A visit to the KTO Seoul Office

Hello everyone!! My evening class was cancelled, and I feel like blogging, so here's the second instalment of my Chuseok holidays~

On Thursday, 15th September 2016, me and my friends decided to go to Korea Tourism Organisation Seoul Office, located near Jonggak Station. I stumbled upon a few events that KTO was holding at their office during Chuseok, soooo we thought, why not?

I was sold when I saw the word 'free' LOL

As the poster stated, there was the hanbok experience where you can try traditional Korean clothes, silk drawing experience and traditional game experience. When we first reached the place at around 11am, we went up to the hanbok experience floor, located on the 5th floor of the KTO building. We knew there was going to be a lot of people at this hanbok experience.... and our instincts were right. There were a lot of people already there, who have their hanbok on. We had to make a reservation, and we managed to get the 1pm slot. So yeah, we had 2 hours to kill.

While waiting for our turn to try the hanbok on, we went to the silk drawing experience, where we could paint on silk. We were given a sample of how the drawing is supposed to look like. And all we had to do was to colour in the drawing with watercolour. It was a nice experience because I felt like I was in primary school all over again... and plus... it was freeeeeeee. :P

I didn't manage to try the traditional games though, because there were a lot of kids there. Besides, I played most of the games at Namsangol Hanok Village the day before.. so yup LOL.

After painting the silk picture, we decided to roam around the KTO building. Honestly, everything and anything you ever need on information about Korea is located here.

On the 2nd floor, there's literally EVERYTHING here:
- tourist information centre where you can get brochures
- a VR (virtual reality) experience zone of famous tourist attractions in Korea
- a cafe
- hallyu tourism zone where you can take a picture with your favourite K-Pop stars hehe
- medical tourist information centre
- Muslim prayer rooms!!!! They have separate prayer rooms for the gents and ladies. Also, they even have wudhu areas in the room itself, so this is a win!

On the 3rd floor, there's a food exhibition hall where you can see displays of Korean foods. We didn't enter this place though.. but this place is free to enter!

On the 4th floor, there's a place where you can cook Korean food and eat it afterwards! However this experience costs 10,000won if I'm not wrong. Also, there are specific times for this experience, so it's best that you come in early and book in for this experience. We didn't try the experience since it wasn't free LOL.

On the 5th floor, there's a marketplace where you can buy artworks, food, and anything Korean-related here. The stuff here was quite expensive so we just looked around.

The clock strikes 1pm and it was time for me and my friends to FINALLY put on our hanbok! Since there were a lot of people, we only had half an hour to wear the hanbok and roam around Cheongyecheon Stream. I reckon it was more than enough time to take pictures! Anyway, I'll just let the pictures do the talking :)

The location of our photoshoot: Cheongyecheon Stream LOL

Oh and by the way! The free hanbok experience is valid until the end of 2016, so if you're going to be in Seoul, you should definitely go for this experience!

That's it for this post. The third instalment to my Chuseok holidays will be coming up soon, so stay tuned! :D

Namsangol Hanok Village

Hello again! Once again, I'm so sorry for all the overdue posts ㅠㅠ Currently I'm still two months behind but I'll definitely catch up soon~

So anyway, from 14th September to 18th September, we had a (very) long weekend in Korea. That was because it was CHUSEOK HOLIDAYS!!!!! Chuseok is one of the most biggest and most important holidays in Korea, and this is the time where all Koreans go back to their hometowns and spend time with their families. For 2016, Chuseok was on Thursday, 5th September, and usually in Korea, the day before and after Chuseok are also public holidays. For this year as well, the holiday period extends for 5 days, since the weekend followed after the 3-day Chuseok holiday period.

