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Published: October 10th 2009
Insa-dong, where we stayed
This is a traditional Korean area, known for it's tea shops and antiques/pottery and handmade items. It was an awesome place to shop!Hello folks! First off, we would like to wish a big Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family celebrating back home this weekend! We will certainly be thinking of you this weekend and the delicious turkey we will be missing!
Now, here in Korea, last weekend was their version of Thanksgiving, better known as Chuseok, or Harvest festival (it occurs on the full moon of the 8th lunar cycle). We decided to take advantage of a 4-day weekend and boarded the Soul train for a few days of exploration in the booming metropolis boasting a population of over 11 million!
Let me start by saying that before our trip had even begun, we weren't sure it was going to happen, because Wednesday night, while playing volleyball at school with other teachers, Mike sprained his ankle. He couldn't walk at all that night and was in a lot of pain. Thursday morning, he somehow managed to walk to school, where his co-teacher took him to accupuncture, which is huge here and they gave him some herbal meds and he was thankfully able to walk enough to come on the trip!
Mike's sprained ankle on Friday
If you look closely, you can see all the needle marks from the accupuncture! yay! So Thursday evening, Mike sporting his crutches and grapefruit ankle and the rest of us with our luggage, boarded the express train for Seoul. We traveled 350km in a mere 2h40min! It was great! The train reached a speed of 298 km/h at one point!
After a bit of a hassle finding our little hotel, we wandered around Insa-dong, which was the neighbourhood where we were staying. Even at 11:00pm, there were tons of street vendors out selling their merchandise and the restaurants and bars were bustling. We settled for a western bar where we were served tortilla chips and salsa (gasp!)! Those are nearly impossible to find here, so this was a big deal!
Friday - Electronics Market, War Memorial, Myeong-dong Friday morning we went to the Electronics market, which is this huge block of over 5000 stores selling anything and everything electronics-related! After a bit of bargaining, Mara bought a new lense for her camera although Mike and I opted out of buying any new toys for the camera, since the lense we wanted was going to cost close to $1000 (not quite ready for that commitment yet). We spent a few hours at this
shopping centre and it was quite impressive. After that we wandered towards the Korean War Memorial. We had lunch at this cute little Italian restaurant where we got soup and pasta (delicious pasta, at that) for $8! The Korean War Memorial is huge. Before you even get anywhere near the doors to go into the museum, they have all kinds of statues, tanks, planes, submarines, mortars and missiles on display outside. There was even a tank and driver display that moved and made shooting sounds if you put money in it!! We spent so much time exploring the tanks, planes and subs, that we ran out of time and couldn't go into the museum itself!! It's on the top of our list for the next visit to Seoul!
We headed to the Myeon-dong area next, which is an area known for shopping. While most of the rest of the city was relatively quiet due to the holiday, Myeong-dong was bustlling with people!! We went for dinner at a Mexican place with an american owner, who was a little odd, but he knew how to get us to the Canadian bar, and he wouldn't tell us until we ate there
first! And yes, after dinner we went to the Rocky Mountain Tavern, where they had canadian beer, canadian food - aka poutine! - and hockey! Unfortunately we were too late to see the Leafs play and had to settle for the Canucks, but it was great to see some hockey and teach our American friends all about the game (and have them try their first poutine ever!).
Saturday, Chuseok Day - Gyeonbokgung Palace, Cheonggyeong Stream, Seoul Tower Saturday was the actual Chuseok holiday and we decided to go to Gyeongbukgung Palace. There were all sorts of traditional Korean games, songs, performances and costumes for this special day. This palace was first built in 1394, but had since been burned/torn down and re-built a few times. It is the largest palace in Korea and the most well-known. Before entering the palace, the long road leading to it had all these crazy Haechi statues along it. Haechi is the mascot, or symbol, of Seoul. It is a lion-like mythical creature that symbolizes protection from harm and distinguishes good from evil. We had lots of fun taking pictures both of oursevles with various Haechi statues and of cute little Korean kids with
the statues! The palace itself was breathtaking. If you look in one direction, you would see the palace set in front of a gorgeous mountain. If you looked the other way, you saw the palace in front of modern sky scrapers and apartment buildings. Seoul is truly a world of opposites co-existing. This palace was huge and I'm sure in the 3-4 hours we were there, we barely saw half of it. We were able to catch a traditional dance and song and watch some kids play traditional games, such as giant snakes and ladders, a spinning top game and this game with a big metal right that you try to keep upright for as long as possible...hard to explain I guess!
