Trip to Seoul: Day 5 - Riverdance and Pig Feet

[If you want to start at the biginning of my travellogue, its here]

Well, to be honest I may have exaggregated the first part in the header a little, but what I *did* was at one point was cross the Cheonggyecheon stream on som stepping stones, making me "dance" in a fashion over a "river".
I had time for a 1,5 hour walk in the afternoon and what better way to spend it than walking? The Cheonggyecheon is a recreated water stream that originally was built over and used as road, but then reclaimed in 2005, and know gives residents and visitors alike a chance to stroll along a nice water stream, which is especially nice in summer I'd imagine. With minus 10 degrees, the dampness doesn't exactly add to the enjoyment, but the times the sun peeked around the skyscrapers it was quite OK. The place is evidently often used for romantic strolls also, from the top of my head I also remember that the kdrama Lie To Me had a scene recorded here.

The shell at the start of the stream is like Seouls version of Stockholms Sergels Torg, ie a place Seoulites go to celebrate great wins and such. The funny thing is that the sculpture "spring" is actually made by the swedish-born artist Claes Oldenburg.

And to the east of the sculpture the water starts.

I continued downstream a couple of kilometers which too me past Bangsan Market, Gwangjang market and Doota until I reached Hwanghakgyo (12th I think) bridge and Seoul Folk Flea Market.

Election banners, this one I don't think is actually for one of the main candidates. I usually have seen students carrying it, and its a play with the peace symbol. Some kind of activists?

Scyscrapers alla around

Bangsan market. Cooking apparel and specialist foodstuffs.

But mostly stuff for making food. And things more for office work.

Pig's feet, or Jokbal as its called, with the first two sidedishes. Very nice for a meat lover, and since it was cut thin slabs I didn't have to look at some feet too ^_^. I could feel the taste of marrow (meant in a good way). Cost 7000 Won (45 SEK/7 $).

And here comes a soup too. And I can't eat with sticks as usual, so I used my hands and got som paper towel from the caring food stall owner. The Kimchi I actually passed on, its a bit strong and with no rice I didn't want to "spoil" my meat experience.

The Pyeonghwa wholesale market. 

Most of the clothes was of some kind of 50+ asian style and patterns that made med slightly (sorry, but thats the truth...) queasy. There were some exceptions, but all in all, guess if I was happy to visit Doota again a final time. After looking around there  and reestablising my respect for korean and asian fashion, I found this resting spot called "FIKA - Swedish coffe break" which is quite spot on! They had menues with swedish letters like Ö in all the right places,  and the special "Semla" buns, and *even* earl grey tea. My respect for Doota went even one step higher then, haha. ;-)

The Fika Place got some strong brands as a support. Even Nubie Jeans ;-P

The Seoul Folk Flea market - "antiques", second hand and newer stuff like sportswear and a lot of other stuff. The green/purple line has a station close by (which has a little confusing setup, but I worked it out).

Fishing poles

Funny english text. They do their best, but I still think you would put effort to get spelling right when actually producing stuff in big numbers? ;-)

Kpop: Sunny Hill (써니힐)

Sunny Hill är ett väldigt bra exempel på hur grupper kan omformas i kpop:ens värld. Om det inte stämmer så kan medlemmar bytas, namn ändras och hela musikstilen ändras. Från att ha varit en ganska mähig grupp fick de en skarp och spretig, nästan svår stil, med ett helt annat anslag. Och såå mycket mer spännande. Jag brukar länka videor utan långa intron, som ofta koreanerna gillar ha, men här har jag behållit dem både för Midnight Circus och The Grasshopper song, de är värda att se åtminstone en gång. Det här är i min åsikt en av de mest unika grupperna från Sydkorea, som har en helt egen stil.

Update: The latest single is Goodbye to romance. I Usually dont that much care for ballads, but since its a nice video and from Sunny Hill, I will make an exception.
Update: New album and single, and it looks promising, more like the "old new" Sunny Hill.

