Dad, You are Doing it Wrong....

Staying in a Hanok Hostel was a great idea. I have to thank a big sister for the reservations, because the place, people and proximity to everything around Bukchon was blissful. I can say that Bukchon is probably my favorite place In Korea so far. I know, I haven't visited real old villages that probably can give off a feel just as nice as Bukchon, but thing is that what's great about that place, is that while it gives this traditional feeling, it is NOT in the middle of nowhere. It is still easy to go downtown Seoul from there so you don't get that it's-nice-to-be-surrounded-by-old-stuff-but-f*ck,-after-a-while-I-really-want-to-get-to-some-civilization-and-this-place-is-so-far-from-a-big-city-so-I'm-freaking-stuck-here-til-the-next-train-brings-me-back-to-Seoul kind of feeling, real old villages can give you.

Anyways.

The area we were at was right in between two castles. Gyeongbok and Changdeok. That, with an amazing amount of nice traditional houses and small trinkets and clothes stores in between, and Insadong right below, all in walking distance. 

Keep in mind though, that my parents are "walkers". And by "walkers" I mean just that.

They walk a lot. 

I think that we did over 10 km walk average every full day we visited Korea together. 

...So while I mean it when I say everything was in walking distance, it's still good to have a good pair of shoes. 

And please. No judging the state of my foot. It's NEVER like that.

I did lose 3 pairs of shoes during the 2 weeks and half they were in Korea. R.I.P.

On our second day together in Korea (SK D3 for my parents), we decided to go get 'em those castles. So, yah.... lotta walking.... under a Crazy Crazy Hot sun (I mean, WTF is wrong with Fall?).

GYEONGBOK CASTLE

Enjoy piccies taken with daddy's amazing camera...!

 My dad always optimizes the color and re-frames his pictures, so he never really cares about getting them to look super straight (and I am using his original pictures here) so that's why so many of them are a bit crooked.

Mommy and me. Thinking. What the heck are THOSE fruits?


...


Turn around.

Dad. Take a closeup picture of that tree. We want to know what's there.

As you wish princesses.

...

Still have no clue what those are.

When I visited Gyeongbok castle last winter, there were open rooms, among them, the rooms that were heated using the traditional heated flood technique (that are, after a while, almost too hot to stand sitting on), but in this heat, they kept all the doors of the castle locked. Which sorts of sucked, taken that my architect of a dad would have loved to see inside.

He did manage, however, to take a picture of the inside, by photographing through a 2 square inches hole in a door. We didn't get to see the inside in Korea, but he'll get to explore the inside of that room as soon as he gets to that picture when photoshopping... which might take a while, taken that he took over 4K pics in 2 weeks and half. I remember when we went to Germany, in 2001, and we felt like the 500 pics he took in 5 days was an incredible amount of pictures.

Mommy and Daddy <3 

Daddy, You are Doing it Wrong

Please start by taking a look at those nice pictures. On one side of Gyeongbok Palace, there are a cultural center and a museum. In front of it, there was a stage and groups of musicians played one after the other, under the bright sun, in a nice mixture of old and new (there was a weird band from Philippines with flutes (?)).

A bit later, people with really nice costumes gathered on the side of the stage and started rehearsing for what seemed to be a more traditional presentation. My mother and I, at that time, had decided to sit in the small bunch of stairs in front of the museum, not facing but on the left side of the stage while my dad left to take more pictures of the buildings around. The sun was getting the best of us, and we decided to take it easy in the shades. 

After a while, people started gathering on the stairs beside us, and it soon was filled with people. Unknowingly, we had sat in the best shaded place to watch the performance. We saw my dad come back a bit before the performance, and showed him the people on the side of the stage (nice costumes, could make nice pictures) and he went on trigger-happy towards them, as we stayed on the stairs. 

After a while, the people in costumes left toward the side of the museum, probably to get ready to the start of the performance. My dad followed.

As they all left, staff of the place started to clear a good 50 square feet in FRONT of the stage, making it obvious that the upcoming performance was going to be a bit more "eventful" than the previous seated musicians who played gayageum to recent popular tunes.

After a while, the people in costumes started marching toward the empty space in front of the stage.

Enjoy those pictures...

Don't you think they are really good pictures?

I mean, no one in the way, really close up.

Now.


Take a look at those pictures I took with my phone as I was siting in the stairs.

... and if you get what's going on. You can, like my mom and I did, laugh your ass off.

and be a bit embarrassed, like my mom and I did.

See, when my dad followed the marching dancers, the space in front of the stage was filled with small plastic stools and people watching the previous concert-thingy.

He did NOT see the staff clear the area. He was only too happy to find it so easy to follow the costumed people by walking backwards with no one to get in his way to realize that it was not really natural for it to be so easy. 

So here we are, my mother and I, embarrassed as hell, when my dad painstakingly SLOWLY through the "scene" and stops in the middle for a good 40 long seconds. Notice on the left of the first picture, the guy in yellow? That was their "official" photographer. We could feel the awkward atmosphere as people were wondering how they would get that tall white guy out of the scene...

Fortunately, I don't know if he realized what had happened, but he ended up getting out of the empty space on his own and the show went on without any incident. 

One more picture, for the win.

By the way, I am still tearing up as I write this blog. Man that was hilarious.