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Korea 2009: Day 05: May 07

08-May-09

This time we met Ashley at her uncle’s place instead. It was closer to the subway line that we wanted to get onto, rather than transferring a couple times. The thing about the subway in Korea, it’s about the same thing as in Japan. hahha… I’m not even sure which one is bigger. Anyways, destination: Gyeongbokgung Palace.

This year is their 100th anniversary of some… thing, so admission to the museums were completely free for the WHOLE year. Although admission to the palace was 3000 won, lol.

We rented an audio tour guide (which i didnt really end up using) that was sooooooo cool. It used a map and a audio pen with a reader. You press the pen onto the map and it tells you about the spot. you didnt have to press on a specific thing either, just the area of the building description or the number and it would start talking. double-sided too. crazy.

The palace was enormous. Separate buildings bigger than my house for each activity of the emperor, hahaha. The traditional architecture was interesting and also beautifully painted.

The first building you see as you enter the palace was surrounded by guardian statues. The four guardians of the South (Phoenix), East (Dragon), West (Tiger), North (Turtle), as well as a second tier of animals from the zodiac.

The pavilion on the lake was huge and beautifully placed to provide a view of the mountains and trees with the reflection from the water. By the pavilion, Ashley went to give her friend and brother a call in order to meet up with them for lunch and Insadong shopping.

Her friend was running a little late, and her brother decided not to come anymore. for some reason… seemed like he was having trouble adjusting to the time difference.

Anyways, there was also a free hanbok place again. This time we all (except ashley) got dressed up again. Cassie and Karen in the womens and Michelle and I in the mens clothing (due to limitations of clothing) haha… that was actually fun 😛 altho the good pictures are on michelle’s camera………

By the time we had finished and took the hanboks off, we had to go meet up with Ashley’s friend. We took another 30 minutes while Ashley went, to explore the tower and its surrounding area. The tower was based on top of the National Folk Museum that we didnt have time to go through, but was also free and looked interesting 😛 and off we went to catch up to Ashley.

Her friend’s name is Jin Hyo, he lent us cellphones to use for our stay in Korea, apparently he has several of them 😛 he setup the numbers and everything too! although i’m not sure what features we can actually use and stuff. he calls himself an ‘Early Adapter’ keeping up with the latest technological trend. his current phone is a touchscreen with two or three basic buttons, rivaling the iphone and storm. The technology in Asia is amazing, which is y Apple hasnt made a large dent in its market. The current cellphones are able to watch TV and their subways have reception, despite some of them being underground. The one i’m using has a UV Measure, measuring the UV rays by facing the phone towards the sun, an FM radio, karaoke, and this is an old phone…

I’m sure it was nice for Ashley not to have to explain everything and show us around. He’s 25, or 26 in korean age, (wiki: in which a person’s age is counted starting from conception, rather than from physical birth. Newborns start at one year old, and each passing of a New Year, rather than the birthday, adds one year to the person’s age)… taking Electrical engineering, and did his mandatory time with the military, a special force that worked with the American military, since he is able to speak pretty good english. Altho he got injured… on the soccer field, by an american 😛 haha……

As with most subway stops, there are several shops before you even enter the system. This one in particular had Kyobo bookstore and accompanied by an art supplies store, stationary, music, notebooks, planners, stickers, etc. pretty crazy underground. cassie spent a lot of money on markers, since she loves them so much.

After lunch we headed off to Insadong to do shopping. This district is famous for traditional souvenirs, art galleries, and custom-made items such as jewelry. Each of us bought a couple of little trinkets as we walked through and Ashley and Jin Hyo left around 5:45 to meet up with their friends.

We then headed to finish off Insadong and then to City Hall, where the Hi-Seoul festival was still taking place. The Dance Party, which is basically a concert off two stages with random dancers among the crowd. It was a lot of fun and not that crowded, since it was an oldies themed day and it has been running all week so far.

Aaaaaaand home. Each day has been busy and exhausting, I fall asleep so easily after putting my head down.


Hanboks and… i’m not sure if the male outfits are hanboks…


Cassandra and one of the Dance Party… dancers.