• Sunny Hill - Monday Blues
• Sunny Hill - Goodbye to Romance
• Sunny Hill - Midnight Circus  (så j-a bra)
• Sunny Hill - The Grasshopper song (musik och video i perfekt union)
• Narsha ft. Sunny Hill - Mamma Mia (nej, inget ABBA-relaterat)
• Sunny Hill - Is The White Horse Coming? (백마는 오고 있는가)
• Sunny Hill - Pray  ( 기도, den är faktiskt lite grym, för att vara kpop)

Trip to Seoul: Day 4 - Mechas and Ho's

This travelogue (which starts here) is all fun, but being here on business, I should of course talk about that to and show some pictures:

University of Seoul

Well then, now that is out of they way. ^_^

Later the same day...I hurriedly visited Asias largest underground market, below the big COEX expo. Here I must mention at least a few of the stores that caught my eye. The first was Aniland, a must visit for all Totoro fans (even though they sell alot of other cutesy stuff too):

Sugar rush or what - Christmas AND Totoro!

And the store.

The next was a toy store (didn't remember the name as it didn't matter - it looked rather generic) where I from my swedish point of view noticed some stuff you don't see that often at home. First there where a lot of Mecha (jaoanese fighting robots) building kits:

And then I found this kind of buildning kits where the parts where made of some kind of wood (bamboo?) and it was all different sorts of buildings or vehicles sometimes. Rather neat and detailed.

 Last and certainly not least was the extremely big Bandi and Luni's bookstore, which was maybe the biggest one I've seen, and definitely so in one plane. Just their section of english (ie original) books was  way bigger than I've seen anywhere in Sweden.

A fun thing they had, like miniature lego blocks, each measuring roughly 2-3 mm a side.

Colorful bibles, just a reminder the Koreans actually have a long Christian tradition

After that I just had to pass the nowadays well-known city district of Gangnam, and specifically Rodeo street (there are other more suitable names of streets and such, but G. and R. will do).

Actually it was almost an anticlimax, the main street was more like a row of showfronts and almost no people going in or out. I wouldn't say the place was dead, it wasn't any impressive at all. The best part was actually when I by mistake went up the wrong escalator in the luxiorious subway station and entered a subfloor like the one in Shinsaegae (or Harrods, London) even though this seemed even more special, with waiter-kind of people standing around at food disks or food courts.

Louis Vuitton

SM Town - known to all k-popers. I tried to see something when I seemingly disinterestedly walked by, but of course nothing came up ;-P

And of course a gift-wrapped building.  ^_^

So guess what caught my eye here, then? The master of bad puns inside of me woke up with a start. This was probably the best thing in my 45 min visit in high end Seoul, haha.

And a evening meal, and FINALLY good black tea, with a thick blueberry-filled waffle made on order. All for a quite OK 4800 Won (32 SEK/4,8 $). Add to that a giant spicy sausage bought from a street vendor 10 minutes earlier and they whole sheebang cost me no more than 6600 Won (44 SEK/6,6$), ie like a fast-food meal here in Seoul.

Not so much to tell as the earlier days, but I got to sleep too ;-)

Trip to Seoul: Day 3 - Kpop, Namsum Tower and Jump!

New to my travelogue of Seoul, you may want to start at day one here:

So, owing to late shopping at Dongdaemun yesterday, and the 10 km walk home ofc, I hade a record late breakfast at 12.00. Yes, thats extreme, but then I'm mostly still on Swedish time ie one could argue I woke up at 3.00 in the morning. ;-) Here is my lunch:

So before going to to first must see of the day, Namsam Tower, we walked through Myengdong and Namdaemun market (again), and here I got a revelation. Well, sort of. We passed by the wonderful Ttrak of Bloo (no, not "track of blood") which is a heaven for a kpop-lover.

The thing is, before going to seoul, I had tried to distance myself from kpop fandom feelings and instead be like "yea, whatever". I mean, what is a week in the heart of kpop, eh? My defences thoguh began falling bit by bit by hearing kpop hits all the time and being surrounded by all theese small signs of kpop, kdrama and just general cultural markers you see all the time at home when you watch it. Like:

Seeing Lee Min-Jung från Big, and many others, doing ads.

And I think I saw Bae Suzy from miss A in two different ads at a TV in just one minute. She seems to be really popular. I first saw her in the above mentioned tv-series Big. I will blog about that one later on.

