2 WEEKS: Seoul to Busan & Hidden Gems!

2 WEEKS: Seoul to Busan & Hidden Gems!

While Seoul and Busan are perhaps the two best-known cities in Korea, look deeper and you’ll find a whole lot more to fall in love with. Connect with Korea’s passion for bibimbap in Jeonju or their religious history by staying overnight at a temple. Explore the stunning river area of Danyang

Or go straight back in time at the incredibly well-preserved village of Hahoe. Sit back as we explore from Seoul to Busan and discover some hidden gems in between. We are so excited to be in this kimchi-loving nation and we are starting our trip here in Seoul, here in the Bukchon Hanok village.

This is a traditional village that has been preserved and it is beautiful. So let’s take a look around before we head off to the Korea Folk Museum and then we’re ending our day at a beautiful palace that gets lit up at night and should be beautiful.

We don’t have tickets so we’re going to have to stand in line. Fingers crossed that we can get in. And oh, we better try some Korean food. We are so excited to be here. Let’s go check out the village. What a great way to start our trip to Korea. – This is beautiful.

All of the architectural elements are just beautiful. Ah, nuts. We love all the architectural elements, all of the lines and the squares that we see integrated into the architecture. It’s absolutely beautiful. And to have the place almost to ourselves this morning has been incredible. But now we are quite hungry,

So we’re gonna go back and have some breakfast and we will pick you up again over at the Korea Folk Museum. See you there. Seoul has the cutest public parks like that one. And we are at the Korea Folk Museum. It’s free to get into. How amazing is that?

It looks like it’s really big. We are here hoping to learn more about Korean history so that we understand what we see the next few weeks while we explore Korea. So I guess let’s go learn something. This is a house, a building that was built in the 1850s

And was moved here in order to be preserved. Sort of like the open air folk museums that we love so much in Europe. I was not expecting to see one of these here in Korea. I love these. We just came around the corner and it looks like they maybe have transported some shops

From elsewhere in Korea to here. This is so cool. I was not expecting it to look like this. I think barber shops look the same everywhere in the world. I thought it would be more of an enclosed museum that you walk around, see like exhibits of maybe clothing

That would tell us the history about Korea. Not this open concept. This is so cool. This is a print shop and the sign out front says that this manual machine right in front of us is the only one like it left in the entire world. This looks like it was a restaurant.

Based on how many coffee houses we’ve seen, we think coffee houses are really important to Korean culture and they’ve got a little one right here. We’re gonna step inside. It has a really cool phone outside. I’ve always wanted a red phone. It’s free coffee. Free coffee. Very sugary free coffee.

Yeah, that’s even a little sweet for me. The more we travel, the more we realize the world is all the same. The classroom here, presumably old, although there isn’t a sign that says so, looks just like the classrooms back home that are older. That’s really cool.

We seem to have forgotten our school uniforms. All right, that was amazing. This shop just behind us has school uniforms that you can try on, but they’re like adult-sized school uniforms that even fit us large Americans. And you’re able to put them on and then it has instructions to sit

And wait five seconds, they’ll take a photo. And we’re like, okay, is this gonna add up in the internet somewhere? What happens? And it prints out a photo of what you’re wearing. That was amazing. It was completely free. – That was fun. – Oh my gosh. – Yeah.

We were skeptical, but that was really neat. – It even fit me, I’m pretty large. It was fun. – No, Bill. – Probably not, no. Okay. Now that we found some signs, we realized that we just took a walk down memory lane. That was fun, even if it wasn’t our memories.

Bill found a new wife. – And a kitty. Well, we just left the indoor section of the National Folk Museum of Korea. This was an incredible museum. I cannot believe it was free. It was so interactive, and we learned so much about the way of life that used to exist here in Korea

Before modernization. And actually, it was really similar to farmers and rural way of life back in the United States. So again, I’m struck by how small the world really is when it comes to some of the things that we do in our daily lives.

So now we need to see whether there’s anything else to do outside the Folk Museum, and then we are headed to something that I am super excited about, Korean barbecue. I’ve been looking forward to this. I don’t know, a long time, a really long time.

I am so excited, and we have a place all chosen that’s not far from here, so there better not be anything else to look at out here. I think we just need to go have some Korean barbecue. While we have the place that we’ve chosen

For our Korean barbecue, and there are a lot of plates on the table, I hope they show us what to do with all this stuff because does it all go on the meat? I have no idea. No idea what we’re doing. It’s very exciting. All right, it’s pork belly and pork shoulder. All right, I’m gonna try my first pork belly. That is so good. It’s just tender and it melts in your mouth. We have learned that you just take all of the toppings that you want, you put them on a piece of lettuce, and then you shove the whole thing in your mouth

All at once. – Are you gonna fit all that in your mouth? – This is not going to go well for me. I can’t put all this in. The aftermath. Well, that was fantastic. Just a good amount of food. Everything is really tasty, much better and more interesting,

I think, than any of the Korean barbecue we’ve had back home. That was delicious. If all the food here in Korea tastes like that, I’m gonna go home having gained weight instead of lost it, which is normally what we do when we travel. It was delicious.

I can’t wait to have that over and over again while we’re here. But for now, we’re off to stand in line at the palace. We’re hoping to get in for the lights at night. It only happens for a couple months each year, and we were not able to get tickets for it.

So it’s off to the line, we go. We made it in. This is the first and main royal palace here in Seoul. And we decided to see it at night because we have a different one we want to see during the day, and it’s beautiful all lit up and everybody walking around.

Some of them are wearing traditional wear, which is a lot of fun to see. I mean, like, it’s beautiful. It matches the ambiance of the lights and kind of makes you go back in time. I’m really glad that we came here on an evening. Well, we are tired, we are full, and we are happy. Welcome back to another beautiful day in Seoul. Today, we are checking out one of five royal palaces, taking a tour of a not-so-secret garden, finding out what a street alley is, and hopefully if we still have some time and energy, we’re going to see some amazing street art.

Our first stop today is Changdeokgung Palace. Boy, I hope I said that right, because I practiced it a lot. And this is one of five royal palaces and is right next door to a second one, so we’re kind of getting a two-for-one today. And I am really excited to look at this palace

Because it looks absolutely amazing, and as people are coming in and out, I absolutely love their clothes. This is really a special place. We have a lot to do, let’s get started. Except I’m not allowed to say that anymore. It is not often that I’m the one who can’t fit through doorways.

I’m pretty short for an American, and I think I love it in Korea this much more. Quick history on the palace. It was built. – It was destroyed. – And then it was built again. – It was destroyed again. – And then it was built again. – And it was destroyed again.

Actually, we’re not sure how many times it was built and destroyed, but it was a lot. Sometimes it was destroyed by invaders, and sometimes it was destroyed by fire, but it’s been completely restored and it’s absolutely stunning. This is where the royal throne was for the king.

I was not expecting this to look like this. Holy cats. Can I say holy cats here? – Sure. It is so wild to find a palace like this, as old as this, with so much history, right in the smack dab middle of Seoul. – Well, we’ve been wandering around for a little bit,

And it’s just amazing to see all the architecture and the vibrant colors of all the paintings on the ends of the roofs and on the underhangs of the roofs. It’s just amazing. – It’s so unlike anything we have at home, and I would say it’s difficult to imagine

What it used to look like hundreds of years ago, except it’s not because there’s so many people wearing traditional clothing, and it’s so much fun to be walking around, and all of a sudden all these people come parading fast in extremely beautiful, exquisite traditional clothing. It makes it just a little bit easier

To imagine what it was like way back when. I absolutely love it here. This is incredible. We are about to join the secret garden tour. I don’t know why it’s called a secret garden, because it seems to be pretty popular. They cap the number of people that enter at the same time,

But we were lucky enough to get an English tour today. They keep everybody together. It’s about 90 minutes long. I don’t think we’re gonna be able to talk much, so enjoy the footage you’re about to see with probably the voiceover we’re about to do. We set off with our group,

And our very first stop was one of the most impressive on the tour. This large two-story building was a library where the royal family and scholars would study, and sometimes banquets were held there. I could just imagine reading my book, overlooking the pond, people watching, enjoying the sun.

Oh, I kinda wish I had had my book when we were touring it. Wait, where was I? Oh, right. This large building is representative of the size of the garden. It turns out the gardens take up to 60% of the palace’s footprint. The structures within the gardens are all designed

To harmonize with their surrounding landscape, rather than changing the landscape to suit the buildings. The end result is acres upon acres of beautiful gardens where the royal family could escape the public eye. But why is this called the secret garden? The garden has actually had many names over the years,

Including inner garden and forbidden garden. Hundreds of years ago, you could only visit these gardens if you received an invitation by the royal family. Today, you can visit the gardens without a formal invite, but entrance is limited to tours in order to preserve the garden’s sanctity and natural environment.

