광주 | Gwangju

May 1st was the start of one of South Korea's rare long weekends, so we decided to go on an adventure. Usually we'd take advantage of the extra travel time and hop on a plane somewhere (only Japan so far but we're wanting to diversify a little). Unfortunately, we weren't too sure on the specific dates and by the time we were, prices had hiked a little, and most things were booked up because who can blame the overworked staff of SK wanting to get away from it all as soon as possible?

I'd made a list of upcoming festivals I really wanted to visit in the coming weeks, and this one coincided with a couple of things in Gwangju and the surrounding area. We'd been told to check out that area, as well as it appearing on quite a few "great places to go in SK that AREN'T SEOUL" (things I keep looking for, because as wonderful as Seoul is, at the end of the day a city is a city.)

Also, why bother living in Korea if every chance you get, you leg it abroad somewhere?

Anyway, we got up early and hopped on the subway to Yongsan, where we could catch a train to Gwangju with ease. Aside from our brief trip to Justin's town back at Christmas time, we'd never really gotten the train anywhere and it was a little bit scary to say the least.

It was easy to buy a ticket though, and despite it being pretty busy we managed to get some unassigned tickets for the very next train. I think this was actually the most confusing and eventful part of the 3~4 hour journey, as we didn't really understand the conditions of carriage. We took it the same way as it goes at home, for safety: if you're unreserved, you can sit anywhere but have to vacate your seat as soon as the person who reserved it turns up.

63 Building and the area trashed a bit by the Avengers

Sadly, what with it being so busy, a few stops through the suburbs saw us hop around from seat to seat until finally the carriage was full less than 30 minutes into our journey. We took our chances with the corridors, like many other people, and basically tried to stay our of anyone's way and hop away quickly any time we came to a station (all of the doors not on the platform side were, wisely, already taken.)

So in that respect, I really would recommend booking or buying your tickets in advance if you're going anywhere at a peak time, beacuse it was kind of uncomfortable and felt like those days as a teenager thinking there's a 50:50 chance you're on the wrong train/travelling with the wrong ticket and pretending to be asleep to avoid finding out that you're the 50% that needs to get off right now.

Most days though, I'd say you're fine winging it on the day if you're the kind of person that's okay with such a footloose, floozy lifestyle ;)

Gigantic churches looking really out of place in tiny towns.

Everything is so green! I missed it!

Chop Chop

This is old news now, because I'm a bad blogger, but I GOT A HAIRCUT! Finally!

I went to Hair and Joy in Hongdae, as recommended by pretty much ALL of the expats I know. I was told they had good prices, great English and excellent hairdressing skills (having trained in both Europe and Asia), which I suppose is actually the most important thing there.

There're fancy, stylish hairdressers in abundance in Bupyeong, a stone's throw away and all open until at least midnight that'll give me a good-looking haircut for pennies. But how to explain what I want if they don't speak much English? Ultimate stress, given my previous fear of having my hair cut. (Let's not talk about afro-gate)

So, anyone who knows me will know I do not take care of my hair. At all. My hair's CV in the past year or so looks like this:

- dyed red
- bleached
- dyed green
- dye top-up
- dyed red again
- dyed brown in an attempt to go back to natural (forgetting how dark my hair actually is)
- bleached at the tips
- tips dyed green

Green. Of course.

Here's me looking despondent about my awful hair and the rubbish "semi-permanent" dye from about 2 weeks ago.

And I had a haircut maybe only 5-6 times in that space for trimming deads. That's it. Safe to say, my hair was kind of frazzled, despite my original intentions to look after it in its dyed state.

Let's not even talk about the time I did my regular fringe trim (something I'd been doing myself for a couple of months) and got the level wrong. Sure, an oddly short fringe seems to be in fashion now but it sure as heck wasn't back then!

So yeah, it's a strange, miscoloured, frazzly mess. Not sure how it is my hair grows so oddly that I managed to get a diagonal ombre, but okay.

In the past 6 or months I've been trying to fix this, getting regular haircuts, banning colour, giving it conditioning masks and basically just trying to grow out this hellish state its in. 3 months into my time in Korea, and I was finally at my stage 1 goal:
Cut it all off.

Now, I don't mean pixie cut style. I just mean, hack off all that old colour, reset to default settings.

I tried it out with hairpins and didn't HATE it, and Nick told me to try it if, at the very least, it'll heal up my hair a bit.

I explained pretty much all of this to Jason (my assigned stylist, after a fairly painless phonecall the day before. I'd been asked who I wanted to see and pretty much went "anyone") and he went to work.

And that's how I ended up like this:

It's so short.
There's still a random bit of the lighter brown on one side because, again, wonky hair. Jason told me he'd fix this when I go back for a trim. But it feels a lot thicker, smoother, healthier, and it's almost all one colour. It still takes forever to wash, oddly, but it's a lot quicker to dry. One downside is that in all this humidity, it gets greasy MUCH more quickly. Or it's more noticeable anyway. I used to get away with washing my hair once a week, maybe twice if I got sweaty or did a lot of smelly cooking. But now it's almost every other day otherwise I look like Snape's offspring.

It was a great experience, the salon played lots of calming music and it's the most extravagantly decorated hairdresser's I've ever been to. Combined with the fact I often had 2-3 people working on my hair at the same time, it was a pretty luxurious experience.

The chop itself was very satisfying. I mentioned I was a bit scared, and after that, at every step before a big change, we'd have a break and I'd be asked if I was 100% sure I wanted to do it, shown how it should look when it's done and assured it would be fine. That's something really lovely that I haven't really had before. I've had lovely stylists but none of that extra reassurance.

I was going to take a photo of my huge pile of hair after the initial big cut (which I was shown to prove IT'S ALL GONE. FOREVER. SORT OF.) but they were too efficient and it was gone in the next moment.

When it came to paying (a bit lightheaded because, well, my head was...a lot lighter.) I genuinely had a moment where I just stood and blinked with surprise.
"What was that, sorry?"
"30,000 won"
That's just under £18. I usually pay £20-25 and that's a CHEAP cut. Most people I know spend £30-50.

I apologised and tried to explain so that they knew it wasn't anything bad. The response?
A cheeky smile and "Oh. Can I ask for more then?"

Nope, too late. I've paid and I'm happy. My next goal is to grow it out nice and long again, but healthy.
My other joy is the fact that it's opened a whole new set of doors for me re: cosplay, as seen below with a sort of Kiki's Delivery Service closet cosplay.

창경궁 | Changgyeonggung Palace

This blog post is technically one of two, because I like to keep everything compact and tidy, and I'm too verbose to have two locations in one post, even though we did it all in one day. Sigh.

We met up with Erin and Morgan to go on an adventure! We settled on visiting a palace AND an Art Village, because the great thing about Seoul is that there's hundreds of things to do and usually within a short distance of each other.

The palace we went to was Changgyeonggung. For only 1000 won per person, it's a great place for a day (or half-day) out!
History Lesson: It was originally a summer palace during Goryeo times, and later became one of the 5 Grand Palaces.

The weather was great, with blue skies, and not as much humidity as we'd seen in the days prior. As with many old buildings in South Korea, there's a lot of very intricate detail in the woodwork and decorations, as well as being very lush, with many trees and lawn areas. It's always nice to see places like this in the middle of large, busy cities.