the second day started with apgujeong, where my dear's kyochon branch is at. when we arrived at apgujeong, we had our first meal in korea -- ramyeon!! qiaoyan had hers with cheese while candy and i had ours with mandu.
yummy....
one thing i like about eating in korean is that they give you plain water for free. unlike some places in singapore, where they INSIST that you don't get iced water... not even when you have ordered food. arghz. talk about bad service.
after eating, we walked to find this princess hotel because kyochon is directly facing it. and after much difficulty.. we finally found it!!!
finally there!! the kyochon store endorsed by my dear and co!! i love the interior..
clean and crisp.. the whole place was in orange and white. i liked it the moment i went in.. of course, the fact that my dear's love of may was playing when we entered helped. not much people there when we arrived.. only a couple and several obvious shinhwa fans. why would i know? because they are from hongkong. hahaha.
there were pictures of them hanging all over and video walls that were playing their videos and concert footages. what's interesting are the tables that had their stuffs in them.. ranging from photos to cd albums to cards and pictures. ahhh.. i think it's pure bliss to work in there!! (although i eventually heard tvxq's tonight through the radio lol)
bad move though.. to have had our lunch before this. because we were so full, none of us were able to eat somemore. but how could i, who is so in love with my dear, leave his store without eating its signature food! therefore, i went on to order a set of wings, despite escalating weight, to show support for my dear.
finally i'm eating some chicken!
good thing is, the chicken wings were pretty small... candy, in a show of good faith, helped me with some of it while qiaoyan left me in the lurch (no i'm kidding.. but she did not eat any really). the set comes with some pickled... i don't know what's that... radish? in any case, it's sort of like a good appetizer. the chicken though... hmmz. how should i say it? it's good, seriously it's good. but it tastes like... roasted duck. okay i know that sounds weird and is totally irrelevant but i swear it tastes like roasted duck. i think it's the spices. but still it's pretty good to go and thus even though i was mad full, i finished like half of it.
after saying goodbye to this lovely place, we made our way to the coex mall where we were supposed to meet up with nellie and yuenling to tour the aquarium. we were late (sorry girls!) partly because i finally caught sight of a cd store and rushed in to buy my dear and co's 8th album, state of the art. i was pretty rushed because i was afraid that the posters would be out of stock if i bought them too late so i was lucky to get them at coex.
despite our original plan to tour the aquarium, the three of us ended up not going in instead because we realized that .. gasp.. the entrance fee is mad. and also, the two of them were more interested to shop instead. so i called nel and told her to meet us when she's done. eventually qiaoyan and candy each bought a jigsaw puzzle and a chain puzzle (is that how you call it?). nel and yuenling took a while to come out and meet us because the latter got lost in the aquarium and nel had to spend some time looking for her.
we agreed to meet at jonggak for dinner later that evening. they left and the three of us made our way to lotte world. not interested in the theme park rides, we only wanted to take pictures of the magic castle with its lights on... but little did we expect that the sky would still be so bright at 7 in the evening.
would have been prettier if it was in lights...
we gave up on waiting for it and made our way to jonggak to meet the gals.. what a long way.. before that, qiaoyan had her nails airbrushed. i think it's quite a good idea to do that. fast and cheap..
on our way to jonggak...
finally we met up with nel and yuenling. we took a while to find our way to the famous eating house featured in my name is kim samsoon.. but thanks to this ajusshi and a young pretty lady, we finally found our way there. the crew, esp. this old lady seems pretty excited to find out that we're from singapore. however, eventually ... i found myself unable to share her excitement.
beef tripe soup... does that beef blood? because even if it doesn't mean that.. whatever that was in my bowl looked like it. i think nel was even more grossed out because she didn't take beef and could only eat the pancakes. but trust me, even the pancakes were no good. the pajeon was plainly.. fried oyster eggs. i was mad disappointed because i could understand why i didn't touch the beef thing (i believe it's good but it's for the korean palates) but no.... not the pajeon!!!
after this (disappointing) dinner, we made our way back to myeongdong. it was nel and yuenling's last night in seoul and they haven't been to the seoul tower yet. although the three of us were mad tired and our legs were dying, we decided to go with them too. nel had to lug this case of pears which she bought earlier from a vendor off the streets. i swear no one should attempt to walk from myeongdong station to the cable car station with a time limit to meet. it will just kill you. well.. it nearly killed me!
the cable car station, by the time we reached was already pretty deserted and to our despair, we had to come back in twenty minutes time! that meant we would not be able to ascend the seoul tower itself!!!
okada sensei.. i finally understand what you're talking about when you say it's a million-dollar nightscene.
but it's waste that we couldn't ascend the tower anymore because it was closed but still we had some good time taking pictures by the side, which was high enough to have the seoul city as our backdrop!
you can't see much from here though. haha
after we got back to the hotel, i met up with nel and yuenling to make our way to dongdaemun where i knew i had to get a good pair of shoes so that i could last the whole trip.. my shoes were killing my feet!! dongdaemun is a war zone on a weekend night... motorcycles behind you all the time, people pushing and threatening to step on your head... we could hardly move around without getting horned at.
we walked around for maybe two hours... and i still could not find a good pair of shoes. i slept without saying goodbye to nel and yuenling because i was simply toooo tired...
the next day would have me meeting my dear finally...
ahhhhh..
listening to: shinhwa -- highway star
whatever you want here
