Day 4 in Seoul: Royal Palace Morning Tour, Nanta, Gwangjang Market & Samcheong-dong

Photo taken at the National Folk Museum, Seoul, South Korea. 

One of the more relaxing days in our itinerary, Day 4's activities were quite structured with fixed-duration programmes. Here is the list of places we visited!

• Jogyesa Temple 조계사
• Gyeongbokgung Palace 경복궁
• The National Folk Museum of Korea 국립민속박물관
• The Blue House 청와대
• Ganghwa Ginseng Center 강화 인삼센터
• Myeongdong Station 
• Cookin' Nanta! at Myeongdong
• Gwangjang Market 광장시장
• Samcheong-dong 삼청동

Setting Off for our Royal Palace Morning Tour!

We booked a morning tour under YEHA tours because we wanted a fuss-free experience navigating the cultural tourist spots in Seoul, South Korea. With an English tour guide, we got to really understand certain cultural ideas and historical facts of Korea. We also got to ask our female tour guide lots of weird questions about Koreans and Korean etiquette which made it pretty interesting.

So here we are, first thing in the morning at 8.30am, after getting picked up by the tour van to be transported to Jogyesa Temple 조계사 where we will meet our guide and join the big coach bus!

So anyway, the weather was really chilly in the morning and most of our faces were frozen - probably explains my sheet-white face here... I remember running out of our guesthouse room in slippers to get water and completely regretting it.

Jogyesa Temple 조계사

First things first, Jogyesa Temple is really beautiful. The architecture and the intricate detailing of every single wall is breathtaking. We were really lucky that our trip date coincided with Buddha's birthday celebrations, so we got to see the Lotus Lantern Festival that commemorates Buddha's birthday!

I'll let the vibrant photos do the talking.

There were many worshippers coming in to pay their respects or make their prayers, along with curious tourists. There is something captivating about Buddhism - the air around the temple was extremely peaceful and serene, even though the traffic outside the temple was quite busy.

The multi-coloured lanterns sure made it a field day for me. I couldn't stop taking photos and really couldn't decide which shots to feature here because there were too many good ones!

The tour guide explained that these lanterns were dedicated to those who had already passed on, but after I translated the text, I realised these white lanterns were dedicated to those who were lost in the sinking of the Sewol ferry. :(

We remember seeing a huge memorial in Seoul's City Hall area meant for all to pay their respects to the lives lost. For the most part, the whole Sewol ferry disaster was and is still really saddening as most of the passengers were teenagers. The white banner above ends off with "May they rest in peace."

A panoramic view of the lantern festival outside the temple.

Intricate detailing and colours. Really impressive design, manual carvings and architecture even as these temples were built way back when building technology was not as high-tech as they are now. Haha ironically, buildings are less intricately designed now despite the newer, faster, more efficient machinery. I suppose people don't bother as much anymore and the minimalist look reigns (cheap, plain and good lol).

Spotted these opposite the temple and had to get a picture. Artfully designed, animated versions of the Four Heavenly Kings of Buddhism. This is Virupaksha.

Another one for the Four Heavenly Kings, Vaisravana.

Dhritarashtra.

Virudhaka.

On the Road

The Blue House 청와대

Pronounced as cheong-wa-dae, this is the Presidential Blue House of Korea. We couldn't get to go in and explore, hence we could only drive by. Characterised by its iconic roof blue tiles, the Blue House is the executive office and official residence of the South Korean head of state, the President of the Republic of Korea and located in the capital city of Seoul. It features a complex of buildings, all built largely in the the traditional Korean architectural style with some modern elements.

Even from so far away, the Blue House looks really elegant! Wish we could have visited but we heard that parts of the Blue House area was under renovation, so well, too bad for us! :l

The National Folk Museum of Korea

I'm going to stop myself from raving over the architecture. I really love the choice of colours. They tend to go along the more bluish, green colours which I really, really like, rather than the red, orange, heavy colours of Chinese architecture.

Taking photos with our Chinese Zodiac sign. Can you guess what am I?

Haha this says 'snake' but I thought it looked like a ninja turtle. Haha! After all, I've never seen images of a snake standing up straight before with fists like that.

