful country. It was also cool how the KTX went through tunnels in the mountains.

Once we arrived in Seoul we immediately took a taxi from Seoul station to the Walker Hill Casino. During the cab ride I came to realize Seoul was no small city! Chit chat at the poker table reaffirmed that. There are 9 sub way lines there and they are working on a 10th! Blows Daegu's 2 line system out of the water.

Daegu is easily the biggest city I have ever lived in at roughly 3 million people. To compare, thats slightly bigger then Toronto's 2.5 million. Seoul on the other hand is the 2nd largest city in the world and sits at roughly 10 million. The GTA is only 5.5! Seoul National Capital Area, GTA's equivalent, sits around 23 million!

Needless to say, it was a long taxi ride to the casino...but an even longer ride back the next afternoon. Easiest way to put my casino experience was I got greedy. I was up quite a bit of money at one point...and then I lost it all and then some. Oh well such is life. One of my partners in crime was worse off. He left his wallet in the cab by accident so was down before he even started...and that was only a sign of what was to come.

Anyways, I took some pictures of the Korean country side and Seoul. I will make them available when I talk about the temples I visited next time.