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Korea 2009: Day 04: May 06

07-May-09

Korean Folk Village. is where we’re headed. Since our internet cellphones still suck (i’m not exactly sure how those phones work) i had to go outside and a couple steps away from the building in order to get enough reception to give Ashley a call and see if she was coming with. aiya…

Anyways, Ashley shows up later and researches a bit about getting a prepaid phone and tries to contact Jenny, who landed the same day we did but never contacted us – -; and banana milk is good. there’s a strawberry milk too, and some blue one that says lite… hmm.

We walked a long way to get to the bus stop that would take us there. There were a LOT of bus stops that take you to random farther places, it’s similar to the GO bus stops but…. for 1800 won (approx 1.80$) and it’s tied to the subway thing so the same pass works on the bus, awesome. it took about 40 minutes to get to the village, which would be the equivalent to our Pioneer Village, same concept.

All of the staff wore the traditional hanboks and there were several gift shops that sold the same thing… haha. before we went in, we passed by a palm reading machine. All of us got a reading for fun and most of the reading seemed to be pretty precise somehow, and all of ours was different-ish. Of course, it took a while to read out since only ashley can read and translate it 😛 I only remember that i’m too honest in love 😉 and uhm… i’m bound to have several little arguments with my future wife 0.o lol and i’m a good worker when i put my mind to it and stuff like that, i wish i wrote it down.

We went in and made our way through. We didnt really learn too much since we just walked around and took pictures :D… We took pictures of Senangdang (statues of faces, similar to totem poles 0.o?) and saw different kinds of homes for the rich and poor, servants and different jobs. Walked into the ‘police station’ of the times and tried on the traditional uniform with a spear! and played in the jail. hahahah… a nobleman’s mansion that included guest and servant wings, which made it that much bigger. there were three museums which we paid for but they were….. not that informative. altho Ashley explained some things about the zodiac days and what traditionally happened on those days such as being more careful around knives and stuff on a certain day. and that mother’s would dream of different things to predict whether their baby would be a boy or a girl. phallic type objects would represent a boy and other things, a girl. Ashley’s mother dreamt of fish apparently. that seemed pretty interesting…

We went to a small swing set area where you stand on it and use your whole body to swing yourself up, i had a lot of trouble T_T karen did pretty good tho. we headed back out to the front to eat at the restaurant, 4 out of 5 of us ordered bibimbap which was pretty good. havent had a meal yet that didnt taste goooood. 😀

Ashley had to meet her family at a certain subway station so we had to leave right after. finding the same bus going back to the same stop we got on at. and the shopping resumes… dangerous. i’ve spent a LOT already……. but this time, i’m also buying for other people 😉

We’ve only shopped a couple days and have looked forward to finding Basic House and UNIQLO which sell a lot of polos and basic things, but… they’re so nice. altho sorta expensive. sometimes. 😀 after going through a bunch of shops around Gangnam, and seeing the awesome multi-use touchscreens on the street, we headed off to COEX Mall again for the sake of Karen.

This time it was SO different and you actually had space to move around. but it actually seemed sort of… dead. o well. i was in most of them already so i just sat outside waiting 😛 the aquarium and kimchi museum was closed so we didn’t visit them. We also checked out the touchscreen interactive map, which was frakkin awesome. i explained it to my co-workers:

COEX Mall Interactive MAP. Language, Search, Popular Places, Info, Customer Service, Buildings Around, Restrooms, Parking, ATM.
You can click any of the 3D Blocks on the map and it will give you information, Name, Times of Op, Directions, and a general description
Directions will simulate a character walking through Where you are to where you want to go, also providing distance in meters and time
Also, the top of the screen has Weather, Time, Date and a 2D Map. At the bottom, advertisements.
Another cool addition was a button at the bottom labelled Handicapped/Children which would bring up the main toolbar at the bottom instead of the middle of the screen.
I have a video of it but I don’t have the willpower at the moment to get it encoded smaller and sent

that was easy 😀

and we ate at Jackie’s Kitchen 😀 Korean-style chinese food, hahaha. was pretty good too! aaaaaaand back home. i always end up sleeping after shower, uploading pictures, and i’m totally out a couple minutes after i lie down.


