Korea (Seoul & Jeju) 2013 14-28 Oct (Day 7)

Amy is here on a mission as she only have 1 full day in Seoul before we leave for Jeju. We have to start the day early. After a simple breakfast in the hotel, we headed out to Dongdaemun market to see what we can buy.

Dongdaemun market is really big, covering quite a number of roads. Although there were many stalls selling clothes, household products, shoes, accessories, etc, nothing really caught our eye. Only thing we bought were Korean pillows made with bean fillings.

After spending the morning roaming the market, we decided to bring Amy for a Korean lunch at... Nobul Budae Jjigae again, but a different branch this time. We ordered the chicken stew with noodles again and other dishes that we didn't try the previous day.

Stew

Not sure what stew this is

Pork belly with kimchi

Soup

Squid

 After lunch, we head to Myeongdong for some real shopping. What blew me away was the many outlets of shops selling skin care products. All the various Korean brands were here.

Of course, the ladies went berserk. Upon seeing the 1st brand, went in to buy facial masks. After stepping out of the shop, went to another brand and bought more facial masks. After that, another brand for more facial masks... 

... and then I discovered that all the brands were having more of their shops as we walked further into the shopping area. Darn, we had to carry the heavy loot as we walked deeper in.

Tip 1: do not buy any facial products the moment you set foot into Myeongdong, go further in and you'll find the same shops again and again.

In Myeongdong, you can also find many popular brands like H&M, Nike, Adidas , etc here. But the highlight for us was obviously the facial products.

Tip 2: we discovered that you can get tax refund on your purchases at some shops. Do enquire before you buy, or lookout for tax refund signs inside the shops.

Tip 3: we later discovered when we went into a Lotte department store that many of the skin care brands had counters or shops inside. While some brands may not offer tax refunds at their own shops along the streets, we could still claim tax refunds if we bought products of these same brands at Lotte. Key is to know what you want from the shops and then go to Lotte to check out whether they have the products there. If the brand is not in Lotte, then go back out to the streets to get them.

Tourists to Seoul will be glad to know that they have special tourist ambassadors along the streets to help you with directions and recommendation. They speak various languages and are super friendly and helpful. Do approach them for advise and recommendations to food or shopping.

Tourist Ambassadors

 One thing you must try are the sandwiches from Isaac. It is so fun seeing them prepare the sandwiches and they taste absolutely lovely. We couldn't resist buying 2 to try. 

Preparation of the sandwiches

Nice packaging

 Of course no visit to Korea is complete without having ginseng chicken soup. For afternoon "tea", we went to a shop recommended by the tourist ambassador. We ordered one of each item on the menu below. 

Fried chicken

The taste of the soup and chicken was so-so. A little bland with a tinge of ginseng taste. We thought it was just plain chicken soup but after breaking the carcass, we found rice inside. The soup then became a little gooey and we didn't really like it.

The fried chicken was also nothing to shout about. 

Rice inside the chicken

After our afternoon "tea" we continued on our shopping again. We really shopped till the sky turned dark.

The street vendors started setting up their stalls and we were pretty impressed by their "packaging". The lemonade stall packed the juice into nice little plastic bags and tasted quite nice.

Street vendors out in full force at night

After a tiring day of shopping, we went for dinner. As we've eaten quite a lot of things in the day, we decided to have something "light" for dinner, porridge.

 Can't remember what type of porridge we had but generally it wasn't to our taste. The consistency was a different type of starchiness from what we are normally used to because of the different rice grains.

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to prepare for our trip tomorrow to Jeju.

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.