Korea day 5, Korean folk village

So I left my confy hotel room that morning early, heading to the Korean Folk Village

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Folk_Village

What you see in my hand is a deceiving object. I thought it was gonna be a delicious muffin, but the troll street food vendor forgot to tell me abuot the egg hidden inside.

...and this are two cute puppies outside the store just at the entrance of the village

But what's the Korean Folk Village? It's a village that kept everything as it was centuries ago. It's a turist attraction, but it kept a decent level of realism, it actually feels like a jump in the past.

It was a really nice experience, they managed to keep a perfect balance between a turist attraction and a real experience. I think some people working there were actually living in the village.

Here some kids are writing wishes on a scaman's tree. Shamanism apparently was big in Korea before Buddism 

Old Korean village were more advanced than you think...

Some ancient Korean Gods...

Some spots were actually breath taking views

Dead or Alive!

Inside the village there were a few event turist could attend. One of those was a recreation of a traditional wedding cerimony

There were also some real temples and old tombs

Fortune tellers. Everywhere in Korea

Despite the number of turists around,it wasn't hard to find quite spaces to relax

Not sure what's that tube is about. A rain catcher is my guess.

Old man sitting outside the abandoned temple

Who's getting drunk at luch???

BTW, that's not a pizza, but a traditional Korean pancake

After the folk village I got back to Seoul, and I had some time before meeting my third and last host (which luckily was a normal person this time, very nice as well) so i went to the Korean National Museum.

This are the famous dragon falls inside the museum. Too bad there's no falls at all. So....Yeah.

So this is when it all started...damn rice...

despite I was in a Korean museum, the most amazing thing I saw was this ancient samurai armor and the gold katana

This are the Buddah hands positions....

So....

....Yeah.

Later I met my host and we went for dinner. it was goooood

Later on we went clubbing, there was some party happening and I actually even met my first host there. 

Most importantly, I danced Gangnam style in korea!

Korea day 4, Suwon

I'll start this blog with some creepiness (is that even a real word?). 

As I said before, I have been couchsurfing. And 2 out of  3 hosts where good. 1 wasn't. 

I had this person hosting me in Suwon (a city near Seoul) for 1 night, and it worked for me so I could explore that city and the surroundings. 

So I took a bus from Seoul and got to that house. It was in the middle of nowhere. Just a big street and forests around.

Now, I can't really get into creepy details here (just ask me in private for the horror full story) but long story short, I had to run away (literally) from a mental person. So I got kind of lost in the middle of nowhere, not sure where to go till I luckily found a taxi that took me to the center of the city. Then I just found a nice Hostel where I spent that night. Brrr.

So then I started exploring the historical city of Suwon.

While the main attraction, Haenggung, was really disappointing, what was supposed to be an old royal palace just looked like a fake attraction for turists.

http://wikimapia.org/69497/Hwaseong-Haenggung

What I found most interesting instead was the city itself. Very different from Seoul. It made me realize Seoul it's probably an exception in Korea. No one was speaking English here, actually no one was on the streets at all. And it's not that small of a city. All the lights, the crowded streets, the fancy shops were gone.

I was the only foreigner there.

It was so peaceful and quite.

And here we have the masterpiece. I personally think it's worth to come all the way here just to look at this pig gold statue. 

But the city it's also a world heritage sight. The gates and the walls of the old fortress are still intact. It reminded me of the great wall of China. Just slightly smaller...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwaseong_Fortress

this is the south gate

It was a very hot sunny day. I loved walking up all those stairs...except I didn't.

Every here and there there was a pavillion like this, in which was possible to just lay down on the wood and get some fresh air. No sound but the wind passing by...

First time in my life I saw a wild heron.

At night the city was slightly more alive, with an Asian style indoor market

And here is something you'll never see in Europe.

The gate at night was quite impressive

I've got a new app on the phone, you'll se some of this pics in the next blogs

I ended my night in a lovely cafè

I had to wake up early the next day. I had to take a bus to the famous korean folk village...