Insadong

Well I finally made it to Insadong this weekend. If you recall I was supposed to go the previous weekend but the plans didn't pan out. I met up with two fellow Canadian girls at 10:00 on Saturday and off we went to Insadong. It took about an hour to get there via subway, but most of the line was above ground and it was sunny day without a cloud in the sky.

We got there just after 11:00 and ended up beating most people there, along with most of the street vendors. Don't get me wrong, it was still busy, but nowhere close to what it was like at 3:00. The area is littered with tiny souvenir shops, most selling the same things. But there was some really neat shops that once I get some cash I'd love to go back and pick up a few things. It's also an area where you can pit one vendor against another and get them to drop their price. Most Koreans in the area speak at least a bit of English so communicating isn't that difficult. Of course none of us actually put this in to action (I didn't buy anything so that's my excuse). There are also a ton of small art galleries and different places to eat as well.

At one point we were sitting in front of a bakery and this old lady comes over to me and starts talking to me (in broken English). From what we gathered of the conversation she does paintings on these scraps of paper. At first I thought that she was trying to sell me one but then she kept pointing at me and then pointing at the painting of a girl... She ended up giving it to me as a present and explaining what everything in Korean meant. Then she tried to write my name on it but spelled it Jama. She let the other two girls pick a painting from her stack that she had already done. We are pretty sure that the picture she gave me was supposed to be me as it was still wet and she obviously did it while we were sitting in front of the bakery. It obviously looks nothing like me but it was still a great gift from a stranger!

Probably the best thing about this place was these candy guys. They were awesome. They make candy by pulling honey and making these hair-like strands. Then inside they put either a peanut, walnut or almond filling. While they make it they put on this big production (in English for us) and both guys got in to it and we couldn't stop laughing.The pictures don't do it justice, and I even took a short video, but realized after the performance ended that I took the video at completely the wrong time. I will definitely go back again, and take the video at the right time.

It may not look like it, but he loved us!

A few random shots from the Insadong trip....

When we got to our arrival subway stop we were distracted by a big mascot

Just checking to see what the robot had going on down underneath

Action Shot: me falling for the second time after trying to sit on the giant paintbrush

I settled for somewhat leaning on it

Double barber poles means....you can receive extra "benefits"

Random drum performance we stumbled on