Including me, there were seven of us on the tour, which lasted about 20 minutes.

For those interested, tickets to the museum are only 700 won and the nearest subway station is City Hall.  There’s also an abstract art exhibition going on at the same time, which runs until August 23, 2008.

After Amy got off “work,” the three of us walked to Insa-dong for lunch.  We found a great hole-in-the-wall Korean restaurant tucked away in an alley.

The food was cheap, plentiful, and unpretentious (unlike other restaurants in Insa-dong).  My “soon duboo” was 4000 won and we all shared 9 side dishes including fish. It’s very easy to get to.  Directions: With Starbucks behind you, look across the street and to your left, and you’ll see an alley.  In the alley on your left hand side, you’ll see the restaurant.  Below is also the menu.

By this time, it was pouring down rain.  We hid out at The Coffee Bean and waited for the storm to pass.

After it did, we went looking for a movie to watch.  Of course, that was a bad idea.  It seems like everybody and their mother watches movies on the weekend and most things were sold out until much later in the evening.  Instead, we decided to look for a chicken and beer place.  After a few blocks of walking around Jongno 3-ga, we found Chicken Maru.  It was only 6000 won for each of us, and that included an order of chicken and 2000cc of beer.

I finally left around 8pm for Gunpo, where I was to met Courtney, who was having her birthday party in Sanbon.

The pool at 10:30am – nice and quiet.

The pool around 1:00pm.  Click on the photo to see the large size of this panorama.

These guys were interesting.  Three tan Korean guys with lots of tatoos, wearing thongs!  G-strings.  Banana hammocks.  Whatever you want to call them, it’s not right in any language.  It makes a Speedo look like a padded bra – theres nothing left to the imagination with thongs!  My small point and shoot camera couldn’t zoom so well, since they were on the other side of the pool.  So, these are the best pictures I got.

In this picture, it looks like the guy on the right is naked.  No, his ass was just hungry and decided to nibble on that thong he was wearing.

All in all, with it being my first time there, I had fun at the pool.  Kevin also brought yummy sandwiches to share.  This is Reardon thanking him by delicately putting sunscreen on his back.

Haha… I kid.  Below is a video I took at the pool, to give you a better feel of the place.  My toes make a cameo.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When we arrived at the river, we saw Kevin and a few of his friends near the area above (practice area for the players). We then looked for seats, and there were plenty because there weren’t many Koreans in the stands watching, even though it was a free event.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Free paper hats were passed out by the girl in the orange (see below). As you can see, they’re practical and stylish, but we chose to forgo them and enjoy the sun. This SBS camera man (below) would NOT leave us alone. He kept returning four or five times to get shots of the foreigners enjoying the game and daring the sun to give them melanoma by not wearing the paper hats. By then, we were thirteen strong, so I guess it would have been a good photo opportunity.

There were also cheerleaders! For a volleyball game! Needless to say, it looked a little ridiculous.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Last, but not least… for the guys who would come to something like this to see the volleyball player’s asses, here they are. NO, not the little one in the middle with green pants! She’s a Girl Scout. What are you, a pervert or something?!?

More pictures can be seen here.

I didn’t take too many pictures because it was one of those events where you either spend too much time photographing and not eating, or eating and not photographing.  I chose to eat!

Check out the entire album on Flickr.

I ate two of those mango cups, and surprisingly, they were sold at the Columbian booth!  Paraguay had some great carne empanadas!

The left picture are Lao textiles for sale, and to the right were popular Turkish kebabs.

a quickr pickr post

Of course, this wasn’t what my badge really said.  It had my name and university on it.  Upon entering the doors, you immediately saw booths for the big boys: Nikon and Canon.  Most of the big vendors gave out bags with their logos on them, stuffed with brochures and catalogs for their products.  Some of them also gave away those “things” that dangle off your cell phone – nothing to get truly excited about.  Still, people were lining up for these bags as if they had free filters, photographic paper, or at least something useful.  To me, it seemed like a game to see who could collect the most junk.

As an prosumer photographer, I found the event to be just “okay.”  Upon entering, you could see what a male dominated hobby this was.  Not only did these men have cameras, they had CAMERAS.  They were big, long, and I had to constantly dodge these lenses as they neared my head.  So, the men were taking pictures while ALL the models were females draping over one thing or another.  This is not the beginning of a feminist rant.  I just found it boring taking these model’s pictures.  They were paid to look pretty, stand relatively still, and look in everyone’s direction at some point.  It’s much more interesting to get a good picture of someone being natural, laughing, or doing something unexpected.  In the beginning, I found that I was pushing into these male crowds to take pictures of these models too.  After awhile, I realized I was only taking their picture because everyone else was clamoring to take their pictures.  This is how I felt after awhile: bored.

What I really wanted to do at the show was try out some lenses, because I’m hoping to make a purchase within the next month.  Of course I can go to Seoul and try out used lenses, but I was hoping to play around with some there.  Bart told me that unlike here, you can try out all kinds of new lenses in Japanese camera shops.

I didn’t take many pictures, but you can view the rest of these photos here.

Mother and daughter enjoying the tulips downtown.

The area of this hillside will be full of purple azaleas at the end of this month.

*The entire photo album can be seen on Flickr.

It was really a fun place to browse.  There were trees, shrubs, plants, and herbs outside:

I really enjoyed the indoor section of the market.  There were orchids everywhere!

The pictures below are from the fresh cut flower section.  Chrysanthemums look so soft and pure.

