Seoul Sistah!

Although this is being posted up reaaaally late, this is the tale of my weekend trip to Seoul. After spending months in Jeju and never leaving that island, my 2 male escorts (Mike and Justin) and I headed up to the capital city for a weekend getaway.

Of course my tale wouldn't be complete without some snazzy background (or at least random) information about Seoul, so let me indulge you. Now the population of the city itself is over 10mill, and if that doesn't make your jaw drop, the suburbs around Seoul boost the entire province (which pretty much is just the city and surrounding suburbs) population up to about 24 million. So... what does 24 million look like? Well literally rows upon rows upon rows of appartment buildings. Literally 24 million people stacked on top of each other. Seoul isn't your typical western city, where upon reaching the downtown core the buildings suddenly become skyscrapers. Nope, instead I found most of the buildings to be similar and not terribly interesting.

In a way I found it to be a little futuristic looking. Almost as though everyone was a designated number, living in a designated section of the city, in a designated building, on a designated floor with a designated room number. In the end, I found it was a little unsettling and not a future I want to envision.

Now while I did not find Seoul to be the prettiest city in the world, it certainly was the most technologically advanced city I've ever seen. The metro system was what stuck out the most for me. You can use your phone as the swipe 'card' to get on the metro (as well as the bus, train and taxi!) and the metro seats were comfortable and heated! There also was rather calming classical music played between each stop. Each metro line had a different song. Furthermore when waiting for the metro, there were doors separating you from the track to avoid any possibility of falling and getting hit by the metro. One of my male escorts dubbed them as 'suicide doors'.

But I guess you guys don't want to hear about the metro. We arrived early Saturday and spent most of the day looking at cameras. However that evening we headed off to check out what was dubbed the 'Light Festival'. Now initially when I heard about this festival I was imagining Koreans in Hanboks dancing while they paraded around intricate paper lanterns. This 'festival' was actually just projections of images onto the buildings that surrounded Gwanhangmun Square where it was hosted. It was actually a little lame as they mostly just projected the same images over and over again. And considering how cold I was, watching a fish swim across a couple buildings lost its appeal pretty fast!




The next day we headed to the GyeongBokGung Palace! This is the largest palace in Seoul and is a part of a district that includes about 4 other palaces. This palace is actually right infront of the parliament buildings of Korea, which is actually a palace with a signature blue roof. Like Canada and England, GyeongBokGung had its own changing of the guard, which was neat to watch with the halberds and flashy clothes.

The palace itself is huuuuuuuuuuge!!! Hopefully you can tell that by the picture I included. This is just the outer courtyard, which has its own man made stream running through the middle.

It was offered and I couldn't resist. So here's me being a tourist and dressed up in a hanbok

Now I didn't grab a headset tourguide for this palace, so unfortunately I'm not up on the history of this palace. I do know that it has spent a vast amount of its time being burnt down and rebuilt. Being burned to the ground by the Japanese or other Koreans, the oldest part of the palace was only from the 1800s. Almost everything in Korea is just a recreation of something that was burnt down. It's actually quite tragic, but for me it didn't lessen the experience. But literally everywhere, there was a little emergency fire extinguisher sitting on every corner of the palace grounds.

Here are the scribbles of my cruddy future. Please never ask me the price of this piece of paper

After this we headed to Insadong, a popular tourist place, to try out one of the popular fortune teller cafes (no I'm not a believer, but I am fascinated by it). I paid my fare and had an 'interesting' fortune told. In summary I was basically told that I would not have happiness or true satisfaction until I was 46. It would be because of my large ego which would get in the way of work and co-workers. Furthermore that any husband I have, I would only be able to see him once a month. For if I saw him too much, I would end up trying to change him, thus causing him to resent me. So my marriage would be one of permanent long distance. He also said I was the element Water , but I'm pretty sure I'm Fire.



Needless to say, it was not the cheeriest of fortunes. Highly entertaining though and worth the money! And that about wraps up my trip! Of course I spent time with friends and meeting new ones, but that isn't really worth blogging about. Besides, I'll be back soon enough to see the rest of Seoul.