The Palm reading machine 😛


The Interactive Touchscreen Map!!

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Korea 2009: Day 03: May 05

06-May-09

I’m very unprepared for this trip, karen did most of the planning and i did almost no research :D…

Today, Ashley had plans with her own friends so we were to fend for ourselves in Seoul. After grabbing some freshly baked goods for breakfast, we went underground and somehow bought Karen a subway pass as well, with gestures and basic words, haha…

We went off to Junggok where we found the tourist information centre and a section of the hi-seoul festival that was taking place during our stay. i’m not exactly sure what the point of the festival is, but it’s very interesting and happy 😛

Our first stop was the information centre, there was a small section in which life-sized cardboard cut-outs of some celebrities were available for you to hug and take pictures with, haha… and a small souvenir shop, where we tried to but couldn’t buy any souvenirs because it was closed for Children’s day 🙁

We did, however, get the chance to make our own flower lanterns with a simple round lantern, glue, and pieces of…. paper? sure. it was fun but the day ahead of us would prove to be difficult on them. Afterwards, Karen and Cassie tried on hanboks! They had a lot of fun posing in the traditional dress and taking photos…. a lot of photos…

Several sales were going towards World Vision, mugs, bookmarks, rings, etc. Along the riverbank of Hangang there were exhibits of the old marketplaces and artistic pieces as well as timelines, and graphic designs. Along the side railings, people were encouraged to tie a ribbon with their wishes for the future written on them. We also met a girl who had just came back from a trip to Toronto to visit her Uncle, a volunteer.

aaaaand my camera battery died because i havent charged it since i got it :(… stealing cassie’s for now 😉

we then headed off to the shopping area between eujiro and myeongdong where there were a lot of familiar brands like adidas nike giordano GSTAR! (insanely expensive) puma, etc… and a lot of small stores, one in particular had lego people on shirts, bought myself a spartan lego-man 😀 but most of all, we found a uniqlo! i spent several won there….. …and plan to spend some more… mostly because i havent bought any pants yet – -; all tops.

Since the city is on holiday, u can only imagine the insanity in the streets. One thing about walking in a crowd in Korea, no one says excuse me, sorry, pardon me… its: *push *shove *cut-off *swerve…. u get the point. I asked ashley how to say those things but she said that they dont really say it, they just…… move around eachother silently with the occasional bump.

Stopping for a moment at the Angel-in-us Coffee shop, where the cashier didnt know what the english on the menu said, we figured out our plan to head to Namsan Tower, North Seoul Tower, one again heading through some more shops. It was unavoidable since the shopping district was so huge. Also being discussed were light plans for Australia next year 😉 hahaha

After we finally got out of the shopping area, we walked up to the cable cars that would lead us to the top of mountain where the tower was built. it was karen’s first ride ever on a cable car apparently. whee. Up top there was a teddy bear museum! and wireframed people in the air, and shops and food places, and of course, the tower observatory. the lines were long but moved quickly. at the observation level on the windows they show what direction a certain city is, and the distance to it. Toronto Canada was mentioned, 10,577km or somethin like that away from the tower. we didn’t take too long, michelle and karen got their fill of pictures and we left so that we had enough time to get through the elevator line and the cable car line. on the elevator level there were washrooms, which was also open to the skyline and the urinals were very….. interesting. and high. i wouldve taken a picture if there wasnt anyone else in there 😛 lol

A long day of walking and shopping, our feet were killing us. walked back to the subway and made our way home to go through our spoils and rest our heads.


Hanboks!


The Namsan (North Seoul) Tower

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Korea 2009: Day 02: May 04

05-May-09

Woke up with the balcony door open, cold. at around 5ish but slept until 6 somethin, to the yoga stretches of michelle and cassie. hahaha….

we were supposed to meet up with ashley at 12 and figure something out. so we have a cellphone which is a bit…….. troublesome. i locked it, but didnt know what the passcode was to unlock it – -; ugh.

we left around 830ish and went to find breakfast and wander around. visited numerous small shops and stopped at starbucks for a drink. we found a small bbq place where we had beef rib stew for 5$, yum. and we then continued to wander and explore a small mall and supermarket before meeting up with ashley.

we were -supposed- to call her ahead of time but since we didnt know the passcode we made sure to be there at 12 and they (ashley and her brother) arrived a couple minutes later carrying blankets for us to sleep on.

