10 November 2022
Palatial offering
Changdeokgung, Changgyeonggung and the secret garden
Today I took a billion photos, visited 2 palaces including one with 2 lots of double g's in it's name and visited the secret garden which I thought would remain a secret. Allow me to explain.
First of all, I did not intend to go to either of these palaces today, I intended to go to the main one which I visited once before many years ago, but ended up standing out the front of a random palace gate and realising I had not actually been here before, so I decided to go in.
While wandering around, I discovered it seemed you go could from palace one to palace 2 via a back gate, and at this back gate was the entry to the secret garden.
I knew of the secret garden, but generally you have to book an escorted tour and their is a kind of lottery system and it all sounds too hard for me to bother with. But that was not the case today or for the next couple of weeks.
Either because it was closed for ages due to COVID, or because they want to discourage group tours due to COVID, self guided tours are available for the next 2 weeks. A self guided tour means, you can just pay to go in ($5) and wander around.
There is a limit on the number of people, and most people have pre booked, but I went to the window and asked and they said I could go in at 10:30, it seems I was the first person to ask that day in person too.
I will leave my description of the garden to the pics, there are lots.
In bad news, I think dust got in my camera, this means it is now rubbish, the sensor cannot be cleaned. So a lot of my photos will now have 2 big dust spots on them. This is the failing of my wonderful camera, it is super expensive, super small, and takes the sharpest pictures of any camera I know of, but it lets dust (and water drops) in and then it is ruined. Just google Ricoh GRIII dust and see the results for yourself.
So from now on all photos of a plain background taken with the aperture greater than about 5 will have 2 big dust spots on the upper right.
My walk to the palace region went past a Buddhist temple that apparently had a lot to do with the independence from Japan movement in the early 1900's, except the top guy died before America granted Korea it's independence by nuking Japan.
Hmm, have I been to this palace before or not. I think not.
Very smoky again today.
The smoke is less apparent depending on the direction you are looking, and sometimes it makes the photos look nice and spooky.
Most Korean palaces look the same to me, I cannot tell new re-creation from old. Apparently one of the 2 today is much older, but looking at the photos now I cannot really tell where one ends and the next one starts.
Nice gardens, is that the secret garden? At this stage of the day, I still did not know.
This is not the secret garden, but I still liked it a lot.
I suspect this is palace number 2, which is the less famous of the 2. No dust spots yet because this was shot at f/5.6.
Regular garden, no secrets here.
Still just a boring regular garden.
On the edge of this lesser palace is this nice bonsai house thing. I liked it a lot.
Inside had many bonsai things. I noticed some of them were pruned incorrectly so did a quick tidy up for them.
Seriously, this is still a non secret garden.
OK, this one is secret. Note that it looks very similar to the non secret parts. Apparently in times gone by it was used for ritualistic purposes.
This part looked really old. Lots of areas were off limits.
One of the few remaining square ponds. Apparently they previously were all square, but when Japan occupied the place they ordered them to be made rounder?
You can sit and watch some performances. Once everyone was seated I started my act. It was highly inappropriate but probably lost in translation.
A contender for view of the day.
Another contender. I caught up with a guided tour group here, which was blasting out instructions in Japanese to a large group of people with giant tripods.
OK, due to colour, I declare this one to be view of the day. Another thing they used to do, release a tiger in the grounds and hunt it!
After exiting the garden, you can then take a tour of the buildings around the palace, which were old government buildings for important government things like portraits, pottery and calligraphy.
I like to do this. The irony is the guys I took a photo of were annoyed at me for taking their photo.
After you exit the paid area you are between the two main palace areas, and it is all tourist streets in an area called Bukchon. Lots and lots of tourists around today. Note to Australians who will be online complaining about Chinese tour groups, many of them were from Singapore!
The tourist area is large, hilly and has over 1000 cafes.
Here you can clearly see the dust spots! First f/8 shot of the day. I do not think I have climbed that little mountain. It is very small but has a good view of the palaces.
Yes, identifying as a woman does qualify as a disability.
And for the final shot of the day, the yellow leaves of Bukchon.