Exploring the museum. They used to use Chinese as their language before the creation of Hangul and the Korean alphabet by King Sejong!

A shot of old-time maps! Not sure if they use this for land planning, but i must say the drawings are simple but communicate what building should be where quite obviously.

This looks so much like the modern locks that HDB flats use that I had to take a picture of it! Has modern technology not actually progressed that much in the area of locks? Hahaha.

Standard Korean side dishes that comes with your meal (and for free!)

This is a really nice shot that I really love but was unfortunately photobombed by this extremely inconsiderate old couple that stood in that position and packed their bags and sorted their administrative stuff (maps and all sorts of things) right there for 15 minutes. Because we were on a tight tour schedule, we had only about 45 minutes here (museum-visiting and all), and just waiting for them to get lost was not an option... :(

They photobombed ALL my photos (10 shots?) in some way or another...

Inconsiderate couple photobombing in process... again. Just look at that ass.

And this shot left me incredibly pissed (with them and my boyfriend) because they left only when we were rushing this last shot of my boyfriend. So yes, he scored a great photo with no idiotic photobombers, and I (a person who ACTUALLY CARES about the quality of my photos taken - no photobombers or unsightly background things) got a shitty shot with inconsiderate old people.

This happens so often (i.e. my boyfriend gets nice shots and I get shitty ones) that I have entirely given up most hope on having any nice shots. I'm just always thankful I even got anything to work with after taking all the shots hahaha...

Yes I get upset over that. I do.

So try me, put your hands into shots. I'll CUT you!

Absolutely serene and beautiful place to have a nice walk! 

Gyeongbokgung Palace

Apparently this is where the King holds his gatherings and dinner parties. Our tour guide called this the "King's Party Place", which sounds really amusing hahaha. Pretty awesome to have a party at a location right smack in the centre of the lake, so you can totally throw someone in if they annoyed you haha.

Did you notice that every single one of the figurines atop the roof is different? So much detail!

A quick shot before we started running across the space to get to the place where they have the Changing of Guards Ceremony. It starts at 11am sharp!

Royal Guards Changing Ceremony at 11am

I might add that all of the 'guards' look incredibly good.

With the guards-changing ceremony, we summed up our sprinting morning tour with YEHA tours! Being youths, we had a hard time catching up with the tour schedule and had to do a lot of brisk-walking and speed-photo-taking and running because of the heavy coverage of locations in a short time. Not too sure if any adults or senior citizens can bear this type of schedule so do consider before you sign up for this morning tour (The website is currently upgrading so you won't be able to book this tour for some time anyway).

I must say the tour guide is really amusing and accomodating, and some of them can also speak multiple languages so it's a real breeze to tour with them. We were really impressed with the tour guides! We actually met one guide who could speak up to five languages fluently... He's a native Korean from Jeju Island who can speak impeccable English, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese... and we even heard him having a whole 10-minute phone conversation in Japanese. #absolutelyinawe

Mos Burger in Myeongdong!

Spotted this three-storey Mos Burger in Myeongdong. Loved the shopfront and cute window-shades! I wish stores in Singapore had the capacity to really do up a building like that, but well, rent in Singapore is really high so I understand why we hardly get to see nice fully done-up buildings!

Lunch at Myeongdong

Our lunch was quite incredible (and we were also quite incredulous). So here's the story: We were starving and couldn't find a place to eat in Myeongdong that was below 10,000 won (S$12). We didn't want to spend too much for lunch because we wanted a quick lunch since we were rushing for our Cookin' NANTA! show at the Myeongdong Theatre!

So after some time, we chanced upon a poster and found a store which specializes in 냉면 (pronounced as naeng-myeon) and walked right in. We noticed that the store was full of native Koreans so... the food's probably good right?

Indeed, it was really good.

To introduce this unique looking dish... This is 비빔 냉면 (bibim naengmyeon) - cold noodles with a spicy sauce. The normal naengmyeon is not spicy, and looks the same as the picture above except for the red pasty spicy sauce.

