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I should blog about this last week when I just back from Seoul, but I didn’t have much time to do so 😛 Anyway here are some updates regarding the vacation.

It was a one week visit, in which first three days I spent it with my friend, wandering around Seoul. The other days with my family, visiting few places such as Korean Folk Village.

The main purpose of the visit was actually for my brother’s graduation, it was on 25 February 2011 in Korea University.

Other than that, I mostly spent my time around Myeong-Dong, where I found out it had become my favorite place when I was in Seoul, been there a few time over a week! 😛 Actually, I only visited a few places this time, but no palace! As most of the places in Seoul I already visited when I was here last time.

The first is the Cat Cafe in Myeong-Dong, a cafe that full of cats!! Coffee + cats, suit me well! 🙂

I also had my first experience of skiing in Jisan Ski Resort, together with my friend dear Rebecca, not a very good experience though, as we didn’t get an instructor there, so most of the time we were just falling. ==

Other than that, I visited the Korean Folk Village, where you can experience the traditional Korean life style, I mean traditional Korean life style back in the old day.

Another place that worth mention is the Insa-Dong’s Stabucks. Yes I’m here again, in fact, this is the reason why me and Rebecca meetup, to have coffee in this special Starbucks coffee house. 🙂

Got this nice Stabucks logo metal box, inside is a chocolate actually, which only consist of three chocolates. ==

That pretty much round up my Seoul visit this time. For more photos, please head over to my photo gallery!

A header image with Korea ribbon!! That mean I’m visiting Seoul, again! ^^

But this time I’m going there for my brother’s graduation, plus a half family trip, I say it half is because I’ll be there with my brother and mom.

But actually, there are quite a lot of Malaysian going to Korea recently, thanks to AirAsia for opening their route to Korea, hopefully I will bump into someone I know during my stay in Seoul.

Well, there are still four more days to go!! Can’t wait for it! ^^

For the pass 3 days I was staying in house due to I fallen sick and also resting at home.

But today is my last day in Seoul and I’m going to visit the Nami Island, or better known as the Winter Sonata place, because it’s the place where the famous Korean drama, Winter Sonata was filmed.

The journey to Nami Seom consist of taking the railway, ferry and also taxi, the journey took around 3 hours.

Nami Seom is an imaginary country, and to enter Nami Seom, you need to buy the passport issues from the Naminara, it cost around 5k won, around RM14.

The temperature in Nami Seom is more cooling than in Seoul, probably because here got more trees compare to Seoul.

Nami Seom is a very beautiful island, it’s full of natural habitat and also for it’s famous pine tree lined roads.

Other than that, animals here are running freely across the island, such as ostriches.

Yes! There are ostrich in this island, but of course it’s not native to here.

Other than ostrich there are squirrels which available all over the island!

The main attraction to this island is actually the environment and it’s beautiful scenery, for those who is a natural lover then this is the place that you definitely want to visit.

PS: Please head over to my Korea trip gallery for more photos!

Today is Hari Raya, the main festival for the our Muslim counterpart in Malaysia, but I’m now in Korea so I went to the Malaysia Embassy to celebrate the even.

Every year there is an open house here, Malaysian from all over Korea will come and meet each other and enjoy local food here.

After visiting the Malaysia Embassy, I went to Cheong Gye Cheon. It was Sunday when I visited Cheong Gye Cheon, so there are quite a lot of people there, the river water is very clear, you can even see fishes swimming inside it, the river is very well kept and it’s very clean.

The Cheong Gye Cheon is located somewhere in the downtown of Seoul, it’s the result of urban renewal project of transforming a stream that was mainly for drainage system into one of the famous public recreation place in Seoul.

I believe before the restoration, Cheong Gye Cheon is more or less like Klang River in Malaysia, where the water is brown in color and rubbish everywhere. In fact, part of the Cheong Gye Cheon was covered with concretes and roads are build on top of it. But today, Cheong Gye Cheon has become one of the most successful urban renewal program in the world.

PS: Please head over to my Korea trip gallery for more photos!

It’s The 6th Asia Song Festival 2009!! An annual event where singers around the Asia continent are invited to perform on stage. This year the Asia Song Festival took place at World Cup Stadium in Seoul.

There are singers from Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even Thailand are invited, popular groups like Big Bang, 2NE1 from Korea, Gackt from Japan and Ekin Cheng from Hong Kong.

We went there around 5pm to collect our ticket from the ticketing booth.

Lot’s of people there including foreigners are lining up to get their ticket.

I got my ticket free by registering my self at the official website.

Around 6pm we start walking into the stadium, because of the H1N1 influenza, there are sanitizer everywhere, even the one spray right to your whole body.

My sit was quite far away from the stage, it wasn’t a good view but the good thing is that there are at least 3 big screen showing the artist performing on stage.

The whole festival was actually very up beat, since the artists are from different country, we can see a lot of fans for different group shows their support.

But nothing beats the local fans here, especially the famous Korean group Big Bang and Girl’s Generation, people gone mad when the host announced their name. These 2 groups are among the last group to come out perform, after this there is an encore but it was Super Junior, I was hoping the Girl’s Generation or 2NE1 for encore though.

