Exploring Seoul Day 3 - Seoul City Wall, Hospitals and Underground Shopping

While preparing for the trip, I realised that the city of Seoul has free walking tours for quite a few places. Since we really like walking tours and the tours are conducted by local volunteers, we thought they should be better than those free walking tours typically conducted by students on exchange programs. Our first tour was of Naksan Rampart, we met our guide at Dongdaemun station where there were two other tourists. We made some small talk and off we went.

Some of the homes along the wall

The view of Seoul city from along the wall

Our guide gave us a brief explanation of the Dongdaemun gate (which I have sadly forgotten) and then we headed off to the Seoul City Wall. Our guide didn't talk much or shared much history about the city wall, so we just walked and walked. I think his English wasn't that good, perhaps if all of us understood Korean we might have had a better tour. We did walk past the Ihwa Mural Village, which was pretty arty and cool. That was probably the highlight of the tour since our guide didn't tell us much about the history of various places throughout our tour or the significance of any of the places to South Korea's history.

Pretty flowers and some arty cute stuff

After the tour ended, we had a quick lunch and found ourselves nearby Seoul National University Hospital. As CS was still sick we thought we might as well go see a doctor so he can get some medicine and get better soon. We went to the Outpatient section first but the staff directed us to the International Healthcare Centre instead as only they had staff who could speak English. Surprisingly there were a lot of Russians there, I guess Russia is pretty nearby and if you want better healthcare than what the motherland can offer, Seoul is the nearest place to go. We ended up not seeing a doctor there as the next appointment was only available 1 hour later. We headed back to our hotel and ended up at another hospital where we only had to wait about 30 minutes. The doctor was quite pleasant and we got our medication without much fuss. The interesting thing for me was that the medicine was packed into individual servings instead of by type as we do in Singapore and Thailand. All the medicine you need to take for that one time is packed together. I suppose there are pros and cons for this as you won't forget to take any medicine, on the other hand if u want to stop taking a certain pill, u can only throw it away.

We headed back to our hotel so CS could catch a short nap and I could rest my aching legs. Since my shoes were killing me, we thought we could go buy some new shoes. I also wanted to check out the underground shopping near the Express Bus Terminal. We went to New Core Outlet which was nearby and located in a rather residential area. We managed to find hiking shoes which met our requirements, but the sales staff couldn't speak English at all. We got by with a mixture of sign language and pointing. The sales staff was really wonderful though and after much running around as she couldn't find our size, we managed to get it sorted in the end. I also bought a pair of Converse sneakers there. After getting our shoes, we headed to the underground shopping at the Express Bus Terminal. I must say I was thoroughly impressed by it. We started at one end and couldn't see where the shops ended, it was like an underground Chatuchak but without the heat. They sold almost everything from household items like curtains, bedsheets etc to clothes, bags, shoes, cosmetics and anything else you could possibly think so. If not for the fact that we were rather tired and wanted to rest early, I would have wanted to explore further. It is definitely a place that I would go back to again if I ever go back to Seoul.

bye bye hiking shoes, you have served us well

Exploring Seoul Day 2 - Back to school, fried chicken and failed Namdaemun attempt

On our second day, we decided to pretend to be young again and checked out the Ewha Women's University and Hongik University area. As the shops are targeted at university students, prices were cheaper than what we saw in the Myeongdong area.

 

I read about this egg biscuit (?) on some blog so I wanted to try it. It was good but not mindblowing.

The first stop was the Ewha Women's University grounds. There were heaps of tourists there taking photographs and selfies. I must say the grounds were really quite gorgeous and I can understand why so many tourists flock there to take photographs. As it was almost spring, there were many flowers in bloom which made a lovely backdrop for all the selfies people were taking.

 

After doing our touristy thing of taking heaps of photographs, we explored the shops which was our main aim after all. I must say I was quite taken aback at how affordable shopping in Seoul was. Most of the items were very cheap and of rather good quality. Since we were around the women's university, naturally the shops were very much catered to females. Clothes, bag, shoes, skincare, cosmetics etc were all concentrated within easy walking distance of the university. Getting a haircut was also relatively cheap, the prices I saw were around SGD20-40 which is really quite reasonable. 

After a quick lunch, we headed to Hongik University which was just a short MRT ride away. The area around Hongik was a lot more bustling than Ewha. After walking about 500m from the MRT, we found some youngsters street dancing and there were a lot more people walking around. There was a guy performing a magic trick which we stopped to look for a while. We wanted to give him some money but it didn't seem as if he was busking. There was no place to put any money and we left after a short while. We spotted a Hello Kitty cafe and met our one and only rude person in our Seoul trip. We were walking and I saw this man walking towards us, since I wanted to avoid colliding into him, I moved to the side but who knew, he came walking straight at me and banged my shoulder really hard. It seemed like he was deliberately doing this cos seconds later, he walked straight into another guy and that guy shouted at him. For a minute I thought they were going to fight but in the end nothing happened, phew...

After that, we walked around a bit more then had an early dinner of fried chicken. I was actually expecting to see many chains selling fried chicken but we couldn't seem to find them. We settled for Kyochon and as expected the portion was just too much for us to finish. I really wonder how do the Koreans eat the fried chicken when the stores don't seem to sell any portions meant for singles. In the end we had packed the remaining portion to eat at our hotel.

Crazy portion which is more than enough  for the two of us. We didn't eat this though. 

As CS wasn't feeling too well, we decided that he should go back to the hotel while I explore Namdaemun alone. My research was obviously faulty cos when I reached there, I realised that the shops were closing. Later I found out that Namdaemun was more of a morning market, in any case it did not seemed like a place where I would go mad shopping for stuff so I didn't really miss much. Instead I stumbled onto some underground shopping and bought a lovely dress for 20,000KRW which is really quite cheap.

While Namdaemun was a bit of a disappointment, Ehwa and Hongik were pleasant surprises. We had an early night as I had booked a walking tour with the Visit Seoul for the next day. All in all, it was a rather good second day in Seoul.