Korea 1.3 - Culture Exploration

Sorry my posts are abit late. Just too tired to blog after each day... We sleep at 1am-2am here. Wake up at 10am-11am! Where is my 12hrs of sleep!!! It's a holidays!! What an irony XD guess we cannot waste any time sleeping especially when we are in the awesome KOREA \^.^/

Our taxi experience at the start of the day

After the first few days of walking lengthy distances around with MRT (with jovan's wheelchaired grandma), we decided taxi was the best mode of transport. Taking taxi to area within the vicinity is actually pretty cheap  (4-6k shared between 3people). 

We went down from our apartment, optimistic about our new approach of traveling  around in taxis. Turns out, many taxi started rejecting us. Maybe its the short distance, maybe its really because they don't know how to get there... Then an angel fell from the sky! :0

Haha nah, it really mean a really nice guy appeared offering to help us get taxi. He explained to the taxi how to get to Toksochon (our destination). The taxi guy even helped us hail another taxi for us. Nice Korean people~! 

Breakfast @ toksochon

Toksochon is actually not bad. Really herbal stuff. The rice is INSIDE the chicken! Plus, the chicken is so soft~~~ fua fua da! I can see why onew is crazy about chicken. Their chicken here is good!

For herbal food, its not bad. Too bad herbal stuff are not to my taste:/ i waste good herbal stuff. They served this very VERY potent ginseng wine. Woah. Bitterrrrr. Woke up after one sip! It's like smelling Anglea's brands chicken thingy. POTENT! 

Visit to Gyeongbukgung Palace (where the King stays at!)

The Gyeongbukgung palace was HUGE! At first we were lost. We were along the road side. Then the map showed that the palace was in the middle of the huge plot of land (where there were other musuems and whatever palace,not named Gyeongbukgung)

Turns out all the other musuem and palace was connected to Gyeongbukgung! Then the rest are supporting palace/ houses (for concubines, prince, queen, officials). HUGE place. The King ought to be super fit and have horse feet cuz wow the distances between each palace sure is far! I learnt and saw many interesting stuff here:) First, we saw the guard changing ceremony. Them practicing their drills:

Then we learnt that there was a designated path for royalties to walk in. The side pathes were for commoners 0.o 

Walking the king's path to greater heights hohoho~

Here's the palace's party place! Parteh ~~~

On closer look at the roof, there are actually monkey king characters on top! It's to protect the building I think. 

King's sleeping place:3

The all important chimneys. We were told that this chimneys were way way WAY more valuable than all the other palace architectures. Cuz the other architectures were rebuilt and these chimneys are originals :0 I guess it's cuz during Japanese occupation, the chimneys were so unimportant that the Japanese didn't bother to burn it. Now, the chimneys had a status upgrade! Hahaha XD

Brief shopping trip @ Samseongdong

A place for cafe hopping and relaxing over a cup of coffee. Their cafes sure are luxurious and relaxing! Example:

Didn't manage to shop here much cuz most of us were tired. Our feet were pretty much dead. Samseongdong was pretty big... we shopped through one alley and took a cab back

Mask mask mask! @ Myeongdong & lotte mart

After clearing my own shopping lists, it's time for souvenir shopping:3 we bought 70 masks from myeongdong. It costs 70,000 for 70 masks. 

Then when we went to lotte Mart, the masks were even cheaper! Other than 10,000 for 10 masks, they were giving out free masks as well :000 NOOOOooo. OTL moment. 

Feeling the wonders of Korea chicken,

Jojo