South Korea: Day 8/10 (T.um, Hongdae, SeMA, Deoksugung Palace, Gwanghwamun Square)

SK Telecom Ubiquitous Museum (T.um), Hongdae, Seoul Museum of Art, Deoksugung Palace, and Gwanghwamun Square. This itinerary was far from planned. One area just happened to be near the other so we walked our way from one place to the next.

The tour at the SK Telecom Ubiquitous Museum is free. Just make sure to make reservations at their website.

We were early for the tour so we spent a lot of time at the lobby of the SK Telecom Building. Mesmerized by the big screen by the window despite the rather violent content of the material being shown. Gave in to iced coffee indulgence after minutes of budget contemplation.

We were each given handsets that would be our museum guide.

The green one inside the purple circle my virtual guide. These guides accompanied us throughout the tour.

An amazing demo of what the future walls would be like. This reminded me of the scene in Cloud Atlas where one could set the wall/window images.

With the screen this size, it’s like watching the life size version of the girl group perform in front of you.

We had half a day to wander around and we started with Hongdae area. It was noontime when we went to the area. We checked the booths bearing accessories and clothing. The clothes were still a bit expensive for me. The price of accessories were okay though. Trying the quirky shades were fun – even though we didn’t purchase any.

Cla suggested we visit the Seoul Museum of Art. Thanks to a Tourist Information Officer in Hongdae and Cla’s patience, we managed to get to Seoul Museum of Art.

Passed by this on our way to the museum. Made me doubt my eyesight. Got a headache and a laugh from realizing that the statues were distorted.

We were lucky. All the museum exhibits that day are open to the public.

 

Heard drums as we exited the museum. It turned out that there’s a change of guards taking place in Deoksugung Palace. 

 

 One of our regrets for this palace visit was not trying the traditional clothing at booth by the palace entrance. Visitors can actually wear traditional clothing (not sure if it’s rented or borrowed) while touring the palace grounds.

We passed by a flute player in one of the tree shaded sitting areas in the palace grounds. Too bad a palace attendant asked him to stop. So we went back to taking photos.

That’s Cla (left) and me (right). Thanks to Cla’s amazing selfie skills and her Galaxy Note 2.0’s camera.

The sign says “Closed”. Lucky, lucky.  

It took a while before Cla convinced me to give this one a try. Have to try this one at least once in your 20s. It’s free and it was fun 😀

   I had no idea who these guys were. I knew they did great things. For the details, I asked Cla 😀 Made a mental note to research more about them.

Day 8 has got to be the one with the most number of places we visited during this trip.