This is a YouTube travel vlog by Kara and Nate Buchanan documenting day six of their visit to Seoul, South Korea. They attend an elaborate changing-of-the-guard ceremony at the Royal Palace (they call it "Gyeong Yubak palace"), note that the palace was built in 1535, was destroyed by fire and later by the Japanese and is being rebuilt, and observe many visitors wearing rented traditional clothing (hanbok). They then visit Bukchon Hanok Village to see ~600-year-old hanok houses. In the evening they join large crowds picnicking along the Han River, buy several large boxes of Korean fried chicken (multiple flavors), and describe the picnic scene—thousands of people, many tents, and widespread chicken delivery/promotion—before returning to their Airbnb.
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It is already our sixth day in Seoul, South Korea, which is so sad because it's gone by way too fast. We had so many things we wanted to do when we came here, and we've already done a bunch of them. Like North Korea. We did the spa thing. We ate raw fish, the fish auction, street food, barbecue. We've knocked a lot of things off, but there's still so many things that we still need to do.
Today, we're attempting to knock off two of the must do historical things here in Seoul, starting with the Royal Palace.
I think we got here just in time for the changing of the guard. It's happening.
Sate and I got separated during that event, and there's like a billion people here. I don't know if we're ever gonna find each other. I found you. Yeah. That was nuts. It was literally starting as we ran up to the fence.
Sheer chaos. We were both like, must capture it. And we split up.
We were on complete opposite sides by the end of it. But that was super cool.
Definitely, like, the most extravagant changing of the guard ceremony I've ever seen. And we've seen a lot of these.
Like, huge flags.
And they were grunting and lots of drums.
There was a lady announcing what was happening the whole time, which is also different than any changing of the guard ceremony we've ever seen. There will be drum beats to signal the rotation of the shift. Now you can pay 3,000 won to go inside of the palace. So we're about to go grab our tickets and head inside.
We are in the palace. The first thing that I've noticed is that, like, half the people in here are dressed up in the traditional clothing. So apparently it's a thing here to rent the costumes and take a picture from the palace.
Sam.
This place is massive and beautiful. We just keep going through these gates to see another grand palace. It's gorgeous. And I realized that we never actually said the name of it. This is the Gyeong Yubak palace, which I'm probably saying very wrong. Definitely just shouldn't have tried to say it, but I love this place. We learned it was built in 1535, and then it was destroyed by fire at some point.
Oh, they're so cute. Then it was abandoned for a long time, and then it was rebuilt, and then it was destroyed by the Japanese, and now it's still in the process of being rebuilt to its original form.
My main question leaving here is if the dress, like all the dress up stuff happened before or after Instagram. Like, I wonder if it was a thing before social media or social media has, like, caused all these people to start wearing the traditional dress, like, just to get the perfect self.
It feels pretty crazy walking two steps out of the palace and being on this main road, these huge modern buildings, the contrast is just funny. But now we're heading not too far down the road to another traditional village called.
Woo. I think it's called Bukchon Panok, and it's supposed to have, like, some old traditional houses and small alleyways and more people dressed up.
We have arrived at the Bokcheon Hanok village. We just saw a sign that says no noise, and it's like, super quiet, even though there's lots of people walking around these streets. But it's super cool. These buildings are traditional Korean houses called hanoks, and they're like 600 years old. I think people live in them or maybe they rent them out to tourists, like a hotel. I'm not really sure yet. But the sun is at this great level right now, and everything is just beautiful.
The sun has set, so it's time to move on from the historical things. No day in Seoul, at least for us, would be complete without trying a new food. So tonight we're going down to the Han river and we're going to have a picnic. But we're going to eat a food that I don't typically associate with picnics, which is Korean fried chicken. Apparently it's really popular to get chicken and then, like, have a picnic by the river. So that's where we're heading now.
Oh, my goodness. So many. So many. Thank you. Now I have enough. As soon as we got off the subway. Thank you. Now I have six.
Seven. They keep coming. Four, eight, nine, ten, eleven.
Chicken.
Chicken. Wow. Delivery. Delivery. As soon as we got off the subway, all these ladies just started handing me fried chicken pamphlets. I had heard that it was supposed to be, like, the thing to do, but I had no clue that there was gonna be this much chicken. That's pizza.
I want that.
No, thank you. Okay, thank you. Soon, they get paid by how many of these they hand out, so I'm just. Just helping them out. Awesome.
Do you recommend the chicken place?
Yeah.
Which one?
This one is crispy and this one is with sauce. Okay. Do you have a favorite place to order from? Yeah.
Pretty sure she said in Korea. Tell them to go to my place. I think this one is good. Okay. I think that guy made our decision. Now I guess we have to find this place. At least they have recycle bins. They're everywhere. We have no clue how to order anything on this pamphlet. So we're head back up to the street and try to find some chicken. But that means that we have to run the gauntlet of the ladies handing out the papers and try not to get any more.
Love the stance, Nate.
Strategic hand position. So we walked about five minutes across the street, street from the river and found the source. All these little chicken restaurants with all these little motorcycles taking the chicken to people, but walking was fine. And we just got a massive bag of fried chicken, three different kinds. And she stuck some other weird cold thing in there. I don't know what it is. I am starving. So we're gonna go the river now. Oh, my gosh. So we read that picnicking by the river was a thing, but I did not realize it was a thing. This much of a thing. There's like, a billion people. They all have, like, tents and blankets and the whole setup. I don't know if you can sleep here or what.
This is so crazy.
Like, for real. If you had to guess, how many people do you think are here?
Thousands.
Thousands.
All the way down the river.
The tents is what's crazy to me. Surely they kick people out of a certain time. Maybe people stay here all night. I think they do just.
And then they go to the spa.
We found a good spot overlooking the river. We're ready to dig into this chicken. We got three different flavors. One is, like, spicy with the sauce on it, and then there's garlic fried chicken and regular fried chicken. Maybe they come with these little sticks that you stab them with. This is the cold thing that we don't know what it is. It kind of looks like little cheese cubes in water. I think this is. Look how big these boxes are. And we got three.
Okay. This is the saucy one. Saucy, spicy one.
Oh, it smells good.
Oh, yeah.
Good stuff. It's gonna be the best picnic ever. It's, like, perfectly crispy still and, like, super saucy, but not too much, and it's still hot. All right, time to enjoy our picnic.
The chicken was so good. I'm very glad we made ourselves come here and do this. We were both feeling a little tired earlier and kind of just wanted to go home and grab something on the way, but this was so worth it, and everybody is still out here. It's just crazy. Now we're heading back to our Airbnb, and tomorrow is our last day in Seoul.
Thought we'd stopped eating the chicken. I just want more.
Let me enjoy the Korean food while we're here. That's not Korean.
