Seoul Trip, Part Two (서울 여행, 파트 둘)
Three days in this entry. Seriously, some of the stuff that happens in here, I can't believe happened so early on in the trip. I was there for like 17 days, not including travel! WTF did I do for the next dozen or so?!
Part one here.
Tuesday, July 30
For breakfast we ate toast at home with strawberry jam. The bread came from Paris Baguette, and I was impressed because even after toasting and spreading with jam, the bread stayed crunchy, which for some reason doesn’t happen with bread we get in the US?? Why? Adelagia said the bread from Tous les Jours was even better!
After that we headed to the SPAO store in Hongdae to buy some BT21 shirts. We’d seen some girls wearing them the day before, and somehow ferreted out that they were sold at SPAO. I purchased two each of Tata and Cooky’s shirts, as well as a pair of plaid shorts and plain white shorts so that I could stop wearing jeans.
I mean… how could I not get this, amirite?
We decided to stick close by for dinner, and went to Moba Soba, which was in the same little complex as the sheep café. It was a ramen place where you order from a machine at the front. They had plaques everywhere showing the one time a celeb ate there, lol. They took a really long time with the food, which on the one hand was nice because it seemed the food was prepared fresh, but on the other hand, how could you ever eat here if you were on a lunch break from work? We just happened to be tourists who didn’t have time commitments, otherwise I’d have been pretty impatient. The food was good, not the best I’ve had or anything, but decent. Nothing I’d refuse to eat, but also nothing I’d need a repeat performance of.
Next up: a raccoon café!! I was both excited and fill with trepidation, because in theory the idea was cool, but on the other hand, weren’t raccoons scary? LOL. Well, if raccoons out in the wild are scary, their indoor brethren, at least at this café, were not. They were chubby and adorable, and there were also many dogs (specifically corgis) there as well. At some point a bulldog named Lucky came in, then left, and it was like he was the boss inspecting the place, lol. We fluctuated between feeling charmed by the raccoons, and feeling sorry for them because they’re stuck indoors all the time (we assume) and was that really right to do to them? One of them seemed to suffer from some kind of mental illness, as s/he kept walking itself back and forth in front of one of the windows to the café part of the place. He seemed to get better, however, when the female caretaker played with him and what not. Adelagia and I sat down on a bench, and some raccoons came by to take naps near us and we were able to even jiggle one of their butts, it was funny. The café part was pretty lame; the drinks were frankly terrible. But I guess what do you want from a raccoon café run by a bulldog named Lucky?
We decided to stop by an escape room we were interested in, to check things out and maybe also see if they had some openings we could take advantage of, assuming we could actually do them in English. I was still a bit wary of the idea of trusting Korean English in an escape room situation, because the experience we had in Vancouver the one time of Chinese English was not good - their riddles and what not made no sense to us lol.
Big, fat droplets of rain started falling as we made our way over, but I realized I had left my umbrella at home - or at least, was sure I had not put it in my purse that morning (I had been borrowing one of Jason’s). I told Adelagia that it was fine, thinking of the rain in Seattle and assuming it would be similar. People in Seattle don’t use umbrellas, because they’re such a pain in the ass and the rain is usually such that you can walk from point A to B without getting too wet. Well… Seoul rain is not like that. Seoul rain comes down hard, and there’s A LOT of it. By the time we reached our location, which was only an eight-minute walk, I was DRENCHED. I felt stunned by what had just happened; I’d never experienced such intense rain! No wonder people in dramas run for the nearest shelter whenever it starts raining and act like everything must stop in order to accommodate the rain! I will never make fun of drama people’s reaction to rain again. Adelagia also said that people in Seoul carried umbrellas for another reason: their teachers apparently told them that it sometimes rained acid rain! WTF. (Thankfully it wasn’t that when it rained on me???) Also, it was supposedly monsoon season, which meant it was extra rainy. I looked it up and it seems like monsoon season is supposed to be early-middle June and ending in early July, but it can also be inconsistent so who knows.
Anyway, we entered the escape room and I asked (in English) whether they had rooms in English. I used English because I figured if they were an establishment that had English escape rooms, their people must be adept at the language, right? Apparently, very wrong. He didn’t really understand what I was saying at all (and didn’t ask me to clarify); he just looked up room availability and told us that they didn’t have anything available. Adelagia asked if we could book something for the future, but he said we would need to make reservations online. The encounter made me even more wary of how good the English would be in their rooms, but apparently the reviews online by native English speakers were positive, so… in any case, apparently if we wanted to do a room we’d have to book online anyway.
We made our way to RoRo11, which was an Italian place I’d found online, maybe even using an app like MangoPlate, I can’t remember, because one of the other things on our list of things to try was Korean interpretations of other cuisines, specifically Italian, due primarily to Let’s Eat. They opened at 5pm, and we were there maybe 30 minutes early, so we sat around and waited for it to open. Right around 5pm a cute-ish, young-ish guy came out and asked if we were waiting for the restaurant to open; when we said yes, he invited us inside. He spoke to us in English, so clearly knew that we were of the foreign persuasion, and yet when he brought over the (handwritten) menu, it was almost completely in Korean other than stray words here and there. LOL! Like he literally did not offer to interpret it or ask if we could read it or anything; it was like it totally made sense to him that we would speak English but also be able to read Korean (which I assume is NOT that commonplace)! Luckily, we could read the Korean, and even more luckily, because it was a non-Korean cuisine, most of it was just Korean sounding out Italian menu words that we understood. :))))))
I ordered spaghetti amatriciana, while Adelagia had some kind of shrimp pasta dish. They were both good, but frankly, I felt my spaghetti was overpriced for the portion and what it contained. Well, I don’t know how much pancetta costs in Seoul, but ₩18,000 for the dish seemed too much because the portion size was very small and there wasn’t that much pancetta in it. Adelagia is a slow eater, and I’m faster than her… but when around other people, I’m usually the slow one. However usually we can time it just about right, but this time I was done in no time at all. I even tried to pace myself, but there was too little food on my plate to do that successfully. And I was not full from my meal, lol. I noticed the other table who had arrived around the same time as us had ordered some kind of noodle salad, and later on a girl came in who ordered the same thing! It seemed, from those two examples, that there was a house dish we should have been aware of and ordered. :/ (Later on, Adelagia looked it up and found out that it was some kind of salmon salad, which also came with a side of noodles. Dang it, salmon? We had no interest in that at all because if there’s one thing we have plenty of in the PNW, it’s salmon.) When we left the guy from earlier, who seemed to serve as both the waiter and the cook (it was a super tiny place, which is the only reason such an arrangement could work), handed Adelagia a handwritten card. It was very cute! It turned out he was the chef/owner of the place! And we agreed, once we were out of earshot, that he had been cute, too, haha.
