in between our palace hopping, my guides and i did a quick visit to bukchon hanok village. this place is where you can find well-preserved traditional houses, called hanok during korea's joseon dynasty. most of the historical sites in seoul, date back to this dynasty which happens to be the last dynasty in korea. the five centuries long dynasty ended in 1897, just a year before the philippines got its freedom after a 300-year rule by spain. ahhh, the wonders of a big world where various things could actually be happening at the same time in its every corner!
bukchon hanok village was great for finding random things, bumping into dead ends, and occasionally trespassing to some establishments. uh oh...
the smell of food from the restaurants greeted us as we made our way to wherever we could see the hanok houses. the enticing aroma momentarily tempted us away from our goal but our stomachs would have to wait, in lieu for random joys we eventually found. say the riveting work of art above? i had to exclaim the same way like the young girls i was with! wouldn't you too?
we meandered around the narrow streets in bukchon but we didn't see the one that i had imagined where rows and rows of hanoks could be found. we only saw a few in the midst of modern dwellings, scattered in bukchon. these hanoks actually have owners that many of them are being used as residence by the wealthy, as restaurants, guesthouses, museums, and several others.
maybe, we hadn't looked hard enough and i only contended myself with these lovely doors. the union of these old-looking doors and the present-day technology made an interesting display. even if i didn't entirely have what i wanted, other pleasant things readily filled in the missing pieces.
i felt like we were a group of errant kids, indiscriminately entering into hanoks but in all instances, no one was at the door. so, i guess that made it okay. but can you imagine walking into a shop full of handicrafts without a single human being in sight? i wasn't even sure if those handicrafts were for sale or just for display. we also went inside a guesthouse where we could only see old jars and the only sound we heard came from the water droplets falling down into a tub. again, nobody emerged from the hanok to even ask why we're there. aside from the owners being too trusting to outsiders, they must have surveillance cameras installed for sure. modernity in the midst of traditions.
aimless was the appropriate description that i could think of, on what we did at bukchon. and much to our surprise, we even found a school with an architecture that reminded us of english schools. (you know, in england) well, i haven't been to england but let me just assume that it was so. the school didn't depict a common korean scene that we found a group of college students filming at the school grounds. i couldn't imagine how noisy we were that we were reprimanded to lower down our voices. oopsie!
in the case of our stomachs, we shared a pack of freshly baked red bean buns from a bakery that we passed by. this we believed to tide us over. at this phase of my life now, i'm overly hooked to anything red bean and having a taste of a red bean bun in seoul was a heavenly treat!
but the buns could only hold us for long and shortly thereafter, we headed to insadong for our lunch. initially, the girls were planning to have ddeokbokki for lunch but because of the lunar new year holidays, the shop we intended to go, was close and so as several others. :( with me just trailing them along narrow paths in insadong, we settled at a hole-in-the-wall for an authentic korean meal experience. and it was darn good for only ￦5,000 less from my pocket after we split the bill.
when i was still emailing with youn joo kim, i told her that i wanted to try hanbok clothing and amazingly, she found a place that's for free. the place was actually a photo booth. (not technically free but it was a good deal already) i was impressed with the guy manning the shop because he could easily shift talking in korean, japanese, mandarin, and english! for all i know, he still has a few languages up his sleeve.
my only regret though, was i did not have a solo photo with my hanbok. huhu maybe next time?
o-O
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