If you have a long weekend, the smart thing to do was to book a holiday out of Seoul, right???? Well me and my friends really overlooked that... We thought we could book a flight ticket to Jeju or a KTX ticket to Busan or something like that, but nope... everything was sold out. And yup, we had to spend our Chuseok in Seoul. Sighs. :(

Anyway, this post is the first instalment of how I spent my Chuseok holidays. On Wednesday 14th September, me and my friend Atirah decided to join a few of our Chinese friends to explore a traditional Korean folk village. We decided to go to Namsangol Hanok Village, which was located near Chungmuro Station. We actually got lost at the start... we somehow got into a place called Korea House LOL. There was a few photo opportunities here, so I guess getting lost wasn't so bad after all.

We finally managed to find the hanok village after asking the staff at Korea House. There are a lot of activities that you can do while you're here. I think most of the activities are held on the weekends, so before heading there, it's best to check out this website!

Entrance to the Namsangol Hanok Village :)

You can see the Namsan Tower from here!!!! :)

As mentioned before, we went there during the Chuseok period, so there were activities held that was related to Chuseok. If I was not mistaken, there was a booth where you could buy songpyeon, a traditional Korean food made out of glutinous rice. Luckily for us, they gave out some free samples to try out! I didn't take a picture of it though, sorry!!

Other than that, there was a booth where you could make your own bow and arrow (not sure how it's related to Chuseok but yup), and a booth where you could make your own spinning top. UNFORTUNATELYYYY you had to pay for those stuff.. and I am just your average uni student on a budget so I didn't do it lol. And yes, I know, I should've at least tried it out once, right???? But nah, there was more exciting things that I could do for free.... stay tuned for my next upcoming post to find out!!!

Anyway, in the village, there were a lot of traditional houses. Walking through the different traditional houses, you can see that these houses belonged to people of different social classes. For example, in one of the houses of the upper class families, they had doors that was hanging off the roof. In addition, I noticed that the size of the kitchens really determined how well-off each family was.... Like if you had a huge kitchen, it means that your entire house was also huge lol.

A living/dining room of an average Korean family

A bedroom of an average Korean family

This is the video of the hanging doors btw lmao

As we kept walking past the traditional houses, there was an area where you could play some traditional Korean games. There was one game where you can throw arrows, another game by using your foot to keep the shuttlecock off the ground (I know there's a similar game in Singapore called chapteh, but I have no idea what the Korean equivalent is called), and also a game where you could play spinning tops! It was fun playing these games... it felt like I was reliving my inner child. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of this area.. my apologies again :( I really need to take pictures next time...

After hanging around the games area, we headed to this place where they had buried a time capsule (HOW COOL??????) in 1994. It is scheduled to be reopened four hundred years later. This place was definitely sooo cool, a place you should check it out if you're at Namsangol Hanok Village!

Afterwards, me and my friends decided to walk to Myeongdong to do some shopping, as it wasn't too far away from the village. At this point, me and Atirah parted ways from our Chinese friends, since we wanted to find a place to pray before doing anything else. Anywayyyy, after that, we were quite hungry so we decided to find a place to eat. We stumbled upon this restaurant called Busan Jib, located in a small alleyway in between Frisbee and Nature Republic. They offer some halal dishes at their restaurant, which was great!!! We ordered the asam pedas dish, thinking that it'd be close to having a hearty Malay dish. Well.... all I can say is that the dish has been Koreanised LOL but it was still a tasty dish. The cons to the meal was that it was quite expensive for uni students like us but we enjoyed our meal and that's what matters. :)

Busan Jib in Myeongdong!

They make it clear that they have halal dishes here... lol

I guess that's about it for this trip!!
Stay tuned for my next post for the next instalment on my Chuseok holidays :)

2018 Pyeongchang K-Pop Festival

Hi everyone!!!! I'm sooooo sorry I haven't updated my blog in like.... forever. My mid-semester exams have just ended and I've been cramming half a semester's worth of work... within 2 weeks LOL. And now that midsems are over, I have a few presentations to prepare for...... lol...... My time management hasn't been the best but I'll try my best to blog everything asap lol. Anyway, it's already November and I am not ready to go back home. At all. I just wanna stay in Korea forever sighhhhhh.

