Seoul Trip, Part One (서울 여행, 파트 하나)
It is very, very strange to think that a trip we planned and looked forward to for so long is now over and done with. O.o Also, writing this up was weird because my perception of time when this was all happening was skewed, due to the fact that we were packing so much in every day. Events that seemed to happen “awhile ago” was only the day before, etc. Also, since there’s zero chance in hell this whole trip would fit into one LJ entry, I’m just going to write up a few days at a time and post incrementally. Hopefully that’ll also encourage me to write this up quickly and finish it!
Thursday, July 25 (Pacific daylight saving time) + Friday, July 26 (Korea standard time)
Hot on the heels of a work trip to Las Vegas came the trip to Seoul. (I flew back from Vegas on July 18, so there was only a week in between! And of course, Vegas was right on the heels of my trips to LA and Oakland for the two GOT7 concerts... which I also still have to write up.) I was both looking forward to Seoul and dreading it, because I knew from research and other people's anecdotes (in the past and from
adelagia, who was there currently) that it was super hot and humid. And if there's something I can't take these days, it's heat. I get overheated very easily, and while Vegas temps reached 112°F, it didn't feel that hot even outside because of the lack of humidity. Seoul, however, was going to be another matter, and I feared if I was going to be able to take it.
I had grappled long and hard about whether to splurge on Delta One/Korean business class, which cost about $3500. (It might've gone as low as $3000 when I was looking, can't remember now.) I ultimately decided against it, because it was more than double what I would pay for Delta Comfort+, which I had flown on a 9-hour leg earlier this year (Feb) when I went to Barcelona and was able to survive okay with my Kindle and some Chinese novels (this time my reading of choice would be BTS fanfic). The flight to Seoul was 11.5 hours, so just a bit further than what I had managed fine, and I figured the "savings" could be put toward all the shit I was definitely going to buy in South Korea. I think I ended up paying $1250 for my Comfort+ fare.
I packed as lightly as I could. Since we were going to be staying at an Airbnb that had a washing machine in the unit, I packed only about a week's worth of clothes. Extra niceties I might've considered (like my favorite hair dryer, Roku, etc.) I left behind, and I took as few cosmetics and toiletries as I could, figuring I would be buying a lot of that stuff in Seoul, probably right away. The other thing I did was nest my Away Bigger Carry On into my Away Medium, so that I would have a whole extra suitcase in which to put things once I got there. Other than that I carried a backpack and my purse.
TMI ahead: The worst case scenario happened with regard to my period, in that I got it this same day. :/ An 11.5-hour flight on day one of my period? YIKES. Luckily I medicated in time, and recently my periods haven't been quite as heavy as they've been in the past, so I was somehow able to survive the flight despite having the window seat and an aisle companion who slept heavily, so I often felt like I didn't want to disturb him. (I had chosen the window over the aisle - an extremely rare occurrence - thinking I might want to sleep and could use the side of the plane as a head rest; that was, of course, before I knew I was going to have my period on the flight. And for the record, I slept hardly at all.)
I decided to be brave and try the bibimbap offered as a meal option; it wasn't the worst thing in the world, and that's about all I can say for it. We got ice cream, though, and I don't know why it seems extra delicious on a plane, but it was sooooo good. (Ben & Jerry's Americone Dream!) The meal right before we landed, however, was something straight out of an airplane meal nightmare... some sort of rice-cauliflower-cheese wrap thing? I don't know, but it was somehow even more disgusting than I imagined... it ended up being too sweet? Yeah, I don't even know.
Right off the plane I could smell that Asian country smell. I don't know how to describe it, but it was there and noticeable. It's not a bad smell, necessarily, it's just one I associate with being in Hong Kong and the like, a kind of reminder scent. I wouldn't be able to describe it.
The first things I saw/experienced at Incheon: a roaming robot thing as seen in "Where Stars Land," the purpose of which I still don't understand; a fucking Shake Shack; a Paris Croissant (because at Incheon they don't hold with no baguettes); and an army of TV cameras right outside the exit after getting through the final steps of immigration. It was something like out of a drama! I thought maybe they were always camped out there or something, in case someone famous were to show up, but when I KTed Adelagia about it she said that they weren't there when she arrived, so maybe someone famous was about to come! I loitered for a bit, but ultimately didn't care enough to stay and find out since I was tired, warm (I can't say hot because that word is reserved for later use, given what I felt in this moment didn't come close, not that I knew that at the time), and knew I probably didn't have the good luck to run into anyone interesting, it was probably just going to be a politician or something. (Unless I left, in which case it was gonna be BTS. It was damned if I did, damned if I didn't.)
I tried to follow the online directions (which I'd printed) of how to get to Adelagia's Airbnb from Incheon, but there were still points when it was a good thing I had her to consult or I might have veered off to god knows where. Where I got the most confused, however, was at the subway station when I was so close to my destination; I could not tell if I was at the right exit, so Adelagia came and got me. It was a good thing, too, because for some reason the subway exit machine ate my ticket, said something incomprehensible, and refused to let me or my suitcase through. Adelagia went to talk to the subway worker person (I was sooooo impressed she could do so in Korean!!), who basically waved me through the side gate.
As I followed Adelagia to her place, which was conveniently connected to the subway, it seemed, I finally got a good taste of the hot humidity that I was going to have to face daily. It was horrendous. It was the sort of humid that seemed like it should be visible, like walking into a wall of heated air. I quickly collapsed onto her couch under the A/C.
After I had recovered a bit, we talked about some immediate plans; for dinner we were going to have fried chicken (yay!), and tomorrow morning meet up with K to have soufflé pancakes. A was in Busan with his new girlfriend, so I wouldn't see him before he left. I have to say, as lame as he often is, that was probably one of his lamest moves imho, new relationship be damned. I mean, how often are you and your friends in a different country, together? Not, of course, that we are that close, but he certainly acts like we're all very close when he needs something. OK, gonna save my A rant for later.
Walked with Adelagia to Ho Chicken, where we had yummy fried chicken, but that walk was terrible. I could not believe how hot it was, and how disgusting it made me feel the very moment I stepped out of air-conditioned space. It didn't help, of course, that I really only had jeans to wear (I didn't have nice enough shorts to be worn as part of an outfit).
Top: The place where I became stumped following directions, and Adelagia came to rescue me.
I got to try a "wet bathroom" for the first time that night. For those unaware, in many Asian countries (except at hotels), the entire bathroom is waterproof, there's no separate stall or room for the shower, and there's a drain in the floor. The shower head is located somewhere, and you use it like you would any shower, but since there's no separate space for the shower, potentially all the water could go everywhere. It's neither as terrible as it sounds, nor as good as the article I linked to makes it sound, either. There are definitely pros and cons. If I had a wet bathroom that looked like the one in the article's picture, I might be fine with one, because there's enough separation that you wouldn't be getting everything in the bathroom wet, and you could keep things on the counter, have dry towels in the room, probably not accidentally spray your toilet paper, etc. But the two wet bathrooms I experienced in Seoul had the (removable) showerheads located right near the sink, they were small, there were no partitions of any kind, and you really did risk getting all your shit wet if you weren't careful. If you still can’t picture it, here’s a pic of my bathroom from our shared Airbnb, which was near a bustling part of Hongdae, and with three decent-sized bedrooms was probably considered a fairly nice apartment:
Had a nice sleep that night, as I was exhausted from traveling, and the bed was one of those nice latex (I think?) ones that don't have springs in them. It was a comforting reminder of my own bed at home, and I was impressed and hopeful that this was the common type of bed people had in Seoul.
Saturday, July 27
The trip to Innisfree Green Café in Myeongdong was, I’m not gonna lie, horrifying. It was soooo damn hot and humid, and it made absolutely no difference whether you were outside or in the bowels of the subway system. In addition to the stifling heat, you also got the same occasional blast of heavenly a/c (from passing storefronts or from vents) before it was cruelly taken away. I’d never before sweated so much in such a short period of time omg. Everyone carried around these small portable fans, and Adelagia kindly lent me hers before I could buy my own. Outside, it barely made any difference at all - you were basically just blowing hot air around. (I would eventually learn how to maximize a handheld's fan efficacy but this was not that day.)
Met up with K just outside of Innisfree, and it was delightful to see her outside our normal environment, but also like no big deal at all. The café was very modern and nice, though it took me awhile to cool down from being overheated. (It sometimes seemed like, after the first comforting blast of cold after getting into an air-conditioned space, I felt even hotter during those first 10 minutes getting comfortable again, than I felt outside.) We all ordered the soufflé pancakes, which were just as beautiful and delicious as advertised, and I got a “snowy apple tea,” or whatever it was called, which was refreshing and yummy, even though I never did figure out what the foam on top was or what it did other than provide aesthetics.
We roamed around and I tried to appreciate the hustle and bustle of this place that I had been looking forward to visiting for so long, trying to ignore how miserably hot and uncomfortable I felt. BTS was everrryyyywhereeee. Their faces on posters shilling for this or that product, their music blasting from almost every storefront, BT21 stuff all over the place too, etc. It was particularly noticeable in Myeongdong, given that it’s a tourist-heavy place, but we saw their faces in plenty of other locations as well. I couldn’t help but wonder if the oversaturation was getting to the point where backlash against them was going to start (if Korean trends were like American trends), or maybe had already started, because I felt like we were at saturation point. And that would make complete sense, because of course now would be when I’d get into them.