Anyway, Ttrak of Bloo was the obviouos end to my self-deluding, since I left that place all warm over carrying with me treasures you cant guess! CD:s? Well, yes. Hmm, well maybe that wan't to hard, but still look at what I found (and this was just a minimum choice from my side, made possible by extreme self-control...):

From left to right, up to bottom it is:

• Ga-In with her latest album, featuring the single Bloom. I actually boought this on principle, even though the tracks are good too, because the music video depicts a female sexuality beyond the male ppoint of view that pervades kpop.
• Super Junior photos, presents for home
• Gangnam Style with PSY. Well, ofc I HAD to buy one of theese. Its shaped like a box of burnable DVD's and really a nice memory of what happened to kpop in 2012 on the world stage.
• Ornage Caramel with their second mini album. Aing among other tracks. The group that brought me inte kpop.
• Sexy Love with T-ara (7th mini album). One of my favorite bands and tracks this year
• Orange Caramel again, this time with the latest Lipstick single.

Even though they are nicely packaged, the albums usually only costs roughly 14000 WOn, ie 95 SEK/14$. To be honest Im not even sure if they are compatible with my swedish CD-player, but the Books that comes with the album and just supporting the bands I have already downloaded from the internet felt right. And since I was such an enthusiastic customer (yes, I tried not to giggle or drool to much), he even threw in two free posters (orange caramel, yay!).

This was sorely tempting, signed CD's by the stars themselves, I really had to lay of them (this time).

So, if you are in Seoul and likes kpop, I warmly recommends this place. It is in the southwest end of Myengdong, you enter the market area from the Myengdong station and turn left at the first street and walk towards the distant Shinsagae department store. Close to the end of the street you find it on the left hand side of the street. Or google for this: 부루의뜨락 on Google Maps.

Dazed by this, feeling warm and cozy inside, the walk then went through Namdaemun market and then down towards Namsum Tower. Given the choice between taking a challenge or doing it the easy way, I did as usual and took the long way. Literally.

Instead of going by the cable car I thought I'd walk up to Namsam Tower, but that was quite a long and steep walk. I'm in quite OK shape, but a brisk uphill walk, though a very beutiful (certainly in spring/summer), still took me roughly 35 mins and weak in my legs. Ah, who am I kidding, I liked it!

Anyway, the tower and the view was as expected, no more or no less. The interesting thing was the tradition of couples placing locks on places they could, usually up in the tower I thought, but here they were on iron christmas trees. Nice idea:

A guy making fast food in a very effective way. Almost worth paying to see.

The hard way

Free show of traditional martial arts at the top

View towards north and downtown Seoul (well, just a small part of Seoul, actually)

Christmas locker trees

See, trees made completely out of locks, often with romantic texts on them

After Namsam tower it was evening break and then time for the Jump show. It is a kind of show popular in Seoul where you actually doesn't need to understand any korean since, beyond some basic korean sounds korresponding to "ouch","hello", and so, which you get anyway, its all about the acting (out) and the martial arts. Its a story about a family who has a break in, and combines slapstick with sound effects and great showmanship. It comes warmly recommended.

Just a snapshot before the show, I didnt dare photograph more...

Just one more comment, a general one:

After two and a half days here in Seoul using the subway I have noticed something I haven't seen an the subway, at least not nearly in the same scale, as in for example London, Beijing or Stockholm, and that is the dynamic merging of business=shopping and subway. Often you either have the subway stations contain shops on the way to the exits, or you have belowground transfer corridors (can be even kilometers!) with sopping stalls, or even stand alone shopping centers, all of these usually situated below street crossings as to serve as an alternative to pedestrian crossings. Its all very nice on makes the subway a lot more "Lived in" and comfy almost at times. And between midnight and 5:30 in the morning the entrances and first hallways are left open for homeless to sleep in, which seemed to be done in a relatively orderly fashion.

Trip to Seoul: Day 2 - Traditions and night shopping

After trying my second cup of tea here in Korea, and this one also hade a bonus taste of something fishy (as in fish), I was happy I got myself a cup of my Twinings Earl Grey from home. The other stuff att Dunkin Donuts was great though, got my sugar levels multiplied by 10 I guess. ;-)

Today was a day for a ”traditional roundtour meaning the areas of Insadong and Bukchon Hanok Village. The first is, in a mostly positive sense, tourist trap in the form of a main street of shops selling traditional stuff like arts and crafts and anything loosely related to ”cultural heritage”, be it eatable, made of wood, stone or textile (or plastic). One place not to miss, roughly halfway along the road, is the Ssamzie-gil shopping centre. Its like a spiral walk with qaint shops along the way. I found several fun things there (presents…).

