Stumbling into the Palace

I've known it to be true before and this weekend in Seoul reinforces my belief that the unexpected events in a vacation are often the most rewarding. Emily and I planned on finding the book store, but wandered into a chases festival at the Folk and Palace Museum. We saw an impressive temple hovering over the highway and decided we HAD to walk towards it. Inside the first massive gate were hundreds of Koreans dressed in their ornamental and colorful henpeck. There was a line of guards dressed in red cloaks with bright head-dressing. They remained motionless, austere, as families posed next to them for pictures. It's so refreshing to see Koreans acting like tourists in their own country. I read that this was the palace of a famous King some 500 years ago. Of course, everything had been torn down (including many relics) by the Japanese and they turned this land into a parking ground to suppress a rebellion. Thankfully, it had since been restored. These reminders do nothing to soften Korea's opinion of Japan but since much of their history was destroyed, pictures and writings of the past are all they have. We walked through miles of temples enclosed in a small wall of protection, I presume. We were allowed to peer through walls and see the simplicity of decoration and lifestyle. Judging from the homes I've been fortunate enough to visit, I believe they still live with much less clutter, utilizing the limited space the apartment affords. [Remember, the majority of people live in apartments. Most these apartments don't have couches or chairs- the people prefer to sit on mats instead.] The sun was brutal and I found myself pondering whether I really did enjoy the lack of consumerism in this collection of palaces. Everything certainly felt more authentic without Pepsi sticking his ugly face into the picture, but I was very, very thirsty.