Seoul Searching

We have now had two sets of visitors; my sister Laura and her boyfriend Karol, and our friends Aly and Callum, so we have had a chance to explore some of the more touristy aspects of the country we live in. We went to Seoul twice with Laura and Karol and once with Aly and Callum, so we feel as if we know the capital city fairly well now, so here are some of the sights, smells and sounds we came across on our travels!

One of the most famous tourist spots in Seoul is Sejong-ro, a pedestrianised street where you can see Gwanaksan and Bukhansan mountains with the Blue House - the office and residence of the President - sitting at the bottom. In the middle of the street are statues of King Sejong the Great and Admiral Yi Sun-sin, a famous King and Navy hero of the Joseon Dynasty. Gyeongbokgung, perhaps the most famous of the palaces in Seoul, is situated at one end near the Blue House. This is a lovely street to have a wander down, incorporating both ancient and modern architecture.

Sejong-ro, With the Statue of King Sejong, Palace, Blue House and Mountains

Outside Gyeongbokgung Palace

 The Han River is a beautiful and calm place to spend an afternoon when the hustle and bustle of Seoul becomes too much. We walked to Yeouido Park, Seoul's business and banking centre, which houses Seoul's tallest building (63 building). It is also a lovely area to sit by the river and relax, or hire a bike and cycle along the bike trails. On the way to the river, we passed a large new shopping centre, and found outside a huge motion sensor display, where the movements of people walking past (or standing in front waving your arms and legs like crazy as we did...) creates a pretty light show on the huge screen. We got a few funny looks from people passing by!

Motion Sensor Display

Relaxing at the Han River

We also took our first trip to N Seoul tower, not the tallest in the city, but often thought of as the most beautiful spot to view the cityscape. We passed Myeongdong Cathedral on the way which was pretty, and we were lucky enough to see a wedding just about to take place. You can either take a lift and a cable car, or if you are feeling energetic, you can walk up the mountain to the tower. We took the lift, then walked up to the tower, and took the cable car down. the walk up gets your blood pumping a bit, but it is quite pleasant and there are some nice photo opportunities on the way. We didn't actually go up to the top of the tower this time, because the view from the top of the mountain seemed good enough, and the day was fairly hazy so we weren't sure that we would see much more from the top anyway.

Myeongdong Cathedral

View of the Tower from the Cable Car

Lovers' Padlocks at the Bottom of the Tower

View on the Walk Up

As a surprise for Laura's birthday, we took her to see the cooking show 'Nanta'. This is one of those things that is very hard to explain, which you can only fully appreciate if you see it for yourself! It is basically a comedy show which uses cooking, dancing and percussion to tell the story of the stressful catering preparations for a wedding. There is barely any language used so it is a universal show - the story is told through the action on the stage. There is a lot of throwing around of food, drumming with knives and pans, slapstick humour and audience participation, and it was absolutely hilarious. Unfortunately you are not allowed to take photos while the show is on, but below is one of the stage before it started.

Nanta Theatre

With Aly and Callum, we did many of the same things, but also some different ones, and everything felt new in a way, because spring finally sprung and we got some warm weather! We took them to Insadong, an area where you can explore many antiques and tourist stalls and shops. We have been here a few times before, but this time we stumbled upon Ssamziegil, a small shopping centre in itself, where you go around a spiral staircase perusing many different knickknacks and souvenirs. It is a little pricey compared to the rest of Insadong, but very interesting to look around. Aly had a silver band ring engraved with 'Insadong' which we thought was a really unique souvenir to have from Korea.

Ssamziegil

We visited Cheonggyecheon Stream, which looked beautiful with all the lanterns ready for Buddha's birthday.

Engraving the Ring

We also went back to one of our favourite haunts - the Noryangjin Fish Market. I don't know what it is about this place, whether it's the bustling atmosphere, the weird and wonderful sea creatures (ever seen a fish that looks like a penis?!) or the food that keeps bringing us back, but whatever it is, we love it! 

Phallic Fish

Eating at one of the Traditional Restaurants

Huge Delicious Prawns!

The War Memorial of Korea was our next stop - we have never visited here, as Laura and Karol went alone before we arrived in Seoul to meet them. It is a huge memorial and museum, and an extremely interesting and well exhibited place to come and learn about the Korean War, as well as other wars that have happened on the peninsula. There are also many tanks, aeroplanes and other war-related vehicles outside that you can climb on and get inside. 

