14th August 2019

Harry decided to try and find the shopping mall again as he had sourced some new info. So I was going to go on a hike as Harry wasnt keen anyway.

I headed to Mount Namsan. It was an hours walk from the hostel so I packed a cheese sandwich, some water and my sketchbook and headed on my way. There was a little sides elevator to get you started on the walk.

And at the top is a cable car straight to the Seoul Tower. But I was going on a hike. So I began to walk up the mountain.

Straight away I found a gorgeous waterfall and couldn’t help to sit by it for a few moments to meditate.

Opposite the bench was an edgy little building, and as I’d sat down already I thought I’d try a little sketching, didn’t quite turn out how I’d hoped but that’s what sketchbooks are for.

Continued the walk up and found it was so peaceful. The most relaxed I’d been for a while. The views straight away were impressive of the City of Seoul.

After about half an hour of walking I stumbled on an outdoor gym, and I’d been meaning to try and find a gym the entire time in Seoul. I went in, ask a guy on one of the machines if I had to pay, but he said no. It free for the public. Which was surprising because it was a proper gym, all the machines and barbells and even gymnasium equipment.

Had a good workout, decided not to work too hard as I hadn’t done any weights in a while and didn’t fancy getting DOMS.

Walked a while longer and soon came across the City Wall. Despite being a tourist spot, it was the least impressive thing I’d seen in a while. It was simply a wall, just a long wall.

Anyway, not too far from Seoul Tower I carried on strolling, listening to some tunes.

Seoul tower came into view, and I decided to take a candid on the City Wall.

Once I reached the tower it was about 1630 and I was ready to eat my sandwich beside the tower with a view of the City.

I did get a lot of strange looks as I walked around barefoot, only because there was a red clay path that you could only walk on without shoes. And by the time it ended I couldn’t be bothered to put my shoes back on. But at the time a couple Korean guys had said a well done to me, on separate occasions, which I thought was strange however did make me smile.

Anyway…..walked back as it was getting late. Went to Lotte Mart and this time I went all in on the freebies. I took about 4 from every stall. The ones that let you pinch your own, I took handfuls and eventually, after about 30 minutes of walking around with an empty shopping cart I was full. Successful free meal. I also bought some bananas for the travels tomorrow back to Daegu airport for the next adventure in Taiwan! (Sydney 8 days and counting lol) Also, here’s a pigeon lady.

11th August 2019
Seoul

Had a long sleep, woke up about 10am with Harry still passed out. Had a massive bowl of breakfast, showered etc, harry still snoring, so I decided to do a little jigsaw puzzle which annoyingly had pieces missing.

Once Harry was up, we headed to the Gyeongbukdung palace which was beautiful.

And then at 1400 we watched the changing of the guards at the Gwanghwamun gate which was entertaining to watch.

After I made Harry come with me to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary art because I love a good art gallery.

Learnt about an inspiring artist, Jorn, who is an advocate for the equality of artists and appreciates artwork being in the eye of the beholder.

The story above the picture on the left is a good example of this.

On the way to the market we visited a museum of urbanism and architecture. It’s last admission was at 1700 and we arrived at 1706. I asked if we were okay to go round if we were quick and the lady on the desk was fine with that.

Got back to the hostel and made myself a sausage and cheese sandwich, which is what I will be eating for the next 3 days as sausages, cheese and bread was all I purchased from the supermarket 🙂

10th August 2019
Seoul

A well needed 9 hours sleep. Harry couldn’t sleep cuz he now has pink eye or something, so I walked to the supermarket to grab some food. Lotte mart is better than Costco at giving out testers.

I tried almost everything and felt like I’d had an entire meal. Just some of the stuff I can remember: pizza, kimchi and a selection of other korean dishes, spicy noodles, chicken soup, yoghurt drink, fruit drink, cider, beer × 3, brownies, breaded sausage, marshmallow chocolate thing and I’m sure there was more. Might as well do run that for my breakfast every morning!

Booked a half day trip to North Korea! Might as well as we’re so close.

Walked up to the Seoul City Hall.

Walked through the streets of Myeongdong, found a guy in a cat outfit asleep standing up. It was so hot we were worried he was fainting, he woke up and I offered him some water.

We then went back to the supermarket as Harry wanted some stuff, and I also tagged along to grab all the free stuff again!

Got twice as much this time haha.

Not doing anything this evening as Harry’s eye hurts, so bed early for a day out tomorrow.

And I’m getting bored of spending money now and ready to start earning in Australia!

9th August 2019
Daegu.

Hungover.

Ran out of toothpaste so I borrowed a spare one.

Made an omelette again.

Then we made our may to the bus terminal to catch a bus to Seoul. Annoyingly they only had one seat for economy. We decided to split the cost of one economy and one premium, and I let Harry have the premium seat and I was only going to sleep on the bus anyway – which ended up proving difficult with awful a.c. and no space between the seats to stretch your legs.

Found Harry at the other end, happy to share his bus journey experience with his bed and tv screen premium bus seat.

We got the train to our Hostel, which proved difficult for a few reasons. We were exhausted, google maps doesn’t work as South Korea doesn’t release local data to foreign companies, and the symbols – impossible to translate. I swear even South Koreans don’t understand their own language when we google translate stuff.

We paid for a single ticket, despite knowing we needed two. So when we had to go through the second gate it read as an error but we just forced the gate and went through anyway, no one said anything.

We found the hostel, Kimchee Guesthouse, which was a nice place, quite lively and had a miniature table tennis table.

Flight to Sydney now booked 😀

8th August 2019,
Daegu, South Korea

Finally we get up before 12pm! This morning, I made full use of the free eggs and made myself an omelette. The other guests in the hostel were nice, Mark and some Austrian guy, talked for a while about skiing which I now miss.

Left for the herbal medicine market around 11am, as it was recommended by The Lonely Planet guide. It was surprisingly boring, smells were nice but nothing to see or buy.

We soon headed into town and saw a cinema, and realised The Lion King was out!! We purchased premium seats as they were only an extra 1000 Yen (70p).

Harry and I then strolled the streets of Daegu to do some shopping. The clothes were a similar style to the Japanese clothes, but at a fraction of the price! We both made a few purchases.

This photo was taken in the afternoon, but for most the day it was sunny and really hot. Maybe too hot.

I decided to have a hair cut, so found an english speaking hairdressers. They came out with a menu for prices, and it seemed really cheap to get hair colouring. I asked if he could dye my hair a grey/blue colour, but he said I’d need it bleaching and it done a couple times, bringing the cost up considerably and I ended up opting for just a cut.

We took a break at a little Cafe and bought some delicious milkshakes.

For dinner, we ate at a British pub as I’d been craving some fish and chips.

And boy did they deliver.

After spending a little too long at the pub, we ran to the supermarket to grab some alcohol and snacks for the movie. I bought 3.2l of beer 🙂

The Lion King definitely exceeded my high expectations. It was so good. I finished about 3l of the beer during the film, only needing to go to the toilet once.

When then went back to the Brewers Brothers pub for a pint, had some strange Korean guy try to get us back to his apartment, and then hit the town!

Reading that a lot of clubs didn’t allow foreigners I decided to find some Korean girls to get us in. It was successful, we were sat with them in a big open bar and eventually went into the club. The bouncers refused us at first but thanks to our Korean girlfriends we got in 😉

The rest of the night was blurry. Stole some drinks, stole a lot of drinks, bought a kebab (revolut says 4:52am), stumbled home, passed out.