One of the first stops we made was to Eblin, where we walked up the stairs to the third floor (seriously, it’s so fucking hot, why do they have SO MANY STAIRS EVERYWHERE) and I bought several sets of BT21 pajamas, mostly in Tata and Cooky themes, though there was a dark blue Koya set that we were all eyeing because the color was so nice and there was a sleeping Koya on the pocket! (Spoiler alert: I am wearing those PJs as I type this up lolol.) I regretted buying unofficial BT21 PJs on eBay, because they weren’t cheap (cost about the same as the real stuff on sale, which they were!), and were obviously not as nicely made as the real ones, and also did not come in super cute packaging! K cautioned that I should pace myself, and I knew she was right, but I also knew I had a whole suitcase to fill so was feeling confident. This was also the first store where I encountered the shopping tax free situation - either they have a passport scanner and can give you the discount right then and there, or they would print out an extra document that you could bring to the airport and collect your refund later.
Then we went to my first Line Friends store, where I stocked up on a bunch of BT21 things, including stationery and Cooky and Tata portable fans, a Cooky umbrella, etc. Adelagia, who is a shameless enabler, exclaimed “I’m so happy right now!” as she watched me put a bunch of shit into my basket. She’d been holding out for sooooo long, finding all this BT21 stuff while I was still in Seattle, lol.
Since K was flying out later that day, she bid us adieu after the shopping escapades, and after the three of us took a selfie down an uninteresting road, because that was all that was available to us when we thought of it lol. Adelagia and I then went for lunch at 내가찜한닭, which served variations of chicken with cheese on a bed of transparent noodles. Delicious!
I think we then attempted to go to the underground shopping area where Adelagia had seen unofficial BTS T-money cards for sale (official ones were basically impossible to come by), and I would need a T-money card for transportation purposes. You can load money onto them, and without one, I had to buy a single-journey ticket every single time I needed to go anywhere. However, she had remembered incorrectly which shopping area it was, so we couldn’t locate them. I say “I think” because my notes for this day are pretty sparse, and I’m trying to remember why we pushed the time to meet Jason, our Airbnb host, from 3pm to 4pm - I remember we wanted to get some more stuff done in Myeongdong and this the only thing I can think of, lol!
Anyway, we also pushed the time back because we needed to get back to Adelagia’s Airbnb to get our stuff. I would be moving all my stuff over that night, while she would move a bunch of things, but spend one more night at her current place and move the remainder of her stuff the following day. We made good time, and kept in touch with Jason through KakaoTalk. As requested, we met him near exit 3 of the Hongik University Station Line 2 stop, and when he realized it was only the two of us and how few things we had, he said we could take his car. I’m sure this was for his own comfort as well, given the horrible heat, but IT WAS SUCH A RELIEF, OMG. It made the journey from the subway station to his apartment extra long because he had to go around crowded streets while dodging pedestrians, but that was fine because it gave us an opportunity to chat with him and pick his brain about places we could go to eat stuff we wanted to eat. He was a nice guy for sure, though a little bro-y (I don’t know how else to put it without going too far lol).
I really loved how spacious the apartment was, with three different bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a living area, but the bathrooms, especially the one in the master bedroom was really small, and one of the bedrooms was less than ideal because it was connected to a small area the size of a closet that might have been intended for -- a bathroom? Laundry room? Not sure but it had a drain in the floor - that he had converted to a garbage area. If you didn’t know, South Koreans take their garbage very seriously, with multiple ways to recycle, and with items that we would consider trash in the US clearly labeled with what kind of recycling it was considered (example: the packaging of a new makeup brush). That part was very cool, because being environmentally conscious is a very good thing. The not so cool part was that we were not familiar with all their rules and regulations around it, and sorting trash could be pretty complicated. Jason gave us basic instructions on what to do, and what we should do with “the rest,” which he would take care of. Garbage was picked up every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday (something like that), and Jason came over every Tuesday and Thursday to deal with it (though we didn’t have much, honestly. He gave us 12 bags to start with - and they have special bags for garbage, you can’t use just any bag as a garbage bag O.o - but I think we ended up using only two of them by the end of our stay, if you don’t count all the recycling). It’s cool that they deal with trash so often and so responsibly, but it also meant that garbage was constantly seen on the street (yes, contained, but still), a la New York City.
I had noticed, upon entering the apartment, an unpleasant odor, not unlike bad b.o., but I got used to it after awhile and didn’t think much of it. Adelagia, however, was much more sensitive to the smell than me, and was like, WE MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE SMELL. I was fine with attempting to do something about it, but since I had also gotten used to it after being in the space a little while, I knew I could probably ignore it. :)) Still, we planned to go somewhere after dinner in order to pick up some things we would need - in addition to air freshener, we wanted to get things like paper towels, Kleenex and wet wipes, none of which were provided in the apartment. There was lots and lots of toilet paper, however, including a roll in the paper towel holder. LOL and also -.-
We went for dinner at 두껍삼, a samgyeopsal place that Adelagia had been to with K and A. It seemed pretty upscale - I always think of samgyeopsal as being a lot more humble of a thing due to dramas and how often it’s eaten in casual places - but it was super yummy.
Such thickly cut pork belly *slobber*...
Afterward, we went to the big eMart (I guess I would compare it to like a Target or Fred Meyer?) to get our supplies. Much to our chagrin, we couldn’t find single rolls of paper towels, so we bought a pack of four, along with wet wipes, tissue (a pack of three), Febreeze and stuff like that. I put it all into my backpack and we went to our separate homes for the night. I managed to make it to the correct exit and everything without getting lost (it was a near thing, though, because I almost went on a different train line that also had a Hongik University stop).
I would break down the walk from our subway stop to our apartment into two sections. The first section is from the actual subway stop to the alleyway between a Lotteria (think Burger King) and an Olive Young (think Sephora). That section is very busy and full of people, especially once you get to the main street. Once you get into the alleyway, however, it’s another story. This is where Murder Road starts. Murder Road was so dubbed because it’s this kind of sketchy backways path that has no sidewalks at all, few streetlamps, and reminded me of various dramas wherein innocent people are chased down side streets and murdered (especially Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, when Bong Soon’s BFF gets attacked). It can feel pretty creepy and eerie if you’re not used to it, despite the fact that no fewer than THREE convenience stores (an eMart, a New Days, and a Nice to CU) were on the same path to get to our apartment (seriously there’s like maybe 30 feet between them, it’s insane that there are so many) - which, by the way, was located up this steep hill, and when Jason drove us up the first time, I already dreaded the many days I would have to walk myself up that hill in the horrid heat. Anyway, the point is, it was creepy.
It’s funny to remember that now, because as the days passed, I no longer felt that way about it. Maybe it’s because I never again had to walk that path alone again, in the dark? Or maybe it’s because after going around Seoul for a bit, you start to realize that these side pockets of residential streets with no sidewalks were EVERYWHERE, so our creepy path no longer seemed so specially creepy? Or maybe it’s because, due to the fact that so many people live in the same area, with many apartment buildings, and with three convenience stores along the way, there were actually quite a few other pedestrians out at various times, same as us? Whatever the reason, I’d forgotten I’d even thought of it as Murder Road until I read it in my notes for this day, lol.
I stopped at the first convenience store (an eMart 24, not to be confused with the big eMart we’d gone to earlier) to buy banana milk and strawberry milk. I was really fucking hot and sweaty, and it was my first night in Seoul on my own, so interacting with the young eMart employee was a bit nerve-wracking... because of my nerves I mostly stayed silent, as if I were some creepy character out of a horror movie (and prob looked it).
Me: *enters silently*
Employee: 어서오세요! [Welcome!]
Me: *silent*
Me: *grabs banana milk* *grabs strawberry milk* *goes to counter*
Employee: *names price*
Me: *sweating as though I were planning to rob the place*
Me: *hands him money*
Employee: 안녕히가세요! [In Korean, a standard polite farewell for someone who is leaving a place]
Me: *silent for ~10,000 years*
Me: 안녕히계세요. [In Korean, a standard polite farewell for someone who is staying in a place] *exits*
Employee: (probably) I have got to find a new job.
Banana milk always looks delicious when characters drink it on dramas, but I suspected it would taste of artificial banana, and would likely prefer the artificial strawberry flavor more. (I love real banana-flavored things, though.) They’d had both in packs of 4 or 6 at the big eMart, but since I didn’t even know if I’d like it, I didn’t want to buy a bunch of them and lug them all home, only to not want to drink them beyond trying the first one. Verdict (I drank them both over a period of time, not this same night lol): They were pleasantly sweet - not too much so - and did have artificial flavoring, but also wasn’t too offensive in that regard. In general, they were fine, and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at one if offered, but they weren't anything I needed to have on a regular basis.
Left: Murder Road as seen from the exit side. I should’ve taken a pic of the reverse, so you could see what it looked like going into it, but alas, I did not.
Once I got home, I KTed Adelagia to assure her that I had both managed not to get murdered on Murder Road or die of exhaustion going up the hill; turned on the a/c; Febreezed everything I could, including the laundry hamper and all the furniture; then went to bed. I slept better on the springy mattress (yes, my hope that all beds in Seoul were going to be of the non-spring variety had died a swift death) than I thought I would! Like the milks, the bed wasn’t the best, but it was inoffensive.
Sunday, July 28
Adelagia arrived at the apartment in the morning, successfully having hired her first-ever cab, and said the Febreeze seemed to have done some good, as the smell was slightly less offensive than the day before.
We then went to Myeongdong and tried to have breakfast in various places, but failed. Not much of a breakfast place, Seoul. Especially on Sundays, things seemed to open late if they opened at all, so various factors were working against us. We tried to go to Isaac Toast and a Chinese Korean restaurant, I recall... we might have tried one or two others as well.