Moving on... this post is about my first ever K-Pop concert in Korea - 2018 Pyeongchang K-Pop Festival, which was held on 8th September 2016 at Gocheok Sky Dome, which is like 50 minutes away from Anam. It's organised by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism as well as the Korea Tourism Organisation. It's open to foreigners only and guess what? IT'S FREEEEEEE!!!!! That was the biggest factor for me to go, because when else are you gonna get free concerts in Korea? Anyway, I found out about this concert while I was still in Australia LOL. All I had to provide was my name, date of birth and the last 4 digits of my passport number. And just like that, I got my free ticket weeeeeeee~

Anyway, the fact that it's free, there's obviously a twist. And the twist is - in order to get front tickets, you would have to queue up for your seats :) :) :) Me and my friends couldn't be bothered queueing up, so we arrived later, at like 4pm I think? We had to exchange the online ticket for an actual ticket, with your seat number. Mind you, the ticket exchange booth opened at 1pm and apparently, there were people who started queueing up early in the morning. Regardless, me and my friends still managed to get relatively good seats at the ground zone.

While waiting for admission to begin, there were a few booths that was outside the venue.
- Booth 1: You can wear a hanbok and take a picture with the backdrop of Park Bogum and Kim Yoojung from Love in the Moonlight. The line for this was sooooo damn long so I couldn't be bothered taking a photo of this. Sorry LOL.
- Booth 2: There were wax figures of G-Dragon and PSY (if I remember correctly?). Not a huge line for this so I managed to take a picture with GD's wax figure LOL.

- Booth 3: There was a Korea Tourism Organisation booth where you can get FREE STUFF LOL. Managed to grab a tote bag here
- Booth 4: There was a Pyeongchang promotion booth where it was pretty much promoting the upcoming Pyeongchang Winter Olympics Games. There was a huge line for this... Can't remember exactly what was there, but there were a lot of people here. Again, I'm not a fan of crowds so I didn't see what was there.
- Booth 5: There was a booth to collect our Descendants of the Sun poster with AUTOGRAPHSSSSS from the cast!!!!!! EEEEEEPPPP!!!!! :D

Admission into the stadium began around 5pm and I think we managed to get inside the stadium half an hour later I think? Also, the concert was supposed to start at 7pm but it officially started at 8pm sigh. I kinda expected these things to happen anyway since the concert was free. Anyway PICTURE SPAM TIME!!! Apologies in advance for the lack of high quality images btw. iPhone quality really sucks in night mode....

Location of the concert~

My ticket, my cheap lightstick (LOL) and the stage~

While waiting for the concert to start zzzzzzz

BEAST!!!!!

TWICE!!!!!!

B.A.P!!!!!!

WONDER GIRLS!!!!!! <333333

A better picture of Wonder Girls (Picture credits goes to my
friend Jay who had a reaaally good view of the stage /sobs/)

The hosts and Jin Goo!!!!! (Picture credits goes Jay, again)

Boys Republic

MONSTA X EEEEEEPPPPPPPP

The most awaited stage - SHINee!!! Onew wasn't here though
because he had an injury :(

There was also Gummy and Cosmic Girls who performed, and EXO also appeared on the tv screen. For some reason I didn't have pictures :( Anyway, after SHINee finished performing, it was already 11pm. We left the stadium to head home and oh my god........ The station looked like a scene from Train to Busan. There was like a stampede of people???? I don't even know how we managed to get on the train because the station was literally filled with people. We somehow managed to reach home in one piece by 12am. And that was a day well spent.

More (very late) updates to come!!
I'm so so sorry it's taking so long. I will try and get everything up ASAP!!! And just so you know, I have 11 blog drafts at this moment, just waiting to be typed up and published lol.

Until then~

Bupyeong Underground Shopping Mall / Ihwa Mural Village

Hello everyone!!!!!! It's already October... can you believe it???? My midterms are coming up in a few weeks' time and I. Am. Seriously. Not. Ready. I thought my study habits/time management skills would improve while I'm in Korea.. but honestly, it's actually becoming worse LOL.