After that we stopped by Line Friends for “dessert” - though my dessert also included fries since I was still feeling a bit munchy. The drinks we got that time: Adelagia got RJ’s “mellow latte,” which had marshmallows in it, and I got Tata’s “popping candy slush,” which sounded like the most disgusting concoction of them all, thus proving that my devotion to Tae/Tata knows no bounds. It was super shocking to take a sip of the thing and then feel the poprocks going off in your mouth, lol. NO, TATA, NO. Also it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too sweet, ugh. But I got my drink sticker and that’s all that matters. *gag*
We got home and I started emptying my heavy purse to see what I could cut down on the next day so I wouldn’t have to feel so much weight, and guess what I found in my purse? AN UMRELLA. LOLOLOLOL cryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Oh but I was also excited because my package of BTS stuff that I'd ordered off a seller on eBay had arrived. Everything together was going to cost like $850 if I bought off eBay, but I contacted her and asked if we could make a deal if I were to buy like nine things from her, and she said of course. So we got in contact over KT and I ended up paying her $550 for the items - partly due to the discount she gave, partly because it meant I wouldn’t have to pay tax, and partly because she wouldn’t have to ship all the way to the US, which was expensive. For awhile I did wonder if I had basically just given $550 to someone with no recourse, but my faith in humankind did not bite me in the ass - at least this time. She actually send the box of stuff, Jason delivered it, etc. However, after going through it I realized that there were two photocards missing, which was totally ugh. I had to contact her on KT again to ask after them, but honestly I didn’t know what I could possibly do if she didn’t believe me or if she tried to claimed she’d sent them.
Wednesday, July 31
By unspoken agreement Adelagia and I both woke up late the next morning, to darkness and the sound of thunder. Yikes. Breakfast was toast and jam again, but this time also with a convenience store egg! And convenience store sausage sticks! And this was when I first tried the strawberry milk. I attempted to crack the egg on my head, the way they do in dramas, but it really fucking hurt and it didn’t even work! Lolol it was hilarious though. The egg was yummy. The sausage stick was weird, in that it wasn’t even meat. It was more like fish cake, but had a not-good flavor and texture.
I heard back from my eBay contact, and she apologized profusely, saying that the cards had fallen into the cracks in the packing area of the office, and that she would send them out that day. Whew!
We went to the Lotteworld mall, which is this… network?... of malls, and has a food court area, an aquarium, and a whole other part that’s like an indoor amusement park. The indoor part was appealing, but pretty much all the rest of the idea of being at an amusement park (the kids, the loudness, the entrance fee of ₩57,000, waiting in line for rides, etc.) was not. Our plan was to go to the aquarium, walk around the mall, eat some good food, find a nice place to relax and have a beverage. We made our way to the aquarium, but when we saw the entrance fee of over ₩30,000, we both agreed that for that price we would rather eat seafood, not look at it, lol. This decision was spurred by the fact that we’d just passed by a Big Guy’s Seafood, which had a bunch of live lobsters in tanks, a lobster countdown, and a price of $25. Adelagia said that there was a Big Guy’s Seafood in Hongdae, but I pointed out that in Seoul, we couldn’t be sure that chains would be as consistent as they are in the US, and she had to concede that was very true. (I’m just now remembering that the morning we ended up having pocha food for breakfast, when we tried to have breakfast in various other places, was all due to the fact that we had gone to Tom N Tom’s because there was an item there that had sounded appealing to us both. Adelagia had led us to the Tom N Tom’s in Myeongdong, rightfully assuming that it would have the same item as the one she’d been to before, but it didn’t! Over time we even found that the same chains - such as O’Sulloc - even had different prices for items in different branches.)
So! That was how we ended up having delicious lobster at the Lotteworld Mall, lol. Since we’d had a fairly large breakfast, I was fine with having the plain grilled lobster, which came with mussels and clams as well. Otherwise, I would have chosen the lobster pasta. It was fun and delicious! However, I was slightly embittered when a trio of women sat down at the table next to us, and their grilled lobster came with many more clams than ours did (ours were more mussel heavy, but I prefer clams).
We walked around the mall a bit, but neither of us are really mall people, even though it was nice to be indoors and feeling comfortable. We went to a grocery store/food court area, where I was horrified by the sight of croissants stuffed with AN ENTIRE STICK OF BUTTER. OMFG is that really necessary?! I was sort of interested in maybe trying some of their baked goods, but the bakery ladies were so pushy with calling out their wares that I simply didn’t feel comfortable with looking around to take pictures and see what I wanted. I don’t know if this way of luring in customers works with regular Koreans or other foreigners, but for me it was too off putting.
Left: The crazy butter croissants. Top right: In Seoul cotton candy is taken to a whole new level. Bottom right: I didn’t talk about this in the entry so I’m doing it now. What the fuck is up with this hair roller look? So many women in Korea did this out in public. I mean, is it a look unto itself? Are they readying their bangs for work/school/a social event? Do you realize you’re still out in public even if not at those things? Also, HELLO YOU LOOK STUPID.
Anyway, we really just wanted a place to sit down where we could have some coffee or tea, and a bit of dessert (why can’t every place be like Midori??). The “sit down” part was why I passed up churros and also Hokkaido (potentially) soft serve. The most promising place was TarTar, which specialized in tarts, so that’s where we went! The tarts were soooooo beautiful, omg. I got a black cherry tart and a - what else - watermelon juice. The tart was pretty good, not the best thing I’d ever eaten, but it was fine and hit the spot.
We decided to leave the mall at that point, since we’d pretty much exhausted everything it had to offer us, and ended up going to a bunny café. A sad little bunny café, I should say. Up until this point, the animal cafés we’d been to had been primarily joyful places where you appreciated animals that you didn’t normally get to appreciate. The animals were out and about, and while sure, some part of you wondered if they shouldn’t actually be out in the wild rather than confined in a city, but at least for the most part they seemed happy and well fed, with conditions that seemed OK, at least from the customer’s point of view. The bunny café was quite a few steps down in terms of cleanliness and the semblance of a fun, joyful place. All the bunnies were kept in cages - two per - and there were two pens that served as play areas. Unlike the places we’d been to previously, the place was empty when we arrived. We opted to pay for an hour of playing with the bunnies, along with some bunny food, which consisted of a few leaves of partially dried green-leaf veggies. The proprietress - not Korean but possibly French, from what little I could hear her speak to her compatriot - let out three of the bunnies from their cages into one of the pens, and Adelagia and I joined them there. They were All About The Leaves, snatching at them and generally acting as though they were starved. I don’t KNOW that they were literally starved, but they only had interest in the leaves and once they were gone - within minutes - the bunnies wanted to have nothing to do with us. They also peed and pooed at random, which might be a normal thing for rabbits, I don’t know, but we did have to be careful not to accidentally sit on rabbit pee. We tried our best to play with them and get some good pictures, but honestly the whole thing was more depressing than anything. I felt so sorry for them. While we had spent hours at the raccoon café, at the bunny café we couldn’t even stay for the time we’d paid for and left after a couple of other groups came in.
Next up we went to Coffee Brown, and horror of horrors, they didn’t have watermelon juice! It was possibly the first coffee shop we’d been to that didn’t have what seemed like a ubiquitous summer drink. I opted for the “lemonade,” but here’s the thing about -ades in Seoul… they aren’t what you and I think of as -ades. Lemonade, yuzu-ade, grape-ade, all of those are made with sparkling water, so the drink you’re going to get will be fizzy. Just a warning for you so if you get an -ade in Seoul you’ll know what to expect!
