Wandering Fel

Showing posts with label Myeongdong. Show all posts

Seoul is one interesting city because despite it's being a metropolis, you can still enjoy a bit of a nature like taking a hike toward the mountain. Unbelievable, it may sound. But Mt Namsan is really located just right on top of Myeong-dong area in Seoul. So whenever Seoulites need to do a bit of hiking, they can just go for the hiking trail toward Mt Namsan on any day in their life because the mountain is really located within close proximity of the city centre.

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Namsan Seoul Tower

If you are a tour group participant, you don't have to walk all the way up to where Namsan Seoul Tower is located. However, you will still to walk for a bit since the bus can only bring you up to certain point. Thankfully we visited Namsan Park when it is still early in the morning and hence, it is not that hot yet since the sun can be so hot on a summer day. If you are watching Running Man, you may remember this episode where Jong Kook has to sing at the pavilion there. It is one of those early episodes of Running Man where Song Joong Ki is still a part of the Running Man family. Omo, look at how the time flies, Song Joong Ki is about to get married to Song Hye Kyo and I still could not find any man yet. O_o!

Prior to reaching Namsan Seoul Tower, you will the lushful greens of Namsan Park. It is one of the historical sites in Seoul and you will see on the right side of the picture below, the five beacons. The beacons are called Bonghwadae and this is were the center of capital defense used to be. To protect city from invasions, castle walls were built on mountains including Mt Namsan. The five beacons were built to report the news from local governments to the central government with a five signal system. Some kind of beacon coding must have been involved in the signalling system.

Morning walk at Namsan Park in Seoul South Korea

One of the famous attraction at Namsan Park and Namsan Seoul Tower is the love padlocks. A lot of couples in Korea "sealed" their love in the love padlocks to the railing and then scribble a lovey-dovey message on the padlock with the hope that their love lasts forever. Few years back, I only see the love padlocks at the ground level of Namsan Seoul Tower. But I guess since it is a very popular activity in Korea, the number of the love padlocks is getting higher and higher every year and the area where love padlocks can be chained to has expanded to the viewing railings at Namsan Park. Love is all around Seoul I suppose.

You can choose pretty much any kind of padlock. Some couples even "lock" their love on mobile phone casing. Well, technically you can write longer message on mobile phone casing. If you break up after locking a padlock together, are you supposed to trace back the padlock and remove it? Hmm, looking at the number of the padlocks locked, I suppose you can just move on from the old padlock together with the old flame. Oh gosh, relationship is hard.

Oh oh, I saw a Gudetama padlock. Does that mean the love is kinda eggciting or just meh? After all Gudetama is a lazy egg and his famous line is "meh" and "I can't". Wait can it even talk actually?

We were somewhat too early for the admission to Namsan Seoul Tower and hence, the only thing we could do around Namsan Park is to wander around and view the scenery of Seoul from uphill. I have been to Namsan Seoul Tower so I guess I did not really care if we can or cannot enter the tower. But if you have not visited the tower before, let me do a brief explanation on the tower itself.

Namsan Seoul Tower is basically an observatory tower where you can view the 360 degrees view of Seoul and its surrounding cities. The tower is 480 metres above sea level and it was used as broadcast tower back in the 60s. Nowadays it is just a popular tourism site in Seoul. Teddy Bear Museum used to be in the plaza level of the tower but I think it has moved to other location.

Other than the observatory, visitors can also go to Ssentoy Museum & Showroom and Hello Kitty Island which both are located at level 5 of the tower. A combined admission package is available for purchase at the ticketing booth. Ssentoy Museum & Showroom is apparently an exhibition of limited-edition toys which I suspect are highly valued for collection purpose. Visitors can buy certain collection too I think. Hello Kitty Island at Namsan Seoul Tower should be pretty much the same if not smaller than the one at Jeju Island.

Some of the trees outside Namsan Seoul Tower have changed its color. The whole park must be quite beautiful on an autumn day.