Ashley had to go visit family later so we figured out the cell phone thing (…passcode 0000) and found the closest uniqlo 😀 for us to visit until she was free again, which turned out to be preeeetty close. as we head off again ashley gives us a call, her family thing is close to a big mall so, let’s go there instead… walked back and we got a ride to the COEX Mall but as we waited for Ashley, we explored the Bongeunsa temple to await a call from her later on.

Buddha’s 2553th birthday just passed and we missed the festival. At the festival, people were given the chance to make their own paper lantern and hang it with wishes up in the temple grounds. There were hundreds. I have no clue about the facts but, it was a really nice place :D……….

There was also a small indoor lantern display which was pretty good. and free. awesome background opportunities ;). and in the middle of that, the cellphone died…. hahaha…

While exploring the small gift shop, i see Ashley and Gunil pass by and catch them before they go in any further. It seems that their cellphone died too… nice 😛 (we need to get a better one….) but shortly after we went off to COEX Mall.

The mall was very busy (apparently it’s Children’s day tomorrow so many people have the day off today. An interesting thing about some of the stores was that they have circular facades. there were several shops just filled with cute useless crap. perfect for souvenirs. hahah… AND! there were interactive touchscreens for the map of the mall! (but the one i saw didnt even work, so i didnt take a picture – -;) There were several advertisements for MOTO V10, X-men origins, and Star Trek. And we can’t forget. Jackie (Chan)’s Kitchen. hahahaha… we didn’t try it, but it was funny to look at :D. we stopped for lunch at a small kimbap place and went to meet Karen at the Express Bus Terminal.

But before that, we need to get our subway passes. The system works the same as in Japan, buy a card, load it up, scan it at the start of your trip and at the end. The only thing you need to worry about it getting to the right station and how much money is left on your card. The boarding level looked as if it was a narrow passageway with shops on the side but it was actually glass boards and doors built-up in order to prevent suicide… …yea… it wasn’t there the last time Ashley was in Korea. Cellphone’s worked underground too! and their advertisements were in video form inside the trains. crazy.

Arriving at the station, wandering around, and waiting for an hour or so, Karen shows up and we’re finally reunited. Go back to the apartment, figure out plans, head out to dinner then head home to rest from our exhausting day. zzz….


Lantern’s at the Bongeunsa Temple


Part of the Lantern festival, shaped as infinity.

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Korea 2009: Day 01: May 03

05-May-09

And off to Korea.

630am flight, just a bit too early.
5 hour flight to vancouver, surprised to see the personal touchscreens on the domestic flight, guess it depends on the plane? meh. Watched Yes Man and Benjamin Button. Yes Man was pretty good. Button was not bad either, altho i slept through the middle of it and woke up half-way through………

Visited the Olympic Store and grabbed some lunch. Dropped Karen off, since her flight to Seoul is a day later, and chilled at the gate after roaming through duty-free shops.

Next up, 11 hour flight to Incheon airport. yikes. Wasn’t exactly comfortabble, but we survived. People have got to learn how to use the touchscreen tho :@ stop stabbing the back of my head already, frak… other than that, explored the selection of movies and shows. Found Nurse.Fighter.Boy that carlos told me about, although i never got around to watching it….

Drifted in and out of sleep, but didnt really get much in the end because I was so damn tired when we landed. Right away, they took our temperature because being let into the main area. This area then led to a shuttle bringing us from the gates to the main building.

Ashley’s uncle met us at the exit and we went off to find our place in Seoul. The air quality is a bit worse than Toronto, and we were able to see the smog over the city when we drove in. And the driving, hooooly shit. crazy. very aggressive. I’m totally freaked out to drive out in Jeju… we’ll see T_T. Lots of cars, narrow lanes, swerrrrving. A couple awesome things in the car was the speed indicator, telling you when you go over and beeping like crazy. and the actual car, sensors on the outside beeping more and more when going closer to an object.