We ended up eating at a pocha-type place, one of those outdoor quick-eat stalls where you have a place to stand as long as you’re eating, and you point out various things that you want to the ahjummas and you eat stuff off sticks. It was definitely one of the experiences I wanted to have while in Korea, but it was soooooooooo fucking hot that it was barely enjoyable. That and because the food was subpar, nowhere near as delicious as it looks on TV, lol. Also, there were pochas lined up right next to each other, all serving identical food - was there really any difference between them?! (We’d come to find that that was a common thing in Seoul; vendors of the same type - food, supplies, or other material goods - always congregated together, which is counter to Western business sense, in which you strictly avoid doing that very thing. Unless you’re Starbucks.) According to Adelagia, she saw that the food came out of prepared - as in, store-bought - packages, so it’s possible they really were all the same, and one’s business solely depended on their ability to lure potential customers. Very disappointing. We tried odeng (long, flat fish cake), soondae (blood sausage), and a cheese-and-sausage-dog, which was 90 percent cheese until you got to the very end, and then a sad little sausage was there to greet you. Probably due to the heat and the lack of deliciousness (my favorite part was the free cup of odeng soup water they gave), we got full from this, and moved on.
To get out of the heat, we went to Beans Bins for drinks. I got a watermelon juice (the first of many!), while Adelagia got an iced matcha drink. Her drink wasn't filled all the way up to the top. I would come to learn that THAT IS A THING IN SEOUL. Drinks are frequently served that way. WTF? Either find a glass that contains your serving size, or serve the size of your cup! Ridiculous. I was apparently lucky that day and my drink (watermelon juice) was served correctly. :P
After enjoying the refreshing drinks and a/c for a bit, we went to the correct underground shopping area where Adelagia had spotted the unofficial BTS T-money cards, and I came away with not just a Taehyung T-money card (which was actually just a printed card of Tae glued onto a regular T-money card -.-), but SO MUCH MORE OMG. I don’t think I can even remember at this point what I bought that time (because yes, we went back eventually), but it was like photobooks and posters and playing cards, etc.
We decided we wanted the Koya pajamas after all, the dark-blue ones we’d seen the day before, but went to two different stores that sold BT21 PJs and struck out both times. I think this was the time we found one in size S, but Adelgia wanted them in XS, which we weren’t 100 percent sure they made, but might find at another store, so she didn’t get them. We finally went to one that had them in my size, so I bought it - it was their last one.
Next up, we visited Thanks Nature Café in Hongdae, which was a SHEEP CAFÉ!!! Adelagia’s GPS had brought us down a certain street, and we kept looking and looking but couldn’t find it. Then we walked like five more feet and saw the sign. -.- It led down to the sheep pen (with today’s sheep, Tom and Jerry) and the café itself. Because we had eaten “breakfast” so late, and were planning to have fried chicken for dinner, we didn’t want to have anything too heavy for our rather late lunch. I ordered a croque monsieur and Adelagia got the garlic cheese toast, with a watermelon juice for myself (two in one day, so delightful!) and a latte for her. They had put the cutest sheep design on it!! And that’s about the kindest thing that I can say about what we ordered. The croque monsieur was okay, but any true French bistro would have been appalled by it. It was made with white bread (ordinarily, Asian white bread is super delicious, but not in this context) and inside was processed American cheese. However, it was somehow the more edible of the two. O.o The garlic cheese toast was... I can’t even describe it. It, too, was made with American cheese, but I can just about handle that. But it also had some kind of - I guess garlic spread, which is what made it garlic cheese toast instead of just cheese toast? - which tasted weird and awful to us both. And it was served with a side of whipped cream!!! LIKE I JUST DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT. And it cost more than the croque monsieur, which at least had a bit of ham in it, and real cheese on top, and was edible! Food wise, this was one of our major regrets from Seoul.
After drinking our drinks and eating what we could without looking like we hated their food (I don’t know why we were trying to be polite when it was they who had served us inedible dreck), we went out to visit Tom and Jerry in the pen. There were a bunch of other people there, which we were disappointed by (we wanted the sheep to ourselves! Who wouldn’t?!), but it ended up being a good thing because there was apparently enough of a quorum that the seeming owner of the place came out to give everyone a handful of sheep food so that Tom and Jerry could eat off our hands. Soooooo cute! And so soft and fluffy!
Finally we decided it was time to go, and I have in my notes that we “accidentally” went to the Line Friends store LOL. IIRC, what must’ve happened is that we passed the Hongdae Line Friends store, which we had not noticed earlier (we speculate because a bus was in the way or something), and decided to go in, in our excitement. I bought more stuff - and I really can’t say what I bought that time, because SPOILER ALERT we went to various Line Friends stores practically every day - and we visited the café downstairs not to eat or drink anything but to take pictures with all the BT21 statues because that shit is important.
(Related tangent: Earlier, somehow, we had learned that Cooky was supposed to have a heart-shaped butt. We had never noticed this feature on him, because of course, most things with him show his front, not his back. So we were curious to know whether this heart-shaped butt thing was real. While in this Line Friends store, I was saying something to Adelagia, I don’t remember what but I’m sure it was amusing and/or sage, when she suddenly pointed and said loudly, “THERE’S HIS HEART-SHAPED BUTT!!!!!” It was apparently on a T-shirt or something. I’m not going to say that I was proud of having a friend who would make that kind of comment, at that volume, in public... but I’m not not saying it, either.
Here is Adelagia's comic strip rendering of the same event lolol:
)
On our way to dinner we passed by OST, a store that specializes in timepieces, and they had a full display of BT21 watches out, so of course I had to get one. I wanted Tata in the smaller watch face, but didn’t see it displayed. The girl who was helping me didn’t seem to understand what I wanted when I tried to explain in English, but luckily I was able to reach into the murky dregs of my Korean to come up with the phrase “small watch” and she finally understood what I wanted and we were both happy.
Trying to find Kkanbu Chicken, where we were planning to have dinner, we ran into the same issue as the sheep café in which the GPS was telling us it was right there, but we couldn’t find it. And we had gotten to a sketchier/seedier part of Hongdae, and right in front of this club/bar was a group of punky guys who were smoking and conversing. While Adelgia was consulting her phone/GPS, I looked at the group of guys, and one of them struck me as being super pretty, a la Taehyung - definitely the most attractive guy I’d seen in Seoul thus far. I wanted to keep looking at him to make sure he was really as attractive as I thought - I mean, it was nighttime, and while there were lights around, it wasn’t like it was the clearest look I could have gotten - but didn’t get a chance, and Adelagia later told me she’d been too afraid of those guys to look, LOL. So now I don’t even know if he really was that cute, if it was a trick of the light, or if memory has now made him more attractive than he was, especially as there were so few guys in Seoul who were actually attractive, lol. (All those stories of idols pre-discovery being chased down the street when spotted by talent scouts now totally make sense. Hell, *I* could be an idol scout, it’d be the easiest fucking job in the world. The good-looking guys are SO RARE and stand out SO MUCH.)
In any case, we walked five extra feet and there was Kkanbu Chicken. LOLOL it was definitely the theme of the day. Kkanbu was a rec by Jason, and he definitely didn’t do us wrong on this one. They have an “extra crispy” version of their chicken that was so good. It was lightly battered, but battered all the same, and yet so crispy! Even more amazing, even their breast meat was juicy and edible! It cost ₩18000 (for quick math, just divide all ₩ prices by 1000 and you have USD. So in this case, $18. Buuuut in actuality it’s less, because the exchange rate is more like ₩1100 = $1), which was costly for fried chicken as Ho Chicken was only ₩9000, but the pieces were definitely bigger, the place was nicer, and of course, the chicken was extra crispy. What was oddly disappointing was their fries -- ₩8000, which is outrageous for the paltry amount they gave, and they tasted fine, but for that price and volume it better be fucking amazing.
On the way home we stopped by the Olive Young at the start of Murder Road and bought more BT21 stuff - seriously, the list of endorsements they had seemed neverending - gel nail stickers (Tata and Cooky), a hooded bath towel (Tata), and a cleansing mask (Koya) for me, and a Chimmy air freshener for Adelagia, who was still finding the apartment unbearably stinky and enlisted Chimmy to help. (Spoiler: IT WAS TOO BIG A JOB FOR CHIMMY. HE COULDN’T GET THE JOB DONE. lolol Adelgia kept telling me to leave poor Chimmy alone. She moved him into her room when we eventually got more air freshener stuff from Daiso - don’t think I noted when - and apparently he did an okay job there.)
Monday, July 29
One of the places I really wanted to hit when doing food research about Seoul was Isaac Toast. I love breakfast sandwiches, and it seemed like they made a really good one. The real experience, however, was disappointing. First of all, the one nearest us wasn’t a sit-down place (in fact, neither was the Myeongdong one... so I’m not actually sure where the sit-down one is, because I swear the YouTube video I watched of these British guys going to Isaac Toast was a sit-down restaurant), and second of all, the sandwiches themselves were a lot more basic than I was expecting. I ordered the ham special because a couple of the girls before us had gotten it, and since I couldn’t decide what else to get, I figured that one must be good if they got it. Well, one of the things that attracted me about the sandwich was that it had pickles in it, but I should’ve remembered from our pickle experience at Kkanbu that it was probably going to be bread and butter pickles, which I hate, instead of dill pickles, which I love. So yeah, that experience was a big letdown. (My watermelon juice was good though.)
For the first time ever (at least for me), we took a bus! Taking the bus in Seoul is a way more common happenstance in dramas than the subway (probably easier to film), but bus systems always scare me. Luckily Adelagia was there to navigate our first experience and I trusted her without question. (I will say I had a moment of alarm when, after the bus started moving she commented, “Oh good, we’re going the right direction.” You mean there was a chance we wouldn’t have been?!?!)
Anyway, where was this bus taking us? Why, to the Line Store in Itaewon! It was, I believe, the first one Adelagia had gone to and it was three stories high, so she definitely wanted me to see it. I bought maaaaaany more things, including the elusive BT21 packing tape that Adelgia’s class had used in some sort of project!! They had like nine of them in stock, and I took seven, generously leaving two for other people to buy (I honestly don’t know why I even did that, I should’ve just gotten them all), and by the time we left, there were none left.