We also bought three bulbs of lilies for 3000 won each.  They’re the orange looking ones in the middle of this picture, called “Rich.”  Hopefully they’ll bloom with no problems.

Overall, we had a really good time and would have stayed a little longer, but Raswan was getting hungry and we left a little early to get lunch at Costco.  After visiting this place, I wish we had a garden to plant some of the great things we saw.

Most of the crowd was rooting for the Giants. I asked Kevin why everyone hated the Patriots so much, and his answer was along the lines of, “Because they’re so perfect!” Ok, I can live with that.

I also met a Canadian who had found my blog online before coming over to visit his friend in Seoul. He read about my Super Bowl post and dragged his friend out of bed to come see the game. Here’s a picture of Freddie and Scott below. Speaking of meeting people, Steve of seoulsteves.com introduced himself to me near the bar. It’s always nice to meet other bloggers and put a face to a name.

Jeff, who had initially emailed me about the event, was very gratious and walked around the tables making sure everyone was taken care of. He dropped by our table and thanked us for coming out.

Good times all around. If I’m still in the country next year for the Super Bowl, this is the place I’ll be.

Tickets were 12,000 won each.  Even though there were 15 of us, we didn’t qualify for the group discount!  I believe the minimum is 20 people.  The aquarium is decent enough, just a little small.  Plus, with it being a Sunday afternoon, there were lots of families there.  We had to wait in line to get some face time with the fish.

Afterwards, we had coffee near the river and spent about an hour getting to know each other.  After the sun set, the ones who wanted to went to Itaewon and had dinner at Gecko’s Garden.  I had a Cesar Salad with a REAL anchovy(!) and a delicious dessert.

I encourage anyone who wants to meet new people to join the Flickr Group.  You don’t have to be good at photography or have a dSLR or know any camera lingo.  What it is, is a chance to hang out with some new people on a Sunday afternoon.  There are meet ups every other week.

[Check out the entire Flickr album HERE.]

After a short stop there, we made it to a small lighthouse on the coast. Lo and behold, what did we see along the path?!

A few years ago, a photographer snapped this photo of us at the Yangyang Salmon Festival, and it has been used ever since for advertisement for the festival.

We then took the backroads to some “famous” restaurant for lunch. By the looks of it, I’m on a dongdongju binge. By binge, I mean 2-3 cups.

Unfortunately, Ras didn’t fully understand what we were having for lunch. Cold noodle soup is actually one of the few Korean foods he dislikes. It tasted good, but I personally prefer hot soups too.

Outside the restaurant were beautiful rice fields. It’s harvest time.

I had forgotten my lens cap in the restaurant and ran back inside to retrieve it. While I was gone, Ras snapped this photo.

“Oh no! Raswan, watch out! The creepy serial killer in the back seat is about to slit your throat!!!!”

We finally made it to Seorak-san as the sun was setting and people were leaving the grounds. It was getting dark, but we made it there, so we decided to at least take the 8000 won cable car up.

In the picture above, you can see Sokcho city to the left, and the ocean is in the horizon. Only 10% of the trees there were ablaze with Fall’s reds, oranges, or yellows. Still, the few I saw were very beautiful.

At the top, I had some guy take a picture of the three of us. The annoying thing is, he only took ONE! Come on, it’s digital. It doesn’t cost any more money to take 5 pictures and let the owner of the camera choose the best one. Instead, I had to choose the ONLY one. (I’m sure Reardon didn’t appreciate that photo, but hey… what can I do?)

It was really cold – about 10 degrees Celsius, and REALLY windy. From the photo, it looks like I’m have a great time, but look carefully at my fist. You just might see drops of blood trickling from my hand because my fingernails are dug in so deeply into my palms, due to the excruciating cold.

The boys tried to keep from falling down the mountain.

Happy to get back in the car, we drove back to Kangneung and checked into the Donga Hotel. Rooms were 40,000 or 50,000 won, and we chose the latter. I’d highly recommend it since it’s stumbling distance home from any downtown bar or restaurant.

The night was spent at The Warehouse, where there was a pool tournament going on. Raswan beat “big Ryan,” but lost the next round.

In the above picture is Lee, Raswan, and John. Lee is Ras’ former boss of three years and the two of them started “The Warehouse” when Ras was still in Kangneung.

The next day, we decided not to go the the Yangyang Salmon festival because 1) we didn’t pre-register to catch a salmon, 2) it’s only fun when you’re actually catching a fish there, and 3) it was TOO cold. Instead, we drove out to the countryside and had coffee at the Terarosa Coffee Factory. Ras and I had been there three years ago when it first opened. Back then, they served only coffee, and no food. It has expanded quite a bit.

I couldn’t pass up dessert with coffee! Here we have tiramisu and cheese cake. The tiramisu was delicious!

After coffee, we headed for Gyeongpo Beach. Reardon told us that the minbaks and mom and pop stores had all been torn down during the time PyeongChang was bidding for the Winter Olympics. It seems none of those people on the beach had any land rights to the property, and were just squatting there.

Before: May 2006 (See the green Family Mart sign in the back?)

After: Now (The Family Mart sign is under the sun.)

We then went to the Hyundai Hotel for a glass of wine before going back home. It was a beautiful day and the view was equally as beautiful. If you haven’t been, definitely make a trip out to Kangneung. It’ll be worth it, especially in the summer.

Back home we go…

Here’s a piece of advice to end this long post. If you’re ever on a road trip with friends, playing “20 Questions” with adults in not fun. Raswan chose “Tiger Wood’s Gatorade contract” and “the Maldives,” while I chose a “horseshoe.”