Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Seoul, Korea - Part 5

Freedom is Not Free
We next went to the Korea War Memorial. The civil war between North and South Korea took about 2.5 million lives. Read about the war here.
One of the many tablets with names of war casualties
I wandered around takings photos here on my own. It's a quiet place and apart from the tourist, I didn't see any locals. I felt sad looking at some of the endless list of names of lives lost. I am blessed, I guess, to be born at a time when I'm not subjected to the atrocities of war in my own homeland. It got me thinking about the people caught in such "madness" in war torn countries. Stop the war!

From sad memories, the tour took us to the Suwon World Cup Stadium, one of the pride of the Koreans when they hosted the World Cup in 2002. I must say, the stadium was magnificent and so colourful!
Just before that, we had a stopover for some quick shopping at Insadong Street. There are lesser stalls here as compared to the earlier Itaewon but its shops had their own appeal.
A stall selling biscuits and snacks
Aren't these wooden pens and pencils cute???
We then had our first Bibimpap for lunch. Some of us enjoyed it, some didn't. Maybe it was due to the fact that we ate sitting down on the floor and most of us had pins and needles in our legs! Ha ha ha...

Before & After mixing the chilli paste
We then ended up at Coex Mall which was really huge, by the end of the 2.5 hours there, I had only covered a less than a quarter of the 85,000 sq. metres of this underground mall which is the largest in Asia. It was here, I saw the love of my life, staring at me from one of the retail shops, Beanpole International.
There he was, my Daniel. At least I can say that I saw Daniel Henney while I was in Korea. Just don't ask me for details! Ha ha ha...I had seen him on big ad prints on buses and on the city streets but I was in the tour bus and didn't get a chance to take a pic of him till now, on my last night in Korea.
With the mushroom steamboat we had for dinner later, we went back to the hotel. Apparently, my room mate said that I slept so well (which means I snored!) 'cos I must have been so happy that I saw Daniel. LOL! The next morning, we had Udon noodles for breakfast and after some last minute shopping near the airport, we said goodbye to Seoul!

Recaps :-
Part 4
Part 3
Part 2
Part 1

Where is the "good" in goodbye? ~ Author Unknown

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