Those of you who may frequent here or have read my previous posts will know of my love affair with Japan. This country is simply amazing and I wish I had more time to explore every nook and cranny of it, unfortunately though that isn’t possible so for now I’m having to make do with weekend roaming of places within reach of Osaka.

For the  first weekend off I’ve grabbed a work mate and we’ve dived into Osaka aiming straight for Dontonbori with the aim of two things, buy a new lens for my camera at the massive Bic Camera store and eat some takoyaki. All in all a rather full proof plan  that we pulled off quite successfully. After the lunch of takoyaki we headed in the direction of Tennoji to head through Osaka’s computer district and check out the zoo. We ended up skipping on the zoo due to the weather (just too hot to keep running around outside) and headed to some temples instead.

On Sunday the plan of attack was Osaka Castle and it’s surrounding grounds (whilst avoiding going in since we had both done it previously) followed by the Osaka Aquarium. All in all it was very good though unfortunately the aquariums main attraction (a large whale shark) was not there as it was receiving a health check-up.

As per normal photos are below. If anything else pops up during the week I’ll post it below but expect the next update next weekend.

After this I moved onto the Changdeok-gung Palace which has an amazing secret garden area as I got there though, closed! Turns out Monday isn’t the best day in Seoul if you don’t plan before hand.

On Tuesday with a bit more planning I headed out to Changdeok-gung and joined one of the guided tours in English of the secret garden section. It’s a rather long tour of about 90 minutes and can also be done in Chinese or Korean. It’s a simple 3km long walk around the closed off area of the grounds which the old kings used as their private area where access was by invitation only. I highly recommend the tour as its quite interesting and a lovely place to check out. If tours aren’t your cup of tea though the grounds can be roamed without a group in the summer months on a certain day of the week (not sure which one it is).

As usual there’s some photos below. We didn’t get up to much last night or today as we’re heading out of here tomorrow. We are off to the baseball tonight though so that should be fun!

Now onto Seoul itself. A good way to put it would be Tokyo but with wider streets and sidewalks (for the most part), a lot more Americans and far more drinking areas, all in all for a slightly cheaper price (though not on the same level as Taiwan). The hotel we’re staying in is actually a serviced apartments building smack bang in the middle of Insagong, an area that is fast becoming the major tourist section for Seoul. The hotel is called Fraser Suite Apartments and for three of us we have a three bedroom apartment and are paying about $80 USD a night which is just incredible (I’ll post photos of the joint before leaving… hopefully).

There was some other stuff I was going to say in the post but as I’ve been writing this over two days now I can’t remember most of it. Basically Seoul so far has been a relax and unwind and check out the occasional thing whilst enjoying the food and night life which hasn’t left too much time for the touristy bits. All I can say though the nightlife here is incredible with a huge choice of bars and very friendly locals who take any drunken opportunity to practice English or to “help you out”. Food wise its amazing with a huge choice of cuisines but for those who aren’t particular to spice its not a fun place, meanwhile for those who enjoy some spice it’s awesome. We have checked out some of the major palaces and gardens in the city for which there are quite a few photos beneath but I can’t promise too much more will be coming up post wise.

I’ll try and get a better post done next time though no promises. I can say though that on Mondays attractions in Seoul tend to be closed which is rather annoying but I did manage some good photos from the TV Tower here (known as the N Tower). I’ll throw those up some time in the next two days.

Jeju itself was easy enough to get through, a quick collection of bags then onto grabbing a taxi to get us to our hotel. This part was interesting as the driver didn’t know of our hotel or speak any English so after a bit of play we managed to get the GPS in his taxi pointing to what we thought was the hotel (it was thankfully). For the point the hotel is known to the locals as Noon Hotel whilst its sold on all the English hotel sites as Luxury and Boutique Hotel at Noon and the sign on the building only says Hotel at Noon… quite confusing.

The area we were staying in is known as Yeon-dong and seems to be the more night clubs and… other establishments area which means there’s plenty of good food and drinks around but also a few seedier places. We picked here though as the price was far better then staying in Jeju city itself and the city was only about 5 to 10 minutes by cab away.

As for the island of Jeju itself its rather small and pretty easy to traverse if you have your own form of transportation. If you aren’t hiring a car (I suggest to do so if you can its a heck of a lot easier to get around) Taxi’s are quite cheap and will happily drive to all the major attractions (they can also be rented for a full day as a private driver, quite the good idea too). Public Transport on the other hand is a struggle unless you can speak or read Korean. Basically the whole island is nicely connected by buses but the buses most of the time will only announce stops in Korean or have signage in Korean (if at all). Whilst there is English bus sheets they aren’t easy to follow. Also of note Google Maps navigation system doesn’t work for either cars, public transport or walking on the entire island so whilst it has the entire island fully mapped there is little English translation and there is no navigation unlike most other cities around the world now a days (coming from Taiwan this was quite the shock). So best point of advice on travelling around Jeju, hire a car or a driver for yourself, know Korean or plan the public transport beforehand.

So in terms of things to do? There is quite a bit but Jeju to my friends and I was a relax and unwind destination. We checked out the Lava Tube caves which are world heritage listed and a few of the main places in town and the black sand beaches. Are there other things to do? Most definitely but since its also Summer it was the wrong time of the year to attempt the hiking trails or a few of the outdoor places. The southern side of the island is covered in amusement parks which would be nice to check out but again middle of Summer it’s not the best place to be.

Overall its a lovely and very beautiful island. I wouldn’t mind coming back for a bit more then two days at some point and if I ever were to do so I would go the hire car route and explore the island in my own time, and preferably in Spring when the weather is nicer. All in all its a nice place to visit and worth the venture if you can afford the extra bit of time.

