[[*---Branched Over Me---*]]

Monday, May 14, 2007

Korea Spring 2007 (II)

Day 4

Had way too much to drink on our clubbing night, slept at 5 plus.... so bad that V (my colleague/roomie) and i couldn't wake up to the morning call at 7.30am.

8.30am - tourguide called the room, i picked up: gera, are you guys coming down?
me: yah yah, we're coming down now.

I woke V up and both of us frantically washed up & so on....

8.45am - tourguide called again: hello, gera, you guys have to come down now.....

me: errr..... are we going down for breakfast or are we setting off?

tourguide: no, we're going off now, the others are all waiting for the both of you....

me: huh..... okok... we're coming down now.

madness! we're checking out and we've not packed yet. we practically threw everything in our luggages, made sure nothing's left behind & zoomed down to the lobby..... everyone else were in the bus waiting for us two..... was pretty embarassed as we walked up the bus and got jeered...... was bad, i got no make-up on, was unkempt etc...

oh btw, our luggage were kept at the concierge for our retrieval later so we can check into some cheap guesthoue we're staying at during our extension.

first stop of the day: Gyeongbok Palace

Gyeongbok Palace was built in 1394 during the Joseon Dynasty period and is the biggest and grandest one before the emperor of the dynasty stopped using the premise towards the end of the dynasty. The palace was built before a mountain right in the middle of the city, adding magnificence to the entire look of the palace.

Geunjeongjeon Hall, throne of the king. Outside this hall is a square for the king and his officials' morning assembly.

Gyeonghoeru Pavilion, the imperial banquet hall.

Gyeongbok Palace, happens to be beside Blue House, which is the admin/residence of the South Korean president (think: the White House of the US or Istana of S'pore).

my korean tourguide, lucy kim (almost every other korean on the streets is either a kim or a lee heehee....)

After touring Gyeongbok Palace, we came to Insadong, an arty-farty street selling lotsa souvenirs and handicrafts and went on a small shopping spree....... bought 2 frilly-ruffles scarf and some old-fashion korean candies there as well as some souvenirs...

Insadong is the last place i'll be together with my company tour group. After which, my colleagues will proceed for lunch and then to the airport for the plane ride back to SG while V and I continued on our Korean adventure ourselves. took some parting shots with:

& Jimmy, our Korean tour guide assistant who helped load/unload our luggages, run errands and took pix of us, then selling at a near rip-off price of 5,000 won (appr s$8) a piece. (now i know why my mum was grumbling that dad paid near s$90 for a set of few pix when they toured Korea a few years back....)

we bode farewell at Insadong and V & I were left alone with a little bit of difficulty navigating our way cos we din have a map with us then. Luckily all is not that tough cos most signboard would have english translation and chinese characters (yah, like Japan, Korean still used a fair bit of Chinese characters or hanja, that was introduced to Korea during the spread of buddhism long long time ago....)

as we navigated, we're delighted to find cosmetics shop like Etude House, The Face Shop, Missha & Skin Food. Went on a shopping spree again! it wasn't until abt 2 or 3pm when we decided to return to Myeong Dong to retrieve our luggage.

Man, to our surprise, Myeong Dong, in the afternoon was one hotspot to be in. No wonder ppl say its the heart of Seoul. you see, while with the tour group, we always get back to MD (where our hotel was) after 10pm and by the time, shops and roadside stalls were closed. we never knew that its actually so happening in the day, with so many interesting things to see and buy and throngs of ppl!

Delayed plans to retrieve our luggage and went jalan jalan instead. had lunch at this restaurant with a old-time touch and finally got to eat an authentic Korean bibimbap!

the appetiser/side dishes..... its always kimchi and also lots of very salty preserved veg..... i like the fishcake and korean vermicelli (the largest plate in the middle), though its a tad on the oily side.... blame it on the sesami oil!

finally got our ass down to collect our luggage and took a cab to our intended guesthouse, Myeong Dong Guest House. But something happened. even after the hotel porter spent a hole lot of time explaining the location of guest house, the cab driver took us to the wrong street. we ended up getting off at another street with many guesthouses and looking at our huge luggages and the slope ahead, we decided not to check in MDGH but settled for Nam San GH instead. We previously evaluated this GH before our trip as well, and it was the 2nd choice. This ended up not to be a bad decision afterall.