This is “lemonade.”
While at Coffee Brown, we discussed the possibility of doing a hanbok day, but instead of doing it at the palace and hiring a photographer or doing it ourselves, we would do it at a studio. We’d be indoors, get to dress up, and have a professional photographer take the pictures. I found a place (called “Hanbok That Day,” but booked through Indiway) in Insadong (near the palace, natch), that had good reviews, and it cost only ₩30,000 per person. I’m not sure what we were thinking it should cost, but considering the hanbok rental and professional photography, at least twice that? They also offered hairstyling services for an extra ₩5000. We figured at those kinds of prices we could do a couple of them if we didn’t like how this one turned out for some reason! We booked an appointment for Monday.
For dinner we decided to try Oh? Udon!, which was a restaurant right across the street from Murder Road. We saw it every time we left for the day, and came back in the evening, basically. We didn’t actually have any interest in trying it until one night we saw that they were pretty packed and thought, wow, is this place actually any good? What if we had a really good noodle place right near us and we never tried it, wouldn’t that be silly? Well… we should have listened to our first instincts, lol. It was not good. It was average to the extreme, actually, to the point where even eating it seemed like a chore. Unfortunately, that meant we couldn’t finish our food, and there was enough left that we felt we needed to take it as leftovers.
This picture somehow makes the bowl of noodles look way more decent than it actually tasted.
Taking leftovers, by the way, did not seem to be the done thing Seoul. Are they just a nation of people who did not like to eat leftovers? Do they not like to deal with the trash and recycling afterward? And yet takeout seems entirely normal, so…? Did it somehow seem rude toward the restaurant because they would have to use takeout containers only partially filled with food? Did most people somehow always order the perfect amount of food when they ate out, so they didn’t have leftovers? Was it that Korean food is served family style, so figuring out who would bring home leftovers if you weren’t with your family would be awkward? I mean, the list of questions are endless! That said, it was never really an issue the few times we asked to take home our leftovers. The restaurants did it willingly enough, but the service staff were always a little puzzled initially when asked, which left the impression that it wasn’t something they frequently had to deal with. In hindsight we probably should’ve just left the food, since we didn’t even like it that much, but at the time we figured we might want it for breakfast or something.
Thursday, Aug. 1
We tried a shabu shabu place that was located near one of the other Hongik University Station exits. It was kind of fun and interesting to try an AYCE shabu shabu place in Seoul, since we’d been to Shabuya in LA with [Bad username: ”jade_okelani”] not too long ago. It was worth it for the novelty, but in terms of actual food and experience I actually prefer the shabu shabu I’m used to. It seemed fairly limited in terms of vegetable offerings, for example, but offered an extensive hot food bar, which I thought was odd. I mean, the whole point of shabu shabu is to do the hot pot, you know? Or at least, I think so. I don’t need some basic Korean cooked-food buffet on the side. You got your own broth from pitchers located in a refrigerated section, which was interesting. Convenient if you needed more soup, because then you could choose a different type of broth if you wanted (we started with beef, then topped off with chicken). We only asked for one extra serving of beef, which was not very well played of us (when are we going to learn to eat our worth?!?!), and half of one of Adelagia’s was all fat. Like, are they even serious? Do people there actually eat that or do they look upon it with scorn, as I did? The drinks and dessert were also blah. Maybe we just went to a super lame shabu shabu place, given its location I wouldn’t be that surprised; they don’t have to be good to get business.
But the most embarrassing part came when we looked allllllll over the place for napkins. We had too much shame to ask any of the servers, because we could clearly see other people using them; we just couldn’t figure out where the hell they were getting them from! All the common areas did not have any napkins. Finally, I thought about the fact that people seemed to keep getting them so easily, without seeming to even leave their table, and added it together with our experience at the samgyeopsal place on my first real day, and pulled out a drawer on the side of the table, where the napkins and utensils were located. Lolol oh man, we felt like idiots, because this is a commonplace thing, and yet we were soooooo mystified as to where everyone was getting their napkins. By the way, I feel like we should adopt this custom at all kinds of restaurants in the US. It’s so convenient!
Afterward, we made our way to the Line Friends store in Myeongdong (if “we went to Line Friends” sounds repetitive at this point, well, you might as well stop reading. It was basically our home base. We kept coming up with things we “had” to buy), and I bought a Tata wallet (I wanted something more lightweight than what I was carrying around) and Cooky luggage tag. I was excited because I finally got a Tata plastic bag, and Adelagia bought a Chimmy mug and got a Chimmy plastic bag! These are the sorts of things that get us excited, people. I don’t understand why anyone is still reading this.
We then went to a meerkat café!!!! That’s right, we were trying to hit every animal café Seoul had to offer. The place was called “Meerkat Friends,” because it turns out that in addition to meerkats, they also had wallabies, weird-looking cats, a raccoon, and other animals I can’t even name. The whole thing was very delightful. The place was bright, spacious, and nicely maintained, and after the sad bunny café I felt a lot better. Plus, because we were the only ones there when we arrived, the staff seemed to go out of their way to charm us with the animals, performing little tricks with them, having us interact with them, etc. Finally, we were allowed into one of the meerkat pens, and we were warned not to make sudden movements or loud noises, because they scared easily. They were so, so adorable omg, and not afraid of people at all. A couple of them even fell asleep on us, including the one with the pink collar, who we were told was the leader of this particular meerkat band. (I do not know what a group of meerkats is called.) At one point one of the caretakers put one of the animals on Adelagia’s head.
Caretaker: Are you scared?
Adelagia: No.
Caretaker: Your face looks scared.
HAHAHAHAHHAA.
Can you tell whether Adelagia's face looks scared?
Afterward, we went to the underground shopping area and I bought more BTS stuff. I have zero idea what I bought that time, it’s all one big BTS shopping blur. However, we were in Myeongdong, so it must’ve been from that same place we went before. I don’t know how much of my money they had by the time I left Seoul, lol. We also peered into other shops that sold Kpop goods, but I was disappointed to find that they didn’t have any special DVDs or anything that I didn’t already have, and the prices weren’t actually that great considering I couldn’t even be assured of getting Tae or JK as photocards or anything.
Of course by that time we were in sore need of a beverage, so we went to the Innisfree Green Café. I ordered the same snowy apple tea that I had the first time, while Adelagia got some kind of refreshing citrus drink. By the time we got out there was an explosion of street carts! Apparently we’d never been in Myeongdong this late before, because we would come to find that this was commonplace. But this was the first time I was experiencing it, and looking at all the different offerings was super cool, even if I didn’t feel all that hungry. Hot pot always manages to stuff me, somehow.