Bukchon Honok Village is sold as an area with traditional houses mixed in with never ones, but dont be fooled by the standard toursit map thinking its a whole homogenic area, rather there are small zones of picturesque alleys coupled with larger areas of dwindling but more recent styled houses and shops. But the Gahoe dong area is a good place for photographs, I found one place there with Namsam Tower in the background. I also managed to take courage and seek myself lunch in a sidealley where I got a very nice lunch with the classic sidedishes fore a mere 7000 Won ie rougly 42 SEK or 7 dollars.

After recuperating and sleeping (yes, I shouldnt do that if I want the sleeping to return to normal, but wait) before going out for the night shift. Yes, I *could* have gone for the ”see the nice palaces” stuff but I honestly wasn’t in the mood for it. Instead I chose sleep and…night-time shopping!

Yes, Seoul is indeed, like most all Megacities, a great place to shop, and one of the hundreds of markets you must not miss out on is the Dongdaemun market. Its really more of a city area spanning a number of shopping malls but it got two cards up its sleeve. Fi rst it has wild opening hours, it really only close for a few hours early morning (5 -10 am), and som only open at 10 *in the evening*. The other thing is its catering for all tastes. The area is the place where the clothes business do business, ie wholesale selling and buying, but in the other end you got high fashion too. My favourite was Doote, which is the place to go if you have already been spoiled by YesStyle .com and therefore have rather high expectations, but on the other hand doesn’t have that big of a wallet. Yes, I found some stuff here too. Presents… and yes some for me too. All men out there: it is an unfair world in regards to clothes, we are whoefully underrepresented in the selections and fun factor of it all, but floor 4 of Doota gives some solace at least. Recommended. The neighbouring galleries have men’s clothing floors also, but there you will have to expect some more aggresive (not much or often,I just hit two rotten eggs among all the sellers) selling tecniques.

One thing good to know: the Seoul subway closes at 24:00 so if you are thinking of using it, stop shopping before midnight. I didn’t. I didn’t want to take a cab. SO I hade to walk for 1h40 mins (roughly 10 km’s) back to base. *aching feet*.

As expected in Korean countries, you leave your shoes outside your hotel room, in this case in a small cupboard

Hihihi. "Chicken Mother". Guess who I'm thinking of ^_^

Political ads on SIncheon crossroads

Typical Korean flower arrangement

Just one in (seriously) hundreds of cute style business concepts

More cute, this time a Mobile service provider

Breakfast. Note to self: don't order green tea again here. Also, Koreans like their donuts, it seems.

At the seemingly popular Dunkin Donuts chain. It was everywhere.

Insadong street

I found the places selling traditional spices and dried mushrooms fascinating.

Yes, it's a pooping man. And, yes they are making poop-shaped somethings on the grill. Guess if it was a popular Kodak moment? (And for some reason few buyers)

Handmade soaps packaged in bamboo. Very nice. As above, at the Sszamzie-gil

At the roof there was this place where one could buy name tags and attach them to this opening. Seemed a couple thing.

A reminder that Seoul (and Korea) is actually quite mointainous.

A series of photos from Bukchon. I found it interesting to see contruction of new traditional houses. Reminded me somewhat of english oak houses in structure.

Bukchon alley

Bukchon

Bukchon

Bukchon

Bukchon house. Very nice.

Stir-fried pork was my choice

Yes, all this for the cost of less then a McDonalds meal at home

This was the entrance to the earlier mentioned Ssamzie-gil. You can't miss it from the main shopping street so don't worry

Girl giving free beuty-product-samples. One catch, you have to enter the shop...

A shop dedicated to swedish Fjällräven. Funny.

"Cannabia" drink with nice leaves on the sticker...from Germany. Wonder whats in that drink?

DOngdaemun suggested shopping walk

Bah, just 8 floors of shopping at this place. Small stuff.

Koreans really like their hats and headwear in general.

Bags. And more bags. Sooo boring. Kidding.

This wasn't really the best example of a bag, just it was diffreent.

Christmas night at Dongdaemun