Wandering Fel

One of my usual pet peeves about joining a tour group is the variety of the food provided. It is very common for tour group to give us Chinese food throughout the duration of the tour no matter whether we are travelling to China or not. I find it a huge waste not to try out the local cuisine while travelling to a certain country but then again, it is not easy to find a restaurant which is willing to accommodate 20 people at one go in some countries. But that does not seem to be an issue in South Korea and Golden Rama still manages to feed us local Korean food halfway through the 7D Korea tour. We are going to dine at Korean Restaurent (the sign really had typo error lolz) before exploring Dong Dae Mun. Yeahh!

Anyway rather than grumble, let's just revisit the beautiful colorful houses at Petite France. These houses serve as cafe, stores, exhibition facility and also a youth training facility. There are 16 French-style buildings where visitors can lodge and experience French food, clothing and household culture.  

  Did you see the statue of a young boy dressed up in green coat behind me? The boy is actually the Little Prince. The concept of Petite France derives from "flowers, stars, and the Little Prince". The village has a memorial hall which is dedicated to Saint-Exupery, the author of the celebrated French novel, Le Petit Prince (1943). I guess you can call Petite France as the Little Prince theme park. If you'd like to, you can buy some souvenirs or even the French kitchenwares from some of the shops in Petite France. 

Marionette or puppet show are available at certain timing and this show seems to be very popular with the children. I have no idea what the person is saying though because she spoke in Korean but the puppet dance is quite fun to watch. There is no additional fees need to be made to watch the show. 

Admission fees:

After passing through Metasequioa Path which is filled with beautiful meatasequioa trees and a major photo spot amongst tourists (a perfect picture without anyone photobombing you really takes a LOT of efforts), we follow the designated path which gonna lead us to Gongsaengwon Garden, where the famous Winter Sonata lover statue is located. In the middle of the path, we saw an international welcome greetings from Naminara Republic.

Okay, apparently there was a famous scene in Winter Sonata where Bae Yong Joon rides a bike together with Choi Ji Won among the autumn fallen leaves. The bike is now on display forever at Nami Island. 

After filling ourselves with dakgalbi goodness, it's time for us to do a bit of walking. The location of the ferry terminal which will take us to Nami Island is located within walking distance from the dakgalbi restaurant. Within 5 minutes, we have reached the ticketing counter for ferry ticket to Nami Island. One thing did catch up my attention though, why is Nami Island also named as Naminara Republic? Hmm, I wonder if it's for fun/ tourism purpose.

Anyeong! We are back in our exploration of Seoraksan National Park. 10 minutes away from the entrance to Sogongwon (which is a section of the park), you will see Sinheungsa Temple. The temple is famous because of its close proximity to Sogongwon. No wonder, a guide map of Singheungsa Temple is provided at the entrance of Sogongwon.