OK and one of the wonderful things about Line Friends is that their employees are trained very well. A person constantly seems to pop up to ask you if you need a basket right at the moment you think you might need one. I decided to put this to the test!
Me: *gathering a bunch of packing tape and stuff*
Adelagia: Do you need a basket?
Me: Yes, but I'm too lazy to go get one. If I keep putting stuff in my hands, they'll probably give me one.
Adelagia: *skeptical look*
Me: *picks up one more item*
Store employee: Would you like a basket?
Me: *putting things into the basket*
Adelagia: Do you need a bigger basket?
Me: Yes, probably, but maybe if I keep putting things into this basket, someone will get me a bigger one.
Adelagia: *skeptical look*
Me: *puts another item into the basket*
Store employee: Would you like this bigger basket?
LOLOL it worked every time! Thank you, Line Friends.
We went to the Line Café to get some drinks, specifically the BT21 ones. Now, here’s the thing about those drinks. They all sound totally disgusting and overly sweet, so we had to choose the ones that sounded the least offensive. For me, that was Cooky’s drink “berry milk slush” and for Adelagia it was Mang’s “bubble taro latte.” We were both pleasantly surprised, initially, by our drinks, but a few sips in we agreed that they really weren’t that good lol. HOWEVER!!! What was a fun, exciting surprise was that our drinks came with character stickers based on the drink you ordered!! AHHHH. We were like, “Oh no, now we have to eventually get all the drinks...”
We briefly contemplated stealing one of the BT21 paintings they had on the wall, but were stumped by the fact that it was glued on. Adelagia even went to ask if maybe they sold them, or had them in prints or something, but of course not. That would make too much sense. JUST LET US GIVE YOU OUR MONEY, GOD. We did take a bunch of other photos, though, because this was apparently the store where BTS went to film the episode where they created the characters, or launched the characters, or... something something who knows. The point is, their asses once sat where we were sitting.
Left: The painting we both really, REALLY wanted to buy.
We headed home to drop off our latest loot (direct bus to and fro, how nice), then went to Gyeongbokgung Palace, even though it was like 30,000°F/C. When we first were discussing our Seoul trip, so many moons ago, we had excitedly planned out our “palace day,” because it would be the same day when we would wear rented hanboks and swan around like palace princesses (if you were in traditional clothing entry into the palace was free). Maybe we would even hire an oppa to take photos of us. Our dreams were so big, and yet so small. Still, we wouldn’t end up doing either of those things, because it was so friggin’ hot. The idea of wearing full hanbok filled us both with NOPE. And obviously, if we weren’t in hanbok, there was no point in hiring a photographer. There were, incredibly, people far more intrepid than we, however. Many, many people were there in hanbok - I don’t know how the fuck they were doing it and not dying of heat exhaustion, omg. We went to buy our tickets, and the line to pay full price at a machine was much shorter than the line to get a discount for traditional dress and/or child tickets, so in a way, that worked out. There was a family ahead of us in line who got to the front, and when told that if they wanted to get the child discount for their kid, they would have to get in the other line, they actually did it. Why was this so incredible, you ask? Because 1) the aforementioned longass line they’d have to stand in; 2) the heat; and 3) the full ticket price was ₩6000, which meant a measly ₩3000 in fare reduction. Would I pay an extra $3 (less, even!) ₩3000, which meant a measly ₩1500 in fare reduction. Would I pay an extra ~$1 for a family of at least three to not stand for many, many minutes in the heat?? OBVIOUSLY. I just do not understand some people’s life choices.
Top right: Me and Adelagia at the front of the palace. Bottom right: Decidedly not me and Adelagia, but I like to think it could’ve been us, 30 or so years ago, lol. Or perhaps... 400 years ago!
Anyway, we trudged along and peered into various courtyards and what not, but I have to admit, it wasn’t my thing. Sure, I was a bit intrigued because in my reading of Chinese web novels I had read plenty about concubines and wanted to see what a royal concubine’s courtyard might look like. But in general, historical landmarks, museums, all that stuff is just not what my uncultured ass appreciates, okay? I can occasionally drum up the interest, depending (I get a lot more into it in England, for example), but ancient Asian stuff has never piqued my interest. It probably makes me a bad Asian, but I just can’t lie. In any case, we made a few turns and somehow got completely and utterly lost. LOL, I had even thought to myself, “I don’t remember how we got here, will we get lost? Haha, nah, it was only like three turns, we’ll find our way back.” OH HOW WRONG I WAS. It was only good in that it led us to a really pretty part of the grounds where there was a pond, and honestly if it hadn’t been so hot, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. My feet and legs were already hurting from the walking around, and we ended up at some building where we got to enjoy some a/c for a bit and Adelagia asked the people there how we could get back to the direction of the subway. We didn’t actually want to go back to the subway, but around that area was where we wanted to go next. It turned out that we had gone completely the wrong direction (of course), so after another long walk in the heat, we somehow found ourselves out of the palace at last, and we were both hungry at that point. We had nowhere specific we were going to go for lunch, so we went to McDonald’s.
Now, let me justify this decision. Normally, when I’m in new places I hate going to restaurants that exist where I'm from. So that always means no fast food, because you can get that anywhere. BUT. The fast food places in Asia are generally a lot higher in quality due to both laws and competition, and they also have a more varied and interesting menu. So a Korean McDonald’s was actually something we had previously discussed trying. That plus the fact that one appeared out of nowhere when we were hungry just made the decision that much easier.
I ordered the grilled mushroom burger while Adelagia got the avocado tomato chicken burger. I was SUPER DISAPPOINTED with my burger. It wasn’t nearly as tasty-looking as their advertisement (hey, consistency between McD’s here and there!), and there was a very weird flavor to the burger that I did not enjoy at all. After a couple of bites, I placed it - it tasted like that weird garlic cheese toast thing from the sheep café! Whatever spread they had used (it looked like mayo, but wasn’t your regular mayo) tasted JUST LIKE THAT OTHER THING. I wiped off as much of it as I could and managed to eat the whole burger due to hunger, but man, what a waste of a meal that was. Oh and they only gave two packets of ketchup. O.o For two medium-sized fries. Like what... with that many fries I need like three just for myself! The highlight came at the end of the meal when we finished up and Adelagia found a fry that had been hiding somewhere. “Ooh! Bonus fry!”
After that Adelagia GPSed us to... I’m not actually sure what she used as her landmark, but it took us down these super cute streets full of adorable little restaurants that seemed to have great food, including seafood options, samgyetang, etc. Oh man, was I bitter seeing all that after we had settled for McDonald’s (regardless of the fact that we would have wanted to try McD’s at some point anyway)! We made notes of the various places so that we could potentially one day return, though Insadong really didn’t have anything else for us to do. At the very end of this row of restaurants was... an O’Sulloc! Like Isaac Toast, O’Sulloc was a place we had earmarked as wanting to try when we were in Seoul... it specializes in tea, and I was pretty much down for any place we could sit down and have a refreshing beverage while enjoying some a/c. We went in and took a look at their offerings, but since we’d just finished lunch we didn’t stay for any food or drinks.
We did roam around Insadong for a bit, and I managed to buy lots more BT21 and BTS-related paraphernalia. Whenever I started to look at something BTS, the vendor would “helpfully” start listing other Kpop band names (“Seventeen! Blackpink!”) that they had the same stock of - as if I couldn’t read it myself, or would somehow be inspired to get that stuff instead of the stuff that had attracted me in the first place, lol. In one particular store we actually found OFFICIAL BTS T-money cards (ugh! Why! Why couldn’t I have waited?! OK here’s the crazy thing... because of how much we were doing every day, it seemed like eons ago that I had purchased my unofficial card. But in writing this now, I realize that it was only the day before. That is insane), but they only had Jungkook and Jimin so I was at least mollified by that - they didn’t have Tae. Now, if we’d found the official cards first I would have been okay with settling for Jungkook, but oh well. One of the other things I bought at this store was a new phone case. I’d been considering a new one because I was kind of sick of my old one, but they were all so expensive and I wasn’t convinced it’d be worth it. But this one was a cute Tata one that had a sliding back - slide one way and you have yourself a mirror, slide the other way and there’s a slot for a T-money or credit card. The utility of it convinced me to pay the ₩25,000 for a new case.
We also went looking for mother-of-pearl stuff for Adelagia’s mom, and while in that shop a hairpin caught my eye. The shopkeeper’s daughter(?)-in-law(?) said it was a letter opener, but assured me it could be used as a hairpin as well (I’m sure she would have agreed with any use that I attributed to it, lol), and demonstrated by putting it into Adelgia’s hair for me to see. It was indeed very nice, and as I’d been into hairpins ever since watching Ashes of Love, I bought it.
The weirdest moment came, however, when this woman called Adelagia “언니[eonni].” I picked up on it but also thought maybe I’d misheard; it wasn’t until we had left and Adelagia mentioned it herself that we were both like “Wait wut?!?!” “Eonni” means “older sister,” a common way to address a slightly older woman who’s either very close to you, or in an effort to soften/casualize (I’m making up words now!) an interaction between two women. The weird thing was that we weren’t at all sure this woman was younger than Adelagia, who is often mistaken for being a college student, lol. So it was a weird assumption for this woman to make, as she herself did not seem that young (I would have placed her as early 30s, maybe?). I wondered if maybe Korean women were just a lot more adept at guesstimating someone’s age, due to the fact that so many of their interactions are based on age (wrt courtesies)... but still, Adelagia isn’t so obviously her age that I would think someone who didn’t know her wouldn’t at least have some doubt. I have further theories about this, but there will come another time when it will make more sense for me to speculate, so I’ll just leave this here for now.
