Monday, September 25, 2006

Seoul 2006



Seoul is Beautiful! Its a great City and lotsa good looking Korean hunks and Cute Korean Chicks >.< I absolutely love it! So after my "express" 5 hr bus ride, from Pusan to Seoul, I dumped my stuff at the hotel and rushed out to see the city =D


First Stop Myeong Dong



Myeong Dong, just down the street from my hotel, actually just right across. Shops are open to very very late, I got outta that place at around 11:30pm cuz there was just sooo much to see. I was surpised to see a couple of my favorite franchises there too, Outback, TGIF's and best of all KRISPY KREME!! you have no clue how badly I missed Krispy Kreme, when I saw it I dashed straight in and got my favorive apple cinnamon donut! :) and I bought another one for breakfast >.< At 11:30.. I haven't even finished walking the place, but everything was closing so I had to head back.


Early Next morning, the Sightseeing Begins...



This palace was simply beautiful! well all the palaces were I visited a total of 3 palaces that day but I only took pictures of one. LOL cuz most of them looked the same :P See one See all, all the Da Chang Jins! The palace grounds are humongous! and haha me and Kristy Remember Psycho guy because he didn't allow us to wander around by ourselves on the ground but we just kept sneaking past him :P talk about being elusive =D


After the Palace we went to Insa-Dong area to see this Temple who supposedly is very famous and is in all our tourist books BUT the locals have no clue where it was :P but we finally did find it.



A very beautful temple, it is said during some kind of festival in may this temple is filled up with lanterns with well wishes. I also asked the care taker there if there were like any procedures in praying, like how the japanese people have the clapping of hands and then the cleansing of the hands and mouth and all that stuff, but surprisingly not. Its very straight forward just like the buddhism in Singapore.


Moving on, we hopped on the bus and went to some area near city hall where we wanted to find Gwanghwamun Gate.. we sorta got lost for like an hour looking for this gate but bumped into this really pretty reconstructed stream



Well after asking like 10 different people on where that damn gate was we finally DID find the gate after walking past 10 different buildings and a whole buncha military and tanks in front of the American Embassy, to find that we have ALREADY been to that DAMN Gate just that we were looking at it from the other side of it when we were visiting Gyeongbukgung Palace.. talk about a waste of time!


Here's the damn gate... my pic of it wasn't nice so this is one i stole of the internet.



Its a really pretty gate.. it would have been much nicer if I wasn't so pissed at it :P


Was getting pretty late after we looked for that gate.. we visited the last palace, Deoksugung, and agreed that we had enuff of palaces and gates for Seoul :P it was time to do shopping and food, so where do we go for shopping and food? NAMDAEMUN!



Lights! Camera! and all that Action with all that smell of Good Food! Seafood, Meats, Vegetables and Fruits OMG! its food heaven! and yea Lotsa and Lotsa Shopping piles and piles of clothes, jewellery, fakes, bikinis, bags, socks, belts you name it they have it EVERYTHING! so we had like a bunch street food and did alittle bit of shopping before running off to see our Cultural Show that we bought tickets for.



I have to say the beginning of the show was making me fall asleep... it was some wierd ass music played by some wierd ass instruments. It was like me when I was 7, and i was learning how to play the violin and my dad would ask me to stop killing chickens.. yea lol that sorta music. but the Buchaechum (fan dance) because all the gurls were sooooooooo pretty like DollS! and the last act Farmers' Music was definitely the best! they wore twirling things on their head which was really funny and Krisrty went on stage to join them haha :) It was definitely fun :)


So the last stop of our long day DINNER!!!!



Korean Table BBQ. The food was delicious and we had sooooo much fun making fun of the waiter and just acting crazy taking pictures of everything :P just because we could were dumb tourist. We asked everything and we didn't know which sauce to eat with what and the waiter was soo nice and patient with us he cooked for us >.< lol we just acted plain dumb!


So yea that was a whole day of sightseeing boy was I tired!


Next morning, I headed out of Seoul to the surrounding area, like Korea's answer to Disneyland... Lotteworld



It was a really cool place! and Ice skating ring in the middle of a mall, plus a monorail and an indoor themepark with rollor coaster at the top! a parade running through :) just like a Disneyland wanabe :) Korean Style. I didn't know the makers of my favorite chocopie was that BIG in korea to have their own WORLD :P



Now this really shows how wanabe they are.. :P can't be it FAKE it :) haha Korean fakes are reknown! and so is this sleeping beauty castle look alike on Lotte Island the outdoor themepark where they had rides like knott's supreme scream and six flag's superman :P


K so enough of my Chocopie brand :P I'm filled with Lotte! now on to more serious business the Convention Center



So here's COEX, i had to visit this place because thats where Disney Consumer Products told me that they have the biggest licensee's shop was here (Ginaworld) So yea I filled my bags will all the Disney stuff well most of it was to do research so I'd know what I could get as premiums for Disneymobile Singapore :P but yea COEX was a huge place and they had different themed malls. :) one of which was like the oceania area where they had an Aquarium :P didn't go in though can't beat singapore's underwater world! =) but here's a video while sitting there sipping on my coffee and just people watching




After all that I went back to Yongsan this Electronic hounding place.. reminds me alot like SimLim square where poachers are there and keep bothering you to come get a digital camera from them! but everything was expensive! I just did a pricecheck on one thing.. logitech's headset. 75 USD INSANE!!!!!!!!!


After Yong San I was juz pretty much tired out.. and had dinner around the area and headed back to my room... i've already burnt a big enuff hole in my pocket shopping the whole day lol i didn't dare go out anymore so here's me bored in my room


 


oh and check out what they have on korean TV :P I was literally hooked on this channel at first it was amazement, then I started to watch it religiously LOL



So yeap after that everyday was pretty much Myeong Dong, Namdaemun, Dongdaemun... shopping shopping shopping and eating eating eating! :P