i woke up later than usual this morning, at about 8 something, went back to bed, and finally got up around 9 something. we took turns taking showers then went back down to the same food court as yesterday. we ate a little after 11am. i decided to have bibimbap as it was one of the few items available at the food court that i could eat and was one of the things i knew that i could eat before my arrival in seoul.

bibimbap

we walked to the history museum. the entrance fee was really cheap, only about $0.70. in the lobby, there were stamps and ink so that you could stamp your pamphlet or paper if you have it, as a souvenir. i thought ink stamp souvenirs was a japanese thing to do. looks like it might be a pan-asian thing. or maybe just a cjk thing, (chinese-japanese-korean). as i stamped my little notepad, one of the employees came out and explained the stamps in english to me. there were 2 stamps. 1 was obviously the front of the museum. the other was hard to decipher. he explained that it was an image of seoul. he pointed out various landmarks. i couldn't tell what was what but smiled happily at his explanations. after walking around and seeing all the exhibits, we decided to have a picture taken at the costume/photo opportunity area in the lobby. the picture is free, you just have to bring your own camera. to enter the lobby, you don't even need to pay the entrance fee, so it's a really good deal. we took pictures in traditional king/queen costumes in front of a painted backdrop that mimics what the royal throne used to sit in front of. the backdrop represents korea, as my brother explained to me earlier inside the museum.

the line to take a picture was nothing but mothers and their small children. an employee told us in broken english that the wait would be long. my brother then asked in korean how long the wait would be. she was very surprised (of course), then they talked a little bit. next thing you know, she's talking to one of the mothers and they let us through to the front and i'm putting on the costume, waiting for my turn. after we left the museum, my brother told me the story. the employee told the mother that we're tourists from america and asked if we could go first. she said that they should give a good impression of korea! while we were having our picture taken, one of the mothers said that she didn't believe we were tourists because we looked korean. hahahahaaaaaa

my brother and i dressed as korean royalty

my brother and i were quite thirsty after visiting the museum. i bought green tea flavored soy milk and it was pretty darn good. then we took the subway to south seoul. we went to the folk museum at lotte world. i was really surprised at what lotte world is. i didn't realize it was one huge shopping complex. i thought it was an amusement park. argh... there was an ice skating rink in the middle of the complex. i knew about it beforehand because my brother told me about it. i thought it would be cool to ice skate abroad, but once i saw how crowded it was, and disappointed with the mall setting, i decided i didn't want to ice skate.

indoor iceskating at lotte world

we walked around a little bit before going to the folk museum, because, well, you have to walk around to get to it! the museum is like a reader's digest of korean cultural history. it starts off in the dinosaur age(!), then builds up to maybe a couple hundred years ago. it's like half museum of wax, half doll houses on display. there are constructed scenes like a natural history museum and also miniatures of buildings complete with people. there was a gift store so i looked around for omiyage but my brother said all the items are twice the price so i didn't buy anything.

