The snorlax: Korea Day4 04/07/2013

Woke up, had some instant ramen for breakfast, havent had instant noodles in such a long time, maybe over a few years now. I loved the korean Jajangmyeon instant noodles, so delicious.

We decided to go to the palace today, forgot the actual name, but some place that the emperor used to live. We got there walked around randomly and aimlessly, had no idea what was going on, but i guess its pretty similar to those chinese palaces that ive been to in china and taiwan. Even the building styles are pretty
similar. Took some random photos of random shits that I dont even know. Then we headed to the actual Palace where the emperor lived/worked. There was this square thing in front, and we pretended that I was king, and everyone started kneeling as I walked by, it was so much lols. Some random people were looking and laughing at us like "wth are these retards doing". Kept walking around to kill some time before the secret garden tour. The secret garden is only for the royal family, no one else was allowed to go in at that time. its pretty similar to 故宫and圆明园in beijing, and the ones I've been to in shanghai and suzhou.

The tour was boring, and the tour guide was too fob to understand, so we were just like meh. the whole tour was supposed to go for like 3 hours, we left after 1 hour, cause everyone was bored, and hungry LOL. I really dont like going to historical sites, unless we have a pro and interesting tour guide to explain shit properly.

David was planning to take us to the banquet thing for lunch, and I think he got a little annoyed because people kept asking the same question. We didnt know where insdaong was, we thought it was really far away, so we were like lets eat something first, so we found this random restaurant in the middle of no where and ate some noodles and octopus stew and other random stuff. After lunch we kept walking to insadong, and it happened to be like 10minutes away from the restaurant that we ate at. There was this street full of random shops, brandon calene and jess went to buy some souvenir, Pua, megan abd bryan went somewhere I forgot. Me and david was just walking around randomly, then we saw this place that specialises in all kinds of tea, there was this big as banner/advertisment thingy outside for some kind of Green tea dessert, me and david wanted to try it out so we went in. We got this greent tea snowice, and a green tea cheese cake. I loved the ice, was so good and refreshing in such a hot weather. The cheese cake was good too, not too sweet, and the bitterness of the green tea complements the sweetness of the cheesecake really well. David ended up shouting me, because i shout him noodles in the aritport lol. After a while, Megan and Bryan came too, they ordered the set as well, after a while everyone came over. Some people decided to get some tea as pressent for family and friends.

We left the tea shop, it was pouring outside, I didnt have an umbrella, so i shared with David. We were walking in front, not sure if we walked to fast, or the others walked too slow, we lost them after a while. So we just kept on walking, and David suggested to try out this Korean tea house place which was apparently really traditional. We went up, got a seat, I really dont sitting on the ground, too stiff for this shit LOL i ordered some random and weird as korean tea, think it was called Sujunggwa David ordered something as well, i forgot what he ordered though, we also had some ricecake sticks in covered in sesame seeds, and some kind of traditional korean cake called yakgwa. The tea tasted really weird, but i liked it, it's a little spicy and sweet. I didn't really like the yakgwa though, too sweet for my liking, and also really greasy, kind of like the Chinese mooncake, but alot sweeter, but i guess it goes well with the tea, since most of the tea are really bitter. We were there for a while, chatted a little bit about life and random stuff. Then the rest of the group came up to find us. Everyone had to order something, because there is a rule that you have to order a drink once you get in. The drinks were quite expensive like $6-7 each, but meh #YOLO #SWAG, since we are already here might as well try right? We stayed there for a long time, because it was pouring outside, like a few hours maybe LOL, we chatted and calculated how much we spent etc. I didnt really give a crap, cause i YOLO.

We left the tea place, and some people wanted to check out the $10 bag store, so we waited while they went inside. Then we decided to go grab dinner, David wanted to show us this banquet thing, so we followed him into this dodgy looking alleyway. David asked everyone if we were fine paying maximum $88 dollar for the banquet, I was fine with it, and everyone else was fine with it too, since we are already here in KOREA #YOLO. But i think david forgot to ask brandon, after brandon heard about it outside the restaurant he was like WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FUCK THAT SHIT, and got really mad. I kinda expected that, since Brandon isnt a big spender. But in the end we ended up getting the $44 banquet, since everyone werent even that hungry from all the snacks. We got our little separate room, and had lots of fancy stuff, raw beef, sashimi, bulgogi, this sweet thingy with ginseng, pancakes, pork, OMG SO GOOOODDDD. Its defs worth the money spent, we had so many varieties and high quality food. I really loved the raw beef, but the serving was too small, only enough for each person to taste. THE TOILET WAS SO FKN DISGUSTING, one of the worst toilets I've been to in Korea, similar to Chinese toilet standard LOL. We walked back to the train station, on the way we say many small restaurants on the side of the road, some of them were really crowded, and makes me wanna eat again. LOL
One thing i noticed abour korea is that the exterior looks really fancy, like all the big and main streets. Inside the little alley it's really dirty, almost like another place compared to the outside. Like the rubbish was stacked on the side of the road etc.