We headed to a Coffeesmith for an afternoon beverage (watermelon juice for me again!) and then we took the bus home. I don’t strictly remember, but I think our meal at McD’s was late enough in the day that it basically served as an early dinner, and we didn’t get hungry again while we were out, nor did we want to have a super late meal.
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Thursday, July 25 (Pacific daylight saving time) + Friday, July 26 (Korea standard time)
Hot on the heels of a work trip to Las Vegas came the trip to Seoul. (I flew back from Vegas on July 18, so there was only a week in between! And of course, Vegas was right on the heels of my trips to LA and Oakland for the two GOT7 concerts... which I also still have to write up.) I was both looking forward to Seoul and dreading it, because I knew from research and other people's anecdotes (in the past and from
adelagia, who was there currently) that it was super hot and humid. And if there's something I can't take these days, it's heat. I get overheated very easily, and while Vegas temps reached 112°F, it didn't feel that hot even outside because of the lack of humidity. Seoul, however, was going to be another matter, and I feared if I was going to be able to take it.
I had grappled long and hard about whether to splurge on Delta One/Korean business class, which cost about $3500. (It might've gone as low as $3000 when I was looking, can't remember now.) I ultimately decided against it, because it was more than double what I would pay for Delta Comfort+, which I had flown on a 9-hour leg earlier this year (Feb) when I went to Barcelona and was able to survive okay with my Kindle and some Chinese novels (this time my reading of choice would be BTS fanfic). The flight to Seoul was 11.5 hours, so just a bit further than what I had managed fine, and I figured the "savings" could be put toward all the shit I was definitely going to buy in South Korea. I think I ended up paying $1250 for my Comfort+ fare.
I packed as lightly as I could. Since we were going to be staying at an Airbnb that had a washing machine in the unit, I packed only about a week's worth of clothes. Extra niceties I might've considered (like my favorite hair dryer, Roku, etc.) I left behind, and I took as few cosmetics and toiletries as I could, figuring I would be buying a lot of that stuff in Seoul, probably right away. The other thing I did was nest my Away Bigger Carry On into my Away Medium, so that I would have a whole extra suitcase in which to put things once I got there. Other than that I carried a backpack and my purse.
TMI ahead: The worst case scenario happened with regard to my period, in that I got it this same day. :/ An 11.5-hour flight on day one of my period? YIKES. Luckily I medicated in time, and recently my periods haven't been quite as heavy as they've been in the past, so I was somehow able to survive the flight despite having the window seat and an aisle companion who slept heavily, so I often felt like I didn't want to disturb him. (I had chosen the window over the aisle - an extremely rare occurrence - thinking I might want to sleep and could use the side of the plane as a head rest; that was, of course, before I knew I was going to have my period on the flight. And for the record, I slept hardly at all.)
I decided to be brave and try the bibimbap offered as a meal option; it wasn't the worst thing in the world, and that's about all I can say for it. We got ice cream, though, and I don't know why it seems extra delicious on a plane, but it was sooooo good. (Ben & Jerry's Americone Dream!) The meal right before we landed, however, was something straight out of an airplane meal nightmare... some sort of rice-cauliflower-cheese wrap thing? I don't know, but it was somehow even more disgusting than I imagined... it ended up being too sweet? Yeah, I don't even know.
Right off the plane I could smell that Asian country smell. I don't know how to describe it, but it was there and noticeable. It's not a bad smell, necessarily, it's just one I associate with being in Hong Kong and the like, a kind of reminder scent. I wouldn't be able to describe it.
The first things I saw/experienced at Incheon: a roaming robot thing as seen in "Where Stars Land," the purpose of which I still don't understand; a fucking Shake Shack; a Paris Croissant (because at Incheon they don't hold with no baguettes); and an army of TV cameras right outside the exit after getting through the final steps of immigration. It was something like out of a drama! I thought maybe they were always camped out there or something, in case someone famous were to show up, but when I KTed Adelagia about it she said that they weren't there when she arrived, so maybe someone famous was about to come! I loitered for a bit, but ultimately didn't care enough to stay and find out since I was tired, warm (I can't say hot because that word is reserved for later use, given what I felt in this moment didn't come close, not that I knew that at the time), and knew I probably didn't have the good luck to run into anyone interesting, it was probably just going to be a politician or something. (Unless I left, in which case it was gonna be BTS. It was damned if I did, damned if I didn't.)
I tried to follow the online directions (which I'd printed) of how to get to Adelagia's Airbnb from Incheon, but there were still points when it was a good thing I had her to consult or I might have veered off to god knows where. Where I got the most confused, however, was at the subway station when I was so close to my destination; I could not tell if I was at the right exit, so Adelagia came and got me. It was a good thing, too, because for some reason the subway exit machine ate my ticket, said something incomprehensible, and refused to let me or my suitcase through. Adelagia went to talk to the subway worker person (I was sooooo impressed she could do so in Korean!!), who basically waved me through the side gate.
As I followed Adelagia to her place, which was conveniently connected to the subway, it seemed, I finally got a good taste of the hot humidity that I was going to have to face daily. It was horrendous. It was the sort of humid that seemed like it should be visible, like walking into a wall of heated air. I quickly collapsed onto her couch under the A/C.
After I had recovered a bit, we talked about some immediate plans; for dinner we were going to have fried chicken (yay!), and tomorrow morning meet up with K to have soufflé pancakes. A was in Busan with his new girlfriend, so I wouldn't see him before he left. I have to say, as lame as he often is, that was probably one of his lamest moves imho, new relationship be damned. I mean, how often are you and your friends in a different country, together? Not, of course, that we are that close, but he certainly acts like we're all very close when he needs something. OK, gonna save my A rant for later.
Walked with Adelagia to Ho Chicken, where we had yummy fried chicken, but that walk was terrible. I could not believe how hot it was, and how disgusting it made me feel the very moment I stepped out of air-conditioned space. It didn't help, of course, that I really only had jeans to wear (I didn't have nice enough shorts to be worn as part of an outfit).
Top: The place where I became stumped following directions, and Adelagia came to rescue me.
I got to try a "wet bathroom" for the first time that night. For those unaware, in many Asian countries (except at hotels), the entire bathroom is waterproof, there's no separate stall or room for the shower, and there's a drain in the floor. The shower head is located somewhere, and you use it like you would any shower, but since there's no separate space for the shower, potentially all the water could go everywhere. It's neither as terrible as it sounds, nor as good as the article I linked to makes it sound, either. There are definitely pros and cons. If I had a wet bathroom that looked like the one in the article's picture, I might be fine with one, because there's enough separation that you wouldn't be getting everything in the bathroom wet, and you could keep things on the counter, have dry towels in the room, probably not accidentally spray your toilet paper, etc. But the two wet bathrooms I experienced in Seoul had the (removable) showerheads located right near the sink, they were small, there were no partitions of any kind, and you really did risk getting all your shit wet if you weren't careful. If you still can’t picture it, here’s a pic of my bathroom from our shared Airbnb, which was near a bustling part of Hongdae, and with three decent-sized bedrooms was probably considered a fairly nice apartment:
Had a nice sleep that night, as I was exhausted from traveling, and the bed was one of those nice latex (I think?) ones that don't have springs in them. It was a comforting reminder of my own bed at home, and I was impressed and hopeful that this was the common type of bed people had in Seoul.
Saturday, July 27
The trip to Innisfree Green Café in Myeongdong was, I’m not gonna lie, horrifying. It was soooo damn hot and humid, and it made absolutely no difference whether you were outside or in the bowels of the subway system. In addition to the stifling heat, you also got the same occasional blast of heavenly a/c (from passing storefronts or from vents) before it was cruelly taken away. I’d never before sweated so much in such a short period of time omg. Everyone carried around these small portable fans, and Adelagia kindly lent me hers before I could buy my own. Outside, it barely made any difference at all - you were basically just blowing hot air around. (I would eventually learn how to maximize a handheld's fan efficacy but this was not that day.)
Met up with K just outside of Innisfree, and it was delightful to see her outside our normal environment, but also like no big deal at all. The café was very modern and nice, though it took me awhile to cool down from being overheated. (It sometimes seemed like, after the first comforting blast of cold after getting into an air-conditioned space, I felt even hotter during those first 10 minutes getting comfortable again, than I felt outside.) We all ordered the soufflé pancakes, which were just as beautiful and delicious as advertised, and I got a “snowy apple tea,” or whatever it was called, which was refreshing and yummy, even though I never did figure out what the foam on top was or what it did other than provide aesthetics.
We roamed around and I tried to appreciate the hustle and bustle of this place that I had been looking forward to visiting for so long, trying to ignore how miserably hot and uncomfortable I felt. BTS was everrryyyywhereeee. Their faces on posters shilling for this or that product, their music blasting from almost every storefront, BT21 stuff all over the place too, etc. It was particularly noticeable in Myeongdong, given that it’s a tourist-heavy place, but we saw their faces in plenty of other locations as well. I couldn’t help but wonder if the oversaturation was getting to the point where backlash against them was going to start (if Korean trends were like American trends), or maybe had already started, because I felt like we were at saturation point. And that would make complete sense, because of course now would be when I’d get into them.
One of the first stops we made was to Eblin, where we walked up the stairs to the third floor (seriously, it’s so fucking hot, why do they have SO MANY STAIRS EVERYWHERE) and I bought several sets of BT21 pajamas, mostly in Tata and Cooky themes, though there was a dark blue Koya set that we were all eyeing because the color was so nice and there was a sleeping Koya on the pocket! (Spoiler alert: I am wearing those PJs as I type this up lolol.) I regretted buying unofficial BT21 PJs on eBay, because they weren’t cheap (cost about the same as the real stuff on sale, which they were!), and were obviously not as nicely made as the real ones, and also did not come in super cute packaging! K cautioned that I should pace myself, and I knew she was right, but I also knew I had a whole suitcase to fill so was feeling confident. This was also the first store where I encountered the shopping tax free situation - either they have a passport scanner and can give you the discount right then and there, or they would print out an extra document that you could bring to the airport and collect your refund later.