War Memorial of Korea

War Memorial of Korea Outdoor Area

We also went back to N Seoul Tower, and as it was a lovely clear day, we made it to the top of the tower this time! It was worth the money and the queuing, and we were lucky enough to arrive at the top just before sunset, so we saw it in daylight, during sunset and then at night with all the city lights.

Sunset...

...At Night

♬ Bora Bora Bora Boracay ♬

Callum and Aly (our second pair of visitors) had decided that travelling from England to Korea wasn't enough. So we decided to take advantage of one of our longer term breaks at the end of April and go to The Philippines for five days.

This did not evolve to be the simple "hop" between Asian countries that I had hoped it would be; to get there we left the night before our 8am flight to stay at at Kiss and Fly hostel (would recommend) close to Incheon airport. Our travelling day started at at 5:30am with a nice fry-up, then a quick drive to the airport with everything going smoothly. The 4 hour flight was also fine, and we even gained an hour when we arrived. This crazy thing about this is that we probably arrived in the Philippines at around midday, but we didn't arrive at the hostel until after 7pm. This was a result of having to take almost every form of transportation imaginable to get to our hostel in Boracay. Firstly, 10 minute taxi between terminals, then a 2 hour wait for the 1 hour (turbulent) aeroplane from Manila to Kalibo, next came a bus for an hour and a half across an island, afterwards we took a 15 minute ferry across to Borocay, finally a death-ride in a struggling motorbike/sidecar/failed transformer which would have thrown me and my bag out had I not held onto everything.

Anyway, after getting lost in the dark for a while, after about 14 hours in total of travelling, we made it.

The hostel (Frendz) was amazing. We arrived at happy hour to San Miguel at 30 pesos each (50p). The hilarious staff noticed how happy happy hour was making us so extended it another 3 hours. We immediately made friends with most of the people around us, including a couple from Korea, well Korean girl and American guy. We proceeded to make her homesick by showing off our meagre Korean vocabulary. 

Despite our 14 hours of travelling (and pretty grim physical state), the first night turned out to be one of the craziest. At about midnight we ventured down the shore in flip-flops, shorts and a vest to see what the nightlife was like, we found the busiest club and rounded off our 24 hour day there.

We all woke up feeling pretty good the next day and got to the beach as quickly as possible to while away the afternoon.

We went for a little souvenir shopping in the afternoon, but other than that tried to keep things relaxing.

The sunset views were very nice, and with the tide out in the evening the beach became busier than in the day.

Dinner the second night did not turn out to be a success. We were recommended an authentic Filipino restaurant, then were even recommended dishes from the menu. My karu karu was a chunky slice of beef fat in a thick peanut sauce, and was inedible. And Callum's tuna panga was half a tuna head. Now I have not blacklisted Filipino food because of this experience, we are at fault for ordering the wrong things (we later found out that tuna panga translates as tuna jaw...) but hey we were still hungry. 

After dinner we met up with friends again and went to a beach bar with live reggae music for the rest of the evening.

I had been really excited to do some water sports as it's pretty cheap. But instead of jet-skiing off by myself we decided to get a crate and go sailing around the island for the afternoon.

Well we didn't actually do the sailing, we just enjoyed the view. We stopped off at a couple of places, the nicer one being Puka beach on the other side of the island.

Unfortunately we were whisked off this paradise beach after only 15 minutes, so we took the sunbathing back to our regular hangout for the rest of the afternoon.

The following day we had planned to leave the party island of Borocay to have a luxurious relax at a nearby mini-resort. We met the resort rep at 10am the next day and went by boat for half an hour to a nearby island. The four of us not only turned out to be the only guests at this relatively new hotel, but also the only four foreigners on the island. 

This suited us just fine.

The hotel was pretty luxurious, as was the pure ocean.

A side note about the hotel staff, they were lovely people, but were quite inexperienced. For example, the food was great but it took well over an hour from ordering to it arriving. This led to the strange routine of us leaving the beach, ordering dinner, then going for a shower and having a drink while it was being made.  

Unfortunately we had to leave after two nights to experience once again the arduous journey "home" to Korea. All-in-all a very exhausting taste of The Philippines where we most definitely made the most of every second of our term break (we missed a nights sleep, got back at 10:30am and started teaching at 2:30pm).