The secret garden tour was not what we expected. We went uphills and downhills, and that place is absolutely massive, acres and acres large. It was beautiful, so serene, with all the different lookout areas, and they’re all built with specific intentions in mind. – The buildings are a lot smaller and more intimate,

Which is just kind of nice. The palaces are really huge by comparison. – It was really neat to go back there, so I think we’d recommend it if you come to the palaces. Well, we are now in the palace next door. Tang Yang Gun, I think is how you say it.

I am trying really hard. I’m sorry if I’m absolutely massacring the words. This palace seems to be a bit more spread out. This one was built after the one next door was built, so it’s a little bit more recent, but just as beautiful. So we mentioned that this palace was built

After the one next door. The one next door had so many visitors that didn’t stay visitors. They moved in and they were there for a long time, so they ran out of space, and in order to house everybody else and a few queens, the king built this palace right next door

So that everybody who wanted to see him and visit him had the opportunity to do so. At least those who were invited, I guess. Early impressions of this palace are that the paint hasn’t been refreshed as recently as the one next door. It’s not quite as vibrant, but I actually really like that.

It gives this palace a bit of an older feel compared to the one that’s next door, which has clearly been repainted recently, and that’s beautiful, but there’s always a place for the ones that retain their old-world charm as well. I’m not sure we filmed it in the palace next door,

The first one we went into, but the roofs have this incredible detail at the end of them. It’s absolutely beautiful, and the design is different in each palace. Well, we have made it to what Google calls a food alley, and I have to say the description is pretty spot on.

That is exactly what it looks like, like a covered alley with vendors absolutely everywhere and tons of places to sit and it’s packed. This is in the middle of like a local vendor market, and this place is absolutely massive. We’re a little bit hungry after seeing the palace,

So I’m excited to find something to have a little bit of a snack on. So I hope they have some of those onion pancake thingies. That’s what I’m looking for. Well, we found one of those onion pancake thingies, and it was really good. We were all kind of packed in like sardines

Around a table, so we didn’t want to film a lot, but it was really good, and I’m glad that we were able to try one here. It was also way more filling than I expected. I feel like I ate a meal and I was expecting a snack,

But I got to try one, yay. Well, we just realized what time it was and that the sun sets in like an hour. So if we want to hit the mural streets, if we want to hit the mural streets, we need to leave the street food alley.

So this was very short-lived, I’m sorry, but we really want to see the art murals before the sun sets, so awkward. – And the pancakes were really filling anyway. – Yeah, that’s true. So off we go. Yes, there really are a lot of stairs. Well, we found the mural village,

As you can see behind me. We’ve only seen a couple so far, but wow, this one is super realistic yet artsy. It’s really cool, and we saw one coming up that was this girl looking out a window. Bill was busy filming a car and totally missed the first mural, but I got it.

I guess some loud tourists come through here because these signs are everywhere. It is a residential area, people live here. This is a really neat village. I’m glad we’re here and we are here at the perfect time, the end of the day, and the light is beautiful,

Just casting a golden glow over all the walls. Look at this view. I wonder how many we can find. There’s even more stairs. This one has really cool tricks of perspective. Speaking of perspective, that’s a lot of cables. This street art was really cool.

It was really fun to pose with the different art pieces that we saw. Some of them were so creative, I loved it. Welcome back to another day in Seoul. Yesterday, when we were exploring the art village, we realized that the views over the city are amazing

And we hadn’t realized how big Seoul was. So today, our quest is to go up as many places as possible so that we can get a feel for just how large Seoul is. So we are starting our day today at Seoul Tower.

Then we are heading to a park that has a great view over the city and we plan to end our day at Hyundai Shopping Street because we haven’t shopped yet. But first, Seoul Tower. Well, we just got down from the top of the tower. The elevator going up was really cool.

They had a video on the top so you felt like you were going into outer space. I’m on the wrong elevator. Over to you, Bob. So it was a great view up there, pretty much all directions. It’s a little bit hazy today, otherwise sunny. So we could see sort of half of Seoul really well but just the enormity of the city, it’s huge. – And I got to enjoy how enormous the city was

From my own bathroom stall. That is the best bathroom view I’ve ever had in my life. Hands down, like no question. That was amazing. – And there was a nice view on the men’s side too. We are gonna go now and see a view over Seoul from a different part of the city.

We’re heading to Haneul Park and this time I am certain I’m saying it wrong. But it’s supposed to have some beautiful grasses that sometimes are pink and we are here during the fall. They may not be pink yet but we want to go find out. So that is our next destination.

Just a quick tip. If you decide to go to the Seoul Tower, you might want to check out and see if there are any bundle deals. We took the cable car up instead of walking or taking the bus because it’s more adventurous. – This is a big hill.

– And there was a fantastic deal for not much more money. We were able to have a bite to eat at the top before we went up Seoul Tower at the top of the cable car platform. And lunch was actually surprisingly good. It was a pork cutlet sort of similar to Japanese tonkotsu.

That is delicious. So make sure you check and see if they have any bundle deals if you decide to take the cable car to the top which was kind of fun and something we’d recommend. Well, that took longer than expected to get here. It took about an hour by metro.

There was some kind of delay, but we’re here now. And after a very lengthy climb up some stairs, we have the most amazing view over Seoul and some really fun grass in the background. Do you know where we are? Maybe you recognize what’s back there. Some beautiful feathery looking grass

That I’m really anxious to see up front because it looks absolutely beautiful. We might not be here at the right time of year for it to be pink. Let’s go find out how tall it is. I’ve read that in late fall, these grasses can turn sort of this beautiful pink color.

And I can see that some of them already are a little bit pink and there is just this huge field. I bet that this is amazing in late autumn. Ah, too bad we’re here just a little bit early. It’s still a really neat area though. Beautiful.

This park is a great example of how beautiful anything can be if you mass plant it. This is just a bunch of grass, but the way that it’s so feathery and blows in the wind, it becomes something beautiful. It’s just one stalk, it would be boring. But mass planting, this garden is stunning

Even though it’s not pink. I was hoping it would be pink, but it was just too early. Well, that was neat. Behind us is the bowl of sky, is that what it’s called? – Bowl Full of Sky is the translation, which is sort of beautiful. – And it’s fantastic.

It’s like a miniature and very low tech super tree. – It’s not a super tree. – Like super trees from Singapore. You’re able to climb up in it and get a good view of the surrounding area. It’s just a fun, different perspective. – 360 degree views in fact, it’s beautiful.

And this is way bigger than we thought it was. Like it looks big, but it’s actually bigger. So much grass, it’s stunning. This park is massive. – And it’s great. Lots of photographers running around doing pretty much what we’re doing. – Photographer things. (both laughing) – It’s fun.

– We saw these birdhouses off in the distance. It’s a good thing that the birds don’t know that the roofs are on the side or upside down. They don’t care. – Got anything to say about it, Bill? – I’m just glad that my head’s in frame now.

– I didn’t even know he was in the frame. Sneak attacking me. – Photo bomb. Well from what we’ve been able to gather, this used to be a landfill. There’s a bunch of release chambers that we’ve seen around, and some of them are very helpfully labeled in English.

Wow, this is what you can do with a landfill. The United States could learn something from this. This is really amazing. It’s beautiful. To think that we’re probably walking on tens, maybe 100 years of garbage is really pretty amazing. Hey, I was expecting the grass to be like three feet high,

But here’s Bill for scale. That is really tall grass. Well, we still have another stop that we need to make today and that’s at Hongdae shopping street. Hongdae shopping street? It’s kind of a mouthful. I’m sure I’m not saying it right. We’re hoping to find a little bit of street food

While we’re there. We heard that there might be some vendors. So that is our next stop today. Well, we made it to the Hongdae area. This is really fun. There’s all sorts of cute stores and restaurants and lots of people out walking around, although you don’t see many of them behind me.

We have realized that we are not hungry yet because our lunch was so big and so good. So we’ve just been looking at different shops and exploring them and watching some street performers. And I think that we’re actually gonna call it a night. See, he gave up. That’s how tired we are.

We’re done for the day. Welcome back to our final day in Seoul. We have an exciting adventure lined up for today, we think. – We don’t know what we’ve done. – We actually aren’t completely positive what we’re doing today. We think we’re going to Chinatown, a fairy-tale village,

And visiting a port area before we go to a K-pop concert. We are super excited, but we’re also uncertain. We booked this group package thing and we don’t normally do group tours. And honestly, there’s just a lot more about today that we don’t know than we do know.

We’ll explain in a little bit. For now, we gotta go on an adventure. We’ll just share things as we learn them. We’re on bus number three. There’s three groups of tours going today, all doing different things. So maybe we’ll be doing the things we thought we were. Fingers crossed.

Well, we’ve made it to Chinatown. So the tour is delivering. It is madness here. It is so busy. All of the groups that are doing what we’re doing seem to be stopping in Chinatown, but it looks so cool. We have an hour and a half to explore this area on our own,

Maybe sample some food before we meet back at the bus and continue on our way. Actually, Chinatown is really a good spot for me to tell you about the tickets that we bought. So the way that the K-pop concert seemed to be working in Seoul is that there are two groups of tickets.