Unloaded at our rental condo, 4th floor, 2 washrooms, kitchenette, master bedroom, 2ndary bedroom, balcony, pretty spacious for a temp place, of course it wasnt meant for such a short-term stay. Went over to ashley’s uncle’s place for a home-cooked meal. Was really good and soo damn filling. She and her brother haven’t been back in almost 7 years so her smallest cousin doesn’t even remember them! She’ll be busy for a couple days during dinner to catch-up with her several relatives around town. A lot of them didn’t even know she was coming over.

Brought back blankets and mats to sleep on (since we dont have beds) and shopped a little in the convenience store for water and snacks. Apparently i was lucky and grabbed two adapters from Stine instead of just one because I need both for it to work T_T… Went out for a stroll around 9pm and a lot of the small stores were still open. It’s too bad we dont really know the small greeting phrases cause we had almost no clue what they were saying to us as we entered and left :D… its nice that we didnt get lost.

and then i pass out while the others are on the computer.


Finishing up my meal at Ashley’s Uncle’s house, yumm… majisoooo…


Accent of our apartment in Seoul

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Japan 2008: Day 26: May 24

30-May-08

— had written a bit during the time, never had a chance to finish. thought i might as well post it —

leave early
rain
shopping
ramen
rain
airport
1445
line
uniqlo
check-in
luggage T_T
22.9, 34 total
tram to gates
waiting.

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Japan 2008: Day 25: May 23

30-May-08

— had written a bit during the time, never had a chance to finish. thought i might as well post it —

wake up
download
leave early
the plan
check-in
kimono
go out
chax colony
shinsaibashi
curry
get back late
dramas
sleep

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Japan 2008: Day 24: May 22

30-May-08

— had written a bit during the time, never had a chance to finish. thought i might as well post it —

the night before we asked the receptionist of the hostel which bus we should take to get to the jigoku area… 24 0.o… we’ll see. we left early-ish and went to find the stop… since they weren’t any good maps, and we were given pretty mixed info, we headed towards the station (which wasn’t that far anyways) and there was an info centre for tourists.

unfortunately, both of the random ppl were wrong o.o… we’re supposed to take buses… 2, 41, 47 0.o lol… meh. in this bus we took a ticket with a number on it when entering, we heard about this method before but all of the buses we took before didn’t use it, they had a flat rate. so at the front of the bus, was a large-ish board with the stop numbers and under them, in led number thingys, increasing after every stop, pretty handy and smart. and these were the old buses.

anyways, we get there and… although i cant remember all of the names at the moment… i’ll describe them one by one o.o…

1. umi jigoku, there is a constant spring which provides the pit with constant steam and heat. the water was a lightish blue. included in this spring area, was a mud pond that bubbled up. and a greenhouse garden watered by the springs as well as a foot bath!

2. _ jigoku, similar to the boiling mud in the previous spring but this mud was a white-ish brown. supposed to look like monk heads as the bubbles boil and pop.

3. yama jigoku, a mountain of mud, because of the hot spring, exotic animals are living there. we saw black swans, peacocks, hippopotamus, crazy ass-monkeys,
flamingos, elephant, squirrel monkeys,

4. kamado jigoku, this one was very….. commercialized. they had comical statues of demons and stuff, too tacky… but it represented the ‘cooking’ aspect of the springs used for cooking long ago… the water here was also blue-green with minerals as well as the mud boiling ponds 😛 there was a larger pond with a stone in the middle with a rope-type seal thingy.

5. oniyama jigoku,

bus routes
jigoku springs
1-6
lunch
walk
7-8
walk
beppu
‘shopping arcade’
you me
hostel
takagawara onsen
pack

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Japan 2008: too busy T_T

27-May-08

gaaah
busybusy.
haven’t had time to write the last couple days T_T
9-6 work, wake up at 730 to get ready… leave work at 6,
sleep the moment i get home, wake up for dinner, back to sleep…
wake up at 430am. try to sleep T_T…
jetlag kills.
will write asap :S?