Anyway, this post is about my trip to Bupyeong Underground Shopping Mall as well as my trip to Ihwa Mural Village. If I'm not mistaken, this was my first weekend trip after school officially started. (Yes, I really cannot sit at home and do nothing... there is so much to explore in a foreign land!!)

Bupyeong Underground Shopping Mall
In Seoul, there are heaps of underground shopping malls, where you can find a lot of things - from clothes to souvenirs. Most of them are actually quite cheap and affordable, so I guess that's why a student/tourist like me love these places.

Bupyeong is located outside of Seoul - it's actually very close to Incheon. It took me and my friends a bit over an hour to get there from Anam. We reached Bupyeong around 11ish in the morning I think? And there were a lot of stores that were still closed.

Anyway, this place is MASSIVE. I think we took nearly 2 hours to cover the entire underground shopping mall. And because the interior pretty much looks the same, I got dizzy after a while.... And to be honest, most of the fashion stores here probably got their stocks from the same supplier, so I guess that explains why everything looks the same to me.

As I've mentioned before, there's a lot of stuff you can find here - clothes, skincare products, shoes, souvenirs. Clothes are mostly 10,000 won, which is quite reasonable if you really look closely at the quality of the clothes. Some stores might sell their products a little more expensive than others, so you really have to look around to get the best deals. And if you're good in speaking Korean, you can try your luck at bargaining. (I still think my Korean skills are very limited, so I dare not bargain lol.)

The only picture I took of Bupyeong Underground Shopping
Mall. It pretty much looks like this throughout the mall.

After walking around the underground shopping mall, we decided to have lunch. And coincidentally, there was a halal Nepali/Indian restaurant nearby, so we decided to check it out. The restaurant is called Bihani, and they're self-certified Halal. Me and my friends had naan with butter chicken, and it was pretty good. The owner is very accommodating - he kept asking us how the food was, and he even provided a space for us to pray. So yeah, that was a really nice gesture.

Bihani from the exterior. It's located next to a carpark.

Naan and butter chicken :3

Afterwards, we decided to head to Bupyeong Shopping Mall, which is located above the underground shopping mall. We didn't really explore the place because we were already too tired at that point lolllll. There's Lotte Mart, a hawker food centre and some cafes here. Again, didn't really take pictures here. Sorry T_T But anyway, that concludes my trip to Bupyeong Shopping Mall!

Bupyeong Shopping Mall

Ihwa Mural Village
I decided to meet up with Jay, a friend of mine from Melbourne, who is also on exchange in Seoul. We decided to go to Ihwa Mural Village, since both of us have not been here before. Before going there, we went to have sushi for lunch. I actually have no idea where the sushi restaurant is exactly, but it's somewhere near the shopping area in Hyehwa.

Afterwards, we headed to Ihwa Mural Village, which is located 10-15 minutes walk away from Hyehwa Station. These murals are actually painted on the walls of the houses there. And yes, this village is actually a residential area, so tourists have to be mindful of the residents living there. Anyway, there's a lot of murals scattered everywhere, and it's just a really nice place to wind down and admire the murals. If you keep walking uphill, you'll eventually reach Naksan Park, where you can see a skyscraper view of Seoul. We didn't really explore the entire park, but managed to see part of the Seoul Fortress Wall.

Omg cool/funny story time! Me and Jay took a picture of a mural of a granddaughter with her grandfather. And coincidentally, the person in the mural was ACTUALLY THERE, talking with other residents. It was kinda cool to see that the murals of people at the village are actually the residents there. Anyway, picture spam time!!

Found this cool building in the middle of the neighbourhood.

Me and Jay had ice cream here. It was such a nice place
to just relax and chill.

I SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM

One of the shops at the mural village. I love the interior :)

Can you see Namsan Tower? :)

The neighbourhood side of Seoul.

A part of the Seoul Fortress Wall

Anyway, that concludes my trip to Ihwa Mural Village!

More blogposts coming up! Stay tuned :)

Until next time!!!