I have been in Japan for about a month now. Golden week, which is a week long holiday for most people in Japan, started on April 29th. I left for Korea with some of the other IES students on the 28th. I had a little bit of trouble when we landed in Seoul though. Apparently with the Filipino passport you need a visa to enter Korea even if you're a tourist visiting for only a couple of days. Scary. I was held up at the Immigration Office for a good 40 minutes while the immigration officer scolded me. I think he felt bad though because he ended up giving me a visa on the spot and told me that next time I come to Korea, I better get a visa...
Our hostel was in Hongdae, very close to the Hongik University Metro Station. Surprisingly we were able to find a club that was packed with people that night. Apparently the night life in Seoul is on no matter what day of the week it is. Crazy right. The club we went to the first night was called Noise Basement. It was pretty fun =D
The next day everyone went to Busan. I stayed in Seoul and went to the Gyeongbokgung Palace as well as the National Folk Museum. I had brought my camera along for the trip, but realized that I forgot to pack the camera memory. So no pictures on the first day. I had to go and buy a 4G camera memory later that night. CRAP. Later that night I met up with Melissa and Hana to have dinner and then we went to the Cheonggyecheon Stream. The decorations from the Lotus Lantern Festival were still up. It was pretty cool. My camera has a very bad night mode option on it, so most of my pictures turned out really blurry or dark. After that we had coffee and dessert at a cafe. I forgot where exactly.
The next day I checked out the Changdeokgung Palace. That place is huge. They were having some sort of Hi Seoul Festival so there were a lot of things going on. On my way back to the station I ran into a protest. There were so many cops there. They were buses and buses full of them. They were holding those long shield things and kind of surrounded the protesters. It was pretty weird because the protesters were just sitting and holding up signs, and one woman was on a podium speaking. Eerie. Anyway they wouldn't let people through at first so I got stuck there waiting until they let me pass.
I met up with Melissa in Myeongdong and we had lunch there. I ate jang jang for the first time and had soju. It tasted pretty bad, reminded me of Absolut Vodka. Then we went to the Folk Village in Chungmuro. We got to try on Hanbok, that was pretty fun. At night we went to Insadong and met up with Hana to eat some Korean BBQ and then had drinks at Itaewon. While we were at Insadong I tagged the rose =D It was pretty cool. This was the coolest picture taken from my trip. It was unique. The next day we went to Hongdae for lunch and met up with Hana. Melissa took me to the Coffee Prince cafe where the drama was shot, that was pretty funny.
I met up with the rest of the group later on at night and we went out to the club all night long. Tiring. The next day I kind of just passed out for the majority of the day. The others minus Kristen went on the DMV tour. I went back to the stationary place to buy more things =P.
Trip to Korea was pretty awesome. I had a great time and I wouldn't mind coming to visit again, only this time I would take the rest of my family with. I think they would enjoy it.