Gangnam and disappointment - Seoul Trip Day 4
24/5 22:00
The urge to yell "honey I'm home" to my empty airbnb when I get back every night is still here. There's two other rooms but I don't know how popular this place or time is for other tourists so they're empty for now. I'm really hoping someone else stays here too so I can have someone to at least pretend to be my friend, though I'm appreciating the solitude that means I can cook noodles wearing just a long t-shirt.
Moving swiftly on, today I went to Gangnam! I fell asleep around 4am and got up at 2pm which is an improvement from yesterday. Got ready and went out the door, this time wiser about which direction to head in. I felt confident walking down the street with my earphones in, blending as much as I could and then I realised that the small piece of paper hitting the back of my leg was in fact the tag still attached to my skirt. Honestly all I could do was laugh as I removed the tag and continued on my way. I hope at least someone found some joy in watching me be a fool. The trip to Gangnam was easy enough with only one change on the subway. The second leg of the journey was longer and there was an old man on the subway that kept staring at me. The young guy next to me was also falling asleep and kept leaning on me and then jolting awake, repeat ad infinitum.
Arriving in Gangnam I saw the reason for my visit immediately: The Starfield Coex Mall. It's the largest underground shopping centre in Korea. I wasn't sure how expensive it was going to be because this is Gangnam after all, but it turned out to have lots of different price-ranged stores inside.
I walked around a lot and found cool stores with lots of different things. I'm being vague because I bought a lot of souvenirs today and no way am I going to spoil those here! For myself however I picked up a moisturiser (a specific Korean brand I had ordered to Edinburgh before, only sold at select locations in Korea), some weird postcards and a T-shirt. Oh, and a clear vinyl plastic bag/purse/tote because it looks just like the kind of funny but also kind of cool item that I like using in my day to day life.
I was getting quite hungry after shopping and walked to the food court area of the mall. Since everything is in Korean besides names of dishes I have to go by photos to see if there's any meat-free meals in any restaurants. I was adamant on going somewhere Korean today and facing my fears. I found a restaurant that showed a ramen dish that seemed to be meat free, but I wasn't sure how spicy it was. Because this is the kind of thing my brain gets nervous about I sat on the bench across from the restaurant on my phone for a while but ended up leaving because I was too nervous to go in. Something about having to deal with eating alone and the language and the spice was just too much. I walked along the hallway further and further until I hit a dead end. There was a small restaurant there, and according to the sign it specialised in Korean porridge foods. I looked over the menu and lo and behold they had kimchi fried rice! Kimchi fried rice is something I've been wanting to have here so I went in. There was only two other people there so I just walked in, asked if I could sit down and chose the furthest corner. I ordered and soon enough had my meal in front of me! My level of Korean is at the point where I understand a bit but am too afraid to speak, so I just say thank you in Korean usually. Today however as I paid I told the lady that it was delicious! I felt way too proud of myself, but as someone who has grown up bilingual I have very little experience of using an actual foreign language out loud so this was a big thing.
After eating I decided to visit the SM Artium, which is a 5 storey building dedicated to SM Entertainment which is one of the big three entertainment companies in Korea. They own groups like EXO, SHINEE and Red Velvet. I'm not a huge fan of any other groups from SM except Red Velvet but it was worth a visit anyway. They had a lot of odd merchandise like health nuts, gourmet popcorn and coasters. The cafe part of the gift shop was lovely though, with lots of different sweets and drinks.
So, after getting out of the SM-museum I decided I wanted to go to the Moomin Cafe, because it was in a nearby area and I'm not planning on going to Gangnam again as it is very very posh and expensive and I am on a budget. Turns out nearby meant a 50 minute walk, which knowing my sense of direction was going to be at least an hour an a half so I opted for the subway. Again, a bit of fiddling around on different apps was required because the Apple maps won't accept location names only addresses, Google maps will identify an address but not show instructions on how to get there and the subway app only deals in subway station names. A lot of copying, pasting and zooming into maps was done to find the nearest subway station. Finally, a route in hand I headed to the subway. I got there in one piece though it was my first experience of a really full subway car. The walk down to the cafe was easy enough as the streets were really empty. Instead of a lot of little shops like in Myeongdong, this area of Gangnam was all large towering buildings and establishments so there was less to sift through. Finally, I saw the cafe! It looked a bit dark inside so I walked closer, and, to my horror it was closed. I was sure I'd checked the opening times several times, and then I walked closer and saw the sign: FOR LEASE. So, after some research I've just done on their website turns out they moved out of that location on the 13th of May. This was in no way on their Facebook page or on their Google page (I've reported it as having moved now so no other poor excited tourist makes the trek for nothing) which is a bit frustrating. I ate my feelings at a nearby Paris Baguette with a Strawberry Latte (contrary to popular belief it does not contain coffee and is just ice, milk and strawberries).
Then, the usual subway home and convenience store stop for evening/morning snacks. The more I walk around the area I'm staying in the more I notice details about the shops and cafe's. There's a specialist gelato place that does "organic shakes" and a soft-serve ice cream shop that serves in halved croissants instead of a cone. Weirdly enough, a super popular coffee place with a Mexican Wrestling theme is also a feature of this area. I keep seeing a sign for a cat cafe near the airbnb, I might go and investigate tomorrow...after all, cats don't speak English or Korean so I should be fine.
