Me. Candid.: South Korea Trip - Insadong, Cheonggyecheon Stream and Han River

First of all.. I'm now in Guro-gu, at Liyana's (my junior from high school) place, to be exact. She's having an exam tomorrow so I am now using her laptop to prevent her from straying into Facebook from her revision. Focus, Liyana, focus! ;p

Let's pick up where I left off. After the sight-seeing at Namsan tower, we had 2 friends from Meteor Club that would help us navigate through the city and brought us to the important tourists spots. Meteor Club is a club where it's members are students from various colleges and universities in Seoul and it provides FREE tour guides around the city. Well, we felt that they are more than just tour guides.. they are our new friends! ^^ We set the meeting at 5pm at Anguk Station.

Enjoying some snack - Deli Manjoo at the 지하철역(subway station)

We met them at the agreed point and we headed to Insadong to enjoy some good 'ol Korean dinner. It was very, very tasty to say the least. Enjoy the feast for your eyes. hehe.

비빔밥 (Bibimbap) - Mixed seasoned rice. This is haemul bibimbap or seafood mixed rice.

Voila! Ready-to-eat bibimbap. To those Full House fans, this is the "dog food" that Rain mentioned in the drama. It was faaaarrrr from tasting like one. haha! Delish.

I forgot this dish's name. Let's just call it Fried Seafood. In case you feel like u've seen this somewhere.. Yes, this is Hyori's special dish in Family Outing.

해물 따전 (haemul pajeon) - Seafood Pancake. Also made popular by Family Outing. It tasted like jemput2 udang but better. hehe. It was on the house. Indeed, generous Korean restaurants.

After the sumptuous dinner, we head to the streets of Insadong. I don't know the name of this bazaar. It was full of cute shops that sells artsy stuffs like intricates, fusion hanbok and even traditional instruments. We can't afford any of it so window shopping is fulfilling enough.

Yunhui, our new friend and the bazaar at Insadong.

WithYongwoo and Yunhui in front of steel trays that had drawings on it. creative.

After we digested our food by window shopping around Insadong, we made our way to Cheonggyecheon stream. The stream was actually hidden under concrete roads and it was reclaimed by the government. The project to break the concrete and retrieve the stream costs USD 900 million. It was opened to public in 2005.

Our tourist-tour guide got lost. Haha!

Laser show at the stream bank.

Another impressive laser show.

Nu'ur under an overhead bridge.

Breath-taking waterfall. The stream was totally dry before, so 120 000 tons of water had to be pumped daily. Yeap, it has chlorine, just like our tap water.

Done with the romantic stroll along Cheonggyecheon stream and up to Sejong plaza, we went to Han River to ride on the river cruise. It set us back us 11 000 won (RM33).

Two damsels in distress with Pirates of The Carribean. No, it was not our cruise ship. hehe.

Our tourist-tour guides maps. It was hand-written and they couldn't read their own map. Haha! Our funny friends.

It was Yunhui's first time to ride the cruise. It is true that we take for granted our local attractions, thinking that we would have time later to visit it. Instead of acting like our tour guides, they were more like our Korean friends who are exploring their city with us.

It was cold enough on land but on the cruise with the wind it was COLD times 4000. Despite that, we still got out to the front of the boat and enjoyed the view from the deck. They asked me to sing something. I was thinking, belting 'Without You' by Mariah Carey on a cruise, on 1 degree Celsius night would be ridiculous so I started to sing a Korean Christmas carol randomly. We ended up singing and dancing to 'We wish you a merry christmas.." on the deck. It was only 1st December but the festive mood was really fun! Good times, eyh? ^^