Tuesday night Joanne came into Seoul and met with Clint, Peter, and I for some drinks in Itaewon. Same ol' stuff really. Drinks then home. The next day Joanne and I set off to take a Seoul City Bus tour. Natalie was sick and couldn't make it. The bus tour was a great thing to do. The basic idea is that you pay 10,000 won to have a bus take you around the city and yo
u can get on and off as you please. Good idea, but we slept too late and only did a couple of things. The first things we did was we went to Deoksugung Palace. It was a traditional palace of some Korean dynasty. It was quite the experience. It was quite funny actually because we only had a half hour there because we wanted to go elsewhere. So here are Joanne and I running around this palace and its grounds snapping pictures like mad, trying to see what we could before we went back to catch the bus. It was fun though. Got some good pictures. This picture is of us in front of a museum on the palace grounds. After that we ran back to the bus, freezing our asses off by the way to head off to Namsangol Folk Village. This little village right in the downtown of Seoul is to show what life used to be like in Korea. It was quite interesting. The architecture was interesting. Very different from classical western buildings. We walked around there for about an hour because by that time most of the places that were on the bus route were closing. After the folk village we went to Insa-dong. Insa-dong is a market is Seoul that specializes in traditional Korean goods. Korea is really hung up on their history by the way. I think in the west we take our history a bit for granted. The market was basically closed because it was the day before Lunar New Year and people were starting to flok to their homesteads to visit their families and pay respect to their ancestors. So shortly dinner, at Subway haha, Joanne and I parted ways and I headed back to Junggye and waited for Natalie to arrive. Once I got home, I decided that I hated my apartment and tore everything off my walls and started going through my things to throw stuff out, when in walks Clint and Peter in the midst of my mess. I was sort of embarassed because it was like a tornado had hit in here. After they left Natalie came along, and things weren't much better. So we went to work for a bit. Made a thing to cover crayon girl and then just chilled. Did a bit of dumpster diving, but no good finds.
On Thursday Joanne, Natalie and I went off to Myeong-dong to meet with Sarah. We went out for dinner and then headed up to Namsan Tower (Seoul Tower) in the evening to see the lights of Seoul. It was pretty amazing. Going there always makes me a big homesick because in the tower there are places listed on the glass and it tells you how far you are from that place and when I look and see that Toronto is 11,000Km away, it makes my heart hurt a bit. After Namsan Tower, Joanne, Natalie, and I caught the bus to Yong-In City to stay at Natalie's for the night. I love bus rides, you get to see so much. It was nice to see some more rural parts of Korea out of a bus window. All I see is city city city....gets to ya after a while.
We go to Natalie's and watched some movies then headed off to Everland on Friday. It was a lot of fun. The park was really big, we didn't get to see everything, but we have another trip in mind. There is a beer garden there, how could I not go back! One thing I found interesting at Everland was that there was a discount for foreigners. We only paid 23,0o00 won and regular price is 35,000 won. I was ok with the discount though.
After Everland we went to Joanne's for the night. We went to norebang and just had some food and relaxed. Saturday we made our way back into Seoul to do some shopping. We headed to Dongdaemun market. The market area there is huge, but it was so damn cold that we said frig it and came back to Junggye-dong, had some drinks and went out on the town.
Saturday night was quite interesting to say the least. I have never seen so much drama in Korea. There were five of us in our party and all five of us got into some fight or altercation. I left one bar covered in beer to stumble upon a police raid or something. After that we went to another bar and stay there, lost track of time, and got home at 6am. Needless to say, we just bummed around on Sunday and did nothing. On Sunday however, I think the palace I went to burned down. Not sure if it was this one, but there was some palace that burned down today. All in all Lunar New Year was good. I am definitely going on a trip for my next vacation though. I am getting a big cabin feverish! Temple stay in 2 weeks!!!