Then we went to my first Line Friends store, where I stocked up on a bunch of BT21 things, including stationery and Cooky and Tata portable fans, a Cooky umbrella, etc. Adelagia, who is a shameless enabler, exclaimed “I’m so happy right now!” as she watched me put a bunch of shit into my basket. She’d been holding out for sooooo long, finding all this BT21 stuff while I was still in Seattle, lol.
Since K was flying out later that day, she bid us adieu after the shopping escapades, and after the three of us took a selfie down an uninteresting road, because that was all that was available to us when we thought of it lol. Adelagia and I then went for lunch at 내가찜한닭, which served variations of chicken with cheese on a bed of transparent noodles. Delicious!
I think we then attempted to go to the underground shopping area where Adelagia had seen unofficial BTS T-money cards for sale (official ones were basically impossible to come by), and I would need a T-money card for transportation purposes. You can load money onto them, and without one, I had to buy a single-journey ticket every single time I needed to go anywhere. However, she had remembered incorrectly which shopping area it was, so we couldn’t locate them. I say “I think” because my notes for this day are pretty sparse, and I’m trying to remember why we pushed the time to meet Jason, our Airbnb host, from 3pm to 4pm - I remember we wanted to get some more stuff done in Myeongdong and this the only thing I can think of, lol!
Anyway, we also pushed the time back because we needed to get back to Adelagia’s Airbnb to get our stuff. I would be moving all my stuff over that night, while she would move a bunch of things, but spend one more night at her current place and move the remainder of her stuff the following day. We made good time, and kept in touch with Jason through KakaoTalk. As requested, we met him near exit 3 of the Hongik University Station Line 2 stop, and when he realized it was only the two of us and how few things we had, he said we could take his car. I’m sure this was for his own comfort as well, given the horrible heat, but IT WAS SUCH A RELIEF, OMG. It made the journey from the subway station to his apartment extra long because he had to go around crowded streets while dodging pedestrians, but that was fine because it gave us an opportunity to chat with him and pick his brain about places we could go to eat stuff we wanted to eat. He was a nice guy for sure, though a little bro-y (I don’t know how else to put it without going too far lol).
I really loved how spacious the apartment was, with three different bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a living area, but the bathrooms, especially the one in the master bedroom was really small, and one of the bedrooms was less than ideal because it was connected to a small area the size of a closet that might have been intended for -- a bathroom? Laundry room? Not sure but it had a drain in the floor - that he had converted to a garbage area. If you didn’t know, South Koreans take their garbage very seriously, with multiple ways to recycle, and with items that we would consider trash in the US clearly labeled with what kind of recycling it was considered (example: the packaging of a new makeup brush). That part was very cool, because being environmentally conscious is a very good thing. The not so cool part was that we were not familiar with all their rules and regulations around it, and sorting trash could be pretty complicated. Jason gave us basic instructions on what to do, and what we should do with “the rest,” which he would take care of. Garbage was picked up every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday (something like that), and Jason came over every Tuesday and Thursday to deal with it (though we didn’t have much, honestly. He gave us 12 bags to start with - and they have special bags for garbage, you can’t use just any bag as a garbage bag O.o - but I think we ended up using only two of them by the end of our stay, if you don’t count all the recycling). It’s cool that they deal with trash so often and so responsibly, but it also meant that garbage was constantly seen on the street (yes, contained, but still), a la New York City.
I had noticed, upon entering the apartment, an unpleasant odor, not unlike bad b.o., but I got used to it after awhile and didn’t think much of it. Adelagia, however, was much more sensitive to the smell than me, and was like, WE MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE SMELL. I was fine with attempting to do something about it, but since I had also gotten used to it after being in the space a little while, I knew I could probably ignore it. :)) Still, we planned to go somewhere after dinner in order to pick up some things we would need - in addition to air freshener, we wanted to get things like paper towels, Kleenex and wet wipes, none of which were provided in the apartment. There was lots and lots of toilet paper, however, including a roll in the paper towel holder. LOL and also -.-
We went for dinner at 두껍삼, a samgyeopsal place that Adelagia had been to with K and A. It seemed pretty upscale - I always think of samgyeopsal as being a lot more humble of a thing due to dramas and how often it’s eaten in casual places - but it was super yummy.
Such thickly cut pork belly *slobber*...
Afterward, we went to the big eMart (I guess I would compare it to like a Target or Fred Meyer?) to get our supplies. Much to our chagrin, we couldn’t find single rolls of paper towels, so we bought a pack of four, along with wet wipes, tissue (a pack of three), Febreeze and stuff like that. I put it all into my backpack and we went to our separate homes for the night. I managed to make it to the correct exit and everything without getting lost (it was a near thing, though, because I almost went on a different train line that also had a Hongik University stop).
I would break down the walk from our subway stop to our apartment into two sections. The first section is from the actual subway stop to the alleyway between a Lotteria (think Burger King) and an Olive Young (think Sephora). That section is very busy and full of people, especially once you get to the main street. Once you get into the alleyway, however, it’s another story. This is where Murder Road starts. Murder Road was so dubbed because it’s this kind of sketchy backways path that has no sidewalks at all, few streetlamps, and reminded me of various dramas wherein innocent people are chased down side streets and murdered (especially Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, when Bong Soon’s BFF gets attacked). It can feel pretty creepy and eerie if you’re not used to it, despite the fact that no fewer than THREE convenience stores (an eMart, a New Days, and a Nice to CU) were on the same path to get to our apartment (seriously there’s like maybe 30 feet between them, it’s insane that there are so many) - which, by the way, was located up this steep hill, and when Jason drove us up the first time, I already dreaded the many days I would have to walk myself up that hill in the horrid heat. Anyway, the point is, it was creepy.
It’s funny to remember that now, because as the days passed, I no longer felt that way about it. Maybe it’s because I never again had to walk that path alone again, in the dark? Or maybe it’s because after going around Seoul for a bit, you start to realize that these side pockets of residential streets with no sidewalks were EVERYWHERE, so our creepy path no longer seemed so specially creepy? Or maybe it’s because, due to the fact that so many people live in the same area, with many apartment buildings, and with three convenience stores along the way, there were actually quite a few other pedestrians out at various times, same as us? Whatever the reason, I’d forgotten I’d even thought of it as Murder Road until I read it in my notes for this day, lol.
I stopped at the first convenience store (an eMart 24, not to be confused with the big eMart we’d gone to earlier) to buy banana milk and strawberry milk. I was really fucking hot and sweaty, and it was my first night in Seoul on my own, so interacting with the young eMart employee was a bit nerve-wracking... because of my nerves I mostly stayed silent, as if I were some creepy character out of a horror movie (and prob looked it).
Me: *enters silently*
Employee: 어서오세요! [Welcome!]
Me: *silent*
Me: *grabs banana milk* *grabs strawberry milk* *goes to counter*
Employee: *names price*
Me: *sweating as though I were planning to rob the place*
Me: *hands him money*
Employee: 안녕히가세요! [In Korean, a standard polite farewell for someone who is leaving a place]
Me: *silent for ~10,000 years*
Me: 안녕히계세요. [In Korean, a standard polite farewell for someone who is staying in a place] *exits*
Employee: (probably) I have got to find a new job.
Banana milk always looks delicious when characters drink it on dramas, but I suspected it would taste of artificial banana, and would likely prefer the artificial strawberry flavor more. (I love real banana-flavored things, though.) They’d had both in packs of 4 or 6 at the big eMart, but since I didn’t even know if I’d like it, I didn’t want to buy a bunch of them and lug them all home, only to not want to drink them beyond trying the first one. Verdict (I drank them both over a period of time, not this same night lol): They were pleasantly sweet - not too much so - and did have artificial flavoring, but also wasn’t too offensive in that regard. In general, they were fine, and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at one if offered, but they weren't anything I needed to have on a regular basis.
Left: Murder Road as seen from the exit side. I should’ve taken a pic of the reverse, so you could see what it looked like going into it, but alas, I did not.
Once I got home, I KTed Adelagia to assure her that I had both managed not to get murdered on Murder Road or die of exhaustion going up the hill; turned on the a/c; Febreezed everything I could, including the laundry hamper and all the furniture; then went to bed. I slept better on the springy mattress (yes, my hope that all beds in Seoul were going to be of the non-spring variety had died a swift death) than I thought I would! Like the milks, the bed wasn’t the best, but it was inoffensive.
Sunday, July 28
Adelagia arrived at the apartment in the morning, successfully having hired her first-ever cab, and said the Febreeze seemed to have done some good, as the smell was slightly less offensive than the day before.
We then went to Myeongdong and tried to have breakfast in various places, but failed. Not much of a breakfast place, Seoul. Especially on Sundays, things seemed to open late if they opened at all, so various factors were working against us. We tried to go to Isaac Toast and a Chinese Korean restaurant, I recall... we might have tried one or two others as well.
We ended up eating at a pocha-type place, one of those outdoor quick-eat stalls where you have a place to stand as long as you’re eating, and you point out various things that you want to the ahjummas and you eat stuff off sticks. It was definitely one of the experiences I wanted to have while in Korea, but it was soooooooooo fucking hot that it was barely enjoyable. That and because the food was subpar, nowhere near as delicious as it looks on TV, lol. Also, there were pochas lined up right next to each other, all serving identical food - was there really any difference between them?! (We’d come to find that that was a common thing in Seoul; vendors of the same type - food, supplies, or other material goods - always congregated together, which is counter to Western business sense, in which you strictly avoid doing that very thing. Unless you’re Starbucks.) According to Adelagia, she saw that the food came out of prepared - as in, store-bought - packages, so it’s possible they really were all the same, and one’s business solely depended on their ability to lure potential customers. Very disappointing. We tried odeng (long, flat fish cake), soondae (blood sausage), and a cheese-and-sausage-dog, which was 90 percent cheese until you got to the very end, and then a sad little sausage was there to greet you. Probably due to the heat and the lack of deliciousness (my favorite part was the free cup of odeng soup water they gave), we got full from this, and moved on.
