Chiang Mai#2 Honey, Umbrella & Hmong Village

Honey Honey~~ all we can drink.. Taken by the van driver, we stopped at this small honey factory. There's a sales person who explains the benefits of honey, how to differentiate good honey, blah blah blah.. hehe we almost fell asleep zzZZZ..... on the good side, we get to taste the 'real good' honey and bee pollen. Quite unfortunate for the honey guy, he didn't get any sales from us =P

Next stop --> the umbrella factory... we should have bought an umbrella here, since it was raining through our trip.. They sell all designs of traditional umbrellas and souvenirs. Not expensive though. We didn't get to look at the manufacturing process, due to the rain. Everyone there stop working, just relaxing =)

From the factory, we depart further out of the city to Hmong Village, a hill tribe village. The van journey is about 45minutes.

Cute toddler shoes selling at Hmong village. We spent some time here taking our lunch at the local eatery. Lunch of the day -- thai instant noodles, vermicelli in soup and steam bun.. err, steam bun is Not okay at all...

There is a row of shops selling souvenirs. Nothing much to see in this village.. There are more food stalls at Doi Suthep which is located 10mins away from the village.

A friendly villager in traditional costume, CUTE ^^

A: only her socks not matching lar.. keke

Seoul#7 Raining Korean Folk Village 한국 민속촌

We had a tough time choosing between visiting the Korean Folk Village (KFV) in Yongin or the much much nearer Namsangol Hanok Village. After all the research done, most actually recommend the KFV if you want to really experience the traditional lifestyles of Koreans. After all, KFV was used  as the filming location for the famous drama series 'Dae Jang Geum''. So off we go again, in a long journey...

We took the metro to Gangnam station Line 2 and came out of exit 6. There are so many bus station outside of exit 6, we don't know which to go.. We crossed the road and went to the middle lane bus stop, oops there were no signboard for bus 5001-1. After getting some information from a kind Korean guy, we saw the bus left in front of our eyes! ** haizz** We actually need to walk further down of exit 6, the stop is right in front of Krispy Kreme. So have to wait another 20minutes for the bus. Metro + bus = about 2 hours journey

We made it in time for the first folk performance, Farmers Music and Dance at 11:30am. Well, it's actually the one and only performance we watched that day, thanks to the rain O.o Other interesting performance they usually do is the traditional wedding ceremony, acrobatics and equestrian feats... that's how our title came in , Raining Korean Folk Village =( 

Love Flowers =)))

We enjoyed our Korean food in the traditional marketplace with the nature sound of rain. hehe

Yums to the beef bulgogi and kalguksu 

a special dish we tried: naengmyeon (cold buckwheat noodles, winter dish)... err.. don't quite like the taste, the noodle is so hard to chew, and the soup is super sour..

The traditional marketplace

Mask play exhibition

Despite the rainy day, we had a good time exploring the village in raincoats =P the village houses were really old and 'real' villagers were placed in some houses doing chores (cutting bamboo, making rice candy & etc) ooh and even real animals in the barn too, chickens, donkeys, dogs...

P: I wish to stay here, in this nice little cottage. See, i can do house chores too >>>

A: Okay, get a job from KFV then =P

Kimchi!

It was worth the visit! Try to allocate at least half day's time here =)