Thursday, 21 August 2014

Neil's birthday and first time in Seoul Part Two

After a good night sleep on a slightly more comfortable bed (no springs!), we set out to have a bit of breakfast before meeting my friend Christy. Since we're meeting back in the Hongdae area, we decided to go to Dunkin Donuts for some breakfast sandwich and donuts. When we met up with Christy we went to EatYourKimchi's You Are Here Cafe. Christy with handy map got us there in one piece. The place is really nice. Very trendy looking and very clean.  I see the EYK touches. Since it's a collaboration with TalkToMeInKorean, we see some books and such as well.  The milkshake was really thick and it took a while before it melted enough to drink properly. Otherwise, it tasted pretty good.

Afterwards, we decided to head to the 63 Building. Neil and I wanted to check out their wax museum (we love wax museums!) and invited Christy along. I had to make a pit stop to pick up a charger for my ipad because the converter I was using (non-Apple product) was too slow. The legit Apple product made a difference in the charging speed. Then it was off to the wax museum we go! We took a cab and it was only about $10. Considering how far we went, it is really cheap. It was a busy place with lots of kids since there's an aquarium and other attractions there. We got our tickets and went down to the basement where the museum was located.




Poor Christy helped us take a bunch of pictures, but she got into some as well! I hope she had as much fun as we did. Next we headed to Gangnam area and went for some Ddeok Galbi. Basically there is a giant hot plate in the middle of the table. You order what type of meat you want and one of the servers will help you cook it. They also throw in a bunch of sauces, spices and veggies. And you can also choose what you want. We decided to have some noodles. There's a lot of red pepper sauce so even at its most mild, it was still very spicy. Neil is definitely learning to eat his spicy food. A cool thing about this is everyone has to wear this red apron to protect our clothes from the bouncing oil and such. At the end of the meal, you can also order a bowl of rice and they will cook it in the same mixture of meat for you so with what's left over, you have Ddeok Galbi fried rice. We were super full after that!




Christy left to meet her friend and see a soccer game. Neil and I tried to kill some time by walking around we were pretty tired so just found a coffee shop to sit in. Oh yeah before Christy left, she helped us take a picture using the media poles in Gangnam. Apparently these poles (looks like light lamp poles) allow you to take pictures and send it to yourself. It's pretty laggy. Good thing she was there to help us.



We stayed around Gangnam because we wanted to go to this comedy thing Neil found on facebook. But when we got to the hotel, people were confused what we were looking for. The events bulletin board had nothing as well. I decided to send an email to these people to ask about getting tickets but no response. Even today, no response. Is there a joke there somewhere?

We mad our way back to Hongdae area (again) and decided to have some chicken and beer to celebrate Neil's birthday. After getting dessert we headed back to our hostel to rest. The next day is another long trip back to Gwangju.




On Sunday, Seoul was a bit overcast and slight rain so we didn't think much of it. We kept our umbrellas out and made our way to the bus terminal. We used one of those short term lockers to put our bags and headed to Itaewon area for breakfast. It was such a long trip from our hostel to the bus terminal to Itaewon, we didn't have much time to explore. I found a market that sold lime leaves and that's pretty much all we did. Oh and have brunch.

When we got the terminal, it took us a bit of find the right terminal. The terminal we arrived at is the not the terminal we leave to go back to Gwangju. But they are just across from each other, so it wasn't that hard. We finally got our tickets and this time got the extra comfy one. While Neil waited with our bags, I went in search of his favourite drink: Fanta Pineapple. It was hard to find that flavour in Seoul. They had orange, grape and even cherry but no pineapple. I finally found one! When I got back, our coworkers Rob and Carly was also there. They got a bus just 15 minutes behind us so we said our goodbyes as we boarded. thus began our journey home on a 3.5 hour bus ride. It started to rain pretty the closer we got to Gwangju. This should have been a sign :( By the time we got back, it was torrential rain. My umbrella ended up having a hole so I had water dripped on me the entire time. We had to pick up some stuff from E-mart (to make Neil's bday soup) so we didn't take a cab. Also, the cab line up at the bus terminal was massive! We decided to walk. My shoes, bottom half of my clothes and most of my hair was soaked. So was Neil. We were a wet terrible mess. I was not happy. We were not happy. After lugging all our stuff back via the subway, we proceeded to dry ourselves and make dinner.

That night we also discovered something was wrong with our hot water tank and we did not have hot water for three days :( We ended up showering with boiled water from a pot. It reminded me of when I first went to China as a child. I didn't think I'd have to do that anymore. After three days, we got an unexpected knock/ring at 10am. Good thing we were already up and having breakfast (and dressed!). It was someone from school to help us with the hot water tank. He also got some plumbers to come by too. It was too early for me to put my makeup on so yeah...that was a bit of a gong show. But by the time everyone left, we had hot water again! Yay!

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