There’s one set of tickets available for Koreans and there is a separate set of tickets available for tourists. The tourist ones sell out pretty much immediately, but you can still get into the K-pop concert by joining a group that’s subsidized by the Incheon Tourist Board, just like the one that we’re doing today.

So far, I think it’s worth it, but we’ll let you know at the end of the video. Also, if you plan on visiting Chinatown from Seoul, do not come on a day that has a K-pop concert. This is like the most people that we’ve seen in Seoul so far.

It’s madness, but a fun kind of madness. Let’s go find something to eat. We got some dumplings. – Okay, so we ordered some dumplings from one of the places that didn’t have a line of 50 people and they look delicious. They were fresh steamed.

It took seven minutes, which we know because he told us. And these are probably gonna be surface-of-the-sun hot. Let’s find out. Oh, I can already tell that the dough is super thin. This is gonna be amazing. – Don’t take a very huge bite. I can see it steaming. – I know.

My gosh, the juice is coming out where my chopsticks hit it. Okay. Mmmm. Those are delicious. They are so tender and juicy. And I think the filling is a pork green onion filling. Absolutely delicious. Oh, yum. I’m so glad we came here. – What’d you get? – No idea.

We stood in line for a really long time for what looks like pancakes with something in the center. We grabbed some quick frozen strawberries covered in candy on the way out. We got on the bus and now we are somehow at an amusement park. We’re here for a half hour.

We have one ride included, so we are gonna choose wisely. But before we ride, you should fill your stomach. This is such a bad idea. We still have our pancakes because they are so hot. We couldn’t eat them right away. So we are gonna eat these and then go on a ride

And try not to puke. – All right, so I got red bean paste. Give this a try. Oh, wow. It’s almost like a filled donut, but there’s more filling than donut. It’s pretty good though. – Well, that is our first amusement ride in Korea. What’d you think, Bill?

– I don’t know if I’d ever been on a Viking ship before. I have a lot of fun. I feel weightless at the top, each time it’s great. – We had to do the Viking ship because we’re from Minnesota. I mean, I feel like it’s in our Scandinavian roots.

That was a lot more fun than I expected. Glad we didn’t puke. Now we’re off to have some hot dogs. This is not gonna end well for us. We switched to our action camera for that. So we’re on it for a few minutes. This dock boat yard marina area that we’re at

Is really cool. There are so many people here, not just from our tour group either. I should say tour groups. There’s like four of us. There’s like 200 tourists running around right now wherever this is that we are. We don’t really know what’s going on today. We’re just along for ride.

But it’s amazing. (laughter) This is chili? What do you want on yours? Is that a ketchup? That’s ketchup. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So they call these Korean hot dogs. So what are they? This is sort of like a corn dog, but different. Like it’s similar, but different.

Is it corn? It’s not quite as crispy. It’s more of a flour dough with a coating of panko on the outside. We’re losing ground on her. (laughter) Should we be running? Why are they all running? So just real quick before we go in. We have a secret. I’ve written down everything

We know about K-pop on this tiny piece of paper. The size of my thumb. We know nothing about K-pop. We only know that this music is so popular to Korea that we had to come to a concert while we were here.

Don’t tell anyone. It’ll just be our secret. Okay? It’s all right here. Now what do I do with my paper? You can’t litter in Korea. I’m just going to take that home with me. That also is our secret. As we entered the stadium to find our seats, we were surrounded by other excited

Tourists. This was what we’ve been waiting for all day. Wait, our seats are close to the stage? How did this happen? We could not believe our good luck. Then we were taken on a musical ride. Over the next several hours, we watched as group after group after group took the stage.

They would sing a few songs. Thank everyone. At least we’re pretty sure that’s what they were saying. [Speaking Korean] Make some noise! Then leave and a new group would be introduced. It moved so quickly. Time ceased to matter. There was no room for boredom. It was just pure enthusiasm and enjoyment. The music

Was catchy and fun. The dance moves were impressive. And actually the screaming from the crowd was just as impressive. It was unlike any concert we’ve ever been to before. And we had zero regrets about our decision to go, even though we knew nothing about K-pop.

Alright, we are leaving our first K-pop concert. I have questions. Why are there only boy groups and girl groups and no mixed boy girl groups? If you know the answer to that, please comment below because I’m actually dying to know the answer.

I thought this was a great way to spend an evening. And kudos to Incheon for making this available to tourists. We had the best seats I think I’ve ever had for any large-venue-concert ever in my life. That was bonkers. It was a fantastic value at around, what, $25 more or less? Just great.

Yeah. Thumbs up. This was fantastic. Thank you so much, Korea. Excellent music, excellent production. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Well, we are leaving Seoul today. We look ridiculous when we’re in transit. Here’s Bill. We are headed off to pick up a rental car and

We are heading to Everland theme park today. Now we’re at a theme park. There is a lot of rain in the forecast, so we’re going to find out two things today. First, what’s a theme park like in Korea? And second, what things are open in the theme park when it rains?

I hope we don’t have to answer the second question. But if it rains, you’ll find out along with us. Well, we successfully navigated here and the park is absolutely full. I mean, we are in the outer, outer, outer parking lot. We’re doing it today because the weather’s better, we think, today and

Less chance of rain, less chance the ride’s being shut down. And today is a Sunday, so at least it’s going to be packed. We’re going to be able to see it. Exciting with tons of people. I really do mean tons and tons of people. So we have to

Take a shuttle to the main park. We’re not even there yet. Panda’s here? Really? That would be amazing. Unlike American theme parks, the parking was completely free and the shuttle bus was free too. It’s a good thing because the parking lot was a long way from the entrance.

Helpfully there’s a ticket office for foreigners or you can buy tickets online. We’re in. It looks like Disney here. This is amazing. And it’s absolutely packed. We bought our tickets on trip.com. We didn’t have to stand any line. It was really easy and we got an awesome discount.

So that was pretty cool. I think we might need to eat lunch right away and make a game plan. It’s packed. That lunch is really good and surprisingly affordable. That was not bad. The chicken was delicious and so much better priced than parks back in the United States. I’m a fan so far.

Baby Panda, we think. When we were at the Singapore Zoo, we did not see the Baby Panda. It was sleeping. It was hiding from us. But we did see the mama. So maybe here we’ll get to see the baby. Alright, so thing number one, I think, that we’ve learned

Today, about Everland, is that it’s not just an amusement park. This is just the zoo section. It’s also a zoo. I had no idea that there was this whole section of it that had a zoo, including Pandas. The line for that one is 80 minutes long.

This whole section is called the American Adventure. We came here for a Korean adventure. We’ll see how it is. We’ll check it out. Hey, this Columbus Adventure ride, what do you think of that? It looks an awful lot like the Viking ship we went on yesterday. I don’t think we’re

Going to go on it again. I’m just glad we didn’t puke yesterday. And as quickly as we walked into America land, we are walking out of it. So what’s next to America? Is it Canada and Mexico? We don’t know. We don’t really

Know where we are on the map, so it’s useless to us. And now we’re in something called Aesop’s Village, we think. We’re not 100% positive, but it’s amazing looking. It is so cute. South Korea so far is shockingly clean, which is really

Confusing to us because there are no trash cans in public areas. I guess everybody just carries their trash around with them until they’re home. I mean, it’s really nice unless you’re a tourist, and then you end up with just a bag of garbage by the end of the day.

That’s okay. So Bill’s really excited that they have trash cans here. One of the things we don’t understand. We’ve reached some kind of overlook where you can see just the masses of people. It is so busy here today. One of the rides has a 200

Minute wait. We might be headed back to the zoo after all. This is kind of epic. This is Walt Disney World level of crowds. I had no idea it would be this busy. We maybe should have researched this event a little bit more. Wow. I just can’t

Stop saying “wow” and looking at all the people. Now we’re at a theme park. That is really good. No fibbing now. This honestly is some of the best popcorn I’ve ever had. It’s just a little bit sweet, a little bit caramel, a little bit salty. It’s perfect.

Do you want to go on that one? It’s got a short wait. – Does it? I’m joking. We’re back in the American Adventure section. That is not okay. Yay! “Keep her where she belongs…” That is not okay. No! We stayed last night not too far from the Korean

Folk Village so that we can spend the day here today. Unfortunately, Mother Nature has decided this is a good day to rain all day. But we have our umbrellas, we have our raincoats and we are ready for a little bit of a rainy adventure.

A few days ago we saw what the other half lives like or lived like in Seoul at the Palaces. This is a little different. These are the common folk from a few hundred years ago. In different parts of Korea they’ve reassembled some of the villages and you can

Look around them and see what life was like back then. For the normal people. We are back in the food court so I guess this is a sign it’s time for lunch. The food here looks really good. You have to be sure to mix it up. We’ve been told that many times.

