Gyeongbokgung & National Folk Museum

안녕하세요!?

So far things are going well. The job is alright (easy but tiring) and I have had a few encounters with the local fauna (absolutely pillaged by mosquitoes within the first couple days, and I saw my first cockroch scutter across the floor last night). Other than that, nothing more that's blogworthy, except for the touristy stuff.

Today I went to Gyeongbokgung and the National Folk Museum of Korea, with fellow Kim & Lee teacher Jagjeet (from BC also). It was pretty impressive, although it was spitting rain the entire time, but we couldn't really complain because as soon as we got back outside after touring the palace and the museum it really thundered down. You'll see what I mean in a bit (see last photo -- aftermath of five minutes walking in the torrent).

Obligatory historical background: Gyeongbokgung served as the main royal palace of the Joseon Dynasty (if you're interested) and I'm not going to go into it further but you can learn more about it here if you're so inclined. To people not familiar with the culture, it was lots of green oriental style buildings, some of which had pretty things inside. Further photos below (starting with a couple random subway station shots):

So that's a bit of Gyeongbokgung for you. In English it's Gyeongbok Palace, thus giving me the impression that the word "gung" in Korean means "palace". I'm fairly sure my intuition is bang on this time. Next few photos are the museum and some of its contents. The chair with the single wheel and the four sticks for servants to carry you around with is clearly the only way to travel. If you attached an engine to that.. it could be a high speed impaling unicyclic war machine. Just saying.