To get out of the heat, we went to Beans Bins for drinks. I got a watermelon juice (the first of many!), while Adelagia got an iced matcha drink. Her drink wasn't filled all the way up to the top. I would come to learn that THAT IS A THING IN SEOUL. Drinks are frequently served that way. WTF? Either find a glass that contains your serving size, or serve the size of your cup! Ridiculous. I was apparently lucky that day and my drink (watermelon juice) was served correctly. :P
After enjoying the refreshing drinks and a/c for a bit, we went to the correct underground shopping area where Adelagia had spotted the unofficial BTS T-money cards, and I came away with not just a Taehyung T-money card (which was actually just a printed card of Tae glued onto a regular T-money card -.-), but SO MUCH MORE OMG. I don’t think I can even remember at this point what I bought that time (because yes, we went back eventually), but it was like photobooks and posters and playing cards, etc.
We decided we wanted the Koya pajamas after all, the dark-blue ones we’d seen the day before, but went to two different stores that sold BT21 PJs and struck out both times. I think this was the time we found one in size S, but Adelgia wanted them in XS, which we weren’t 100 percent sure they made, but might find at another store, so she didn’t get them. We finally went to one that had them in my size, so I bought it - it was their last one.
Next up, we visited Thanks Nature Café in Hongdae, which was a SHEEP CAFÉ!!! Adelagia’s GPS had brought us down a certain street, and we kept looking and looking but couldn’t find it. Then we walked like five more feet and saw the sign. -.- It led down to the sheep pen (with today’s sheep, Tom and Jerry) and the café itself. Because we had eaten “breakfast” so late, and were planning to have fried chicken for dinner, we didn’t want to have anything too heavy for our rather late lunch. I ordered a croque monsieur and Adelagia got the garlic cheese toast, with a watermelon juice for myself (two in one day, so delightful!) and a latte for her. They had put the cutest sheep design on it!! And that’s about the kindest thing that I can say about what we ordered. The croque monsieur was okay, but any true French bistro would have been appalled by it. It was made with white bread (ordinarily, Asian white bread is super delicious, but not in this context) and inside was processed American cheese. However, it was somehow the more edible of the two. O.o The garlic cheese toast was... I can’t even describe it. It, too, was made with American cheese, but I can just about handle that. But it also had some kind of - I guess garlic spread, which is what made it garlic cheese toast instead of just cheese toast? - which tasted weird and awful to us both. And it was served with a side of whipped cream!!! LIKE I JUST DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT. And it cost more than the croque monsieur, which at least had a bit of ham in it, and real cheese on top, and was edible! Food wise, this was one of our major regrets from Seoul.
After drinking our drinks and eating what we could without looking like we hated their food (I don’t know why we were trying to be polite when it was they who had served us inedible dreck), we went out to visit Tom and Jerry in the pen. There were a bunch of other people there, which we were disappointed by (we wanted the sheep to ourselves! Who wouldn’t?!), but it ended up being a good thing because there was apparently enough of a quorum that the seeming owner of the place came out to give everyone a handful of sheep food so that Tom and Jerry could eat off our hands. Soooooo cute! And so soft and fluffy!
Finally we decided it was time to go, and I have in my notes that we “accidentally” went to the Line Friends store LOL. IIRC, what must’ve happened is that we passed the Hongdae Line Friends store, which we had not noticed earlier (we speculate because a bus was in the way or something), and decided to go in, in our excitement. I bought more stuff - and I really can’t say what I bought that time, because SPOILER ALERT we went to various Line Friends stores practically every day - and we visited the café downstairs not to eat or drink anything but to take pictures with all the BT21 statues because that shit is important.
(Related tangent: Earlier, somehow, we had learned that Cooky was supposed to have a heart-shaped butt. We had never noticed this feature on him, because of course, most things with him show his front, not his back. So we were curious to know whether this heart-shaped butt thing was real. While in this Line Friends store, I was saying something to Adelagia, I don’t remember what but I’m sure it was amusing and/or sage, when she suddenly pointed and said loudly, “THERE’S HIS HEART-SHAPED BUTT!!!!!” It was apparently on a T-shirt or something. I’m not going to say that I was proud of having a friend who would make that kind of comment, at that volume, in public... but I’m not not saying it, either.
Here is Adelagia's comic strip rendering of the same event lolol:
)
On our way to dinner we passed by OST, a store that specializes in timepieces, and they had a full display of BT21 watches out, so of course I had to get one. I wanted Tata in the smaller watch face, but didn’t see it displayed. The girl who was helping me didn’t seem to understand what I wanted when I tried to explain in English, but luckily I was able to reach into the murky dregs of my Korean to come up with the phrase “small watch” and she finally understood what I wanted and we were both happy.
Trying to find Kkanbu Chicken, where we were planning to have dinner, we ran into the same issue as the sheep café in which the GPS was telling us it was right there, but we couldn’t find it. And we had gotten to a sketchier/seedier part of Hongdae, and right in front of this club/bar was a group of punky guys who were smoking and conversing. While Adelgia was consulting her phone/GPS, I looked at the group of guys, and one of them struck me as being super pretty, a la Taehyung - definitely the most attractive guy I’d seen in Seoul thus far. I wanted to keep looking at him to make sure he was really as attractive as I thought - I mean, it was nighttime, and while there were lights around, it wasn’t like it was the clearest look I could have gotten - but didn’t get a chance, and Adelagia later told me she’d been too afraid of those guys to look, LOL. So now I don’t even know if he really was that cute, if it was a trick of the light, or if memory has now made him more attractive than he was, especially as there were so few guys in Seoul who were actually attractive, lol. (All those stories of idols pre-discovery being chased down the street when spotted by talent scouts now totally make sense. Hell, *I* could be an idol scout, it’d be the easiest fucking job in the world. The good-looking guys are SO RARE and stand out SO MUCH.)
In any case, we walked five extra feet and there was Kkanbu Chicken. LOLOL it was definitely the theme of the day. Kkanbu was a rec by Jason, and he definitely didn’t do us wrong on this one. They have an “extra crispy” version of their chicken that was so good. It was lightly battered, but battered all the same, and yet so crispy! Even more amazing, even their breast meat was juicy and edible! It cost ₩18000 (for quick math, just divide all ₩ prices by 1000 and you have USD. So in this case, $18. Buuuut in actuality it’s less, because the exchange rate is more like ₩1100 = $1), which was costly for fried chicken as Ho Chicken was only ₩9000, but the pieces were definitely bigger, the place was nicer, and of course, the chicken was extra crispy. What was oddly disappointing was their fries -- ₩8000, which is outrageous for the paltry amount they gave, and they tasted fine, but for that price and volume it better be fucking amazing.
On the way home we stopped by the Olive Young at the start of Murder Road and bought more BT21 stuff - seriously, the list of endorsements they had seemed neverending - gel nail stickers (Tata and Cooky), a hooded bath towel (Tata), and a cleansing mask (Koya) for me, and a Chimmy air freshener for Adelagia, who was still finding the apartment unbearably stinky and enlisted Chimmy to help. (Spoiler: IT WAS TOO BIG A JOB FOR CHIMMY. HE COULDN’T GET THE JOB DONE. lolol Adelgia kept telling me to leave poor Chimmy alone. She moved him into her room when we eventually got more air freshener stuff from Daiso - don’t think I noted when - and apparently he did an okay job there.)
Monday, July 29
One of the places I really wanted to hit when doing food research about Seoul was Isaac Toast. I love breakfast sandwiches, and it seemed like they made a really good one. The real experience, however, was disappointing. First of all, the one nearest us wasn’t a sit-down place (in fact, neither was the Myeongdong one... so I’m not actually sure where the sit-down one is, because I swear the YouTube video I watched of these British guys going to Isaac Toast was a sit-down restaurant), and second of all, the sandwiches themselves were a lot more basic than I was expecting. I ordered the ham special because a couple of the girls before us had gotten it, and since I couldn’t decide what else to get, I figured that one must be good if they got it. Well, one of the things that attracted me about the sandwich was that it had pickles in it, but I should’ve remembered from our pickle experience at Kkanbu that it was probably going to be bread and butter pickles, which I hate, instead of dill pickles, which I love. So yeah, that experience was a big letdown. (My watermelon juice was good though.)
For the first time ever (at least for me), we took a bus! Taking the bus in Seoul is a way more common happenstance in dramas than the subway (probably easier to film), but bus systems always scare me. Luckily Adelagia was there to navigate our first experience and I trusted her without question. (I will say I had a moment of alarm when, after the bus started moving she commented, “Oh good, we’re going the right direction.” You mean there was a chance we wouldn’t have been?!?!)
Anyway, where was this bus taking us? Why, to the Line Store in Itaewon! It was, I believe, the first one Adelagia had gone to and it was three stories high, so she definitely wanted me to see it. I bought maaaaaany more things, including the elusive BT21 packing tape that Adelgia’s class had used in some sort of project!! They had like nine of them in stock, and I took seven, generously leaving two for other people to buy (I honestly don’t know why I even did that, I should’ve just gotten them all), and by the time we left, there were none left.
OK and one of the wonderful things about Line Friends is that their employees are trained very well. A person constantly seems to pop up to ask you if you need a basket right at the moment you think you might need one. I decided to put this to the test!
