Exploring Seoul Day 5 and Taipei Day 1 - Hiso food courts, revamped airports

On our last day in Seoul, we didn't do much other than walking around Myeongdong and trying to get our tax free claims processed. There are 3 different companies doing tax refunds in cash/ credit cards in South Korea so you do need to check where to go. Luckily Myeongdong has all 3 companies but you do end up walking around quite a fair bit. Make sure to bring your passport, your credit card and all the receipts. The credit card is required as you need to drop off your receipts at the airport, the process was relatively pain-free and all the staff were unfailingly polite. We opted for cash refund as we were running low on Korean won and didn't want to change any more money as we were leaving for Taipei. 

 I did finally try the super long soft serve ice cream. Didn't finish it though, was just too much to eat. 

After receiving all our cash refunds, we headed to Shinsegae to stare at expensive stuff we can't afford. On our way there, I spotted a coffee shop selling red ginseng latte, the flavour sounded so interesting I just had to try it. The taste was interesting and while I wouldn't drink it again, it was definitely worth a try. We walked around the basement of Shinsegae and just stared at all the expensive things on offer. As we were there around lunch time, the food court was ridiculously crowded. I saw a queue for the gimbap and being Singaporean decided that the food must be good and bought a beef gimbap to go. My instincts proved correct when I ate it later at the airport lounge. It was seriously mouth-watering, one of my better meals in Seoul. 

At the airport, though we already got our cash refunds, we still needed to drop off our receipts at the various tax refund companies so they can process our claims. Failure to do this means that your credit card would be charged with the cash amount which has been given to you. Though I read that there will be long queues for this, in reality there was no queue at all. I think there must have been a huge influx of tourists so now they have many counters opened to cater for this. As we still had some money left over, I went walked around the duty free shops to take a look. Strangely enough all the prices were listed in USD instead of KRW. I wanted to spend the remaining KRW I had so I asked the staff what I could buy with the amount I had. Sadly, the staff were not very helpful and I had to work out what I could buy by myself. In the end I bought some toiletries and had only a few coins remaining. Buying toiletries in town was a lot better as you get a lot more freebies. Shopping at the airport is recommended only if you need to finish spending your KRW. 

After a short flight of about 2 hours, we landed in Taipei Taoyuan Airport. I last went to Taipei 10 years ago with my mum and aunt. The airport has upgraded since then with a lot more shops. We were quite exhausted when we arrived so we quickly got on a bus. The Freego bus apparently stops by a certain time so we took the Kuokuang bus to Taipei Main Station instead. From there we took the MRT to Ximending to our hotel. Strangely enough, the Taipei Main Station MRT does not sell the pre-paid card which is refundable, so we had to buy a single ticket and then buy the pre-paid refundable one from Ximending station. After all that, we finally arrived at our hotel (which was also in a commercial building). After a short rest, we went out to walk around Ximending. I seem to remember there were more roadside stalls when I was there 10 years back. We also found out that the stalls are not permanent, they have to keep moving around to avoid the police. It's so tough to make a living like that. I managed to locate Ah Zhong Mee Sua and promptly bought a bowl to share with CS, sadly it did not taste as good as what I remembered. There was a huge crowd queuing outside the Nike store nearby, probably for some limited edition sneaker. We never did manage to find out what it was for though. As we were worn out from the traveling, we decided to have an early night after filling our stomachs.

My favourite thing in Taiwan, tea leaf eggs which are found EVERYWHERE!

Exploring Seoul Day 4 - Of hanoks and closed shopping malls

For our second walking tour, we booked the a tour of the Bukchon Hanok Village. I think this place does not require an introduction since almost all the Korea tourist brochures feature shots of this place. We met our guide at Unhyeongung where we found the rest of our tour mates. This tour was much better than our tour the previous day. Our guide was absolutely wonderful and gave us a very good overview of the traditional Korean houses and why they were built this way. She also shared some personal history since her father is originally from the North. I think the psyche of the Koreans is something outsiders really can't understand if you don't have relatives stuck in a place which is so near yet so far. 

We spent quite a bit of time at Unhyeongung, since the Bukchon area was made up of mainly private homes and you can't just enter the houses to take a look. While there were visitors it was really just a handful of people so we could really take our time looking at the sights and taking photos. I would highly recommend you to book the Seoul City Tour for this place. When we finally made it to Bukchon, it was overrun with tourists as expected. Luckily our tour was on a weekday so while it was crowded, a weekend crowd would have been worse as even the locals also go to Bukchon now. As you walk around you will actually notice that a lot of the doors/ gates have notices which tell tourists not to knock or peer into the houses since people are still living there. Our guide was telling us that some people have actually moved out as they couldn't get a good rest cos of all the crowds.

Some clear shots of Bukchon without the crowds

Can you see the noticed on the door? It tells you not to knock or peep into the house

After our tour, we walked around the area for a bit and found a lonely Totoro enjoying the sun.

Since it was our second last day, we decided to venture to Dongdaemun to take a look at the supposedly massive shopping that goes on there. It was however a failed plan. When we went there, NOTHING was opened. I have no idea why but ALL the shops were closed and it looked like a dead town. There was one shopping mall which was opened but I was really looking forward to the wholesale shops. I wasn't expecting to shop up a storm in Dongdaemun but I was disappointed that we missed the buzz of the place. Instead, we went back to Myeongdong and wandered around soaking up the atmosphere. 

