On Monday, little sis and I left for Seoul just for a couple of days. By the time we arrived in Seoul, it was already evening. We went straight to "check-in", we weren't staying at a hotel this time because we were on a budget. So we tried to do a home-stay via airbnb, we found a pretty cheap place to stay hosted by an old married couple.
After putting down my stuff, we went to Yeongdeungpo Station to meet up with little sis's friend who was going to bring us for dinner. We went to a shopping mall called Times Square and had Andong Jjimdak for dinner. It's mostly steamed chicken in Korean soy sauce but the one we had was mixed with various vegetables, prawn, noodles, dumplings and a ton of stuff I can't really remember now but it's soooooooooooo good. I probably ate too much.
After dinner we didn't do anything much but let her friend show us around Yeongdeungpo and went home not long after because we were too tired from not sleeping much from the previous night.
16th September 2014,
Tuesday, we got up pretty early and the old lady we were staying with made us breakfast. I was so happy to have a home-cooked meal again! After breakfast, we went to meet up with little's sis friend for lunch and we had various kinds of food, I don't even know what her friends ordered but it was good. We only met up for lunch because she had classes, so little sis and I made our way to I'Park Mall for the life-size Ghibli exhibition. I know, I know, we came all the way to Korea and are still looking at Japanese things.
At the Ghibli exhibition, we were greeted with Howl's Moving Castle, the castle could actually move. They had the display for Howl's home with Calcifer, Sophie, Markl and Howl. The figures look a little creepy if you ask me.
Next was Princess Mononoke, and the first thing you see when you get into the room is Ashitaka sitting on Yakul. If you look around, you can see little kodamas sitting everywhere, some on the rock, some behind the Great Forest Spirit, there was also a display of San and her wolf family.
After that was Pom Poko, Pom Poko is one of the lesser known Ghibli films and I personally don't fancy it that much as well but the set up was kind of cute. I didn't take much pictures at this part, as you can tell, my lack of interest in Pom Poko, haha. After that was Totoro!
They had a couple of installation pieces and pretty ones of top of it for My Neighbor Totoro, this one as shown is Mei and her sister running towards their home. I personally loved the one that made of Totoro sleeping in the tree. You could only see Totoro through the little cracks and holes of the structure.
And they obviously had to have the structure of Mei and Satsuki standing next to Totoro at the bus stop in the rain.
After Totoro was Porco Rosso, this pig pilot always reminds me of my god-brother-in-law because I gave him a Porco Rosso figurine as a wedding gift a couple of years ago. Yes, his favorite film is Porco Rosso weirdly. I remember one of our first conversations was about Kiki's Delivery Service, he doesn't like famous works of Hayao Miyazaki.
This structure was the exact same figurine I gave him, and if I remember correctly, it was a musical box too. You can twine it and it will play music.
They saved the best for last - Spirited Away. Even though it's Hayao Miyazaki's most famous work and it's unbearably overrated, I love this film all the same. It was the first film I got to see from Ghibli, I was 13 years old and saw it when it opened in Singapore. Back then, I was still an otaku, lol.
I really love this photo little sis took of me, it looks like I'm going into the bathhouse.
I look too happy next to Kaonashi, it's sickening.
After the exhibition, little sis and I made our way down to Hongdae to check out the cafes. Little sis and I ended up going to Piano Cafe for the first cup of coffee.
The coffee wasn't too impressive but the interior was cute. After coffee, we walked around Hongdae where I stumbled upon some art stores and bought some paper. They have the exact brand I want in Seoul that I have been having a hard time finding in Singapore and Japan. The streets actually reminded me of Melbourne.
The sign for Coffee Prison was pretty hilarious, lol.
One thing I miss about Southeast Asia is street food, and Seoul has so many stalls all around. You hardly find it in Japan.
Little sis and I tried this popcorn ice cream and it was so good!
We waited around Hongdae for little sis's friend for supper. In the end we went to a bar to drink, her friend said it was something like an izakaya but mostly girls. I fell in love with Korean rice wine on this night, it's so fucking good and cheap. We ordered two bottles, one with honey and one with red vinegar. I forgot to take photos because I was enjoying the wine too much. We stayed out till about 11pm and headed back. Even with the lack of sleep, both little sis and I barely slept, for some reason, even when we were dead tired, we just couldn't get to sleep.