miniatures display at folk museum

after lotte world, we took the subway to coex mall & world trade center area. i bought stamps at mailboxes etc. for my postcards that i had to send. we walked around the mall a lot but didn't do any shopping. there were many vendors in the food court but there was nothing to eat as everything had meat or eggs in it. my brother wanted to eat at sbarro. i saw that they had spaghetti with meat sauce. i asked my brother to ask the employees if they had plain sauce and if so, then i would eat that. he didn't ask because he thought the noodles have egg in them. i told him if that were so, they would be called egg noodles and they would be yellow. the noodles were made of a grain. i don't think he believed me so we walked around some more. at this point we were both very hungry and tired. we decided to look inside tgi friday's (i don't even eat there in america!). they had spaghetti with chicken on top. i told my brother i could get the spaghetti and he could eat the chicken. again we had the eggs in noodles debate. we walked out of there. i was getting pissed off. i didn't care what i ate at this point, i just really needed to eat. we ended up back at sbarro. i had a green salad. it was tiny. somewhere inbetween grabbing the salad from the display and putting it on the tray, they put dressing on it. i wasn't looking but i heard my brother say in a slightly disgusted tone, "there's already dressing on it." i looked. they said the dressing was lemon but it looked more like a creamy honey mustard. the dressing was of dubious origin but i didn't care. i said it was fine, paid, and sat down to eat. my brother starting drink water that i thought was mine.. somewhere in the shuffle, my brother didn't notice i said i would like water to drink. he got the water for himself then without asking if i wanted anything. weird. he must have forgot our childhood (because i always have a drink with a meal, multiple drinks!, and he, i think, often did not have a drink) or forgot his manners. he quickly went to buy me a water. the salad was swimming in dressing so i couldn't eat all of it. after eating, we both kind of just sat there for awhile. i think we were both just so tired at this point. i was sick of seeing countless stores without really going in them or buying souvenir gifts for people when i told him i have to get something and when he had earlier said he needed to do shopping as well. we were hardly even window shopping. it was more like mall power walking. my feet were really pissed off at me. i was sick of going up and down flights of shopping malls just so he could point out how this floor has a lot of convention halls and trivial shit like that. i couldn't stand sitting around doing nothing so i started to pull out postcards so i could fill them out. my brother had a shocked look, "you're going to write them now?!". "yeah, if we're going to just sit here." "let's go then." so with that, i put away the postcards, unfilled.

replica fountain of trevi in one of the shopping malls

after more mall power walking, my brother wanted to get a drink at starbucks because he's addicted to it. i fucking hate coffee but when traveling, i will go to starbucks and try things. only now, i think the only thing i can drink is tea and i didn't want to bother but i really was open to the idea of a rest, no matter how short. starbucks was too crowded for my brother so we walked and walked and walked to the other side of the mall where there was another starbucks. it was too crowded so we stopped next door, at the coffee bean and tea leaf. as my brother drank his coffee, i filled out the damn postcards. after that, we took the subway back to the hotel.

riding the subway

before going back up to the room, we first shopped for food at lotte food court. we hadn't eaten dinner and i wanted to get a little something for breakfast as we would have to leave really early in the morning and my chances of finding something to eat has been very slim during regular hours. i also wanted to try korean bread as we kept passing by bakeries that looked delicious. we first bought some korean mochi as i wanted to try that too. i bought 2 kinds: pumpkin and black sesame. both were very good. they weren't as sticky or as sweet as japanese mochi. my brother decided to buy a chicken burrito again (he had one yesterday) and at the same place we bought some candied sweet potatoes because i knew i wasn't going to have much success in finding food for myself and to try them as koreans, much like okinawans, seem to love sweet potatoes. i noticed that one of the vendors had nikuman, it's like a meat dumpling. there's also yasaiman, a vegetable version. they were just heating up some vegetable ones and would be ready in 5 minutes. we walked around for 5 minutes. we came back and my brother asked what was inside the yasaiman. turns out it has eggs in it. argh. no food for me after all!

around 30 minutes to closing time, much of the food goes on sale at a reduced price. i just had to go into a bakery and get some bread. due to the sale, there wasn't much choice left. i grabbed a bag which had 2 different kinds of small bread. i wasn't sure what they were exactly but i was willing to risk it. i didn't care if they had milk or eggs in them at this point. i really need to eat something for breakfast tomorrow. after the food court is a sort of super market. i wanted to try a korean fruit so we bought chamae because my brother said that it is good. i also got 2 drinks: sesame flavored soy milk and an apple flavored drink. my brother bought 1 kg of kimchee. disappointingly, i wasn't able to find anything else i could eat.

we ate in hotel room as watched a korean film, "teach me english", on my brother's laptop. i ate the mochi and about half of the sweet potatoes. i had one of the breads, the sweeter looking one. there were red beans inside. it was pretty good but nothing i ate was a meal. they were all deserts. i was tired and the air conditioner was too cold for me. i got in bed and finished the book i brought with me on the trip. i told my brother that if he wanted to go out to some clubs, i would just be taking a nap and to wake me up.