Me: *gathering a bunch of packing tape and stuff*
Adelagia: Do you need a basket?
Me: Yes, but I'm too lazy to go get one. If I keep putting stuff in my hands, they'll probably give me one.
Adelagia: *skeptical look*
Me: *picks up one more item*
Store employee: Would you like a basket?
Me: *putting things into the basket*
Adelagia: Do you need a bigger basket?
Me: Yes, probably, but maybe if I keep putting things into this basket, someone will get me a bigger one.
Adelagia: *skeptical look*
Me: *puts another item into the basket*
Store employee: Would you like this bigger basket?
LOLOL it worked every time! Thank you, Line Friends.
We went to the Line Café to get some drinks, specifically the BT21 ones. Now, here’s the thing about those drinks. They all sound totally disgusting and overly sweet, so we had to choose the ones that sounded the least offensive. For me, that was Cooky’s drink “berry milk slush” and for Adelagia it was Mang’s “bubble taro latte.” We were both pleasantly surprised, initially, by our drinks, but a few sips in we agreed that they really weren’t that good lol. HOWEVER!!! What was a fun, exciting surprise was that our drinks came with character stickers based on the drink you ordered!! AHHHH. We were like, “Oh no, now we have to eventually get all the drinks...”
We briefly contemplated stealing one of the BT21 paintings they had on the wall, but were stumped by the fact that it was glued on. Adelagia even went to ask if maybe they sold them, or had them in prints or something, but of course not. That would make too much sense. JUST LET US GIVE YOU OUR MONEY, GOD. We did take a bunch of other photos, though, because this was apparently the store where BTS went to film the episode where they created the characters, or launched the characters, or... something something who knows. The point is, their asses once sat where we were sitting.
Left: The painting we both really, REALLY wanted to buy.
We headed home to drop off our latest loot (direct bus to and fro, how nice), then went to Gyeongbokgung Palace, even though it was like 30,000°F/C. When we first were discussing our Seoul trip, so many moons ago, we had excitedly planned out our “palace day,” because it would be the same day when we would wear rented hanboks and swan around like palace princesses (if you were in traditional clothing entry into the palace was free). Maybe we would even hire an oppa to take photos of us. Our dreams were so big, and yet so small. Still, we wouldn’t end up doing either of those things, because it was so friggin’ hot. The idea of wearing full hanbok filled us both with NOPE. And obviously, if we weren’t in hanbok, there was no point in hiring a photographer. There were, incredibly, people far more intrepid than we, however. Many, many people were there in hanbok - I don’t know how the fuck they were doing it and not dying of heat exhaustion, omg. We went to buy our tickets, and the line to pay full price at a machine was much shorter than the line to get a discount for traditional dress and/or child tickets, so in a way, that worked out. There was a family ahead of us in line who got to the front, and when told that if they wanted to get the child discount for their kid, they would have to get in the other line, they actually did it. Why was this so incredible, you ask? Because 1) the aforementioned longass line they’d have to stand in; 2) the heat; and 3) the full ticket price was ₩6000, which meant a measly ₩3000 in fare reduction. Would I pay an extra $3 (less, even!) ₩3000, which meant a measly ₩1500 in fare reduction. Would I pay an extra ~$1 for a family of at least three to not stand for many, many minutes in the heat?? OBVIOUSLY. I just do not understand some people’s life choices.
Top right: Me and Adelagia at the front of the palace. Bottom right: Decidedly not me and Adelagia, but I like to think it could’ve been us, 30 or so years ago, lol. Or perhaps... 400 years ago!
Anyway, we trudged along and peered into various courtyards and what not, but I have to admit, it wasn’t my thing. Sure, I was a bit intrigued because in my reading of Chinese web novels I had read plenty about concubines and wanted to see what a royal concubine’s courtyard might look like. But in general, historical landmarks, museums, all that stuff is just not what my uncultured ass appreciates, okay? I can occasionally drum up the interest, depending (I get a lot more into it in England, for example), but ancient Asian stuff has never piqued my interest. It probably makes me a bad Asian, but I just can’t lie. In any case, we made a few turns and somehow got completely and utterly lost. LOL, I had even thought to myself, “I don’t remember how we got here, will we get lost? Haha, nah, it was only like three turns, we’ll find our way back.” OH HOW WRONG I WAS. It was only good in that it led us to a really pretty part of the grounds where there was a pond, and honestly if it hadn’t been so hot, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. My feet and legs were already hurting from the walking around, and we ended up at some building where we got to enjoy some a/c for a bit and Adelagia asked the people there how we could get back to the direction of the subway. We didn’t actually want to go back to the subway, but around that area was where we wanted to go next. It turned out that we had gone completely the wrong direction (of course), so after another long walk in the heat, we somehow found ourselves out of the palace at last, and we were both hungry at that point. We had nowhere specific we were going to go for lunch, so we went to McDonald’s.
Now, let me justify this decision. Normally, when I’m in new places I hate going to restaurants that exist where I'm from. So that always means no fast food, because you can get that anywhere. BUT. The fast food places in Asia are generally a lot higher in quality due to both laws and competition, and they also have a more varied and interesting menu. So a Korean McDonald’s was actually something we had previously discussed trying. That plus the fact that one appeared out of nowhere when we were hungry just made the decision that much easier.
I ordered the grilled mushroom burger while Adelagia got the avocado tomato chicken burger. I was SUPER DISAPPOINTED with my burger. It wasn’t nearly as tasty-looking as their advertisement (hey, consistency between McD’s here and there!), and there was a very weird flavor to the burger that I did not enjoy at all. After a couple of bites, I placed it - it tasted like that weird garlic cheese toast thing from the sheep café! Whatever spread they had used (it looked like mayo, but wasn’t your regular mayo) tasted JUST LIKE THAT OTHER THING. I wiped off as much of it as I could and managed to eat the whole burger due to hunger, but man, what a waste of a meal that was. Oh and they only gave two packets of ketchup. O.o For two medium-sized fries. Like what... with that many fries I need like three just for myself! The highlight came at the end of the meal when we finished up and Adelagia found a fry that had been hiding somewhere. “Ooh! Bonus fry!”
After that Adelagia GPSed us to... I’m not actually sure what she used as her landmark, but it took us down these super cute streets full of adorable little restaurants that seemed to have great food, including seafood options, samgyetang, etc. Oh man, was I bitter seeing all that after we had settled for McDonald’s (regardless of the fact that we would have wanted to try McD’s at some point anyway)! We made notes of the various places so that we could potentially one day return, though Insadong really didn’t have anything else for us to do. At the very end of this row of restaurants was... an O’Sulloc! Like Isaac Toast, O’Sulloc was a place we had earmarked as wanting to try when we were in Seoul... it specializes in tea, and I was pretty much down for any place we could sit down and have a refreshing beverage while enjoying some a/c. We went in and took a look at their offerings, but since we’d just finished lunch we didn’t stay for any food or drinks.
We did roam around Insadong for a bit, and I managed to buy lots more BT21 and BTS-related paraphernalia. Whenever I started to look at something BTS, the vendor would “helpfully” start listing other Kpop band names (“Seventeen! Blackpink!”) that they had the same stock of - as if I couldn’t read it myself, or would somehow be inspired to get that stuff instead of the stuff that had attracted me in the first place, lol. In one particular store we actually found OFFICIAL BTS T-money cards (ugh! Why! Why couldn’t I have waited?! OK here’s the crazy thing... because of how much we were doing every day, it seemed like eons ago that I had purchased my unofficial card. But in writing this now, I realize that it was only the day before. That is insane), but they only had Jungkook and Jimin so I was at least mollified by that - they didn’t have Tae. Now, if we’d found the official cards first I would have been okay with settling for Jungkook, but oh well. One of the other things I bought at this store was a new phone case. I’d been considering a new one because I was kind of sick of my old one, but they were all so expensive and I wasn’t convinced it’d be worth it. But this one was a cute Tata one that had a sliding back - slide one way and you have yourself a mirror, slide the other way and there’s a slot for a T-money or credit card. The utility of it convinced me to pay the ₩25,000 for a new case.
We also went looking for mother-of-pearl stuff for Adelagia’s mom, and while in that shop a hairpin caught my eye. The shopkeeper’s daughter(?)-in-law(?) said it was a letter opener, but assured me it could be used as a hairpin as well (I’m sure she would have agreed with any use that I attributed to it, lol), and demonstrated by putting it into Adelgia’s hair for me to see. It was indeed very nice, and as I’d been into hairpins ever since watching Ashes of Love, I bought it.
The weirdest moment came, however, when this woman called Adelagia “언니[eonni].” I picked up on it but also thought maybe I’d misheard; it wasn’t until we had left and Adelagia mentioned it herself that we were both like “Wait wut?!?!” “Eonni” means “older sister,” a common way to address a slightly older woman who’s either very close to you, or in an effort to soften/casualize (I’m making up words now!) an interaction between two women. The weird thing was that we weren’t at all sure this woman was younger than Adelagia, who is often mistaken for being a college student, lol. So it was a weird assumption for this woman to make, as she herself did not seem that young (I would have placed her as early 30s, maybe?). I wondered if maybe Korean women were just a lot more adept at guesstimating someone’s age, due to the fact that so many of their interactions are based on age (wrt courtesies)... but still, Adelagia isn’t so obviously her age that I would think someone who didn’t know her wouldn’t at least have some doubt. I have further theories about this, but there will come another time when it will make more sense for me to speculate, so I’ll just leave this here for now.
We headed to a Coffeesmith for an afternoon beverage (watermelon juice for me again!) and then we took the bus home. I don’t strictly remember, but I think our meal at McD’s was late enough in the day that it basically served as an early dinner, and we didn’t get hungry again while we were out, nor did we want to have a super late meal.
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