The group split up for Saturday evening, so Mike and I wandered along the Cheonggyeon River, where they have built numerous waterfalls and walkways along it. At night, this place was beautiful! It was all lit up and there were light shows and displays. The best was this light show where they projected the laser light onto misting fountains. Without the mist, the show was nothing special, but with the mist, it became this colourful array of
shapes and designs, that depicted Seoul's technology (or something like that)! It was so cool! Then, we walked to Nam Mountain, where at the top, lies the Seoul Tower. You can climb the mountain to get to the tower, which is only about 230m up, but it was nighttime, so we opted for the cable car. After a bit of waiting in line, we finally made it to the top, just in time to get a quick view on the outdoor terrace before heavy rain and thunder rolled in! Wouldn't that be our luck! lol
Sunday - Changdeokgung Palace, Dongdaemun market Sunday morning Mike and I got up early so we could check out another, older palace in Seoul, Changdoekgung Palace. This palace, while smaller than the other one, had been rebuilt less, so more of it's original structure remained. In our opinions, it was much nicer and more beautiful than Gyeongbok, simply because most of it was still original. At this palace, you can only enter on a tour (not on your own). We arrived at 9am and the first English tour wasn't until 11, so we joined a Japanese tour! Needless to say we couldn't understand a
word the tour guide said, and we were the only blondes among a sea of Japanese (that got a few stares!), but we got to see the palace, so we were satisfied! This palace was cool because different areas had different designs, colours and construction, based on the King or Queen of the time's preferences (whereas much of Gyeongbok was the same design). There was also an area known as the "Secret Garden" with lots of ponds, trees and small buildings used for archery, meetings, writing and walking. Once when this palace was partly burned down by the Japanese, in order to rebuild it, they had to actually tear down some of Gyeongbok for building materials - so two palaces were actually ruined by one fire!
We met up with the rest of the group later to check out the Dongdaemun market area. Parts of it were closed because of the holiday weekend, but we still managed to find some good deals on clothes and accessories and got to improve our haggling skills! Austin won that game, talking a man down on a leather bag from 100,000W to 70,000W - almost a steal! (note 100,000W = roughly 100$). After
an afternoon filled with shopping, we headed back to Insa-dong for a nice traditional Korean dinner before sending 3 of our group back to Yangsan (only Mike, Mara and I were fortuante enough to get Monday off of school too!). Once the group was down to 3, we checked out the markets in Insa-dong, which were by far the coolest, because everything was hand made and beautiful and so authentically Korean! It was a small market, but we could have spent hours in there!
Monday - Bukchon Village & Sinchon Monday was a bit more low-key, but we went in search of the Bukchon Village, a traditional village area with lots of history, character and beautiful homes. Once we found it, the cameras didn't stop clicking! It was so beautiful! Most of Korea is now high-rise apartment buildings and shopping stores in tall buildings. This area was literally all one storey homes and stores that had the most beautiful design ever. Everything was handmade and gorgeous! Even the spouts off the eve troughs we made to look like a bird spitting out water!! So much detail is put into everything here, you just never want to leave!
For
lunch that day, we found a great place that makes sandwiches, like regular sandwiches, and it was actually the first sandwich I have had here...they just don't do the sandwich thing here! So, even though it was called "A Twosome Place" and we were 3, we went in and had amazing BLTs. I know, you think, whoopie, but seriously, I miss regular sandwiches! We spent more time wandering around another shopping district, Sinchon, then headed back to catch the train back to Yangsan.
We got home late that night and had to start school bright and early Tuesday, exhausted from everything, but it was a great weekend and a fantastic little getaway!!
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Tracey
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It's amazing to look at your pictures and to see you guys in a place on the other side of the world where I also have been - when I was in Korea we went to Gyeongbukgung Palace as well. Crazy!!! Looks like you are having an amazing time. Take care of that foot Smitty! Miss you both.