As always some photos below. Next up is Seoul. We’ve been here a bit over a day now but mostly just relaxed (yesterday was Liberation Day for South Korea) and explored the city a bit. I’ll do a post tomorrow probably covering the first two or three days.

Now for Taiwan itself, the city is incredible. The one thing I can fault it for is there isn’t enough simple casual bars. There’s plenty of restaurants you can drink in but in terms of just a straight bar we couldn’t find too much, then again this problem could’ve been overcome by researching it a bit better but I don’t feel you should need to research where to find a bar if you’re willing to wander. In all other terms though the city is amazing. It’s easy to get around and its incredibly cheap to do so (our huge trip to Tamsui was 55 TWD whilst a short trip to the 101 from The Grand Hotel was 23 TWD). If trains aren’t your cup of tea taxis are also incredibly cheap costing about 200-300TWD to get across the city the only problem being most taxi drivers speak very little to no English.

Hotel wise we kicked back in The Grand Hotel which there were a few photos of previously. The hotel itself is a tourist attraction and the dumpling place inside the hotel is quite delicious but the buffet breakfast isn’t anything spectacular. Overall the rooms are OK and for what we paid expected. Looking into the rooms with a view they are far better but come with a pretty hefty price tag.

Other then that Taiwan is just simply amazing. Whilst ridiculously hot in the summer it would be best to go in the other months for sure but summer is definitely still manageable just don’t plan on walking too much.

Next up Jeju. I’ll do a single post on Jeju from Seoul tomorrow.

So yesterday we went out with the main interest of finding and browsing through the technology markets area (Guang Hua Digital Plaza) to mostly check out the prices and browse. Whilst this was a success we didn’t exactly get any photos from it as there wasn’t anything interesting to get photos of and a write up of what technology I liked wouldn’t be very interesting.

After the tech area we stumbled into an exhibition area, what this place was called I’m not sure except it was near Huashan Culture Park. Whilst cool photography wasn’t allowed in a few of the exhibitions we went into so once again not much to write up about.

In the evening though we did head up north to the coast to a town called Tamsui. Here we enjoyed the old streets night markets which was incredible then caught a ferry up to the edge of the water at a place called Fishermans Wharf which has a cool bridge which gets lit up in all kinds of fancy colours (in the images below).

As for today it was more of a sleep in and relax day with lunch at the original Din Tai Fung building followed by a stroll around the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall grounds, an impressive collection of gardens and monuments/exhibits to one of the most important people in history here.

Tonight will probably be spent exploring one of the night markets we haven’t been to yet so maybe some photos from that to come but that wont be until we are in South Korea as we fly out shortly after midday tomorrow. I’ll do a wrap up on Taiwan soon as well but for now, here are some pictures.

Now onto Taipei. To put it simply its amazingly cheap here. Food and services that are needed everyday are very very cheap. Think about $1-2 in Australian Dollars for a large drink anywhere and meals not much more if you eat like the locals. Public Transport is about 18 TWD which is close to 60c Australian to get across the town.

In regards to what we got up to today. We headed out to the Taiwan Fine Arts Museum at first and thought we could walk there, turns out the path to walk there wasn’t a straight line and we ended up walking in the heat and humidity for a good 30 minutes (hence the cool down drinks in the photos below). After that we journeyed across town to the Taipei 101 Tower to check out the lookout and see the surrounding shops and memorials. After all that and some occasional bites to eat we moved on back to the local night markets here near the hotel for a quick peek and a bite before passing out.

Tomorrow  we move onto National Palace Museum for a gander then onto one of the more major temples and its adjoining night markets. For now though here are the photos.

Note: I’ll be fixing up the thumbnails on the posts soon. I just need to make sure I set it up right again.

With that bit of weather pitch over its time to move onto the more interesting details of today’s journey, or at least just a recap. As I’m actually having weekends off while over here it makes it thankfully quite easy to plan when and where to go out to and today’s plan was to explore the CBD and head out and run around Kings Park, a giant bit of park land just over the Mitchell Highway from the city (seriously have a look at the size of it and its location to the CBD on a map, its rather impressive).

The CBD itself reminded me a lot of Brisbane, most people packed into some key areas with the streets around the edges of the CBD rather quite, whether this means anything I’m not sure I just found it rather interesting. First stop though was to check out the Swan Bells at the Bell Tower sitting along side the quite beautiful Swan River. The bells themselves have an interesting history to them but I passed on heading into the tower due to the cost of entry and well… It didn’t look like it would have much in it for the price.

After that detour I headed back into the city to make my way down to Kings Park along the way finding the lovely St George’s Cathedral hidden away between some giant sky scrapers. Eventually I made it to the base of the hill upon which the entry to Kings Park is. The hill I found though was a street named Mount St, which by the seems of things was where some of the wealthier families of Perth lived (some gigantic houses and fantastic cars here) and where all the fit people go to run up and down a steep hill. At the top of the hill is the entry to the Kings Park grounds  (while not really an entry its more the main point for cars to enter in and where people wander up). I proceeded to follow the crowds of people and work my way around the grounds until I found the walking trails and went exploring.

From that point onwards there isn’t much else to mention really except that the scenery is fantastic, the view of the city is incredible and the grass so well maintained and inviting in the afternoon sun on a day like today. Such a beautiful place and so close to the city its absolutely fantastic.

Other then that I worked my way eventually back into the city and to the hotel where I’m currently sitting here writing this blog rather then packing. I’m changing hotels tomorrow to something a bit cheaper to keep the budget down. Because fo this though I’ll have everything in the car and be cruising out of the city to discover some of Western Australia a bit more. I’m thinking to the north of Perth this time…

As usual photos below. Theres also an extra panorama included of the Perth CBD and the Swan River taken from Kings Park that I’m really happy with (note to self, consider printing this one).