mural in myeongdong shopping district

two weeks ago, i was on vacation to south korea. it was my first time there so everything was new to me. i am just glad to be with my friends who were no first timers. in one of those days, we decided to have dinner in one of the busy neighborhoods in seoul. after dinner, the plan was to check out the area.

myeongdong was the district, one known for night markets. as expected, there were so many people in there, too many in fact. the streets were closed of to vehicles and temporary pushcarts, made up stalls for food, clothes and many more were all displayed in the middle of the street.

in one corner, i saw this magnificence! street art was not something i was prepared for here in myeongdong. i took just a couple of snaps thinking of an entry for CCC's Street Art Contest #222.

as for the art, it was a grayscale mural at one wall of a clothing store. a mural of the sea, of waves to be exact. this somehow reminded me of a woodblock print by the famous japanese hokosai. those sea foams somehow reminded me of stubbly fingers.

sadly, it was a bit hard to take a picture from the front. as you can see, it was but a small side street and the front was another shop. i had to take the best of what i could do from the side. as this was part of a wall with no entrance nor windows, there was less traffic on this alley. but all the other streets here in myeongdong were shoulder to shoulder full.

just look at this main street. buildings were on both sides and small stalls were at the center of the street. that makes less space for footpath. i am just glad to have survived this all. one thing i learned the hard way though, is that google maps is not a reliable source of info in seoul. yes, the mighty google has not penetrated the seoul market. maps were outdated, and google maps do not even have that "how to get there on foot" feature which i usually when in japan and even in the philippines. it's as if, the walking feature was disabled. not a very good place for the nightwalker like me.

in korea, they use some other local apps for those purposes. have you heard of kakao map or naver map? those will show you an updated map of seoul and will suggest of which buses or trains to take to get to places. but still, no walking suggestions. for a large city, it seems that koreans do not recommend getting to places on foot.

_{all content is by yours truly unless otherwise specified}

^{all photos are taken with a galaxy s23 ultra}