ok, looks beautiful here right, but trust me, this is the VIP section. as we checked in at the very last minute, all that was left is a miserably small room for 2. would have wanted a vip room which is not too much more expensive and is more traditional (slp on futons, not spring mattresses). felt a little disappointed and depressed at first but its not that horrible at the end of the day.

there's a pull out bed and after i pull out the bed, i couldn't leave my luggage lying flat but left it standing cos the room is just too small! the window opens up to a common corridor which then means we can't open it cos there're ppl walking through and fro...... so its as good as having none.....

but the staff are a bunch of helpful ppl and they offer free breakfast of bread & spread & Shin ramen instant noodles! what's better is that there's free sending and pick-up services to and from popular destinations which means we save time travelling and the trouble of walking up and down the bloody slope! its lesser than s$70/night/rm in an expensive city where avg 3-4 stars hotel would cost at least twice or thrice this amt.

due to lack of slp the previous night, we decided to catch some slp before hitting out on the streets again at night. Destination: Myeong Dong & Dongdaemun!

had fried chicken takeaway from a local fried chix chain, Twotwo, and ate on a bench in the cold weather, near this lunatic woman who was mumbling to to herself... (btw, KFC's still the master when it comes to fried chix! finger-lickin' good!)

Dongdaemun: popular shopping place - the haven of 'Prata' and 'Louis Ding Dong'......

this place opens till wee hour at night, almost 24 hrs! No wonder everyone comes here while all other shops else where are closed.....

more street delight! this is skewered grilled meatball coated with sweet bbq sauce..... its quite yummy! V had this corndog that's interestingly covered with crinkly-cut french fries! corndogs are popular street hawker food here, just like hotdogs, pretzels and kebabs in New York City.

took a cab back to the GH. this cab is one of a kind..... its driver is a sound enthusiast and he has this dvd/cd player in his cab playing movies. We 'watched' Rambo that night and know what? this cab driver would adjust the volume level at various point of the movie to create the kind of movie theatre sound effect.

& he has been on Herald Tribune before! honestly, V found it irritating that the sound level was too high, kind of disturbing..... & i'm not sure if its quite safe to drive and manhandle the volume knob at the same time..... keke.....

had a beautiful slp after putting on the facemask i bought to see if it works.... not as if i could see some dramatic changes overnight...

Day 5

our extension, as opposed to our guided tour, was much more leisurely. no need to wake up at 7.30am for brekkie then set off at 8.30am for our destination. we woke up at our preference, slowly washed up, got dressed in my new blouse and necklace bought the day before, put on make-up before setting out to sight-see.

used the GH shuttle service to get us to Changdeok Palace where there's a Secret Garden which V wanted to visit.

but darn, we din do our homework properly, Changdeokgung was closed on Mondays! had no choice but to bring forward the plan for the rest of the day. We'll walk along the scenic Cheongye stream to the City Hall, then walk to Namdaemun.....

Cheongye stream is the next important water body to the Han River as it runs through the important areas in the city centre. its been 'landscaped' to become another tourist attraction and also an area of leisure strolling for the koreans....

on our way to the city hall, we came by korean tourism office. check out this mouth gargle dispenser we saw in the toilet! what? mouth gargle dispenser? i've never seen something like this before. cool!

city hall

there's some arty farty anti CO2 sculpture at the field before city hall (think: padang in S'pore). in the background, there's some squash tournament going on..... yesh, that's in the middle of the bustling city.

munchin' street food again... cheap and interesting... 3 pcs of fried item for 1000won (s$1.64).

were kinda low on won so we thought we should go find a bank and change some USD....

the other popular hotspot for shopping - the namdaemum market, which is a wholesale market selling everything ranging from food to clothings......

didn't manage to spend much time there as we needed to rush back to the GH then proceed to Seoul Tower before night falls so we could see a panoramic day & night view of Seoul......

From our GH, its a short walk up the slope to get to the cable car station. but before hopping onto the cable car, we made sure we had Donggaseu (tonkatsu or pork cutlet rice) that the stretch of road is famous for.... there're a few restaurants selling this here.

the only difference between and korean Donggaseu and the japanese is the gravy. I dun remember the jap style ones have any dressings. they either come 'naked' or with the jap curry. the korean ones has a slightly sour ketchup based dressing...... verdict: good, but honestly, nothing really fantastic or special abt it. price: my mixed cutlet that consist of beef patty, fish & pork cost 7000 won (s$11.50) while V's pork cutlet rice cost 6000 won(s$10). as usual side dishes of kimchi & fishcake comes free....

proceeded to take the cable car that took us up to Nam San (or South Mountain).

