Korea (Seoul & Jeju) 2013 14-28 Oct (Day 6)

Today, one of our travel mate, Amy, will be joining us in Seoul this evening, and this "starts" our official holiday. Due to a work trip to Taipei, she missed out on 5 days of great fun and light sightseeing. 

We checked out of our "official residence" and downgraded to a cheaper hotel (we are paying for our accommodation now T_T). We are going to stay at GS Hotel, 87 Gwansu-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea.

Although the rooms were small, the great thing about this hotel is that its located between and very near Jongno 3(Sam)-ga and Euljiro 3 (Sam)-ga subway stations. There are many shops nearby and at night there will be many street vendors. There is also a street of small eateries that is packed with people during meal times.

Today, we decided to explore the area around Ewha Woman's University. Its like a university town and it was pretty crowded. 

Being Singaporean, we're always attracted to food. Saw a street food hawker and decided to try a skewer stick of BBQ chicken.

After exploring the area, it was time for lunch. As we didn't know what was nice in that area, we opened our ears to try to find an English speaking Korean. Thank goodness we didn't need to wait too long, I heard a someone speaking American-accented English and saw that it was a 20-plus (Korean?!) guy talking to his Korean female friend. Immediately, I swooped in and asked them to recommend a nice Korean restaurant in the vicinity. 

Thanks to their recommendation, we went to Nobul Budae Jjigae. The manager there was extremely helpful and friendly. She tried with some difficulty to explain to us the dishes and made some great recommendations.

Stew

They added noodles into the stew

Side dishes that came with it

Chicken stew

They added the flat noodles which was very nice after absorbing the sauce

The prices are very reasonable

Outside Nobul Budae Jjigae

After lunch, we decided to explore Dongdaemun and walked around off our lunch. There were really many shopping centres and we just went into a handful to walk around. As it was cold weather the air conditioning was adjusted and we felt quite stuffy in a few of the small shopping centres. After just doing a quick browse, it was already evening and we had to make our way back to the hotel to meet up with Amy, who was making her own way here.

Seoul did a good work of converting their canals into walkways and we discovered that our hotel was within walkable distance via the canal. We later discovered "walkable" is a very subjective term, as it took us nearly half an hour to reach our hotel.

Although the distance was a little long, we just took in the sights along the way. 

Finally we reached the hotel and discovered that the road outside was transformed with quite a number of street vendors erecting tent-like structures to shield customers from the cold wind. It was like a scene our of the serials that I've watched on TV. Nice.

For dinner, we ventured to look around the area around the hotel and discovered a a street filled with numerous small restaurants. We were walking up and down and decided to try one that was most crowded, as we believe that good food will definitely attract the crowds.

We finally decided on this small restaurant that was so full of local flavour. The food indeed was good and we had to order our favourite beef bulgogi. 

After a nice dinner, we went back to the hotel to await Amy's arrival. We had to rest well tonight because Amy's arrival to Seoul signals that we have to start "work" the next day and we will have to "work" very hard. The shopping queen will get down to "work" immediately as she only has a limited time in this shopping city before we head off to Jeju.