We both wanted to get a foot massage, from all the days walking around everywhere, so we followed a sign for a foot massage and went to the indicated floor. A woman greeted us who, through the course of a brief conversation, we both took to be Japanese, though by the end we were questioning why we even thought that, lol. It was just one of those weird things. Anyway, we allowed ourselves to be talked into a higher tier of foot massage than we originally wanted (sometimes we gave into things simply so that the awkward, stilted conversation in which neither side truly understood what the other was saying, would end), so instead of paying ₩18,000 we paid ₩25,000 - I can’t even remember how long the massage was now. I think 45-60 min? Anyway it felt really good for the most part on my very sore feet and legs, but at one point she was using some kind of wooden stick to dig into my foot, and even though I didn’t know how to stay “You’re gonna have to stop that now,” in Korean, I figured my screaming might get the point across. However she stopped before any of that was necessary. Honestly for ₩25,000 it wasn’t the best massage deal ever. In LA you can get a full-body massage at a Chinese foot massage place for $25. But then again, at those places they also expect you to tip like $10 so maybe I’m not being fair.
Naturally after all that taxing massage stuff we were once again forced to go enjoy some beverages, this time at O’Sulloc, haha. Adelagia was fairly out of it from the massage, or maybe it was having the strange animal on her head, or maybe just everything combined, LOL.
Adelagia: What do you want to drink?
Me: Mmm… I’ll have a hojicha.
Adelagia: Hot or iced?
Me: Iced.
Adelagia: Okay.
*drinks arrive; both are hot teas*
Me: Oh, do they not do hojicha iced?
Adelagia: Hmm?
*pause*
Adelagia: OH NO!! (⊙_⊙)
Hahahaha, luckily it didn’t matter because their hojicha was delicious, and when you’re sitting in an air-conditioned space you can still enjoy a hot beverage.
Left: An iced hojic Two delicious hot beverages.
After that we wandered around the street vendors for a bit, wondering if we should partake in some street food. It might have been this night, or maybe it was a different night, but as I forgot to note exactly when it happened, I’ll just explain now - the when doesn’t really matter. In the tourist-heavy locations, because there are so many restaurants all crowded together, in order to attract customers the restaurants hire people to call out to people and entice them to go in (or alternatively, makeup places hire people to give out face masks, but you don’t actually get it unless you go in). You get used to it - you just ignore them, or say a curious “no thanks,” and they’ll back off. USUALLY. One time, it was like a series of aggressive guys. First one tried to speak to me charmingly in Japanese, so of course I did not understand a word he was saying. Second one called me “beautiful girl” in Chinese, but I once again didn’t understand what he was saying because my Chinese is so subpar (it was Adelagia who told me later). Finally I encountered a particularly pushy guy who grinned the whole time and WOULD NOT GET OUT OF MY FACE. Like I muttered the usual “no thanks,” and tried to go around him, but instead of dropping off and trying his luck with someone else, he stayed in front of me and matched me step for step! WTF?? Finally I kind of yelled, “NO!” and glared at him, which finally made him leave me alone, but his grin never once faltered. Like seriously wtf. Did he really think I was going to be like, “Well, I wasn’t hungry, but you’ve now convinced me to eat at this place because you followed me with a menu”??? When of course the opposite was true - I would now eat ANYWHERE BUT THERE. I mean, some part of me, the person who is an actual human being and can put myself in the shoes of other people, felt bad about the encounter because I’m sure it’s a shitty job, and it’s not nice to be yelled at, but of course the me who was in MY shoes felt it was totally inappropriate and he deserved it.
Anyway, as much as we might’ve wanted to WANT to eat street food, we weren’t really feeling it, however (it’s really hard to work up an appetite in stuffy heat like we always experienced outside), not hungry at all. I made the terrible decision to buy some glazed strawberries. I had seen them before, at other locations, and they always looked soooooo good, all drippy with syrup and red from sweet strawberries. They reminded me of candied apples, which I’ve always thought looked soooooooooo incredibly wonderful and delicious, even though the few times I actually ate them were a disappointment. (That’s right, I never learn.) Anyway, that’s what was going through my mind when I bought a stick of glazed strawberries for a whopping ₩5000. I was imagining myself enjoying some delightfully sweet strawberries with a syrupy glaze. What I instead got was a mouthful of GLUE. Like, it wasn’t literal glue, don’t get me wrong. But the glaze hardened quickly, and just one strawberry with its glaze caused my mouth to nearly seize up, unable to chew this incredibly sticky and rapidly hardening substance. We had to stand there for many minutes while the heat from my mouth finally melted down the glaze enough - it was like eating a super sticky taffy - and I went and got a plastic bag from the vendor so I could stick the accursed strawberries into it. OMG what a horrendous mistake that was. I don’t know how you’re supposed to eat it, because clearly the way I’d done it was wrong. Maybe you’re just supposed to lick it, like a strawberry lollipop? I don’t know because I never saw anyone else actually eating one, even though I did see other people buying it.
While I was struggling with my stick of strawberries, Adelagia had seen a sign for a restaurant that served gangjang gejang, a raw crab dish that we both very much enjoy. In the US the dish is made with blue crabs, but in Seoul it’s made with their local flower crabs, which we can’t get live here. Maybe that’s why it was so expensive? We’d made note of it at other places, but it always cost upwards of like ₩48,000 wtf? Jason, too, had warned us that it was a very expensive dish. We started heading in the direction that the sign indicated, but along the way there was a young girl standing outside a restaurant, encouraging people to go inside. Because we are not rude assholes, and because she did not seem like a rude asshole, we didn’t ignore her, so to give her a chance, I asked if they served gangjang gejang, and she said yes. The price seemed reasonable, comparatively speaking -- ₩20,000 for two crabs. So we went up and were very single minded about our order, haha, getting one order of gangjang gejang each. In retrospect we probably should’ve gotten just one order, and also gotten some samgyeopsal or something, just for the sake of diversity, but oh well. Of the things I regret doing or not doing in Seoul, this doesn’t even make the top 10. Anyhow! It was fairly delicious, though a little salty, particularly because they gave a surprisingly small amount of rice considering that according to Maangchi, to me the goddess of all things Korean food, this dish is known as a “rice thief” because of how much rice you can consume while eating it. The thing, though, is that I don’t think it was any more delicious than the gangjang gejang we’ve had at Sam Oh Jung in Lynnwood, or that I have made myself using blue crabs, at home. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I mean, I suppose that’s a good thing. But it does also sort of make me wonder if perhaps they would have tasted different in a restaurant that specialized in the dish. Or in more of a seafood-oriented place, like… Busan. But that’s a different regret entirely. ;)
Anyway, because two small crabs plus a paltry amount of rice wasn’t that filling, afterward I was invigorated to actually eat a skewer of beef (₩7000), which was decent but not, imho, worth ₩7000. I also bought a cup of cherries (₩5000, wtf at these street food prices), because they’re my favorite fruit and I wanted to taste Korean ones (they do indeed taste a bit different from the cherries I’m used to, they’re all delicious in their own way). The funny thing is that because they were being sold at a juice cart, it wasn’t super clear if the cherries were intended to be sold as they were, or if they were supposed to be made into a juice, like some of the other fruit. Because the cherries were whole and not pitted, I assumed they were meant to be eaten whole, but it didn’t hurt to ask, which I did. The guys manning the cart seemed exasperated by my question. “Just eat! Eat!” they exclaimed, motioning. All right, all right, man, just checking!!
