King Sejong, Yi Sun-sin and Jokbal - Seoul Day 3!

It is my utmost goal to post about my Korea trip at least before its anniversary or my next (hopefully) trip to Seoul.  I don’t know how much I can recall about my trip and a good thing about posting about it so late is that I get to reminisce the times that me and my friend had in Korea.

Day 3 is yet another palace (Changdeokgung), a museum this time (King Sejong Story), a mall (COEX Mall), a pharmacy (sadly I got sick) and KTX (to Busan)! And 3 days is not enough for Seoul. For us its crunch time because we have catch the last train to Busan. Equipped with our newly found favorite -- banana uyu (milk), we head first to a very familiar place Gwanghwamun Square where you can find King Sejong's and Admiral Yi Sun-sin's statues. I remember one of the episode of Queen In-Hyun’s Man when Kim Boong-do emerged riding a horse from Gwanghwamun Gate!

Episode 1 - Queen In-hyun's Man from dramabeans.com

We don’t know really that there is an underground FREE museum! It’s King Sejong Story. At first I am reluctant in getting into museum when I travel but since its free, so off we go underground! The entrance is at the back of King Sejong's statue. I don’t know much or rather I don’t know anything about King Sejong, though I've heard his name. Even a bit of information about him from a kdrama or movie is zero. We just want to go there because we see it on a lot of dramas.  But it was all changed upon learning his story! You probably know that he is the proponent of Hangeul but I didn't know about the other things that he did and one that stroked me was giving maternal leave for bondwomen. If only we have a lot of time, I would read everything from the museum and now I understand why he also named as Sejong the Great. We also learned about Admiral Yi Sun-sin and his turtle ship.

I can read Hangeul! And King Sejong made it possible!

Admiral Yi Sun-sin not to be confused with IU's drama

Inside the museum its just WOW!

Got me teary eyed	Chaaaarrrrge!
good 'ol way to say "화이팅!"	Turtle Ship

After this we hail a cab to go Changdeokgung. We didn't go to secret garden which a total bummer because quite frankly I can't see any difference with the two palaces that we've been, so if you will not go to secret garden it will be a waste. We stayed for a while on a shop within the palace's vicinity and drink our new found favorite, citron tea! What I enjoyed while touring the palace are the pink cherry blossoms. There are a lot of photographers setting up their tripods and cameras. I am also surprise to see local tourist on both palaces, errr they are actually students of all ages going on a field trip. I cannot single out a place that we've visited in Seoul or even in Busan that there are a lot of students touring the places too!


I can't recall where we had our lunch, but I think we head to COEX Mall.  Dubai have a lot of malls and when I say mall huge malls. Dunno why we went to COEX Mall, maybe just to see what does a mall in Seoul looks like and its in Gangnam area I'm sure it will be posh. Went to a shop to see a vast array of KPOP CDs! We did not buy anything because we already bought a tons of them in Myeongdong at a lesser price. The mall is connected to a train station so its very accessible. There was a coffee expo the week before and too bad that we missed it. I am not surprised though with such expo because there's a lot of coffee shops in Seoul and for me as a tourist it will be a crime to be on the same coffee shop twice!

After COEX Mall we hit Gangnam... yeah..oppa Gangnam style! though at that time Psy's Gentleman single was already released a nice follow-up though I don't think I become bigger that Gangnam style (I even have to google what is that song). Gangnam has its own underground market which is like Greenhills shopping center in Manila. I just can't count how many exits are there and at this time I got ill. Its already dark when we get off the station and we have to get back to the underground to go to Watsons to buy some paracetamol but there's none. A girl was kind enough to point where we could find a pharmacy and the pharmacist was so helpful. I initially asked for a generic paracetamol but he asked me where it hurts and he changed it. Apparently, there are paracetamol that relieves body pain first before headache, if you have one. Mine was body pain really... maybe from exhaustion. I never pack any medicines when I travel and I just realized it now and its important to bring some. Good thing that the drug worked fast because I was worried that it will ruin our tour plus we have to go to Busan later. We planned to go to Apgujeong and  Cheongdamdong, but its already dark and getting late so we decide to head back to Hongdae and eat jeokbal!

Jokbal is pork trotter/pig's feet. In Philippines, we have love eating pigs feet/leg too and we call it pata. We do crispy pata (fried) and the patatim (sort of stew). We have to wait in line to this jokbal shop in Hongdae and the way they check for seat availability is thru CCTV! We didn't wait that long and we were given a seat on a corner. Jokbal is delicious, actually, I like pork so I do agree with what Drew Arellano once said on his show that whatever you will do with pork, it will be delicious.  No, seriously its one of the delicious pork dish I've stated. And the salad, up to now I want to know how the dressing is done its so yummy! I was reluctant to taste the salad because it feels like it doesn't match at all to this Korean dish because it looks western to me but I was happy that I tried. Burp!

Myth Jokbal

YU. MMY!

We head back to our hostel, packed our things and dash to Seoul train station. Our hostel was kind enough to let us leave our luggage for 2 days. Actually, we will be spending the night on a train to Busan. We practically dash to the ticket booth to buy the last trip to Busan. At first we want to try KTX which will let you to be in Busan for just 2 hours and 40 minutes. But as we submit our itinerary to the Korean embassy, we realized that we lack one night stay reservation at our hostel. So we decided to take the last train to Busan and the slowest train to Busan which will take 5 hours. 

We still missed a lot of what we want to visit in Seoul. Maybe we just went to 90% on our itinerary in Seoul. Perhaps unconsciously we let it to be like that so that we'll have a reason to comeback! yay!