Day 4:  15 Oct 2006

I'm so excited! I'm finally going to Seoul!

This is the first time I am taking Korean air and the service was quite pleasant. Kyoko and I went by the Prestige Class which is actually business class because there there were no seats left on the economy class on our departure date. To make use of this Pretige Class, we had to pay 10,000 yen more. The seats were a bit more plush, wider and definitely more leg room compared to economy class. Despite our comfortable service, the time spent was a mere 1 hour plus flight to Seoul's Incheon Airport. If only we could enjoy the comfort a bit longer. Both of us were somehow not feeling too well (my appetite has been poor since the day I reached Fukuoka. Why? Body is adjusting to the change in environment or was it because the weather was a bit warm?) and we hardly touched the delicious sushi and soba served on board! They do look yummy, don't they?

Our Japanese speaking Korean guide, Ms. Zhang (張米善) picked Kyoko and I, plus another 4 Japanese tourists up from Incheon airport and brought us to our hotel. It was an hour ride by mini van. Ms. Zhang introduced us to Korea and some interesting places to visit in Seoul. I don't know what trouble I always get myself into but when I went to Busan last year, I also signed up with some travel Japanese agency from Japan and hence, even though I am in Korea, what I hear is nothing but Japanese. I understood what the Japanese speaking Korean guide has introduced to us about Korea so I am so glad that my comprehension ability is not degenerating albeit my not so fluent Japanese speaking ability. When we reached our hotel in Seoul, Kyoko and I took a brief rest before we embarked on our window shopping trip to Myong dong!

Hotel Crown, Myeong-dong

Our bedroom...note the ornate design of the bed board. In fact. the photographs do not do justice to what I see --> Everything in the bedroom seem to be overly done, quite coarse, loud and old fashioned. The deign seem to be that of 20, 30 years ago...

After consulting the various sight seeing brochures, we decided to take it easy and just visited 2 places using the subway, which is quite easy to use as long as one gets the hang of how the subway system works.

                (1)  Deoksugung Palace (Admission fee 1,000 won) (大漢門)

                (2)  Myeong-dong shopping district (明洞)

The Palace visit was interesting enough and we were very lucky to have encountered the guards-changing ceremony of some sort.

Actually I don't know what ceremony it was...

Deoksugung Palace 

The palace is just to the right of this photograph, in a modern street, with cars, Dunkin Donuts shop!

 Doesn't the guy in white resemble the revered 'Yon-sama'? (of course it's not him!)

Apparently, the officials in the past has fixed places according to their rank, when seeking audience with the king!

There were many ginko nut trees within the compund of the place!

For us ignorant Singaporean, this is now a ginko nut tree looks like!

If the weather had been cooler, I would have been really lucky to see autumn leaves in shades of orange and red within the palace compound!! Alas! The autumn this year has been slow and the minimal rain has not made the weather cool enough for me to see 紅葉！The leaves were quite green except for 1 or 2 trees that had tinges of yellow in the leaves (not even orange!).

After the palace visit, we took the subway to Myeong-dong to shop but because we were tired, we walked the entire stretch of Myeong dong without buying anything at all! That’s rare of me to return home empty handed! It was a very crowded street due to the 38^th Myeong dong festival and the fact that it was Sunday brought life to the place.

Myeong dong (明洞)

Myeong dong is indeed a very good place for fashion conscious ladies with all the cosmetics (The Face Shop, Skin Food etc). For gluttons, the food stalls are great for gluttons like me!!! -->  BBQ cuttlefish, sweet potato sticks , Korean mochi (toppoki) etc. Somehow we were not hungry and wanted to settle dinner by buying some food from the convenience store near our hotel. However since we passed by an eatery, we went in for some dinner. I had kimuchi soup rice set. Kyoko has beef ribs rice set. The auntie in the shop speaks Mandarin! I think the auntie is a China Chinese who stays in Korea. There ends Day 1 of our Seoul adventure. Not very adventurous!

The only thing we spent in Myeong-dong is this 37cm tall ice-cream! Yummy!

DAY 5 (SEOUL)