Saturday, November 09, 2013

Seoul and Busan Trip 2013 - Day 3 - Gamcheon Culture Village Part 2 and How to go to Jagalchi Market from Gamcheon Cultural Village

Taegeukdo Village's (also known as Gamcheon Culture Village) unusual name reveals the community’s unique origins. During the Korean War, some 4,000 followers of the Taegeukdo religion, refugees from other parts of the war torn land, settled in this neighborhood of Busan, erecting as their homes some 800 wooden shacks. You can read more interesting facts about the village from Visit Korea official website.

In recent years people was attracted to the village because of the way these houses were built and soon the village was transformed into an arts and culture village.

At the entrance of the village, you can purchase a map from the village center for 2000 won. The map will lead you to hunt and collect stamp from seven art houses and after collecting all the seven stamps you can collect some post cards from the center. I did not purchase the map cause we two old folks cant covered the whole village and some steps were too steep for our age. My hubby fall on his butt at one of the stairs lol. Lucky was not serious.

No probem if there's no map, just follow the direction of the fishes to get around.

You have to take a slow and relaxing walk to admire these art pieces and houses. The cool and cold weather was a bonus to our walk. Cannot imagine walking during summer.

Looking down from the roof of the houses were these bird men.

Love how these paintings of flowers can brightened the otherwise boring alleys.

Hubby fall at these irregular steps, more steep and irregular steps around the village so you have to climb up and down carefully, especially during winter where they can be wet and slippery.

Even the present Korean president visited this village.

Made our way up to the observatory deck where the view is superb. Nice location to take photo of the colourful village.

Some of the korean students brought some kimbap(popular korean dish, some steamed rice rolled in seaweed) to eat and enjoy there.

Every where we went we bound to see some kind of paintings, really very interesting.

I even spotted "The Little Prince," from the French novel of the same name, he seems so lonely with just a cat or is that a fox accompany him. He seems to be looking afar from where he is sitting.

Do remember to have a little chat with him if you visit this village.

These 3D painting on the wall made the stairs looked so real as if we can climb the stairs to the window but was actually painted on a flat wall.

Spotted some tiny man on top of the fishes reminded me of a dream I once had when I was a child. I thought I saw some tiny people walking on the edge of the wall but could be I was dreaming and as a child, could not differentiate between a dream and reality.

Not attempting to climb down these steep and narrow steps after my hubby's earlier fall. If you are young or have strong knees, do try to wander around the village but do keep in mind to not make too much noises as this is a village where people are actually living in them. Not every villagers love the influx of tourists venturing into their village.

Had a wonderful walk and taking lots of photo of this beautiful village, time to exit this village to head to our next destination, Jagalchi Market.

We need to get to the spot where we alighted earlier and cross the road to the bus stop infront of Gamcheon Elementary School to board mini bus 2 or 2-2.

Hahaha the mini bus that came was the same lady driver that we boarded earlier, I show her the phamplet(collected the phamplet on Day 1 from the tourist information office at KTX Busan station) that I wanted to go to Jagalchi Market and she just smiled. On arriving somewhere near Jagalchi Market she alerted us to alight and with her hand gesture I presume she meant to walk all the way straight along the alley lol. But we need to turn some smaller alley to reach Jagalchi Market cause I have good sense of directions by looking at the map and realised that the market is located near some port so when I spotted some ships I just turned towards the direction of the ship.

2 comments:

LindyLouMac said...

It looks such an interesting place to explore, so sorry about your husband's fall, thank goodness he was ok.

alicesg said...

Thanks Lindy for the concern. Sorry been so busy lately to pop over to your blog. :)