17th September 2014,
It was the last day in Seoul so we decided to go to Namsan Tower. We got up, had breakfast and took the train to Myeongdong Station and walked to the cable car terminal. The walk was quite tiring as it was up a steep hill and with little sleep, we were both dying.
The view going up the mountain from the cable car was pretty nice.
Once, we got off the cable car, we could smell fried potatoes. There were a couple of stands near the entrance, and even though the fried potatoes smelled so good, little sis and I settled for macaroons and ice cream. After eating, we walked to Namsan Tower and took some photos of the view. We didn't go up the tower.
There was nothing much other than some souvenir shops and restaurants. It was cloudy that day too, so most of the clouds covered the other mountains. Seoul is literally surrounded by mountains, so it was nice to see it from high up. Oh, there was also those locket-couple things that I'm never a fan of and I thought that only existed in Paris? I don't know.
We didn't spend too long up there as well, we still wanted to go to Bukchon Hanok Village which was a traditional Korean village. We got on the train again and got off Anguk Station, it was quite a far walk again to the village.
The traditional houses were really pretty, and it was definitely a nice break from looking at Japanese houses and temples. We took a couple of photos and that was about it. They had several workshops but since we were on budget, we didn't do anything. We just walked around and to our surprise, there were a couple of cute cafes and stores nearby as well. Little sis was happy once again to get her coffee fix. There was even a store that made watches and the workshop is just next to the store, so you could actually look into it. I thought it was pretty interesting.
Just down Bukchon Hanok Village is Samcheongdong. This was the favorite part of the trip. I love how pretty Samcheongdong is and the endless amount of art galleries it has. There were several cafes and interesting stores as well. I would definitely want to go back and spend more time there. Little sis and I went to get some cake and smoothies at Retrona Pie and the cake was soooo goood. Earl Grey chocolate!
They even had moomin!
They had an owl gallery but it was closed. ):
There were chickens running around inside this house!
We hung around Samcheongdong for a couple of hours because there were tons of interesting stores to see and I visited some of the galleries and looked at the art and talked to some of the artists, really made me happy! I also got to look at some people work in progress at one of the galleries, it was really inspiring to be in an art environment again, I really miss it. The next time I am in Seoul, I am definitely coming back here. :)
We left Samcheongdong at about 6 in the evening and met up with little sis's friend up, somewhere high up in the mountain, again for dinner. We had Korean BBQ! and I thought I loved the one in Shin-Okubo already, the one her friend brought us to just made me not want to go to Shin-Okubo anymore, lol. We spent an hour just eating and drinking, and moved on to another bar where the rice wine was only $3 a bottle. We were all getting pretty high from drinking too much, and her friend suggested to go to Karaoke. I'm not a fan of it like I said so many times already but enjoyed myself as all of us sang along Disney songs.
We sang Frozen's Do You Wanna Build A Snowman, Little Mermaid's Part of Your World and a couple more that I can't remember but it was so fun~ The next time I go to Karaoke I'm singing Disney songs. :3 I was surprised when her friend started singing Inuyasha songs as well, I sang with her ^^ Definitely does brings back memories of when I started liking Japan again.
And the Karaoke was also really cheap, only $5. We lost track of time and finally stopped singing at about 12.30am and rushed to take the bus down to the train station. Thankfully, we managed to get on the last train back.
18th September 2014,
The next morning, it was time to head back to Tokyo. Our flight was at 10am, so we got up at 6am and got to the airport by 8am. Little sis is so love with rice wine she bought 3 bottles and I got a big box of cigarettes since it's so cheap in Korea. Only $20 for 10 boxes.
We made it back to Tokyo at 1pm and only got home at about 7pm. After a warm shower, the both of us passed out until the next morning.
I was pretty bummed out that I couldn't meet Su In on this trip, one of my friends from high school that I haven't seen for three years, as she was pregnant. It was near to the due date too, so I told her if it was too much trouble, we shouldn't meet, the baby is more important. Also, the next time I head to Korea, I'll definitely do more research and go to Jeju island as well. This was such a last minute trip, we booked everything only one week before going, that we didn't have much time to plan anything out. I'm surprised I managed to enjoy myself on this trip, definitely puts Seoul in a different light for me.
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