Nalina's Diary: In Sol Dong

As if there weren't enough towns and people and things to buy, In Sol Dong came into view. It's completely a tourist trap! As soon as I left the taxi, I was surrounded by people of all sorts of nationalities and side-street carts full of colorful and flashy trinkets. The stores had unique collectibles including old fashioned pottery, clothing, pots, fans, hats, and other such artifact-copies. I entered a small park whose entry was an old fashioned traditional gate and wall. Once inside, I saw a very well polished stone wall to my right and two statues on either side of the wall. The wall had written on it Korea's writ of independence. It was written in English, Korean, and Chinese. Further inside the small park was an open patio type of building with traditional colorful paintwork. At the very end of the park by the wall was a very tall and old artifact that had been surrounded and protected behind glass.

The guardians of the gate!!... not really

The writ of independence

Surrounding city

Smirking me

Patio! It needs mosquito screens

A description of the above photo, and yes my reflection too

Another me next to the mosquito-screenless patio

From here we went to the side-street shopping stores and collectible shops. I broke down and bought a couple things... one of which was a lovely jewelry box with abalone shells to decorate the outside! :D I cannot wait to bring it home and use it! :D

A white guy painting Asian stuff... can't lie, he's good!

Hand-painted fans

LOVERLY! But about 200,000 wons

More jewelry boxes

Royalty crowns

More royal crowns

More jewelry boxes! You can tell I like colorful things

Rows of hand-crafted fans

Hand-made pottery

I wanna take these home!

Upper-class fans... not much different huh?

After this I went to the National Folk Museum of Korea. Here there were traditional buildings scattered across the huge museum grounds. At the center was a huge palace that had been renovated and preserved. At the far corner was an artifact museum where they kept smaller artifacts and showed the change of the times through the ages behind glass walls. I'll let pictures do the work here! Enjoy!