Left to right: Moments before my jaw would become glued shut; delicious gangjang gejang; an OK meat stick.
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Part one here.
Tuesday, July 30
For breakfast we ate toast at home with strawberry jam. The bread came from Paris Baguette, and I was impressed because even after toasting and spreading with jam, the bread stayed crunchy, which for some reason doesn’t happen with bread we get in the US?? Why? Adelagia said the bread from Tous les Jours was even better!
After that we headed to the SPAO store in Hongdae to buy some BT21 shirts. We’d seen some girls wearing them the day before, and somehow ferreted out that they were sold at SPAO. I purchased two each of Tata and Cooky’s shirts, as well as a pair of plaid shorts and plain white shorts so that I could stop wearing jeans.
I mean… how could I not get this, amirite?
We decided to stick close by for dinner, and went to Moba Soba, which was in the same little complex as the sheep café. It was a ramen place where you order from a machine at the front. They had plaques everywhere showing the one time a celeb ate there, lol. They took a really long time with the food, which on the one hand was nice because it seemed the food was prepared fresh, but on the other hand, how could you ever eat here if you were on a lunch break from work? We just happened to be tourists who didn’t have time commitments, otherwise I’d have been pretty impatient. The food was good, not the best I’ve had or anything, but decent. Nothing I’d refuse to eat, but also nothing I’d need a repeat performance of.
Next up: a raccoon café!! I was both excited and fill with trepidation, because in theory the idea was cool, but on the other hand, weren’t raccoons scary? LOL. Well, if raccoons out in the wild are scary, their indoor brethren, at least at this café, were not. They were chubby and adorable, and there were also many dogs (specifically corgis) there as well. At some point a bulldog named Lucky came in, then left, and it was like he was the boss inspecting the place, lol. We fluctuated between feeling charmed by the raccoons, and feeling sorry for them because they’re stuck indoors all the time (we assume) and was that really right to do to them? One of them seemed to suffer from some kind of mental illness, as s/he kept walking itself back and forth in front of one of the windows to the café part of the place. He seemed to get better, however, when the female caretaker played with him and what not. Adelagia and I sat down on a bench, and some raccoons came by to take naps near us and we were able to even jiggle one of their butts, it was funny. The café part was pretty lame; the drinks were frankly terrible. But I guess what do you want from a raccoon café run by a bulldog named Lucky?
We decided to stop by an escape room we were interested in, to check things out and maybe also see if they had some openings we could take advantage of, assuming we could actually do them in English. I was still a bit wary of the idea of trusting Korean English in an escape room situation, because the experience we had in Vancouver the one time of Chinese English was not good - their riddles and what not made no sense to us lol.
Big, fat droplets of rain started falling as we made our way over, but I realized I had left my umbrella at home - or at least, was sure I had not put it in my purse that morning (I had been borrowing one of Jason’s). I told Adelagia that it was fine, thinking of the rain in Seattle and assuming it would be similar. People in Seattle don’t use umbrellas, because they’re such a pain in the ass and the rain is usually such that you can walk from point A to B without getting too wet. Well… Seoul rain is not like that. Seoul rain comes down hard, and there’s A LOT of it. By the time we reached our location, which was only an eight-minute walk, I was DRENCHED. I felt stunned by what had just happened; I’d never experienced such intense rain! No wonder people in dramas run for the nearest shelter whenever it starts raining and act like everything must stop in order to accommodate the rain! I will never make fun of drama people’s reaction to rain again. Adelagia also said that people in Seoul carried umbrellas for another reason: their teachers apparently told them that it sometimes rained acid rain! WTF. (Thankfully it wasn’t that when it rained on me???) Also, it was supposedly monsoon season, which meant it was extra rainy. I looked it up and it seems like monsoon season is supposed to be early-middle June and ending in early July, but it can also be inconsistent so who knows.
Anyway, we entered the escape room and I asked (in English) whether they had rooms in English. I used English because I figured if they were an establishment that had English escape rooms, their people must be adept at the language, right? Apparently, very wrong. He didn’t really understand what I was saying at all (and didn’t ask me to clarify); he just looked up room availability and told us that they didn’t have anything available. Adelagia asked if we could book something for the future, but he said we would need to make reservations online. The encounter made me even more wary of how good the English would be in their rooms, but apparently the reviews online by native English speakers were positive, so… in any case, apparently if we wanted to do a room we’d have to book online anyway.
We made our way to RoRo11, which was an Italian place I’d found online, maybe even using an app like MangoPlate, I can’t remember, because one of the other things on our list of things to try was Korean interpretations of other cuisines, specifically Italian, due primarily to Let’s Eat. They opened at 5pm, and we were there maybe 30 minutes early, so we sat around and waited for it to open. Right around 5pm a cute-ish, young-ish guy came out and asked if we were waiting for the restaurant to open; when we said yes, he invited us inside. He spoke to us in English, so clearly knew that we were of the foreign persuasion, and yet when he brought over the (handwritten) menu, it was almost completely in Korean other than stray words here and there. LOL! Like he literally did not offer to interpret it or ask if we could read it or anything; it was like it totally made sense to him that we would speak English but also be able to read Korean (which I assume is NOT that commonplace)! Luckily, we could read the Korean, and even more luckily, because it was a non-Korean cuisine, most of it was just Korean sounding out Italian menu words that we understood. :))))))
I ordered spaghetti amatriciana, while Adelagia had some kind of shrimp pasta dish. They were both good, but frankly, I felt my spaghetti was overpriced for the portion and what it contained. Well, I don’t know how much pancetta costs in Seoul, but ₩18,000 for the dish seemed too much because the portion size was very small and there wasn’t that much pancetta in it. Adelagia is a slow eater, and I’m faster than her… but when around other people, I’m usually the slow one. However usually we can time it just about right, but this time I was done in no time at all. I even tried to pace myself, but there was too little food on my plate to do that successfully. And I was not full from my meal, lol. I noticed the other table who had arrived around the same time as us had ordered some kind of noodle salad, and later on a girl came in who ordered the same thing! It seemed, from those two examples, that there was a house dish we should have been aware of and ordered. :/ (Later on, Adelagia looked it up and found out that it was some kind of salmon salad, which also came with a side of noodles. Dang it, salmon? We had no interest in that at all because if there’s one thing we have plenty of in the PNW, it’s salmon.) When we left the guy from earlier, who seemed to serve as both the waiter and the cook (it was a super tiny place, which is the only reason such an arrangement could work), handed Adelagia a handwritten card. It was very cute! It turned out he was the chef/owner of the place! And we agreed, once we were out of earshot, that he had been cute, too, haha.
