Paju Tour

Attended a Paju Fam Tour this weekend on November 20th, and we got a chance to see an enriching side of Paju that I've never ever seen before. We arrived at Jamsil Sports Complex Station in Seoul at 9am, and departed towards the DMZ 3rd Tunnel, and after which the Dora Observatory. We received these name tags that had pigs on them and were really cute, and also rice cakes for our breakfast!

Anyhow, the first stop we walked through to the 3rd Tunnel of DMZ, where it was 200+m out of 1300+m worth of underground tunnel that the North Korean troops dug just to infiltrate South Korea. It was quite an interesting experience because throughout the 200m that I walked, I was mostly bent forward since it was really low and it hurt my back. I'm wondering how they walked almost 1.5km bent like that (unless they were really short....). We weren't allowed to take photos within the tunnel, so only photos outside!

Did I mention I dropped my Ray Ban Sunglasses inside the tunnel? :(

(Was a gift from my mum too...)

Anwyay, next up we went to the Dora Observatory, where we could see North Korea. Over here, we had many binoculars that cost 500won per use. You could see the city that North Korea built to "show" South Korea that they were equally developed and were technologically advanced as well. However nobody lived in those buildings..

We headed for lunch after that where we had soft tofu soup and some bossam (pork belly) and there's no photo of the bossam because we finished it all

After lunch, we headed to (what I personally feel) the most interesting part of the trip!! A Korean wild grapes farm where we had a packaged tour of the winery where we could make chocolate, jam, soap, have a tour of the winery and also wine tasting. Well, before it all started there was this photo zone... so yes, incoming photos!

  

 Wine tasting...

Was a little busy making the soap, chocolate and jam to have taken any photos while we were making them, but we have photos of the end product! They looked really cute and have something to do with the grapes that are used for the wine. It was extremely interesting and we had a lot of fun!

 They gave us crackers to eat with leftover jam too

We headed over to this place called Provence where we were given free time to walk around, take photos and collect data to write about this place. Provence is a really beautiful, and in my opinion, a place where many hipsters in Singapore would love to come. It's quiet, has many bakeries and cafes and it's a great place to take photos due to the many artwork and exotic areas available here. It's as though nature mixed well with greenhouses and a natural feel surrounds this entire place. Well, I'll let my photos do the talking!

There were many beautiful quaint shops that sold household items and scented candles! It was quite an interesting place to be and I certainly recommend going there at least once to have a look around, take photos and eat their garlic bread! The place is extremely well known and even the Pope went there to eat their garlic bread before. It's also a place where "You Who Came From The Stars" was filmed at!

After that, we headed to a nearby restaurant for some food which, literally translated, means "Olden day country side rice set" and even though it sounds very vegetarian-y and bland, it was really delicious! The variety of side dishes were plentiful and they tasted great! We really enjoyed the dinner.

As much as I wanted to stay on till the next day, I had reports to finish up by this week so I had to leave in order to get things done. All in all, it was really interesting and even though I wasn't able to get to the second day of activities, I thoroughly enjoyed myself in Paju, and am looking forward to sharing about this wonderful place with more people!