As always thank you for reading!
Cheers,
Becks
The urge to yell "honey I'm home" to my empty airbnb when I get back every night is still here. There's two other rooms but I don't know how popular this place or time is for other tourists so they're empty for now. I'm really hoping someone else stays here too so I can have someone to at least pretend to be my friend, though I'm appreciating the solitude that means I can cook noodles wearing just a long t-shirt.
Moving swiftly on, today I went to Gangnam! I fell asleep around 4am and got up at 2pm which is an improvement from yesterday. Got ready and went out the door, this time wiser about which direction to head in. I felt confident walking down the street with my earphones in, blending as much as I could and then I realised that the small piece of paper hitting the back of my leg was in fact the tag still attached to my skirt. Honestly all I could do was laugh as I removed the tag and continued on my way. I hope at least someone found some joy in watching me be a fool. The trip to Gangnam was easy enough with only one change on the subway. The second leg of the journey was longer and there was an old man on the subway that kept staring at me. The young guy next to me was also falling asleep and kept leaning on me and then jolting awake, repeat ad infinitum.
Arriving in Gangnam I saw the reason for my visit immediately: The Starfield Coex Mall. It's the largest underground shopping centre in Korea. I wasn't sure how expensive it was going to be because this is Gangnam after all, but it turned out to have lots of different price-ranged stores inside.
I walked around a lot and found cool stores with lots of different things. I'm being vague because I bought a lot of souvenirs today and no way am I going to spoil those here! For myself however I picked up a moisturiser (a specific Korean brand I had ordered to Edinburgh before, only sold at select locations in Korea), some weird postcards and a T-shirt. Oh, and a clear vinyl plastic bag/purse/tote because it looks just like the kind of funny but also kind of cool item that I like using in my day to day life.
I was getting quite hungry after shopping and walked to the food court area of the mall. Since everything is in Korean besides names of dishes I have to go by photos to see if there's any meat-free meals in any restaurants. I was adamant on going somewhere Korean today and facing my fears. I found a restaurant that showed a ramen dish that seemed to be meat free, but I wasn't sure how spicy it was. Because this is the kind of thing my brain gets nervous about I sat on the bench across from the restaurant on my phone for a while but ended up leaving because I was too nervous to go in. Something about having to deal with eating alone and the language and the spice was just too much. I walked along the hallway further and further until I hit a dead end. There was a small restaurant there, and according to the sign it specialised in Korean porridge foods. I looked over the menu and lo and behold they had kimchi fried rice! Kimchi fried rice is something I've been wanting to have here so I went in. There was only two other people there so I just walked in, asked if I could sit down and chose the furthest corner. I ordered and soon enough had my meal in front of me! My level of Korean is at the point where I understand a bit but am too afraid to speak, so I just say thank you in Korean usually. Today however as I paid I told the lady that it was delicious! I felt way too proud of myself, but as someone who has grown up bilingual I have very little experience of using an actual foreign language out loud so this was a big thing.
After eating I decided to visit the SM Artium, which is a 5 storey building dedicated to SM Entertainment which is one of the big three entertainment companies in Korea. They own groups like EXO, SHINEE and Red Velvet. I'm not a huge fan of any other groups from SM except Red Velvet but it was worth a visit anyway. They had a lot of odd merchandise like health nuts, gourmet popcorn and coasters. The cafe part of the gift shop was lovely though, with lots of different sweets and drinks.
So, after getting out of the SM-museum I decided I wanted to go to the Moomin Cafe, because it was in a nearby area and I'm not planning on going to Gangnam again as it is very very posh and expensive and I am on a budget. Turns out nearby meant a 50 minute walk, which knowing my sense of direction was going to be at least an hour an a half so I opted for the subway. Again, a bit of fiddling around on different apps was required because the Apple maps won't accept location names only addresses, Google maps will identify an address but not show instructions on how to get there and the subway app only deals in subway station names. A lot of copying, pasting and zooming into maps was done to find the nearest subway station. Finally, a route in hand I headed to the subway. I got there in one piece though it was my first experience of a really full subway car. The walk down to the cafe was easy enough as the streets were really empty. Instead of a lot of little shops like in Myeongdong, this area of Gangnam was all large towering buildings and establishments so there was less to sift through. Finally, I saw the cafe! It looked a bit dark inside so I walked closer, and, to my horror it was closed. I was sure I'd checked the opening times several times, and then I walked closer and saw the sign: FOR LEASE. So, after some research I've just done on their website turns out they moved out of that location on the 13th of May. This was in no way on their Facebook page or on their Google page (I've reported it as having moved now so no other poor excited tourist makes the trek for nothing) which is a bit frustrating. I ate my feelings at a nearby Paris Baguette with a Strawberry Latte (contrary to popular belief it does not contain coffee and is just ice, milk and strawberries).
Then, the usual subway home and convenience store stop for evening/morning snacks. The more I walk around the area I'm staying in the more I notice details about the shops and cafe's. There's a specialist gelato place that does "organic shakes" and a soft-serve ice cream shop that serves in halved croissants instead of a cone. Weirdly enough, a super popular coffee place with a Mexican Wrestling theme is also a feature of this area. I keep seeing a sign for a cat cafe near the airbnb, I might go and investigate tomorrow...after all, cats don't speak English or Korean so I should be fine.
As always thank you for reading!
Cheers,
Becks
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