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Japan 2008: Day 23: May 21

24-May-08

after getting up around 10, i went out along to explore and shop… i wanted to find some shoes, but the only ones i did end up liking, there were only the ‘samples’ left and i did not want to buy those o.o…

walked around from place and place lalalala, and got back at around 1130/45 and michelle was awake and packing. in the middle of packing, michelle speaks up and… we have a problem. big. sorta problem. when she booked the hostels for beppu she booked APRIL 21st and 22nd instead of MAY… so at the moment, we’d have no place to stay in beppu T_T… stressful.

we both immediately went online to try and find something but all of the hostels automatically do not allow people to book a place for the night of, so anything for ‘tonight’ would be ‘booked’ online, we would have to call and check T_T… since michelle felt really bad, she went out to find a phone to call…. and somehow she found out that calling beppu would be long distance and we would have to use a gray phone with an international calling card, which of course, we don’t have, and the closest gray phone would be at the airport… because most japanese are nice people, the daughter of whoever michelle was talking to, lent her her cellphone and she placed the call. the person who picked up at the hostel could not speak english well, so michelle tried to get the daughter to talk to the receptionist person… and we were told to call after 9pm to see if there were any free rooms 0.o, that the place was booked up… michelle wasn’t sure because there was a strong language barrier between her and the daughter and the receptionist – -;… *sigh* she felt really bad and bought out lunch too… lol

after she came back and explained what happened, i got the great idea of asked david to help us 😀 hurray! luckily he was on msn at work and he placed the call to khaosan beppu. he got a different person on the phone and… there were several empty rooms… several. we’d only have to get there before 9, since that’s when the counter would close. not a problem. beppu booked, and we’re ready to go. thanks david! saved our asses. we would’ve had to stay in hikari no mori for a couple more days if not… lol.

after all of that commotion and stress, we finished packing and went for a quick run to you me to try and find cassie’s rice bowl container thingy… with no luck. we hurrrrrrrried back to david’s and grabbed our luggage and hauled it to the station to catch the express train from hikari no mori to beppu. and of course, we miss it. by a minute. we watched as it left the station 🙁 *sigh*… but luckily for us, getting to beppu wouldn’t be as difficult as first getting to hikari no mori 😛 we headed towards kumamoto station and from there, we asked one of the train staff people in broken english, how to get to beppu the fastest (before 9) so we jumped on a train to hakata, then hakata to beppu, easy stuff. although our luggage is friggen heavy now, after buying a lot of crap and packing it into our pieces of luggage T_T…

we reached beppu station at around 730-45? and found our hostel in about 15 minutes. nice. our room was on the 3rd floor though. with no elevator. ngaaaah. we had a japanese style room, tatami floors with sliding doors to a small step-down patio/sitting area. bunk beds, and a whole-room shower, the room had a drain in the middle of it, so the shower was just attached to the wall, the toilet and sink to one side.

as soon we settled in a little bit, i began to look up how to get to our next stop, lodge tyojirou by kansai airport. easy enough, limited express to shinkansen to limited express to the airport, then a private line to the hostel… it’d just take 5 hours to get to the airport T_T… whee. michelle went downstairs to talk to the locals and get info on where to go during our day in beppu. our priority: the jigoku (hell) pits, a series of 9 hot springs setup as a tourist attraction. oooooo….

by the time we realized we havent eaten dinner yet, it was 10ish so we headed out and were pointed into the direction of a family restaurant called skylark. we totally overlooked it and found a small ramen place instead :D… when michelle asked for an english menu, the girl described the bowls in english! and her english wasnt too bad either, good job! mm. ramen. i actually did see a couple of ajisen ramen places… one was really old and run-down the other wasn’t as bad… we didnt eat there tho. the ramen we had at this small place used the thinner noodles, which i think i prefer o.o…. hmm.

as we walked back, a random guy in his underwear was running from… somewhere, into an apartment building… we guessed that he went to an onsen and… forgot… clothes? lol… who knows, that was pretty funny. one of the guys michelle met in the hostel was screaming gay and apparently asked if i was single… michelle, being the good friend that she is, told him i was taken o.o *phew* get the hell away from me 😀


a hand onsen 0.o in front of beppu station


it’s crazy where i see hitachi all around japan. shrine/temple sponsors, air conditioners, escalators, washers, dryers, everywhere. (yes, my photography skills are lacking)

wireless at airport not letting me upload pics 🙁

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