Hanbok at Gyeongbokgung
The night before, my friends and I decided it would be a fun experience to rent hanboks and take photos at Gyeongbokgung. Gyeongbokgung is the main palace in Seoul. My friends and I met at Gyeongbokgung Station and we randomly picked one of the hanbok rental shops. The one we went to is called Hae wa dal hanbok (해와달 한복). We were so lucky to stop into this one. They had different styles ranging from princess to king to queen. When we were out and about I do think that our hanbok were quite nice in comparison to the others we saw.
First, I picked out the skirt part, and then the man matched it with the blouse part of the hanbok. Then, I went into the changing room with a helper who aided me in putting it all on. After, I got to pick out a purse and the hairdresser did my hair. She told me that most places won’t do hair like theirs does, and when I was walking around I did notice that ours was the most elaborate.
We walked the short distance to the palace, got our tickets (they were free since we were wearing hanboks), and finally entered our rightful domain. Lily and Monica were pretending to fight over who’s palace it was. We started taking photos and some man approached us and offered to take photos for us. He took them from all different angles, and I was expecting there to be lots of photos but there were only five.
While we were taking photos near the king’s throne room, a photographer approached me asking if it was okay to take some photos of me. I agreed and he started asking my friends and I to pose in certain ways. I thought it would be over after that but he kept taking us to different locations within the palace. This lasted for about an hour and a half before we had to leave. We spent the whole day being models for the photographer. It was definitely a unique and fun experience. I need to practice posing! While we were being photographed, a Chinese man came up to us and asked if he could take photos with us. So, we also posed for those. These photos are the ones that the photographer took of us.
Here are our behind-the-scenes photos that we took while we each were being photographed in each location.
Afterwards, we were stopped on the road by some older lady who was asking us a bunch of questions and said we looked good. So many people interacted with us; it must have been the hanboks.
We returned the hanboks and then went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner and Cafe Raison d’Etre. A nice end to the weekend.
