Wednesday, July 28, 2010

3rd July 2010: Another great museum visit

Woke up refresh and recharged in this Korean soil. It was a long and interesting day for me.

My day started with breakfast at 8am in the hotel's coffee shop...yummy sausages and sashimi :P After meal, we met up with a group of Korean youth delegates which includes Soomin, our guide to Myeong-dong on the night before.

We were brought to the Seoul COEX, Convention & Exhibition Center. Here we were divided into 3 smaller group and each assigned 1 or 2 Korean youth guide. I was in 3rd group with KB and 3 others and being guided into Seoul Auto Salon Auto Service 2010 by Grace. She spoke fluent English and to my surprise she majored Scandinavian Languages in Hankuk University. Interesting major...wonder if we have this back at home.
Those interior and exterior modifications exhibited at the auto show were nice but i doubt they were legal on road. Nevertheless, the cars were interesting but the models seemed to be more interesting to many. I enjoyed photographing both the cars and models. I really wished if I could grab hold of my 1000D and captured all this great stuffs. Lesson learned, never travel without my DSLR no matter how difficult it is to carry them everywhere.



As we have some time to kill after our visit, we headed to the shopping mall on the basement. Many familiar brands could be found here. We visited a music stores. I discovered that the average price of albums in Korea was almost similar to Malaysia. Even Koreans production was as expensive as in Malaysia too. And I learnt that Wonder Girls, Super Junior and Rain were not that hot in Korea after all. There were much more better ones.

During noon, we headed to ...could not recall what that area was called now. We took our lunch in a typical local restaurant but not the typical Korean dishes. We got toufu as the main dish and few other cold dishes. It was a nice to experience the Korean food using the Korean way, with flat chopsticks and long spoons. Not to forget their rice in stoneware which one could filled it with some water to produce tea like soup for after meal. The environment was nice as well. Our delegates were mingling well with the Koreans delegates. "사랑해요, Sarang he yo" was the most spoken Korean words by the group.

After the meal, we went to the National Museum of Korea. This was the most interesting program of the day. We were give 1 and a half hours in the museum and another hour to watch the summer cultural performance. 1 and a half hours were not enough for KB and I. We have Grace to guide us through the museum and she was pretty good in explaining about their history to us. We could only cover 2 stories out of the 3 stories exhibition hall but we really did enjoyed it. We wished we could have more time in the museum.

At 3pm, we were back at the entrance of the museum to catch the cultural performance. It was interesting to see how they were able to swing the ribbon on their hat so easily and surprise to discover that they too have their version of 舞虎. The performers also sang a traditional folk song.

Next was dinner time again. This round, we got a whole grilled mackerel to go with 밥 Bap...short-grain rice, thick miso and numerous cold dishes. This meal was really enjoyed by everyone.

After the full meal, we were transported to the ChongDong Theater for the Traditional Korean Arts Stage, MISO. We also got to try on the traditional Korean clothing, the Hanbok 한복. We looked gorgeous in it but seriously the head dress was too heavy for me. My head was tilted all the time.
Then at 8pm sharp, MISO began. It was a story about the love of a lady. In that one and a half hours performance, they managed to showcase to us the Korean traditional dance move, musical instruments and narrative song as well as more of their traditional clothings. It was an interesting performance but I was just too tired and at some point some scenes were too long. I actually dozed off at some points but still managed to capture the message of the performance. Blame it on me please!
poster from visitKorea site. No photo shooting or recording was allowed in there :S
It was an interesting day and we have got a lot of interaction with the Korean youth delegates. All of them have very interesting profiles. Grace majoring in Scandinavian languages, Cha Hee did her internship in Sweden, Soomin doing some international relations(Japanese) and many more with unbelievable profiles. Envy of their system. They really do promote diversity but at the same time still preserved their national identity.

For more photos,please refer to FB album

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