So here’s something I’ve never thought about. The origin of the word treadmill. [laughter] I think you stand on it with one on the right foot and then you put your plant. No, no. Flour is at the other end getting milled. We love open air museums like this where they have preserved buildings from

Different parts of history, different parts of the country and brought them in one place so that tourists are able to experience sort of everything all at once. And we have visited them mainly in Europe and when we heard that there was one in

Korea not part from Seoul we had to make this a priority for visiting. And I absolutely love all the different architecture styles and there are a lot of signs that are in English so this is a really good one to visit if you’re visiting Seoul

And you’re looking for a day trip. It’s totally doable by bus or there are shuttle companies that you can arrange tours from. We of course rented a car and we’re staying nearby because we also wanted to pair it with Everland. I’m really glad that we stayed locally so we could visit here.

This is amazing. It would even be more amazing if the rain would totally stop. But we’re making hte most of it. It’s not too bad. In addition to having homes of the farmers and some of the, I guess, more common folk, they also have a nobleman’s house here and

The place is massive and clearly of a different housing quality than what we were looking at earlier. These places are much larger with just better everything, better flooring, better ceilings, better amenities. It’s neat to see how the different classes live throughout time. With my luck, I’m sure I

Would have been a servant had I been born in these times. Well, we just finished watching one of their performances and it was really cool. My favorite was the women dancing. When they move, they glide. I have no idea how they do that.

Bill does something that we call a ninja walk when he films where he tries to stay super, super still so that the camera doesn’t bounce. These women were expert ninja walkers. I don’t know where they got their training, but I’m sending Bill to school there.

– I got a lot of work to do. – He does. It was really cool. I loved watching the dancing. I could’ve watched that for a lot longer than they went on. Yeah. That was a lot of fun. This looks like a lot of stairs.

If you do come here, don’t forget to make it back to the Buddhist temple. It’s a little bit off the beaten path and there’s nobody around. It’s super quiet and peaceful and beautiful. We’re sort of heading back to the entrance area and just on the way out, there’s this

World Fair exhibition where they have a bunch of displays from different countries. If you come here, don’t miss it because they have quite a collection and it’s really fun to see all the different countries. Don’t miss it. Wow, the lights that come on at night are beautiful. I’m so glad we’re still here.

We debated leaving because of the rain, but we waited and it’s gorgeous. Ah, it’s so beautiful here with all the lights. Wait, I was going to go in that shop and we haven’t gone in it yet. So see ya. Bye. More and more. More. More and more. More. More and more. Welcome back to Tales From Our Pocket. We have driven a few hours south from Seoul and we are somewhere very different as you can tell. We are in the middle of the woods, a national park. We are staying tonight at Haensa Temple and it looks pretty amazing and wait until you

See the special things that are here. We are actually staying overnight. We are here for almost 24 hours and I am really excited. I’m sure you’re wondering what it’s like to stay in a temple here in Korea. And the rooms in this particular temple do not have a sleeping on the floor.

Score one for this temple. We actually have two single beds and our own private bathroom. It looks like maybe this was designed for students to stay in. It’s what the accommodation reminds me of. We’ll let you know in the morning whether it was comfortable. In classic YouTube fashion,

They have some clothes that we need to change into. These clothes are a little bit baggy, but they are the uniform for the next 24 hours, I guess. – They look like MC Hammer pants. – I think that it’s more like a genie. I like them. We just finished orientation. It sounds like we have a really good mix

Of activities and downtime. And there are four others who are staying the night with us and we are about to go on a tour to find out where we can go and where we cant, and where all the activities are happening. Are you going to do one? Sure. Whose idea was this?

Well, this is what 4 a.m. wake-up call looks like. We’re on our way to morning prayer. We’re living like monks today. Are they tired all the time? Do they get nap time? I need nap time. I already needed a nap time. I just hope there’s coffee later on. But yeah, morning prayer. We’re not able to record the morning prayer.

But trust us, we’re going because we’re up. Well, we made it on time to the morning chanting, which was very different than last night. Last night’s chanting had like two monks that were there, and this morning the room was entirely filled. And so it was a totally different experience

From last night. So I am glad that we got our butts out of bed at 4 a.m. in order to make it there. – So this morning, after the morning prayers, we enjoyed some breakfast of mostly beans and rice and some rice porridge. Then there were some vegetables

That we didn’t quite recognize, but they were good. And now we’re gonna go on a little morning hike. The sun isn’t quite up yet. It’s cloudy. We’re hoping the clouds will break and we’ll be able to see the sunrise. – I mean, it’s like 100% cloud cover, so we’ll see.

But it’s supposed to be a nice hike anyhow with a view over the entire temple. So it should be a great view, even if the clouds don’t break. – All right. – You’re an optimist. We wondered where they got their produce from. We seem to have stumbled upon the answer. Fields and fields of vegetables. – Lots and lots of peppers. One of the reasons why we chose this temple for our temple stay well in Korea is because there’s a section of the temple that is actually registered

As a UNESCO World Heritage site. As far as I know, this is the only temple that you can stay at that’s also a UNESCO World Heritage site. Why is it a UNESCO World Heritage site? Well, they have the oldest intact version of the Buddhist Canon that exists.

It is comprised of well over 80,000 individual wood blocks that are all stored in a library that we are not able to have access to, but we can look at it from the outside. So that’s what we’re looking for right now. I’m pretty excited to see how large of a space

This is enclosed in. So I guess let’s go try to find it. – If you do decide to come, be prepared for a lot of hills. This is the outside of some of the buildings where all of the individual pages are stored. We were just fed lunch. We were not expecting that.

We were fed three meals while we were here. We knew that dinner was coming. We knew that breakfast would be happening. We did not know we’d get a delicious, delicious lunch. We’re full. At least we have gone up a lot of steep hills to work off the food we’ve eaten.

Well, after wearing the vests and the pants for nearly 24 hours, we have to admit those pants are really comfortable. They are not really our fashion style, but they were super super super comfortable. So I guess we approve of the attire. Overall we really enjoyed our experience here.

This is a different way of connecting with Korea. And if you come, I think that we would both recommend it. We had a short drive yesterday and now we’re in the town of Danyang, which is known for it’s outdoor adventures. I mean I would go on that.

[Squeals] And after all of the cultural exploration we’ve been doing, we’re ready for some outdoor time. We’re going to start our day by going up to an observatory, which is where we think we’re seeing paragliders leave from. Maybe we can hitch a ride? Is that possible?

Then we’re going to go to some caves, and then it looks like there’s a boardwalk that goes along the river. A little bit precariously perched, but we want to walk along that and then go to an even more precarious perch. At the top of a mountain,

It looks like they have one of those glass floor things you can walk on, which terrifies me, but we’re going to do it. But first, we need to go find some lunch. And it looks like there’s a market not too far from where we’re staying. I think that’s lunch. Let’s go find out.

This market is amazing. It seems to have a little bit of everything. There’s food that’s been prepared that you can take and eat. There’s an ice cream place. There’s fruits and vegetables and many things we don’t recognize. It’s just kind of this awesome local mix.

We are, I think, the only tourists that we’ve seen. And it’s pretty amazing. I’m super glad that we made this our stop for lunch. We have some fried chicken that’s coming. Ah, it looks really good. One of the foods that Korea is known for is fried chicken.

And frankly, I can’t believe we’ve been here this long and haven’t had it yet. That ends today. We are getting fried chicken for lunch and it smells delicious. And we are super excited to try it. Everybody says it’s better than what you can get in the United States. We’re about to find out.

That is so perfectly breaded and crispy on the outside and well seasoned and absolutely deliciously tender. This is amazing. It is a lot more than we can eat at once. But we have a refrigerator. So leftovers. This is amazing. We got two kinds of chicken and this one’s the spicy one.

Which probably means Bill should be trying this first. But you know, I’m a sucker. Here goes. Oh, there it is. It’s not too spicy. It is spicy. The heat sort of builds on you at first. It’s like nothing. And then like the spice hits, but it’s a sweet spice. And so the sweet really offsets the spice. It is really good. Even though I look like I’m having trouble handling it, I think I’ve got this.

It’s really good. I’m going back for another. Wait, there’s a giant fish growing out of your head. What? Oh. We decided to save some room because we saw something interesting in there that we wanted to give a try. It’s some kind of batter with green onions, a little bit of carrot and napa cabbage. So we’re going to give this a try. Please pardon my chopstick skills. They’re not that great. Mmm. Mmm.

Really crunchy and tastes very fresh. I can’t really tell what’s in the dough, but it’s good also. Well after like 47 hairpin turns we are at the observatory. And I think I hear another car coming. I was going to say “I think we’re the only ones here.”

But I think we’re about to not be the only ones here. Boy, we’re really glad that we didn’t need any vehicles on the way up. It was such a narrow road, but there were mirrors at every corner so you could see other people coming.

We think that was a group of paragliders that just got here. The view up here is incredible. There’s mountains absolutely all around us. We had no idea just nestled down in our little valley, that there were all these jagged peaks are just everywhere. It’s absolutely stunning. I mean, it’s beautiful.