PS: Please head over to my Korea trip gallery for more photos!

Today I went to Jongmyo, it’s a royal shrine for placing the tablets of deceased kings and queens of the Korean Joseon Dynasty.

The shrine is a very nice place with beautiful scenery, a lot of senior members will go there and have a good walk while breathing in fresh air.

The Jongmyo is not as big as the other palace. There are 2 main hall here, the Jeongjeon and the Yeongnyeongjeon.

Jeongjeon is the first and main hall while Yeongnyeongjeon was build when Jeongjeon could no longer accommodate any more tablets.

At the northern part of Jongmyo there’s a overpass link to Chang Gyeong Gung, it’s a palace right next to Jongmyo, so we can go to Chang Gyeong Gung directly from Jongmyo.

The Chang Gyeong Gung is again another palace in Seoul, the Jongmyo was actually a part of the Chang Gyeong Gung, it was when the Japanese invaded and they build a road in between to separate both Chang Gyeong Gung and Jongmyo.

The main entrance of Chang Gyeong Gung is not as nice as the other palaces I visited before, mostly because there are renovation here, and there are no ceremony held in here also.

But there’s a very nice lake in this palace, there are ducks and Koi fish inside the lake also.

Some where at the palace there’s a very beautiful white greenhouse here.

At night me and my brother went to Gwang Hwa Mun for the Soul City Tour.

The Soul City Tour is a bus ride to bring us around the Seoul, drop us at the Seoul Tower for like 15 minutes, then start going back.

The tour is actually not very bad, you get to see Hangan and it beautiful bridge throughout the tour.

PS: Please head over to my Korea trip gallery for more photos!

I had been busy going out for the pass few days, today I’m staying at home, resting and regaining my energy back. Actually I’m just being lazy. 😛

Nothing much happen today as I’m staying at home, but at night something funny happened, some drunk old man came and collapse at stair case outside my house, so we took a picture of him, together!! 😀

It was fun!! 😀

I went to COEX MALL today, it’s located at the Samseong-dong.

COEX is the largest underground shopping mall in Asia and there’s a big cinema complex with 16 screen hall called Megabox.

But however, when I went there it seems like all the shopping complex only concentrated in one floor, I don’t know though probably I just don’t know the way. But to me the main attraction is the COEX Aquarium.

The COEX Aquarium, is the only theme-oriented aquarium in Korea, fishes are group into their origin like Deep Blue Sea, Seven Seas, Marine Touch, Ocean Kingdom, The Inca Empire and Amazonian World, each theme inhabit it unique type of fishes base on their origin.

To me it’s a fascinating experience to see these fishes, there are a lot of exotic fish like the Piranha from Amazon, and also some other animals like otter and turtles!!

I spend around 2 – 3 hours walking around and watching fishes in the Aquarium, then after have my dinner and go back home. 🙂

PS: Please head over to my Korea trip gallery for more photos!

Again today I visit another palace in Seoul, the Deok Su Gung, right in front of the main gate there are guards doing the guard-changing ceremony.

This palace is slightly smaller than Gyeong Buk Gung, there’s also an Art Museum here, which I think is kind of spoil the view here because of the modern design building build right beside the palace.

By the time I came here there’s a function going on here, it seems like a fashion show held by KB Star (Kookmin Bank of Korea), and the stage here blocked the main view to the palace, which is kind of disappointment to me. 🙁

Anyway, after the visit I was suppose to go Gyeong Hui Gung, but it’s under heavy renovation so I have to cancel the plan, I went to Gwang Hwa Mun instead.

The Gwang Hwa Mun is more like the center of the Seoul, there are a lot of people crossing the street every time the traffic light become green.

The most significant view here is the big statue of Admiral Yi Sun-sin.

But I’m more attracted to the large field of flowers at the other side of the statue.

I’m not sure what is the event but this make a perfect view for photo shooting. 🙂

I kidnapped this two kids then snap a photo after that return the kids to their parent. 😛

PS: Please head over to my Korea trip gallery for more photos!

It’s the 3rd day for me in Seoul, also the first time I come out alone and wondering around in the city of Seoul. But luckily the subway system here is very well organize, even thought it look complicated compare to Malaysia, but it’s actually very easy to understand, the only problem is finding the exact station within all the subway station in the map.

Sorry for the bad photo.

So today I went to Gyeong Buk Gung, it’s the largest palace among the five main palaces in Korea.

The palace was heavily destroyed by Japanese people during the invasion, believed that the Japanese wanted to erase Korean history. Now the palace is being restore to it original state, until now only 40% of the palace been restored.

After visit the palace, I went to Insa Dong, it’s a street of selling arts and antique stuff, quite a lot of interesting stuff here.

One of the thing that draw my attention was the Starbucks coffee house, the Starbucks coffee house here has the name written in Korean, it’s very rare that Starbucks has their name in other language than English, you can find the exact same coffee house in this Wikipedia link.

That’s it for my 3rd day in Seoul. 🙂

PS: Please head over to my Korea trip gallery for more photos!