Korea (Seoul & Jeju) 2013 14-28 Oct (Day 2)

The next day, my students, Jin and Ashley, became tour guides for my friends and I. They brought us to Insadong area and we had lunch at a local joint.

Insadong area

 This is a popular joint with locals and reputedly have long queues every day. As we arrived at about 2pm, we had no problem getting a long table for ourselves.

The restaurant

Inside the restaurant

Halfway through our meal, a Korean star walked in and everyone turned to look. I've seen him before on Running Man, but didn't know his name. My student, Ashley was star-struck. It was Chun Jeong Myong. I wanted to walk over to ask him for a picture and but wasn't sure if it was polite to do so. As Ashley was so star struck I couldn't get an answer from her and so let the chance go... drats. Anyway, back to the food. The side dish of kimchi was in 2 containers and was free flow. I happily helped myself to it, yummy.

The free flow of side dishes

We ordered 2 different pancakes, 1 spring onion pancake and the other a sweet potato pancake. It was really so nice and tastes different from the ones we have in Singapore.

Spring onion pancake & sweet potato pancake

Next was the main dish. Its called sujaebi, and its sort of like our "min hoon kueh" (面粉粿). It was nice. The soup was sweet as it had lots of seafood like clams in it.

Sujaebi

After a full lunch, we walked around the area. We walked past the Blue House (cf USA's White House), or Cheong Wa Dae. Throughout our walk around the perimeter, there were many smartly dressed agents everywhere.

This building is behind Gyeong Bok Gung palace and we walked a big round to get to the main gates. However, the palace was closed. We had to go back another day. Here's a picture of the opening days and timings.

Instead we went next door to the National Palace Museum to look at artefacts and treasures.

Throne

How can we be in Seoul and not do any shopping? So we took a slow stroll and walked past the front of the palace...

Gyeong Buk Gung

 ... and strolled the shopping street...

... and came to this nice building. It was filled with shops with very original products, very interesting place, you just go round and round and up and up until you reached the top. However, not too sure what this place is called.

My wonderful students Ashley and Jin, arranged dinner with my other students after their work and we all caught up in this lovely restaurant.

Good choice my students, the fried chicken wing was so so so good...

... and so was the chicken stew. It was filled with chicken, potatoes, carrots, rice cakes, vegetables and potato noodles... we had 3 of these really huge plates as there were 9 of us.

Gosh... it was so good too. And was even more heavenly when we had soju to accompany this dish... aww... I'm so missing Korea... erm... I mean the food, as I type this... sigh.

Of course we over ordered the food and we had to walk it off. We went back to the front of the palace and strolled past King Sejeong's statue...

... as I've always seen on K-dramas people strolling along the canal, I asked the students to bring me there. So this is the famous Cheong Gye Cheon.

Was so pretty in the night with the buildings and lights all around. As it was getting late and my students had to work the next day, we parted ways. Thank you my wonderful students, Ashley, Jin, Jessie, Kane and Eric for taking spending your precious time with me and showing me your beautiful city.