Plus, we found the paragliders. We found where they jump from. It looks like it’s maybe a group who is doing tandem jumps. They’re very excited. They’re back there. So Bill started walking toward the observatory to see whether it’s open and all of a sudden a voice started speaking in English.

Pairing to account timed out. Please reset the camera. It kind of feels like we’re suddenly in an episode from Lost. Which is an older American TV show that was the weirdest TV show. “System failure.” And these people were stranded on an island and it felt remote.

Sort of like how we are now with buildings that look like they haven’t been touched in a while and benches that were falling apart. This bench is a pretty bad sign. Strange voices. So this is really bizarre.

When we travel, we love to find a place that has a great viewpoint over the city so we have a better perspective of where it is that we are staying. This one tells us that the city of Danang is much larger than we thought. We had no idea.

It’s just nestled in there in the river. We knew it was beautiful. Heights give you a different perspective. I’m glad we didn’t have to climb up a bunch of stairs to get to this one. Because we’ve done that before. This one is just 47 hairpin turns.

It’s worth a trip if you have a car or if you want to paraglide. Yeah, that looks amazing. It might be kind of hard to see but past the first three that just took off, there’s tons more paragliders off in the distance. I see maybe 10 to 12. Well, we have arrived at the caves and we can already tell that there’s a lot more tourists here.

There’s two tour buses behind me. And there’s a lot more tourists, shops and services. Like all of this. Never knowing you might need a couple monkeys or a couple parrots. I’m guessing this is going to have a lot more people. We had to pay to park.

So I guess we’ll find out how busy it is. And we are donning our cave gear so that we are a little bit warmer in there. We’re not totally positive that we’re able to film in there. So it might just be some covert shots. I guess let’s go see what we’re in for.

Should we tell Heather there are going to be bats? The caves are pretty cool. It is almost entirely stairs. So if stairs are not your thing, then neither is the cave. It’s pretty dark. It’s a little bit cool. But this is the safest cave we’ve ever gone through.

Unfortunately, we didn’t see any bats. Everything had handrails everywhere you went. And you get a pair of free gloves that have these grippy things on them. So that you can hang onto the handrails and safely go through the cave. I thought it was fun. On to the next thing.

We’re headed to that funny looking thing on top of the hill. Well, we just got here and there are all kinds of things to do. If you hear that right now, that’s a zip lining activity. As a couple of people zinging by us.

There’s also some kind of alpine slide and some other kind of slide too. We really don’t know. We haven’t checked it out yet. We had no idea that there was so much to do in this area. So after some quick consultation, we decided we’re only going to do

The boardwalk tonight and we have to come back in the morning. Because we might have to have a little bit of fun before we leave to the next area. It’s just too much to do. So just the boardwalk tonight and then we’re coming back in the morning.

Wow, we are doing so much more in this area than we thought that we would be doing. All right, boardwalk. And there’s parking in the middle of the river. How is that possible? I want to park there. So we are on the boardwalk and there is classical music that has been piped in.

I don’t know whether it’s always classical music that plays, but this really is a delightful stroll. It’s very relaxing. I mean, except for the people who are talking into cameras bothering everybody else. No, I’m just kidding. Nobody is near us. It really is relaxing. It’s really nice.

There are frequent signs telling you what to do and what not to do when you’re here. Don’t bike. Don’t scoot. That’s kind of hard to see. Don’t fish. Don’t litter. Don’t eat or drink things probably. Don’t fall. We’ll do our best. Don’t lean on things or you could fall.

I’m guessing this one is don’t pick the flowers. Don’t push in husbands who are filming things for YouTube. That’s not actually a sign. I’m just kidding. “Cute!” [Laughter] You can see all the way down to the water. This is see-through. This is not comfortable. It’s very disconcerting.

I’m just going to stick to this side of the platform. Well that was a great walk. It was an out and back about one kilometer in each direction. And now we’re going to go check out the light tunnel. What is a light tunnel you ask? I don’t know either. Let’s go find out.

Well good morning. It is a new day. We are still in Danyang. We did not make it to the light tunnel last night. I just wasn’t feeling 100 percent. So we took that as an opportunity to relax. But now we’re back exploring just a little bit of Danyang before we leave.

And since we didn’t make it to a light tunnel, we found a rose tunnel. That is free of roses right now because it’s autumn. I saw one. I saw one rose. We did see one. And we did drive through sort of a light tunnel last night. But it wasn’t like the light tunnel.

The one we drove through happens to be free. So if you’re in the area and you’re going to the skywalk, you actually get that anyway. For the skywalk or the boardwalk, you get that anyway. Something I love about Danyang is how they have all of these places to walk. And they’re so peaceful.

And it’s just nice. All of them are along the river. This is just such a refuge from the larger cities in Korea. I absolutely love it here. I do wish that we had had one more night. We’re here for two nights.

So if you come to this region, I would consider three nights on your itinerary. It’s really nice. Well, remember what I was saying about how things haven’t gone perfectly the last 12 hours or so? We woke up to rain this morning. There was a quick break in it.

We thought we could come to the tunnel. It’s starting to rain again. We’re trying to make it back to the skywalk observatory. We have umbrellas. I think we’re still going to go. But this means we waited to zip line. And we shouldn’t have. Should have gone last night. They were about to close.

But I bet we could have had time. Well, I guess there’s a reason to come back to the region. Next time. Well, we are back at the Skywalk. It happens to be the same parking lot that you go to for the boardwalk. And it’s raining a bit more steadily now.

But we really want to see what it’s like up there. So we’re doing it. We’re going all in. Let’s go. Whatever this is doesn’t run in the rain. Which is a bummer because it looks absolutely amazing. I mean, I would go on that. Well, we just finished having a snack at the cafe at the top of the monorail section. Monorail. Monorail. Monorail. Monorail. Once again. Monorail. We were hoping the rain would let up. It is still raining a bit. But it’s also sunny at the same time. So beggars can’t be choosers. We’re going to head up to the top of the Skywalk now. It looks like you actually walk to the top. So at least it’s not stairs.

Strangely, you can actually get rained on while being in this thing. Well, the rain seems like it’s taking a break. The sun has come out a little bit, and I am again struck by how stunning this area is, surrounded by the mountains that are just completely green. It’s absolutely beautiful.

I want to come back in autumn when all of the leaves. We are at the very top and sure enough, I see glass platforms that you can walk out and there are metal grates and it is a really long ways down. Like a really long ways. While we…

Oh, sorry I needed the makeup department. We made it to the top. They have a place where you can wipe your shoes off so that you’re not slippery and maybe so you don’t drop things. Because we are standing on grates.

And you can see through the grates all the way down to the bottom. And there are also glass platforms that you can walk out. They kind of go out from the side and you can see all the way down from them too. I’m not positive I’ve ever been on one of those.

I have a fear of falling. I’m a little bit terrified, but I’m still gonna do it. I might not breathe the whole time, but I’m gonna do it. It’s happening. This is happening. Yes, it’s shaking. – It’s not shaking. – It’s shaking. – Okay. – Oh my God, you can feel it moving.

It’s shaking. – It’s fine. – You know what, it really is shaking. – Yeah, it’s designed to do that. I’m not comfortable. “Trust me. I’m an engineer.” Okay, so these aren’t so bad. The glass is kind of frosted, but still my stomach does a somersault like it’s on a roller coaster

When I look down or if Bill puts his arm over the railing. Then it’s like a somersault. But it’s not too bad. It’s frosted glass. You can see we’re hanging, what looks like, out over the river. We’ll actually put the height over the river right there.

Welcome to a beautiful day in Korea. We are at an amazing location. This is an UNESCO World Heritage Site and it is a traditional village that’s very well known in Korea. It’s absolutely beautiful. Known for a lot more than these flowers that I’m standing by. Where am I?

We are in the traditional folk village of Hahoe. There are a number of unique characteristics about this village. My favorite is the thatched roofs. Unlike the tile roofs that you see all over Korea, this village has a mix of the tile and the thatched roof. Apparently the thatched

Roof was where the commoners lived and the tile roofs are where the noble people would live. And here in this village, something else that makes it unique is that you find both houses sort of side by side. So the noble people would rub shoulders, I guess you could say, with the common people.

And that was super unique for the time of this village in Korea. This incredibly cute village is known for more than being just an UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1999, after a fierce bidding battle among many amazing cities in Korea, Queen Elizabeth herself visited this very

Village. Now since she was the royal matriarch of England, she was not known for removing her shoes because it was considered part of her attire. And in Korea, you do a lot of remving your shoes. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people showed up to welcome her and they

Created a feast and she saw people making kimchi. She even visited some locals’ houses. And true to Korean custom, she even removed her shoes before entering, thus honoring the Korean traditions and I think the people of Hahoe really fell in love with her. In fact, they have an entire building

Commemorating the Queen’s visit to the village. And after she visited, Hahoe experienced growth of tourism by Tenfold. Interesting tidbit, The Queen’s visit in 1999 predated Hahoe being designated as an UNESCO world heritage site. She was here first. This 600-year-old tree behind me marks the center of Hahoe village. There’s a rope that runs

Around the tree that locals and visitors can tie wishes to and those are given up and burned once a year. It might be a little bit hard to see, but there’s some cables that run across the water here and that’s for the festival that they have once a week.

