Stealing the Seoul of South Korea! Part 3

 I don't f---ing believe it!  The Adventures of Pan Laoshi reached 5000 hits!  How fitting that I'm actually traveling while this happened.  Hen hao!  Shingihada! 

South Korea, Day 3


Day 3 was straight up shopping.  Sue couldn't hang out until the evening.  In the morning, my Korean home stay "Mama" made me some sort of Korean jiaozi soup.  It was pretty good.

Mama woke me up to have breakfast.

After, I went to the Gwangjang Market.  The area was devoid of foreigners and tourists, or at least appeared that way.  I think I saw about 3 or 4 Chinese and a group of Filipinas.  That's it.  Sue sent me to an area not trampled by zombied just-out-of-college expat English "teachers."  Awesome.

I followed a young looking crowd upstairs to an area that was pretty sweet. The area had a whole lot of trendy, fashionable clothes for cheap.  Some were name brands, but most were not.  From what I gathered, it was an area for fakes and cheap custom-made stuff. Looked for a nice casual winter coat, but to no avail.

Cheonggye Stream cuts through downtown

Walking down the Cheonggye Stream for about 2 km, I made a quick stop at a Dunkin' Donuts before going to Lotte Mall.  Lotte was pretty upscale, but what it did have that made me turn my head towards it was 3 floors of discounted duty free.  Initially, I just wanted a coat.  In a moment of weakness, I got myself a watch.  Let's just say it was a present to myself for the rest of the year...I'll leave it at that.

In the evening, I met up with Sue to do what most foreigners come to Seoul for...shopping for cheap and good quality skin care cosmetics.  Feeling guilty over how much I spent for a piece of metal around my wrist, I wanted to get Cathy some nice skin products.  This involved walking into really girly girl stores.  Sue helped me out, having a consumer discount card.  We even ended up phoning Cathy from inside an Etude House to find out what she wanted.  As you can see, I got into the spirit of things...I mean, why fight it?

Paul the cute Asian hearts you.

Sue and I went to pick up her boyfriend from the subway station. His name is Kwangseok.  What a cool guy!  He and Sue brought me to a really great place where they served makgeoli (milky alcoholic cocktail-ish beverage) and dubu kimchi (tofu kimchi).  What an awesome pairing!  I wouldn't try this stuff if it wasn't for them.  The menu was not only written all in Hangul, but I was told going into restaurants alone in Seoul was a faux-pas.

Makgeoli

Dubu kimchi

I had a really great time with them and got to know a bit more about Kwangseok.  A friend of Sue is definitely a friend of mine.  Before we parted ways for the evening, we discussed the plans for the next day...