After that we stopped by Line Friends for “dessert” - though my dessert also included fries since I was still feeling a bit munchy. The drinks we got that time: Adelagia got RJ’s “mellow latte,” which had marshmallows in it, and I got Tata’s “popping candy slush,” which sounded like the most disgusting concoction of them all, thus proving that my devotion to Tae/Tata knows no bounds. It was super shocking to take a sip of the thing and then feel the poprocks going off in your mouth, lol. NO, TATA, NO. Also it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too sweet, ugh. But I got my drink sticker and that’s all that matters. *gag*
We got home and I started emptying my heavy purse to see what I could cut down on the next day so I wouldn’t have to feel so much weight, and guess what I found in my purse? AN UMRELLA. LOLOLOLOL cryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Oh but I was also excited because my package of BTS stuff that I'd ordered off a seller on eBay had arrived. Everything together was going to cost like $850 if I bought off eBay, but I contacted her and asked if we could make a deal if I were to buy like nine things from her, and she said of course. So we got in contact over KT and I ended up paying her $550 for the items - partly due to the discount she gave, partly because it meant I wouldn’t have to pay tax, and partly because she wouldn’t have to ship all the way to the US, which was expensive. For awhile I did wonder if I had basically just given $550 to someone with no recourse, but my faith in humankind did not bite me in the ass - at least this time. She actually send the box of stuff, Jason delivered it, etc. However, after going through it I realized that there were two photocards missing, which was totally ugh. I had to contact her on KT again to ask after them, but honestly I didn’t know what I could possibly do if she didn’t believe me or if she tried to claimed she’d sent them.
Wednesday, July 31
By unspoken agreement Adelagia and I both woke up late the next morning, to darkness and the sound of thunder. Yikes. Breakfast was toast and jam again, but this time also with a convenience store egg! And convenience store sausage sticks! And this was when I first tried the strawberry milk. I attempted to crack the egg on my head, the way they do in dramas, but it really fucking hurt and it didn’t even work! Lolol it was hilarious though. The egg was yummy. The sausage stick was weird, in that it wasn’t even meat. It was more like fish cake, but had a not-good flavor and texture.
I heard back from my eBay contact, and she apologized profusely, saying that the cards had fallen into the cracks in the packing area of the office, and that she would send them out that day. Whew!
We went to the Lotteworld mall, which is this… network?... of malls, and has a food court area, an aquarium, and a whole other part that’s like an indoor amusement park. The indoor part was appealing, but pretty much all the rest of the idea of being at an amusement park (the kids, the loudness, the entrance fee of ₩57,000, waiting in line for rides, etc.) was not. Our plan was to go to the aquarium, walk around the mall, eat some good food, find a nice place to relax and have a beverage. We made our way to the aquarium, but when we saw the entrance fee of over ₩30,000, we both agreed that for that price we would rather eat seafood, not look at it, lol. This decision was spurred by the fact that we’d just passed by a Big Guy’s Seafood, which had a bunch of live lobsters in tanks, a lobster countdown, and a price of $25. Adelagia said that there was a Big Guy’s Seafood in Hongdae, but I pointed out that in Seoul, we couldn’t be sure that chains would be as consistent as they are in the US, and she had to concede that was very true. (I’m just now remembering that the morning we ended up having pocha food for breakfast, when we tried to have breakfast in various other places, was all due to the fact that we had gone to Tom N Tom’s because there was an item there that had sounded appealing to us both. Adelagia had led us to the Tom N Tom’s in Myeongdong, rightfully assuming that it would have the same item as the one she’d been to before, but it didn’t! Over time we even found that the same chains - such as O’Sulloc - even had different prices for items in different branches.)
So! That was how we ended up having delicious lobster at the Lotteworld Mall, lol. Since we’d had a fairly large breakfast, I was fine with having the plain grilled lobster, which came with mussels and clams as well. Otherwise, I would have chosen the lobster pasta. It was fun and delicious! However, I was slightly embittered when a trio of women sat down at the table next to us, and their grilled lobster came with many more clams than ours did (ours were more mussel heavy, but I prefer clams).
We walked around the mall a bit, but neither of us are really mall people, even though it was nice to be indoors and feeling comfortable. We went to a grocery store/food court area, where I was horrified by the sight of croissants stuffed with AN ENTIRE STICK OF BUTTER. OMFG is that really necessary?! I was sort of interested in maybe trying some of their baked goods, but the bakery ladies were so pushy with calling out their wares that I simply didn’t feel comfortable with looking around to take pictures and see what I wanted. I don’t know if this way of luring in customers works with regular Koreans or other foreigners, but for me it was too off putting.
Left: The crazy butter croissants. Top right: In Seoul cotton candy is taken to a whole new level. Bottom right: I didn’t talk about this in the entry so I’m doing it now. What the fuck is up with this hair roller look? So many women in Korea did this out in public. I mean, is it a look unto itself? Are they readying their bangs for work/school/a social event? Do you realize you’re still out in public even if not at those things? Also, HELLO YOU LOOK STUPID.
Anyway, we really just wanted a place to sit down where we could have some coffee or tea, and a bit of dessert (why can’t every place be like Midori??). The “sit down” part was why I passed up churros and also Hokkaido (potentially) soft serve. The most promising place was TarTar, which specialized in tarts, so that’s where we went! The tarts were soooooo beautiful, omg. I got a black cherry tart and a - what else - watermelon juice. The tart was pretty good, not the best thing I’d ever eaten, but it was fine and hit the spot.
We decided to leave the mall at that point, since we’d pretty much exhausted everything it had to offer us, and ended up going to a bunny café. A sad little bunny café, I should say. Up until this point, the animal cafés we’d been to had been primarily joyful places where you appreciated animals that you didn’t normally get to appreciate. The animals were out and about, and while sure, some part of you wondered if they shouldn’t actually be out in the wild rather than confined in a city, but at least for the most part they seemed happy and well fed, with conditions that seemed OK, at least from the customer’s point of view. The bunny café was quite a few steps down in terms of cleanliness and the semblance of a fun, joyful place. All the bunnies were kept in cages - two per - and there were two pens that served as play areas. Unlike the places we’d been to previously, the place was empty when we arrived. We opted to pay for an hour of playing with the bunnies, along with some bunny food, which consisted of a few leaves of partially dried green-leaf veggies. The proprietress - not Korean but possibly French, from what little I could hear her speak to her compatriot - let out three of the bunnies from their cages into one of the pens, and Adelagia and I joined them there. They were All About The Leaves, snatching at them and generally acting as though they were starved. I don’t KNOW that they were literally starved, but they only had interest in the leaves and once they were gone - within minutes - the bunnies wanted to have nothing to do with us. They also peed and pooed at random, which might be a normal thing for rabbits, I don’t know, but we did have to be careful not to accidentally sit on rabbit pee. We tried our best to play with them and get some good pictures, but honestly the whole thing was more depressing than anything. I felt so sorry for them. While we had spent hours at the raccoon café, at the bunny café we couldn’t even stay for the time we’d paid for and left after a couple of other groups came in.
Next up we went to Coffee Brown, and horror of horrors, they didn’t have watermelon juice! It was possibly the first coffee shop we’d been to that didn’t have what seemed like a ubiquitous summer drink. I opted for the “lemonade,” but here’s the thing about -ades in Seoul… they aren’t what you and I think of as -ades. Lemonade, yuzu-ade, grape-ade, all of those are made with sparkling water, so the drink you’re going to get will be fizzy. Just a warning for you so if you get an -ade in Seoul you’ll know what to expect!