We’re not able to be part of that. We will have to see it next time. We just had the most amazing experience. There is a tea house here that we were told about by the tourist office for the village when we entered and so we made sure to visit. It’s open

From 10 to 3 on the day that we’re here. And I thought we would have to pay. It was free. That’s the first thing to know. The second thing to know was that it was like a tea ceremony. We were instructed on the proper way to hold the

Teacup. The proper way to drink it. So it’s very particular that the way we’re holding the tea, the cup of tea, and it’s delicious. It’s chrysanthemum andong tea. We hope she’s holding it correctly. It is really good. The proper way to pour it. The order in which to have the tea versus the little snacks that came with it. I didn’t do it enough. It was delightful and it was served by two amazing women in traditional dress. And honestly it’s one of my favorite

Experiences that we’ve had so far in Korea. It was just incredible. We have no idea what we were doing. The tea was delicious. The snacks were delicious but really it was a company of the two women. Eat. Eat. It really was them that made the experience.

We’re taking a quick break to eat something and we’re just having some of the snack foods that are available in the village. But we’re gonna send you back in time because last night when we first arrived here we had a delicious meal that we want

To share with you. So we’ll see you back in time. Thanks for jumping back in time with us. We are about to eat dinner. We are told that this steamed chicken and the salted mackerel are both dishes that are indicative of the region. So we’re

Hungry. We’re gonna give them a try. The chicken dish can be served spicy or not spicy. We didn’t know that when we ordered it. We’re expecting spicy. Oh I’m doomed. I’m doomed. Is it spicy or not? I’m the guinea pig and I’m about to find out.

It smells delicious by the way. I love like glass noodles, chicken, veggies. It looks absolutely delicious. It smells delicious. I hope it’s not too spicy so that I can eat it. Oh it’s so tender. It’s spicy. That is some of the most tender chicken I’ve ever had. Like period. It is pretty spicy

But it’s like at the very top of what I can handle. So I am all in on this meal. This is amazing. I’m super excited. So another dish that we ordered is salted mackerel and apparently it’s also a characteristic dish. Anyway I’m going to try it. Here we go.

A couple fish bones on here. So it’s really good. Really tender. Nice fish flavors. Not bad. Not bad fishy flavors. Very good. Just excellent. Meanwhile my throat is burning with the spice of some of the bites I took after the one I took on camera. It is pretty

Spicy but I think I can handle it. This is delicious. Queen Elizabeth planted this tree when she visited in 1999. A lot of these buildings open up their doors to visitors and the information desk can tell you which ones are available for you to enter if you

Stop by there on your way in. Speaking of going inside buildings we actually stayed here last night and we recorded it last night before we made a mess in the room and it was amazing. So let’s go ahead and roll that now so you can see

What it looks like to stay in a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since we’re staying in a traditional Korean village, I think we are staying here, we knew that we had to stay in a traditional village home. And honestly, it’s kind of the only option

Here if you want to stay overnight in this village. We are in the cutest, warmest, coziest room so we wanted to give you a room tour. This is how big or how small this room is. This is how wide it is. Look at this. And it is about that tall. The beds are

Pretty simple but this is all we need. Well that and a pillow. Oh gosh this is actually a really heavy pillow. I don’t know what this is made of but this actually feels amazing for my neck. Oh I bet I’m gonna sleep really well. We are

Pretty tired we walked a fair amount today. It may be a traditional room but it’s got a modern bathroom which is a good thing. It’s small but it does the job. It’s got everything you need right here. And that’s the room tour. Short and sweet. Everything you need right here.

I think we’re gonna sleep really well. I’m excited. Speaking of staying here it’s something we highly recommend. We really enjoyed staying in a traditional room and eating a really traditional breakfast this morning. The place that we reserved while staying in a traditional village in Korea actually includes a simple snack for breakfast. I

Don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t the feast that we were just given. This looks amazing. We have a plum tea. We have a kimchi pancake. That’ll be a first. And we have some coriander-covered vegetables, some apples, and a soy sauce mixture to dip everything in. I’m hungry. This smells

Delicious. I don’t even know where to start. The kimchi pancake is excellent. I haven’t even tried the other two things yet but it’s really good. The village gets a little bit more crowded during the day and if you stay here at night you get to experience the village pretty much

By yourself. Our host was amazing, gracious, and really really kind. If you come here we would highly recommend staying here and enjoying what most tourists don’t get to experience or see. Who can tell us what these are? They are enormous. They are the size of Bill’s head.

This village is a delight. There’s pretty much a surprise around every corner that you take. I love it here. It’s fantastic. It’s peaceful. There’s hardly any cars. It’s mostly pedestrian There are views in every direction even outside the village. There’s a river that runs around it.

That’s actually the origin of the name, Hahoe, It means something like “at the turn of the river”. And that’s the name of the village. We love watching all of the local families, and by local I mean Korean, come here with their families and with their dogs. And it’s just so much fun for

People watching. We are some of the only western tourists who are here, and that makes it an even more special place for us. I love it here. Everyone’s been really welcoming and helpful. Great people here too. Hello. -Hello. Look at these flowers. This field with all of the

Purple flowers is absolutely stunning. I have no idea what they are, but they’re beautiful. Everybody else thinks so too. And Bill wants a special call out for the butterflies because there are a million of them, not that we counted, but there are a lot.

If you happen to be here on the weekends, they do a mask dance of some sort. We’re not really sure what to expect, but do be sure to check the schedule so you don’t miss it. Welcome to Jeonju. We are super excited to be here. There’s a traditional village that our hotel

Is just on the outside of, but even better than that, Jeonju is known for being the home of bibimbap. Bibim- burger? Oh, it looks spicy. And we happened to be here during its annual bibimbap festival. We had no idea that was even a thing when

We booked here, but obviously now that we know, we have to try to find it. Unfortunately, it’s raining out today. It’s also pretty cool, and we are wearing all of our clothes, and we sort of look like two people who are dressed to get on a discount airline.

Wearing all of our clothes at once. We are going to make the best of it. We’re here for a limited time. So I guess let’s try to go find some bibimbap. Also, it should be noted. I looked online to try to find out where this bibimbap

Festival is, and all it said was “the traditional village”. So we’re just going to wander around hoping that we just stumble into a bibimbap. festival. There could be one around any corner. We genuinely have no idea. We might be kind of close because there’s an absolute traffic jam down this one road.

I mean, the cars are not moving and people are running around and the cars are just not moving. I don’t even see the end of them. It’s just this long line of cars. When in doubt, follow the people who are dressed in traditional wear. Look at this line. Koreans love their bibimbap.

Look at that. Where is the bibimbap. Show us the bibimbap. Nobody gets hurt. Definitely nearby. All of a sudden, there are just tons and tons of people. That’s impressive given how much it’s raining and so much traditional dress. It’s beautiful. I think we’re getting close again. Wow, there’s a lot of people out.

More traffic, more umbrellas. We’re heading the right direction according to the T.I. I see some bibimbap in my future. All right, we got a plan. Well, we found one place and it’s a noodle place. But I thought bibimbap was rice. This is bibim-noodles. So I don’t know.

I think that because we’ve been looking for this for about two hours now, our expectations were maybe not quite right. So I think we’re going to try to find a bibimbap restaurant nearby and maybe do that instead. What we really thought was we’d have a bunch of stands to choose from.

It turns out that it’s a bunch of the restaurants around here that are participating in the festival and there’s other things going on around the festival. We had no idea this was going to be such an ordeal. So we’ve stopped at a couple of restaurants

And we have found, can you please pass the bibimbap? Bibim-burger? Hey, you guys look like you had some bibimbap. Where did you get it? Bibim-pulled pork, bibim- hamburger, bibim-everything but bibimbap. So we are going back to the noodle place that we started out at and I guess we’re having bibim-noodles for lunch.

This is our bad for thinking it was going to be a bunch of bibimbap stalls and instead it’s like bibim-fusion, which is fun, but not quite what we were expecting or looking for. Bibim-noodles it is. Off we go.

Finally, by the way, it’s like well after 2pm now and we only had like the smallest of breakfasts. We are both hangry. I don’t know if that translates to other languages, but it just basically means you’re hungry enough that you are not thinking rationally and you’re a little bit angry.

And that’s how you end up with hangry as a word. In case you hadn’t heard it before. Show me the bibimbap. So we managed to order something. We don’t know exactly what we’ve done. We think it’s something a little closer to traditional bibimbap. We’ve also been provided this nice table in a covered area which is great because it’s raining. Thank you. Oh it looks spicy. It looks amazing.