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.

Exploring Seoul Day 1 - Ginseng Chicken, Hanboks, Strawberries and Shopping

After moving to Bangkok, we haven't had a proper overseas holiday, with most of our holidays within Thailand. As most of our overseas holidays were tied to CS's work trips, he could never really enjoy them properly. We decided to treat ourselves to a proper overseas holiday and chose Seoul and Taipei since we've always talked about visiting these two places but somehow those plans never materialised. 

We arrived in Seoul bright and early after a late night flight. It was a nightmare clearing immigration  with only a small number of counters opened. For a country which is pushing for tourism, you would think that there would be more counters opened. Once we cleared immigration, it was off to find an airport bus to take us to our hotel. We had chosen to stay in Myeongdong since it is apparently the best place to stay for tourists. We didn't choose to stay in any hanoks (of which there are plenty, and also easily found through hotel booking sites such as Expedia and Agoda) since we were not interested in that. Locating the airport bus counter was a breeze and after buying our tickets, we waited inside the airport as it was just too cold to stand out in the cold. Surprisingly we found a Gong Cha in the airport, and over the next few days, we came to realise that Gong Cha was everywhere in Seoul. 

The bus to Myeongdong took over an hour and we took the opportunity to catch up on sleep. The bus had a recording which tells you which stop it's at but sometimes the timing is a bit off so you do need to take note of your surroundings. 

We booked a room at Ekonomy Hotel Central Myeongdong but since they had two branches at Myeongdong, we got confused and got off at the wrong stop and went to the wrong one.  The staff was rather friendly and told us where our hotel was located, and after a short walk we reached our hotel. Interestingly, both hotels were in a commercial building. The building we were in also had a restaurant which seemed rather popular. We never seemed to see any office workers whenever we went out, which made me wonder what time they start and end work. As we didn't have any Korean won with us, we also sorted out our money exchange in Myeongdong which seemed to have a currency exchange every 10 steps. The area around the China embassy seemed to have the best rates. If you can't find it, just walk around a bit and compare prices, the moneychangers were relatively competitive. 

After leaving our luggage in the hotel, we headed off for some ginseng chicken as we haven't eaten anything since touching down in Seoul. We headed for the one restaurant which every guidebook seems to recommend, Tosokchon Samgyetang, and found out that it's even listed on the map at the MRT station. Since we were really early, there was no queue and we were seated as soon as we arrived. Just as we were hesitating over how to order, a waitress appeared and asked if we understood Chinese, she then handed us a menu and proceeded to tell us the kimchi is free flow, the portion is for one person etc etc. Over our next few days in Seoul, we realised that there were many Chinese working in Seoul, every time we were confused on what to do in a restaurant, there would be a Chinese waitress who pops up and tells us what to do. After we ordered our food, other guests started streaming in. I think this restaurant is in every guidebook in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia as we were surrounded by tourists from these countries. As the weather was rather cold, it was quite pleasant to eat something warm and soothing, however I felt the soup was a bit too thick and since the chicken was stuffed with glutinous rice, I found it impossible to finish everything. While I really love drinking soups (it's the Chinese in me), I didn't find this particular ginseng chicken mind blowing. 

interior of Tosokchon Samgyetang and its menu

After stuffing our stomachs, we decided to head to Gyeongbok Palace to see if we could catch the free guided tours there. We were walking there when we got distracted by fresh strawberries at the grocer. Obviously we had to stop and buy them! They were every bit as delicious as expected. 

When we reached Gyeongbok Palace we realised we had missed the free guided tours so we decided to just buy tickets and wander around the palace ourselves. There were many Korean girls as well as tourists who wore hanboks and wandered around taking photographs. The palace seem to rent out the hanboks but I think many of the Koreans actually came wearing their own hanboks. Some of the hanboks were a little too short and didn't look as lovely whereas some were modernised in a really trendy way.  Since we didn't have a guide, we did get quite bored rather quickly. I had initially thought that the palace grounds were quite small but they turned out to be bigger than expected. We did try to eavesdrop on what other tour groups were saying but since there were so many of them, the information just got drowned out.

 view of the palace

a building in the palace which was out of bounds to visitors

As we were rather tired out from the flight, we decided to head back for a short rest before venturing out for the evening. After a short rest, we went out in the evening to explore Myeongdong. It was really bustling and full of people. For tourists like us who are in Seoul for the first time, I do think it was the best place to stay. There were many restaurants, shops etc which makes walking around rather fun.

obligatory bingsu shot

I did pity the sales assistants who were outside the shops trying to pull in customers, since the weather was rather chilly. There is a Face Shop, Innisfree, Nature Republic etc every few steps away and I'm quite sure their sales targets must be very high since there are so many tourists staying there. As per my usual practice, we went to the 7-11 opposite our hotel so I can see what snacks they sell. I was totally amazed by how cheap the soju and makgeolli was. One bottle of soju was only 1000plus won? Only SGD1plus! It was the same price for makgeolli! No wonder they drink so much, it's so cheap! We bought a sakura soju to try, and it was quite yummy, not as rough as the normal soju. All in all it was a rather good first start to Seoul.