A page out of my travel diary No.1

I'm sitting on the subway, yes, sitting. We won't be standing up all the way to Lotte World. I won't be as tired as I was yesterday as we arrived at COEX mall, the largest underground shopping mall in the world. We bought cute items for friends and family and had pizza next to a strange fountain. Then we went to Gyeongbokgung, which was closed for some building work, although we did manage to see a few guards practising ... erm ... whatever it is they actually do, parading with flags, banging drums and wearing colourful robes. I guess this proves it isn't all just a show for the tourists, but maybe they knew we could see over the wall?

Anyway, we settled for the very atmospheric palace museum and saw an ancient water clock chime at 16:41 exactly. In Insa-dong I bought a nice shirt for Granddad and some other trinkets. We were very tired on our feet and stopped off for lattes and iced drinks. We then headed over to Hongdae to search for trendy clothes, and found them all right, oh boy, a little expensive though. We didn't want to splash the cash just yet, we still planned on spending a night in a love hotel and the day at Lotte world. Maybe we'll buy these trendy outfits with the money we have left over?

Oh! And in Hongdae, we had a really great meal at the pancake place we've passed by on previous visits to that part of town. Washed down with fizzy beer.

So... as I was saying, I'm sitting on the subway, but now its 10 hours later and we're on the way to Doksan. I'm thinking about brewing some iced coffee before we head to the love hotel. Today we spent the 10 hours between these subway sittings at Lotte World. It was like a strange dream, as I guess theme parks should be. In the middle of the day Rachel felt quite sick after going on a ride that spun round and round and around a large fake tree. We also saw perhaps the weirdest thing I have perhaps ever seen on a stage. A water show with quite "abstract" waves made out of plastic and strange spinning foliage that rose animatronically from the front of the stage. At the end of the show a huge white 'mer-angel' descended from the ceiling and moved its head about a bit before rising back up into the dark opening it had come from. We left bewildered.