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.