Most tourists go up to Nam San for one purpose - to go up to the Seoul Tower for spectacular view of the city.

like all other observation deck, you need to pay an admission to ascend to the deck. tix sells for 7000 won here.

its a pity by the time we come up here its already dark, therefore while we see the beautiful night lights, we're quite unable to tell what we're seeing, except for the shopping centres with large enough signboards.....

Singapore is 4651.90 km away from Seoul Tower!

the toilet is really classy, surrounded by glass windows, overlooking the city.....

descending Nam San, we made our way to Hilton Hotel down the slope to look visit the Seven Luck Casino there. Nah, we didn't gamble there, unlike our male colleagues who hit the casinos almos every night in Seoul. Seven Luck is no fight to the ones in Las Vegas for sure, not even Genting Highlands'. It was so small i thought there're other sections of the casino around the corner, but nope.

we lost energy and interest for late-night shoppings at Dongdaemun so adjourning back to the GH for a good rest was the best thing to do then......

Day 6

back to Changdeok Palace for some unfinished business..... but before that we grabbed a bit of breakfast from this beautiful traditional rice cake shop..... they come in different colours and are all carefully made and exquisitely packaged. To S'poreans it prob taste like ondeh ondeh.....

admission tix. visitors to this palace has to be accompanied by official tourguides, so we joined the english speaking tour.

CD Palace was built during the reign of the Joseon Dynasty, just like Gyeongbok. It served as the last residing place for the last king of Korea before the Japanese occupation in early 1900s.

kids eager to start their excursion....

the royal throne.....

Biwon, or Secret Garden - this is the back garden of the royal family. the kings would fish in this pond, invite guests to one of these pavilions. Scholastic examinations were also held here too!

spotted this extraordinary flower there! look, the flower/fruit is in the shape of a heart!

here's where the king stayed when he wanted to experience life of a noble man or commoner....

we also saw in here, a juniper tree that was believe to be more than 750 years old! kidding me?!

Lunched at a small local shop..... had this cold noodles, which was refreshing but a tad unsuitable for a cold day..... but its an interesting try! i've tried cold japanese soba with dip before but never ate out from a bowl of icy noodle soup with ice in it..... the soup tastes good with some fermented bean paste mixed in. the noodle's like mee kia, but very Q and very good. like korean noodle, they've the best texture ever.....

took the subway and travelled down across Han River to Samseong Station where Coex. It like the world trade centre or something..... there's shopping complex at the ground floor and an aquarium which we didn't get to see.... interestingly, while asking ard for recommendations, koreans kept mentioning 'Quacks', were at first scratching our head, wondering where the heck they are saying but we later found they actually mean Co-ex.

lunch at Coex food court.....

after Coex, its time to head to the supermarket to do some trade visit and grab some local goodies! were mistakenly led to do our supermarket shopping at Lotte dept store. when we did, we're disappointed that its like more like Isetan and no where near the usual local supermarket. we had to make a big detour to get to Yong San station, to a hypermarket call E-Mart.

back to the hotel to do some packing before we check out tml...... took out all the cosmetics and skin care i bought and received as free samples...... too little or too much?

Day 7, the final day

before we checked out for the airport, we decided to give Myeong Dong one last shot! we knew we're gonna try out some of the goodies there before we leave Korea........

while V went to get her galbi (beef rib) soup, i went separate way to get zha jiang mian! i love zha jiang mian in sg so i had to try the korean style. and it turned out being one of the best thing i had there.....

i got the noodles from a chinese restaurant and it cost only 3500 won a shot, one of the cheapest meal i got here.......

was so excited to know there's krispy kreme in seoul! went to grab some to bring home for my family. its been almost 2 yrs since i last sank my teeth into these deliciously sweet and sinful doughnuts!

to pile on more carbo, i got this tasty looking waffle with strawberry and chocolate cream by the streetside stall.....

time to head back to the GH to take the airport shuttle to Incheon!

its finally home sweet home. i thought it was time too, i was kinda lethargic by then. so much i actually wanted to be on the plane asap to rest.......

korea.... a place i prob won't be back again..... i love how the ancient and modern elements blend in so well together..... however once is good and enough for me. ok, that's it!

gera!

[[ Hit by a fallen branch ]]*|1:44 am|

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