Is that what you meant? That must have been what you meant to say. It’s very important, the mixing of the bibimbap. Noodles. Bibim-noodles. I’m sorry. So it’s very important to mix your bibimbap. What is bibimbap? Well, bibim just means “mixed” and bap is “rice”.

And so if you don’t mix it, you don’t have bibimbap. I’d say it’s delicious but honestly I’m so hungry it doesn’t matter. It is really good though. Alright so I’m ready to try this. There’s still white rice showing. You have to mix it more. What? I’ve been mixing this for like five minutes.

Keep going. What? Alright have I mixed it enough? Not really but you’re hungry so go ahead anyhow. So I got the traditional bibimbap. Heather got the noodles. I got the rice. So it’s just a mix of a lot of different things, zucchini, bean sprouts, rice,

This fantastic, what looks like a red bean sauce. I’m going to give it a try here. Mmm. It’s really good. Really fantastic flavor in the sauce. It’s a little bit sweet, a little bit spicy. And everything’s just really fresh and nice. It’s just a fun dish. It’s great.

I might use some ice cream. My mouth is on fire. Need some water? It doesn’t help. Alright, let’s see about seeing the rest of this village and we’re going to see if we can also find Heather some ice cream because her mouth is burning. Well that was pretty tasty.

Mine was a bit spicy, the noodle version. But now we can say that we’ve had bibimbap in Jeonju. And why is that special? Well bibimbap actually came from Jeonju. That’s what Jeonju is famous for. So we had to have it while we’re here and the fact that there’s a festival and it’s

Our bad for assuming we had a guess at what the festival would be like. Bad tourist, bad tourist. I’m so ashamed. Bad tourist. Of course it’s not like what we expected. So many things here are not like what we expected. But that’s okay. That’s why we travel to learn and expand our assumptions.

So now we know a bibimbap festival does not necessarily have a bunch of traditional bibimbap. It has varieties of it. Which is fun if you eat bibimbap all the time but if you go to a bibimbap festival expecting a bunch of regular bibimbap. That’s not it. So now you know. You’re welcome.

Well we found an ice cream place. It’s not quite what we expected but this looks really unique. It’s roasted ice cream. Roasted ice cream. And at least to my eyes it looks like a giant roasted marshmallow. I must try this. It does smell like marshmallow. “Bill’s ice cream” How much was this?

We might need another one. Well you’ve already eaten half of it. That is amazing. Wow. Is it burnt enough for you though? Because you normally like marshmallows like ultra burnt. I do prefer my marshmallows a little bit more burnt than this. But this is blowing my mind.

You got a little white stuff on your lower right lip. You’re right there. There you go. This is so… I think I need to run away now so I can finish this. It was supposed to be bills. When it’s raining out it brings extra challenges when we’re filming.

If you appreciate us bringing you videos when it’s 50 degrees out and raining do us a favor and comment or like, subscribe, maybe even… do all three if you’re feeling extra generous. We really appreciate it. It really helps out our channel a lot. Thanks so much.

Well, since we completed our quest for bibimbap, we’ve been exploring the streets of this area and it’s so cute. And now that I know that there are some houses that have thatched roofs, like what we visited in Hahoe, It’s kind of nice to contrast it with one that’s completely different. It has

All tile roofs. It’s a completely different style and far, far more people here. But it’s really, really quaint to walk around. It’s really fun. We have found the most happening section of this traditional village. It is hopping here. It’s amazing. There are so many food options. How on earth do you choose?

This is amazing. Alright, we made a decision. We got some ice cream inside of bubble waffle with all sorts of things on it, maybe marshmallows and macaroons. And things sticking out and running… That’s pancake syrup. No question. There’s maple syrup on my ice cream.

Also, they only had forks. At least I don’t have to try to eat it with chopsticks. Alright, pancake syrup? Oh, maple ice cream is a thing, right? That is really good. That is bizarre. They know how to do ice cream here. This is amazing.

I’ve never dreamed of putting maple syrup on ice cream, but it works. You end up with a maple flavored strawberry, which it turns out is delicious. First, marshmallow coated ice cream on a stick. And now, maple covered strawberry ice cream and a waffle cone. I’m right, Naka-halt. This place is amazing. Mmm.

So many people are out in their traditional clothing. It is so much fun to see that all over Korea and here too. We’ve noticed that it seems to be a really popular activity for like date nights. And then we see groups of girls or groups of friends. And it’s just so much fun.

Welcome to another beautiful day in… Do you not know where we are? Busan, South Korea? We are going to spend the next two days in Busan, exploring some of Busan’s most popular tourist sites to find out whether they’re worth it. We also are hoping to add in one or two hidden gems.

This morning we are starting at perhaps one of the places that Busan is most well known for right now. A place that’s all over Instagram, all over YouTube. And I’m guessing the crowds are going to be here. Where are we? We are at Gamcheon Culture Village.

That’s right. This place is painted over and has an amazing history. And I can’t wait to explore it with a bunch of other tourists. Our first stop was a tourist information center where we picked up a map. And you can get stamps as you follow a route along with all the other tourists.

But if you fill in all the stamps, I guess you get a free postcard at the end. If you bring it back to the tourist information center. So we’re going to try to play along and see how many stamps we can get today. Gamcheon hasn’t always been the colorful village it is today.

For at least the past century, this town has been home to Korean War refugees and a religious community. They’ve had their buildings painted in pastel colors for decades. But it was a government-sponsored art project in 2009 that created vibrant murals and art installations. Today visitors from all over the world,

Including us, visit to shop and pose for photos. If you look beyond the colorful buildings, you’ll realize that there are fantastic views everywhere you go. This somewhat crowded town was carefully planned to maximize views. A visual spin on Love Thy Neighbor by sharing the view with them.

The alleys might feel cobbled together, but those same alleys are a delight to get lost in. Frozen beer, really? Try again. Marshmallow ice cream? Get in line. So we had this marshmallow crusted ice cream thing. It is really cool to find it here again. So it’s marshmallow on the outside and

Ice cream somewhere buried inside of the toasted marshmellow. Uh oh. They call it an ice cream s’more? Or toasted ice cream s’more? Something like that. Oh my god, it’s so good. You have marshmallow on your face. Oh man. No. Do I get any of this? No. I have marshmallow everywhere. It’s in there. It’s there. Now I’m just burnt enough for you? Mmm. It’s the perfect amount of burnt. This is actually chocolate in the middle. It might be Oreos.

So it’s ice cream in the center and then a layer of I think crushed Oreos. And then the marshmallow which is then caramelized by the flame on the outside. So we’re just getting out of the really busy area which is kind of nice now. There’s fewer people. It’s actually somewhat quiet.

Anyway, up there there’s all kinds of shopping and it’s a lot of fun. But whatever you do, don’t touch the cat. There’s a cat statue and a dog statue so that means equal opportunity for cat and dog lovers. Dog. Cat. He likes dogs too. Yeah, dogs are okay. Last stamp.

That was really neat. Once we got away from the main road at the start, then there were a lot fewer people that were with us. – It’s estimated there are two million people that visit this neighborhood every year, which means that at least 5,000 a day on average

Are visiting here, so it’s a lot. – Now we’re gonna try to find a snack and make our way back to a pretty popular market. Well, we are now at Biff Square, which is sort of the Hollywood walk of fame of Busan, maybe even of Korea.

And it is busy and there are snacks and this looks pretty amazing, I think. Bill’s in line back there somewhere for something. We’re not sure what. Well, we got in the first line that we came to because it was really long and Bill made friends

And we found out, sort of, what it is that we stood in line for. What is it, Bill? If I understood correctly, it’s called a “hotteok,” which is a, I know… – That sounds Jewish. – I thought it sounded Dutch. Bad tourist. – I’m so ashamed. – Bad tourist.

It’s Korean for some kind of pancake or at least this kind of pancake. So it’s some kind of dough and there’s all kinds of nuts in it and we’re told it’s very famous and all the travelers come from all over Korea to Busan just for this pancake. – I should try it.

Yeah, it’s a mouthful. – What did you say? – A mouthful. – It’s a mouthful, okay. Oh, wow. It tastes like there’s peanut butter in it. It’s like crunchy peanut butter, but there’s no peanut butter in it. It’s just a bunch of delicious nuts and raisins and this is an amazing snack.

I can’t believe that we haven’t run into this yet. Anywhere else. – Yeah, it’s nuts and then there’s a really sweet sauce in there. It sounds like it might be brown sugar. We’re not really sure. Possibly honey, also possibly chocolate. We don’t know. It’s very good. You guys, best market ever.

Look what I found. That, my friends, is a donut, which I have not consumed yet on this trip. Oh yeah. All right, well we are out of the market and onto what seems to be a general shopping street and there are so many people who are out and about, which is really fun.

Maybe because it’s a Friday night. I don’t know. We’re now headed to, of all things, a nearby mall, which has two really special features to it. So we’ll tell you about them when we get there. So let me tell you real quick about the two special features in a mall of all places.

