5/15/2011

Buddha's Birthday, National Cemetery, Taekwondo Supplies

Big week this week so I will break things down like this:

1. Buddha's Birthday
2. Flowers in Spring
3. National Cemetery
4. Fantastic Restaurant
5. Taekwondo Supplies

1. Buddha's Birthday:
Tuesday was a national holiday so I took the opportunity to visit one of the temples right across the street form the COEX mall. It was a very wet day but still there were many many people visiting and offering prayers. I took a few minutes to walk around and document what was happening on film. There are more pictures in the slide show later on...

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It wasn't the best of days to be hanging around all those umbrella's and sloshing around in the rain so I left soon after I arrived.

2. Saturday was a trip out to see the fields of yellow flowers near the Han river. There were quite a few people taking advantage of the good weather to get a picture or 2 of themselves amongst the blossoms.

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3. A "on the way" stop in at the National Cemetery was a spontaneous stop. you can get there by taking the subway line 4 Dongjak station exit 8. It is a very big place and there were many children participating in some art contest painting the monuments there on their sketch pads:

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4. Fantastic Restaurant.

Now this is a little out of the way in a trendy street.


스토브

88-1 Banpo-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul
South Korea
02-518-7596
I was pleasantly surprised as the Brunch Buffet was what you would expect in any trendy western cafe. I subsequently went on to gorge myself on scrambled eggs, ham, bacon, real sausages!, juice, pasta, pancakes, jam, cream, toast, waffles and deserts. I have not eaten food like this for a year now so if you are craving some real western style breakfast I definitely recommend this place! Expect to pay for it though as it is about 25,000 won per person.
I did notice that the clientèle are all mid 30's or under, trendy and young and obviously more contemporary in their tastes than the older generation. The whole street is pretty much like this as well; all modern and young.

Here is the photo slide show for the rest of the pictures:


5. Taekwondo Supplies.
Well I have been searching for a physical place to buy something to do with martial arts for a while now and have been very puzzled that no one that I talked to could tell me where to go. However with a little help from my friend we went for a trip to a wholesaler that is located near Yeoksam station exit 5 line 2. Here is a map.

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Its a little difficult to find you have to go up a slight rise which looks like a dead end. If you go in the weekend there is bound to be a lot of kids around there I assume testing for their black belt so follow the crowd then go past where everyone is and you will see a building with a big blue sign in English saying Taekwondo Supplies.

Here is their website too if you want to do it the easy way :)

I wanted to get some MMA style gloves and have been searching for some reasonably priced gloves to use for pad work in class. These Adidas ones were perfect for me and at 27,000 won from the shop; an excellent buy:

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These one are fingerless and I have noticed the ones they have on the webside look like full finger gloves so you may have to contact them if you want to do purchase on the web to check their availability.

I also found this site www.isami-seoul.com and purchased some of these leg/foot... braces or protectors or what ever you call them. They are great and stop you slipping around on the floor in the summer due to all the sweat :) so you can execute those high kicks without landing on your butt :)

http://www.isami-seoul.com/goods_detail.php?goodsIdx=357

So there you have it for another week. For all you coin collectors out there I may have something fantastic coming up for you in the next few weeks but I will keep you posted on these developments.

I got a message from "net citizen" out there who noticed I had a few pictures of that downed aircraft last week and he was sharing with me some excellent pictures of the aircraft going down.

So have a look at this from zeegs:

I have not done one of these for a while so here is a "at the moment" youtube clip or 2 :)







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