I'm finally back from South Korea and Japan. It was a great 5 week run of exploring the culture and food combined with too much shopping. To document the trip, there will be a number of posts dedicated to the trip.

This post will start off my Korea & Japan trip blog series. How this series will work is that I will post a collective post about each week which will just comprise mostly of photos. There will also be some more in-depth posts about certain sites and activities where I go into further details and talk about how I found it. In addition, there will be 2 'Foodie Friday' posts - one for Korea and another for Japan.


I flew out of Sydney on the 18th of December at 9am to Seoul, South Korea. Probably the best highlights of the first week was that I was able to FINALLY see snow on my first night. I have visited Europe and North America in the winter season was unable to see snow on both occasions so finally seeing it was a lifetime wish fulfilled. On the 20th of December, we visited 'Deoksugung Palace' which I absoluted loved. We saw the changing of guards and was shocked at how immersed I became into the ceremony and the architecture of the whole palace - it may be due to my infatuation of 'Princess Hours' when it was first released. The next day we visited MMCA (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art) which I was also really looking forward to. We visited their Seoul branch which was opened in mid-2013 but there are 2 other branches located within 2 of the palaces within the Seoul area. Across those 2 days, we also had our first taste of market shopping. The crowds were crazy and so many stores - both major chain stores such as Forever21 and their make-up brands such as Etude House, and little stalls set up on the streets. Dongdaemun was not really what we expected but supposedly it comes alive from 10pm to 3am and we unfortunately left before then :( We were recommended this little tea house in Insadong that we finally found after searching for what seemed like forever. It was such a nice, quaint little place and offered some really interesting but delicious teas. We also partook in the couple tradition of writing all of our 3 names onto a disc and tied it onto fencing where other couples had placed their own signature discs.