This Lotte department store has the largest outdoor observation garden deck in all of Korea. So that’s thing number one. Thing number two is the world’s largest indoor musical water fountain. It’s right here in this mall. Guinness Book of World Records is what we’re talking about.

So kind of excited to see both things in one mall right here in Busan. The views from up here are spectacular. I cannot believe this is free at the very top of the Lotte department store. Completely free to go up on top of. We love having a viewpoint over cities

And it’s even better when they’re free. This is amazing. And we’re here right at sunset, except the sunset’s hiding behind that hill. I do not know whether there’s a giant dog on top of this building, but there is. There is even a lift bridge bench up here, which is pretty fantastic.

Oh, I get it. I think it’s a dog park. Welcome back to day two in Busan. Yesterday we did things that were a little bit more in the city. Today we are gonna explore what Busan is really known for and that is the water. Starting with a really unique gondola ride. Cable car? Gondola? Ropeway?

– I don’t know what it’s called, but we’re doing it. Have a good time. Have a good time. – Oh, here we go. And we’re pretty much over the water right away. – Now you could say the views from this are 360 degrees, but actually it’s sort of more than that

Because it’s all around you. Oh God. And down. The floor of this is glass bottom. This is called a crystal cabin. So the floor is glass, so you can see the water below you. This is a super smooth ride. It’s much less jerky than other ones we’ve been on.

I think that I’m less nervous about going on this than the ones that are on the mountains, which kind of terrify me. But this one, if I fall, I fall into the water, which I feel like there’s a chance of me living if that happens.

Unlike a mountain where you’re less likely to live if you fall. It is an awful long way down though. I don’t love gondolas. They kind of make me nervous. I have a fear of falling. Somehow this one with a glass bottom, I feel a little bit better about.

I thought I would feel worse, but I don’t. This one’s a little bit better in a lot of ways. The views are really incredible. Thank you. -Thank you. We are on the top floor just above where we came out of the cable car. And there’s great views from up here

And more photo ops than you can shake a stick at, which we absolutely took advantage of. They’re even cute as stuffed animals. An artist, I wonder what he could be painting. Oh dear. Well, the basement of the building had more information about the cable car/gondola that we rode.

It turns out that this is where Korea’s first water cable car was. Now the one that we rode is not the original. They actually stopped operating in 1988 because it became a little bit unsafe. They reopened now and that is the one that we went on this morning. So the first water cable car was indeed here, but it wasn’t exactly the one we rode on this morning. Where can I get one of these? The guide that we got told us that there is

A little dinosaur park here. Yep, there is. My friends just told me about a suspension bridge here that goes to an island. So we’re gonna go see if we can find that. They’re friendlier than they look. Well, Bill says I should record that in front of something that’s actually friendly and we’ve seen them in person

And they’re adorable. So this guy wants us to know that there is a suspension bridge near here that goes out to a little island. It looks like there’s a lot of stairs. People are huffing when they get up to the top. But we won’t. We will be.

We just discovered it costs a little bit to go on the suspension bridge out to the island, but it’s only a thousand won, which is not too bad. Well, this is probably one of the most unique and safe ways that I’ve ever visited a little offshore island. That’s really cool.

And well, we’re at the 1,000 won. Well, after enjoying a quick lunch, we are heading back to the beach to look at it, not to swim. Here we go. I feel like it’s a roller coaster. It’s not a roller coaster. That was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the glass bottom gondola.

That was a first for us. But now we are back on the other side near Songhdo Beach. – Yeah, we’re just checking out this walkway here. I can’t remember its name. – Skywalk. – Skywalk. We’re checking out the Skywalk. And it’s just kind of some fun, I don’t know,

Some fun tiles and artwork and things on the ground here and lots of people around. It’s fun. – We are actually here on a Saturday. And so I don’t know whether this is right, but it feels like it’s us and a bunch of people from Busan, which is really cool.

We are now on the other side of the harbor at another cultural village that is not quite as well known as the one we went to earlier in this video. This one is named, I can’t pronounce it. (laughing) It starts with an H and it’s right here.

And so far this one reminds us a lot of Greece and the walk to Oia. – Also reminds me of the walk between the Cinque Terre towns in Italy. – Kind of curious to explore it and see how it compares to the one we went to earlier. – Yeah.

One thing where I think this village has over Gamcheon is the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, which is pretty amazing. – Hello. Hello. Hello. These are the coolest stairs. – They’re made into a rainbow piano. It’s a little hard to see from up close. I think we got a good shot of them from up top. – Walking and going downstairs is hard in case you’re wondering. Somebody nearly fell. It wasn’t me or Bill. Bill and I suddenly feel underdressed. If you’re wondering which cultural village should you visit when you come to Busan, it kind of depends on what you’re looking for. This one is really nice. It’s laid back. There’s not as many people.

It’s really great for grabbing an ice cream and taking a stroll along the sea. – The downside of a more laid back cultural village is that there are fewer things to do here. There’s fewer photo opportunities, fewer shops and fewer restaurants. So like Bill said, depending on the vibe that you’re looking for,

I would use that to guide which one you would go to. We enjoyed both of them. With the setting at this one with the water and late in the day with the sunset, I don’t think it can be beat. – This is really nice. – Thank you so much for watching.

See you next time. Bye. – Bye.

Places we visit include Seoul, Incheon, Seoul Day Trips, Busan, Danyang, Hahoe, Haeinsa Temple, and Jeonju! While Seoul and Busan have a lot to offer and are arguably THE most popular cities in South Korea, there are tons of opportunities to get off the beaten path in Korea! Danyang and Hahoe might have been our favorite cities to experience in Korea. Grab a snack for this ultimate-sized travel video that covers 2 weeks in South Korea!

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DAY 1 – SEOUL
00:00 Ah, South Korea
00:39 Seoul Bukchon Hanok
02:50 National Korean Folk Museum
07:25 Korean BBQ
09:15 Gyeongbokgung Palace

DAY 2 – SEOUL
11:25 Changdeokgung Palace
15:09 Secret Garden Tour
17:46 Changgyeonggung Palace
19:36 Food Alley
21:12 Ihwa-dong Mural Village

DAY 3 – SEOUL
23:00 Seoul Tower
26:36 Haneul Park
30:30 Hongdae Area

DAY 4 – K-POP CONCERT
31:34 Going on a tour!
32:27 Incheon Chinatown
35:28 My Land & Wolmi Park
38:14 Our 1st K-Pop Concert!

DAY 5 – EVERLAND PARK
41:25 We look ridiculous
42:12 Everland Park
43:36 Pandas!

DAY 6 – KOREAN FOLK VILLAGE
48:51 Korean Folk Village
50:59 Treadmill?
53:21 Traditional Dancing
55:56 Folk Village at night

DAYS 7-8 – KOREAN TEMPLE STAY PROGRAM
57:07 Haeinsa Templestay
57:51 What the rooms are like
59:49 Walking Meditation
01:00:15 Buddhist Drum Ceremony
01:04:15 Morning Walk
01:05:37 Only UNESCO Temple you can stay at?
01:07:36 Do we recommend a Templestay?

DAY 9 – DANYANG
01:07:46 Danyang
01:08:38 Gugyeong Market Food
01:11:36 Observatory
01:12:30 Lost, the TV Show?
01:14:45 Gosu Caves
01:17:33 Boardwalk (Jando Trail)

DAY 10 – DANYANG
01:19:59 Rose Tunnel
01:21:57 Skywalk
01:24:50 Not comfortable

DAY 11 – HAHOE, UNESCO SITE
01:26:01 Hahoe Traditional Village
01:27:36 England’s Queen visited!
01:29:43 Tea Etiquette Ceremony
01:31:46 Hahoe Food
01:33:57 Staying in Hahoe
01:38:44 Mask Dance

DAY 12 – JEONJU
01:40:06 Jeonju Bibimbap Festival
01:44:18 Bibim-Noodles
01:47:45 Marshmallow Ice Cream Treat!
01:50:28 More ice cream!

DAY 13 – BUSAN
01:51:55 Gamcheon Culture Village
01:53:05 Gamcheon History, briefly
01:54:35 Recent treat reappears!
01:58:35 BIFF Square
02:01:52 Busan’s BEST view is free!

DAY 14 – BUSAN
02:03:54 Busan Air Cruise Crystal Cabin
02:06:05 Songdo Sky Park
02:06:56 Korea’s 1st Water Cable Car
02:08:22 Songdo Yonggung Suspension Bridge
02:09:59 Songdo Beach
02:11:26 Huinnyeoul Culture Village
02:13:17 Gamcheon vs Huinnyeoul

#travel #southkorea #southkoreatravel
#danyang #hahoe #haeinsa #seoultravel
#seoul #busan #jeonju #seoultravel #busantravel

Attributions
Schoolroom photo by Randy Stern
Adapted for video with resizing & cropping
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en