Served in a large stainless-steel bowl, Naengmyeon is basically glass noodles in a tangy ICED broth (yes there is crushed ice floating around the broth) with slices of Korean pear, a boiled egg and beef. Traditionally, the long noodles would be eaten without cutting, as they symbolize the longevity of life and good health, but the servers at the restaurant provided us with a pair of scissors and everyone around us just casually took their scissors and started mutilating the dish in all ways possible... Hahaha, so we imitated them too!

Verdict? The bibim naengmyeon is one of the most insanely interesting food dishes I've ever tried. The bibim sauce is extremely spicy (if you mix the entire dish together unknowingly with the given amount of sauce) and a perfect match for the icy broth. One minute your mouth's super spicy, the next minute the icy broth makes it all better. Eat, and repeat and your mouth feels like it's been in the freezer and in the furnace again and again. Haha. Pretty awesome experience even though we were dying from the spice (and we love spicy food!)

If you can't take spicy food, do go for the regular naengmyeon. We didn't manage to get the name of the restaurant, but it was located around a food area in Myeongdong on a 2nd level.

NANTA!

Super cute photobooth design!

Selfie while waiting for the doors to open...

Found this fire extinguisher really interesting. Firstly it's such a fat extinguisher which appears hard to grip, but the placement of it seems to make a lot more sense than the Singaporean positioning of a fire extinguisher!

For e.g. If your room is on fire and it's filled with smoke, people regularly tell you to lay low to avoid inhaling the smoke and damaging your lungs right? Then stay low and crawl out of the room. That's what we learn generally. In Singapore, our extinguishers are usually hung at chest level (and you have to even use some effort to break glass to the box it's encased in just to gain access to it). So now that I think about it, if there is really a fire in a Singapore public place, seriously just run!

Technically, while you're being a hero, it is highly possible that while you're trying to break the glass of the box the extinguisher is encased in (and let's say you panic a little and are unable to break the glass on the first few tries), you might have... well inhaled a lot of smoke and gone woozy... so you'll probably faint... and that's pretty much the end of the story for you.

I guess my boyfriend's right to say I think too much... but the last two paragraphs made sense right?

Nanta was fantastic! A definite must-watch! Do book your tickets prior to the show because seats are almost filled up every single day.

Walking Around Myeongdong

And... a long queue for this 2,000 won super tall ice cream!

Gwangjang Market

Not for the faint-hearted. Gwangjang Market is incredibly crowded, so be prepared to push a lot of people and get pushed in return. A few times I nearly lost my balance because some old lady decided to bash me with her big bag of stuff... I'm sure you know how most asian old ladies behave... It's pretty bearable once you get used to all the shoving. It gets pretty warm here too with the many headlights and people and street-food-cooking, so make sure you wear a little lesser on the day that you're heading here in your itinerary.

Bought this pancake and sat at some seats to chow down on it. Super yummy with the bag of vinegar-ish sauce it came with!

We sat down and got spicy rice cakes and kimbap to munch on too! Just look at the bags of pre-made kimbap above man...

Samcheong-dong

After an eventful day, we decided to head back to the area of the Blue House and explore the area of Samcheong-dong. It's directly opposite the Blue House and next to Gyeongbokgung Palace. Samcheong-dong is famous for its Bukchon Hanok (Korean traditional houses) Village. Maintained remarkably well, the serene antique beauty of Korean traditional houses amid the busy hustle and bustle of the city makes Samcheong-dong a really fascinating and unique area to check out. 

Featuring chic galleries, restaurants, cafes and accessory shops, Samcheong-dong appeals to artistic types. The cafes here are also really quaint and peaceful.

Looking for a place to rest our tired feet, we went to Homestead Coffee, which happens to look super homely. A 2-storey cafe, it's a great place to wind down and hang out with friends.

We shared a yummy Green Tea Frappe! There's JS trying to fold his sleeves, but I know he looks like he is scratching himself hahaha.

Isn't the interior so lovely and cosy! 

Simply relaxing...

Sooo... that sums up my fourth day in Seoul! Extremely eventful and a day full of interesting surprises... Seoul is definitely somewhere I would love to return to further explore.

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed putting it together! :)

Cheers!