This is “lemonade.”
While at Coffee Brown, we discussed the possibility of doing a hanbok day, but instead of doing it at the palace and hiring a photographer or doing it ourselves, we would do it at a studio. We’d be indoors, get to dress up, and have a professional photographer take the pictures. I found a place (called “Hanbok That Day,” but booked through Indiway) in Insadong (near the palace, natch), that had good reviews, and it cost only ₩30,000 per person. I’m not sure what we were thinking it should cost, but considering the hanbok rental and professional photography, at least twice that? They also offered hairstyling services for an extra ₩5000. We figured at those kinds of prices we could do a couple of them if we didn’t like how this one turned out for some reason! We booked an appointment for Monday.
For dinner we decided to try Oh? Udon!, which was a restaurant right across the street from Murder Road. We saw it every time we left for the day, and came back in the evening, basically. We didn’t actually have any interest in trying it until one night we saw that they were pretty packed and thought, wow, is this place actually any good? What if we had a really good noodle place right near us and we never tried it, wouldn’t that be silly? Well… we should have listened to our first instincts, lol. It was not good. It was average to the extreme, actually, to the point where even eating it seemed like a chore. Unfortunately, that meant we couldn’t finish our food, and there was enough left that we felt we needed to take it as leftovers.
This picture somehow makes the bowl of noodles look way more decent than it actually tasted.
Taking leftovers, by the way, did not seem to be the done thing Seoul. Are they just a nation of people who did not like to eat leftovers? Do they not like to deal with the trash and recycling afterward? And yet takeout seems entirely normal, so…? Did it somehow seem rude toward the restaurant because they would have to use takeout containers only partially filled with food? Did most people somehow always order the perfect amount of food when they ate out, so they didn’t have leftovers? Was it that Korean food is served family style, so figuring out who would bring home leftovers if you weren’t with your family would be awkward? I mean, the list of questions are endless! That said, it was never really an issue the few times we asked to take home our leftovers. The restaurants did it willingly enough, but the service staff were always a little puzzled initially when asked, which left the impression that it wasn’t something they frequently had to deal with. In hindsight we probably should’ve just left the food, since we didn’t even like it that much, but at the time we figured we might want it for breakfast or something.
Thursday, Aug. 1
We tried a shabu shabu place that was located near one of the other Hongik University Station exits. It was kind of fun and interesting to try an AYCE shabu shabu place in Seoul, since we’d been to Shabuya in LA with [Bad username: ”jade_okelani”] not too long ago. It was worth it for the novelty, but in terms of actual food and experience I actually prefer the shabu shabu I’m used to. It seemed fairly limited in terms of vegetable offerings, for example, but offered an extensive hot food bar, which I thought was odd. I mean, the whole point of shabu shabu is to do the hot pot, you know? Or at least, I think so. I don’t need some basic Korean cooked-food buffet on the side. You got your own broth from pitchers located in a refrigerated section, which was interesting. Convenient if you needed more soup, because then you could choose a different type of broth if you wanted (we started with beef, then topped off with chicken). We only asked for one extra serving of beef, which was not very well played of us (when are we going to learn to eat our worth?!?!), and half of one of Adelagia’s was all fat. Like, are they even serious? Do people there actually eat that or do they look upon it with scorn, as I did? The drinks and dessert were also blah. Maybe we just went to a super lame shabu shabu place, given its location I wouldn’t be that surprised; they don’t have to be good to get business.
But the most embarrassing part came when we looked allllllll over the place for napkins. We had too much shame to ask any of the servers, because we could clearly see other people using them; we just couldn’t figure out where the hell they were getting them from! All the common areas did not have any napkins. Finally, I thought about the fact that people seemed to keep getting them so easily, without seeming to even leave their table, and added it together with our experience at the samgyeopsal place on my first real day, and pulled out a drawer on the side of the table, where the napkins and utensils were located. Lolol oh man, we felt like idiots, because this is a commonplace thing, and yet we were soooooo mystified as to where everyone was getting their napkins. By the way, I feel like we should adopt this custom at all kinds of restaurants in the US. It’s so convenient!
Afterward, we made our way to the Line Friends store in Myeongdong (if “we went to Line Friends” sounds repetitive at this point, well, you might as well stop reading. It was basically our home base. We kept coming up with things we “had” to buy), and I bought a Tata wallet (I wanted something more lightweight than what I was carrying around) and Cooky luggage tag. I was excited because I finally got a Tata plastic bag, and Adelagia bought a Chimmy mug and got a Chimmy plastic bag! These are the sorts of things that get us excited, people. I don’t understand why anyone is still reading this.
We then went to a meerkat café!!!! That’s right, we were trying to hit every animal café Seoul had to offer. The place was called “Meerkat Friends,” because it turns out that in addition to meerkats, they also had wallabies, weird-looking cats, a raccoon, and other animals I can’t even name. The whole thing was very delightful. The place was bright, spacious, and nicely maintained, and after the sad bunny café I felt a lot better. Plus, because we were the only ones there when we arrived, the staff seemed to go out of their way to charm us with the animals, performing little tricks with them, having us interact with them, etc. Finally, we were allowed into one of the meerkat pens, and we were warned not to make sudden movements or loud noises, because they scared easily. They were so, so adorable omg, and not afraid of people at all. A couple of them even fell asleep on us, including the one with the pink collar, who we were told was the leader of this particular meerkat band. (I do not know what a group of meerkats is called.) At one point one of the caretakers put one of the animals on Adelagia’s head.
Caretaker: Are you scared?
Adelagia: No.
Caretaker: Your face looks scared.
HAHAHAHAHHAA.
Can you tell whether Adelagia's face looks scared?
Afterward, we went to the underground shopping area and I bought more BTS stuff. I have zero idea what I bought that time, it’s all one big BTS shopping blur. However, we were in Myeongdong, so it must’ve been from that same place we went before. I don’t know how much of my money they had by the time I left Seoul, lol. We also peered into other shops that sold Kpop goods, but I was disappointed to find that they didn’t have any special DVDs or anything that I didn’t already have, and the prices weren’t actually that great considering I couldn’t even be assured of getting Tae or JK as photocards or anything.
Of course by that time we were in sore need of a beverage, so we went to the Innisfree Green Café. I ordered the same snowy apple tea that I had the first time, while Adelagia got some kind of refreshing citrus drink. By the time we got out there was an explosion of street carts! Apparently we’d never been in Myeongdong this late before, because we would come to find that this was commonplace. But this was the first time I was experiencing it, and looking at all the different offerings was super cool, even if I didn’t feel all that hungry. Hot pot always manages to stuff me, somehow.
