Saturday, June 20, 2009

080817 – History Museum, Gyeonghuigung Palace, Art Museum and Nanta Theater

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After my late Sunday brunch, I took a subway to City Hall and walked for about 20 minutes to Chungmuno for Nanta Theather show. Nanta is a 90 minutes non-verbal comedy performance set in a kitchen as its background that is using pans, knives, pots and any cooking utensils that can be found in a kitchen as its music instruments. Therefore there is no language barrier and this show can be enjoyed by people from all around the world. Nanta combines rhythms from Korean folk music with modern musical forms. Nanta means cooking in English. I bought 50,000 won seats at 6pm show.

Since I have 3 hours before the show starts, I went to the nearby History Museum; about 5 minutes walk from Nanta Theater. Outside the museum compound, seas of lavenders welcome you.

The admission fee is 700won, but I got a coupon from a booklet, therefore I did not pay anything for the admission fee. How nice.

The museum showed mainly the Seoul chronology from the stone ages to current times, focusing more on the era of Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910).

There are four sections of exhibitions provides an overview of Seoul as the capital of Joseon Dynasty, everyday life in Seoul, cultural heritage and development of Seoul. On top of these, there even have the history learning corner for kids, touch museum that offer visitors experiencing the life during the Joseon Dynasty and lastly, the info-bridge where visitors can learn more about the exhibits through the computers. I would like to apologize for not taking extra photos in the museum.

After the museum visit, I headed to another nearby palace called Gyeonghuigung or Gyeonghui Palace. This palace was built during the Joseon Dynasty and later in the period, this palace served as the secondary palace for the King. The secondary palace is usually the palace where the King stayed in-case of emergency. Admission fee is free.

One of the gates inside Gyeonghuigung. The palace is quite small and nothing much interesting, so I spent around 15 minutes here.

The only main hall inside the palace

Sidewalk next to the main hall

View from Gyeonghuigung, surrounded by high-rise buildings

In the Gyeonghuigung area, there is a small Seoul Museum of Art. The museum was sort of under renovation during my visit there. There were not many visitors here at the museum. It’s kind of spooky. I made a quick exit after a flash glance at the art gallery. Later I found out, this is not the main art museum. The main one was behind Deoksugung, nearby City Hall.


Still have another one hour before the show starts. I walked to a nearby McD to grab a quick bite and browsed through the photo I snapped that day.

The entrance to the Nanta show and no doubts, most of these cooking utensils were used during the performance.

Audiences are not allowed to snap photo during the performance, I quickly took out my camera and snapped at the stage.

The storylines are funny. The performers will choose a participant from the crowd to add more spice into their show. It’s a must see if you were in Seoul. I was totally captivated and laughed from start to awesome finish. The show finally finished at 7.30pm and I took a subway nearby back to hotel. What a good show to end my weekend.

Below is the synopsis of Nanta
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Three cooks start their day.
While they are busy preparing the vegetables and organizing the kitchen, a bad tempered manager appears. He orders them to prepare the food for a wedding by 6 o'clock in the afternoon.
The cooks, who had not been told about this event, are caught completely off-guard.
Not only that, the manager also brings his young nephew with him and demands that the cooks teach him how to cook and prepare food.
The manager exits after barking these seemingly impossible orders.

At first, the cooks don't like this clueless boy, but have to get on with their work.
They start preparing the food, but things don't go on smoothly.
The boy and three cooks get closer, though, and the audience joins the show.
The cooks struggle to prepare the dishes as quickly as possible, and manage to set the table by 6pm.
The wedding banquet draws to a successful conclusion.
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1 comment:

  1. All of them are excellent photos so the best one were in which appearing old and classic Japanese structures, actually this is one of my dreams going to a place like that.

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