While preparing for the trip, I realised that the city of Seoul has free walking tours for quite a few places. Since we really like walking tours and the tours are conducted by local volunteers, we thought they should be better than those free walking tours typically conducted by students on exchange programs. Our first tour was of Naksan Rampart, we met our guide at Dongdaemun station where there were two other tourists. We made some small talk and off we went.
Some of the homes along the wall
The view of Seoul city from along the wall
Our guide gave us a brief explanation of the Dongdaemun gate (which I have sadly forgotten) and then we headed off to the Seoul City Wall. Our guide didn't talk much or shared much history about the city wall, so we just walked and walked. I think his English wasn't that good, perhaps if all of us understood Korean we might have had a better tour. We did walk past the Ihwa Mural Village, which was pretty arty and cool. That was probably the highlight of the tour since our guide didn't tell us much about the history of various places throughout our tour or the significance of any of the places to South Korea's history.
Pretty flowers and some arty cute stuff
After the tour ended, we had a quick lunch and found ourselves nearby Seoul National University Hospital. As CS was still sick we thought we might as well go see a doctor so he can get some medicine and get better soon. We went to the Outpatient section first but the staff directed us to the International Healthcare Centre instead as only they had staff who could speak English. Surprisingly there were a lot of Russians there, I guess Russia is pretty nearby and if you want better healthcare than what the motherland can offer, Seoul is the nearest place to go. We ended up not seeing a doctor there as the next appointment was only available 1 hour later. We headed back to our hotel and ended up at another hospital where we only had to wait about 30 minutes. The doctor was quite pleasant and we got our medication without much fuss. The interesting thing for me was that the medicine was packed into individual servings instead of by type as we do in Singapore and Thailand. All the medicine you need to take for that one time is packed together. I suppose there are pros and cons for this as you won't forget to take any medicine, on the other hand if u want to stop taking a certain pill, u can only throw it away.
We headed back to our hotel so CS could catch a short nap and I could rest my aching legs. Since my shoes were killing me, we thought we could go buy some new shoes. I also wanted to check out the underground shopping near the Express Bus Terminal. We went to New Core Outlet which was nearby and located in a rather residential area. We managed to find hiking shoes which met our requirements, but the sales staff couldn't speak English at all. We got by with a mixture of sign language and pointing. The sales staff was really wonderful though and after much running around as she couldn't find our size, we managed to get it sorted in the end. I also bought a pair of Converse sneakers there. After getting our shoes, we headed to the underground shopping at the Express Bus Terminal. I must say I was thoroughly impressed by it. We started at one end and couldn't see where the shops ended, it was like an underground Chatuchak but without the heat. They sold almost everything from household items like curtains, bedsheets etc to clothes, bags, shoes, cosmetics and anything else you could possibly think so. If not for the fact that we were rather tired and wanted to rest early, I would have wanted to explore further. It is definitely a place that I would go back to again if I ever go back to Seoul.
bye bye hiking shoes, you have served us well
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