We both wanted to get a foot massage, from all the days walking around everywhere, so we followed a sign for a foot massage and went to the indicated floor. A woman greeted us who, through the course of a brief conversation, we both took to be Japanese, though by the end we were questioning why we even thought that, lol. It was just one of those weird things. Anyway, we allowed ourselves to be talked into a higher tier of foot massage than we originally wanted (sometimes we gave into things simply so that the awkward, stilted conversation in which neither side truly understood what the other was saying, would end), so instead of paying ₩18,000 we paid ₩25,000 - I can’t even remember how long the massage was now. I think 45-60 min? Anyway it felt really good for the most part on my very sore feet and legs, but at one point she was using some kind of wooden stick to dig into my foot, and even though I didn’t know how to stay “You’re gonna have to stop that now,” in Korean, I figured my screaming might get the point across. However she stopped before any of that was necessary. Honestly for ₩25,000 it wasn’t the best massage deal ever. In LA you can get a full-body massage at a Chinese foot massage place for $25. But then again, at those places they also expect you to tip like $10 so maybe I’m not being fair.
Naturally after all that taxing massage stuff we were once again forced to go enjoy some beverages, this time at O’Sulloc, haha. Adelagia was fairly out of it from the massage, or maybe it was having the strange animal on her head, or maybe just everything combined, LOL.
Adelagia: What do you want to drink?
Me: Mmm… I’ll have a hojicha.
Adelagia: Hot or iced?
Me: Iced.
Adelagia: Okay.
*drinks arrive; both are hot teas*
Me: Oh, do they not do hojicha iced?
Adelagia: Hmm?
*pause*
Adelagia: OH NO!! (⊙_⊙)
Hahahaha, luckily it didn’t matter because their hojicha was delicious, and when you’re sitting in an air-conditioned space you can still enjoy a hot beverage.
Left: An iced hojic Two delicious hot beverages.
After that we wandered around the street vendors for a bit, wondering if we should partake in some street food. It might have been this night, or maybe it was a different night, but as I forgot to note exactly when it happened, I’ll just explain now - the when doesn’t really matter. In the tourist-heavy locations, because there are so many restaurants all crowded together, in order to attract customers the restaurants hire people to call out to people and entice them to go in (or alternatively, makeup places hire people to give out face masks, but you don’t actually get it unless you go in). You get used to it - you just ignore them, or say a curious “no thanks,” and they’ll back off. USUALLY. One time, it was like a series of aggressive guys. First one tried to speak to me charmingly in Japanese, so of course I did not understand a word he was saying. Second one called me “beautiful girl” in Chinese, but I once again didn’t understand what he was saying because my Chinese is so subpar (it was Adelagia who told me later). Finally I encountered a particularly pushy guy who grinned the whole time and WOULD NOT GET OUT OF MY FACE. Like I muttered the usual “no thanks,” and tried to go around him, but instead of dropping off and trying his luck with someone else, he stayed in front of me and matched me step for step! WTF?? Finally I kind of yelled, “NO!” and glared at him, which finally made him leave me alone, but his grin never once faltered. Like seriously wtf. Did he really think I was going to be like, “Well, I wasn’t hungry, but you’ve now convinced me to eat at this place because you followed me with a menu”??? When of course the opposite was true - I would now eat ANYWHERE BUT THERE. I mean, some part of me, the person who is an actual human being and can put myself in the shoes of other people, felt bad about the encounter because I’m sure it’s a shitty job, and it’s not nice to be yelled at, but of course the me who was in MY shoes felt it was totally inappropriate and he deserved it.
Anyway, as much as we might’ve wanted to WANT to eat street food, we weren’t really feeling it, however (it’s really hard to work up an appetite in stuffy heat like we always experienced outside), not hungry at all. I made the terrible decision to buy some glazed strawberries. I had seen them before, at other locations, and they always looked soooooo good, all drippy with syrup and red from sweet strawberries. They reminded me of candied apples, which I’ve always thought looked soooooooooo incredibly wonderful and delicious, even though the few times I actually ate them were a disappointment. (That’s right, I never learn.) Anyway, that’s what was going through my mind when I bought a stick of glazed strawberries for a whopping ₩5000. I was imagining myself enjoying some delightfully sweet strawberries with a syrupy glaze. What I instead got was a mouthful of GLUE. Like, it wasn’t literal glue, don’t get me wrong. But the glaze hardened quickly, and just one strawberry with its glaze caused my mouth to nearly seize up, unable to chew this incredibly sticky and rapidly hardening substance. We had to stand there for many minutes while the heat from my mouth finally melted down the glaze enough - it was like eating a super sticky taffy - and I went and got a plastic bag from the vendor so I could stick the accursed strawberries into it. OMG what a horrendous mistake that was. I don’t know how you’re supposed to eat it, because clearly the way I’d done it was wrong. Maybe you’re just supposed to lick it, like a strawberry lollipop? I don’t know because I never saw anyone else actually eating one, even though I did see other people buying it.
While I was struggling with my stick of strawberries, Adelagia had seen a sign for a restaurant that served gangjang gejang, a raw crab dish that we both very much enjoy. In the US the dish is made with blue crabs, but in Seoul it’s made with their local flower crabs, which we can’t get live here. Maybe that’s why it was so expensive? We’d made note of it at other places, but it always cost upwards of like ₩48,000 wtf? Jason, too, had warned us that it was a very expensive dish. We started heading in the direction that the sign indicated, but along the way there was a young girl standing outside a restaurant, encouraging people to go inside. Because we are not rude assholes, and because she did not seem like a rude asshole, we didn’t ignore her, so to give her a chance, I asked if they served gangjang gejang, and she said yes. The price seemed reasonable, comparatively speaking -- ₩20,000 for two crabs. So we went up and were very single minded about our order, haha, getting one order of gangjang gejang each. In retrospect we probably should’ve gotten just one order, and also gotten some samgyeopsal or something, just for the sake of diversity, but oh well. Of the things I regret doing or not doing in Seoul, this doesn’t even make the top 10. Anyhow! It was fairly delicious, though a little salty, particularly because they gave a surprisingly small amount of rice considering that according to Maangchi, to me the goddess of all things Korean food, this dish is known as a “rice thief” because of how much rice you can consume while eating it. The thing, though, is that I don’t think it was any more delicious than the gangjang gejang we’ve had at Sam Oh Jung in Lynnwood, or that I have made myself using blue crabs, at home. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I mean, I suppose that’s a good thing. But it does also sort of make me wonder if perhaps they would have tasted different in a restaurant that specialized in the dish. Or in more of a seafood-oriented place, like… Busan. But that’s a different regret entirely. ;)
Anyway, because two small crabs plus a paltry amount of rice wasn’t that filling, afterward I was invigorated to actually eat a skewer of beef (₩7000), which was decent but not, imho, worth ₩7000. I also bought a cup of cherries (₩5000, wtf at these street food prices), because they’re my favorite fruit and I wanted to taste Korean ones (they do indeed taste a bit different from the cherries I’m used to, they’re all delicious in their own way). The funny thing is that because they were being sold at a juice cart, it wasn’t super clear if the cherries were intended to be sold as they were, or if they were supposed to be made into a juice, like some of the other fruit. Because the cherries were whole and not pitted, I assumed they were meant to be eaten whole, but it didn’t hurt to ask, which I did. The guys manning the cart seemed exasperated by my question. “Just eat! Eat!” they exclaimed, motioning. All right, all right, man, just checking!!
Left to right: Moments before my jaw would become glued shut; delicious gangjang gejang; an OK meat stick.
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