Bongeunsa Temple and COEX Mall!!

Sunday morning was a bit of a struggle for me because of another late night. However, the fact that I was sober both nights made waking up far easier than if I had been hungover. Since my parents are visiting my dad made us a delicious bacon and egg breakfast before we headed out for day number two in Seoul. We headed to Gagnam to visit the COEX mall, which is the largest underground mall in Asia. The train ride was roughly 90 minutes, which is a long time, but worth it. Before we looked around the mall we headed across the street to Bongeunsa temple. I want my parents to experience more traditional parts of Korea as well as the more modern parts, so I thought visiting the temple would be a good start to the day. We spent about 45 minutes - an hour viewing all the different parts of the temple and enjoying the beautiful fall day. We ran into a guy from Boston who is here on a business trip.

This is Mireukdaebul, which is the Buddha of the future. It is the largest statue of Buddha in Korea. Mom and dad pose for a picture in front of a temple monument. It's kind of funny that there is a parking lot and high rises within walking distance of a temple. This is the statue of Haesoogwaneumsang. She represents the Korean traditional Gwaneum faith. She is surrounded by an oriental pond, which combines nature with the Buddhist belief.

After we finished with the temple we headed back to the mall where we spent a good 2 hours just walking around and eating some lunch. I had my parents try kimchi jiggae, which is one of my favorite Korean dishes. My mom liked it, but my dad couldn't handle the spice. The mall was awesome and had many Western stores and Western style influence store. However, because of the area of Seoul the mall is located most of the stores were expensive (Western prices), so expensive for Korea. I did manage to buy two adorable sweater dresses and two Big Bang CD's.

I just thought I would ad this picture for your viewing pleasure. This Calvin Klein ad and another one lined the walkways in the mall. They were everywhere.

We left Gagnam around 5:30 p.m. and headed back to Incehon on our 90 minute journey. When we got back to my place we had a home cooked meal and some wine. I was exhausted from the busy weekend I had, so after dinner I just downloaded pictures onto face book, posted some blogs and then went to bed. Next weekend we will be staying overnight in Seoul, so we don't go crazy from all the travelling.