The Little Things In Life: Seoul Korea in 3 Days (Day 1)

Seoul, South Korea
Day 1 (25 - 26 November 2010)

It has been months ever since I last blogged a proper entry and I suppose it is about time otherwise I will lost track of all the events that has happened for the past few months. I last left off in September and one of the things that I would like to share is about my virgin voyage to Seoul, South Korea. The reason for the trip is simply to recce Seoul prior to the annual trip with my tenants and family. Autumn is about to end during that period but thank God we managed to savor what's left of it and yet, it is still a beauty to behold.

We stayed in Renaissance Hotel located in between Seoul Leung and Yeoksam MRT. It is not exactly the most convenient place and in fact, it is quite far from most of the main attractions but heck, most of the big names are too E.g. Ritz Carlton, JW Marriott and what not.

Our room in Renaissance Hotel. Comfortable enough and considering
that you'll not be staying in it for most of the days, its good.

Complimentary bottled ginseng tonic.
Since I am not a ginseng connoisseur, no comments.

It is already late in the night when we arrived at our hotel and by the time we checked in, it is already past midnight. Since we took AirAsia (Return flight ticket at only RM250!), meals are not included and that only meant one thing... we need food and where to find food at this hour of the night?? Fret not, there are plenty of eateries that operate late into the night and we found one such Korean BBQ place 5 mins walk away from the hotel. Believe it or not, I actually prepared placards with Korean phrases with both the Korean characters and roman pronunciation to show to people that I tried to communicate with in Korea but lo and behold, I realized that I have left it back in Singapore X-(. The waitress approached us and spoke to us in Korean. I asked my wife "How?" in mandarin and to my delight, the waitress asked me "What would you like to order?"in a language that I spoke since young. Yes, mandarin! Yay!

We're so famished that we overestimated our appetite and ordered
a beef BBQ and a pork BBQ. Little did we realised that it comes with
a wide variety of pickles, soup and other condiments!

We were served all sorts of veges. Although they all tasted good,
the portion is just too big. Clockwise from top left of the photo,
broiled broccoli with sweet pepper paste, spring onion+cucumber+
bean sprout salad with sweet pepper and sesame dressing,
rice cake stew, grass fungus w black sesame, and pickled bok choy.
Sorry for not being able to provide the Korean names of the dishes
as I realised that I am hopeless when it comes to Korean.

A close-up of the spring onion+cucumber+bean sprout with
sweet pepper and sesame dressing. They have another ingredient in
this dish that I couldn't tell. The texture felt like 'Dow Miao'.

Whenever you eat out in Korea, they will definitely serve Kimchi
and the king of them all are the ones made with Napa cabbage.
I loved it to bits and I realized that not all Kimchi are the same,
even here in its native country. This one is slightly spicy and
tasted more sweet than sour/savory.

The next day, we visited the many palaces in the city itself. There are 4 palaces altogether i.e. ChangGyeongGung, ChangDeokGung, DeukSuGung and the mother of them all, GyeongBokGung. If you like to visit all the palaces plus JongMyo Shrine, it would be slightly cheaper to buy the ticket booklet which will cost you KRW10,000. The palaces are of different sizes and you may want to do a little read up on the Korean Tourism Board site here to plan ahead of time less your legs suffer.

Our first stop, DeukSuGung. You can easily locate this palace as
it is situated just outside the DuekSugung subway station.
There is a unmistakable Korean drum at the palace entrance.

Korean general guarding his post as the DeukSuGung entrance.

This is the ticket booklet that you can get at the ticket booth beside the palace entrance.

The palace entrance from Dunkin' Donuts across the street.

Thank God that we still manage to savor a little of what's left
of autumn in Seoul. The clear sky makes it even more beauty to behold.

My beautiful wife.

The walk through the palace garden really
is an experience of its own. If I were a lady,
I would imagine myself being the lady of the house.
But then again, I'll be a fat lady :p

The architecture of the Korean is very similar to that of the Chinese.
No wonder most westerners are unable to differentiate between the two.
We all looked the same?

Its quite amazing to see the palace in the midst of the concrete jungle.

Ahh~What would autumn be without the falling leaves?

I love the art created by falling leaves especially one like these.

Yellow tree! Looked to beautiful to be real~it is real...

The harmony of autumn meets winter

No autumn would be completed without the crimson beauty
of the maple tree. I was left speechless by the beauty of God's creation.

The trees in the palace garden are perhaps
as old as the palace. Some of the trees are
so old and hollowed due to terminates/disease
that the authority fortified it with cement.

Imagine yourself lying on the ground amidst the falling leaves
and your eyes feast on a view like this~

The guards at the entrance and that person in the center is

the queen... well, to me she is~

Our next destination is GyeongBokGung and you will not miss this place as it also has a subway station named after itself. Do note that this palace is the largest of them all and it will do you good to schedule this palace for a day itself as there are lots of ground to cover. By the time we are done, my wife and I agreed that we had too much palace for the day. So remember, to enjoy the palaces, DO NOT visit any other palaces together with the GyeongBokGung in the same day! You have been told!

Entrance to the GyeongBokGung.