Beautiful trees at Namsan Park Myeongdong

Namsan Seoul Tower's admission fees:

INDIVIDUAL ADMISSION

- Observatory: Adults 10,000 KRW/ Children 8,000 KRW

- Ssentoy Museum & Showroom: Adults 10,000 KRW/ Children 8,000 KRW

- Hello Kitty Island: Adults 8,000 KRW/ Children 7,000 KRW

PACKAGE ADMISSION

- Ssentoy Package (Observatory + Ssentoy Museum & Showroom): Adults 14,000 KRW/ Children 11,000 KRW

- Hello Kitty Package (Observatory + Hello Kitty Island): Adults 12,500 KRW/ Children 10,500 KRW

- 3 Type Package (Observatory + Ssentoy Museum + Hello Kitty Island): Adults 19,500 KRW/ Children 16,000 KRW

Adults: Older than 13 y.o.

Children: 3 - 12 y.o.

Namsan Seoul Tower's operating hours:

Sunday to Friday: 10AM - 11PM

Saturday: 10AM - 12AM

Sometimes when you join a group tour, you may be able to see in the travel itinerary if breakfast, lunch and dinner are provided throughout the duration of the travel. The meals provided by Golden Rama for its 7D Korea tour is quite complete but it's nice to finally be able to roam Myeongdong on your own and hence, eat on your own. The food catered by a tour group usually must be provided by restaurants who have capacity to cater to a group tour which usualy have around 20pax participants in a group. This means the selection of the food will be rather limited. So on our last night at South Korea, we are gonna go feast at Myeongdong. Woots!

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Gogung Myeongdong

One of the Korean restaurants that I kinda miss is Gogung and I was so ecstatic to see the restaurant on the level 2 of this building in Myeongdong named Sunshine. I actually offered my Mom and Bro if they want to eat other things because Gogung is famous for its bibimbap and we have eated bibimbap before albeit it's a vegetable bibimbap. But it seems that they are pretty much tired after walking for so much in the past few days and decided to just go ahead with my suggestion.

The restaurant is not crowded around 6PM on a weekday but diners are slowly coming in around 7PM-ish, probably it's because that's the timing where people knock off from work. Gogung Myeongdong is actually a branch for its main flagship restaurant at Jeonju and it specialises in Jeonju Bibimbap. Bibimbap has always been one of the most favourite Korean meals amongst tourists and Jeonju Bibimbap is considered one of the best food in Korea, up to the point that the country celebrates annual bibimbap festival at Jeonju.

Gogung offers set meal which has quite good value of money. The set meal consists of one dolsot Jeonju bibimbap (hot stone bibimbap), one Jeonju traditional bibimbap (served on normal bowl), a choice of either seafood pajeon (pancake) or japchae (Korean clear glass noodle), salad, and two glasses of Makgeolli (Korean rice wine). The price of the set differs depend on what you want to have in your set. If I recall correctly, the price of the set meals is usually cheaper during the day. So if you want to be economical, you should visit Gogung for lunch instead.

If you are ordering pajeon, remember that the size of the pajeon in Korea is big so unless you come to Gogung in starvation mode, the set meal for two people is good enough to be shared amongst three people. So if there is only two of you dining at Gogung, remember to come with empty stomach. I love the seafood pajeon served at Gogung because they do not skimp on the amount of seafood thrown into the pajeon. Yumz.

Seafood pajeon and salad from Gogung Myeongdong

Bibimbap is supposedly a nutritious and healthy food comprised of rice with bean sprouts, five colors and five tastes with 30 kinds of ingredients including gingko, pine nut, chestnut, walnut and fresh vegetables (cucumbers, seaweed, mushroom, etc). The different between dolsot bibimbap and traditional bibimbap is that the meat will be cooked by the heat of the hot stone bowl used to serve the dolsot bibimbap.

Dolsot Jeonju bibimbap from Gogung Myeongdong

However, the Korean traditionally eat Jeonju bibimbap in its raw setting. So if you want to try the "original" taste of bibimbap, you should try the traditional Jeonju bibimbap. If you don't really like it raw, you can mix the egg and the meat to the dolsot bibimbap's hot-stone but then the two type of bibimbap will kinda taste similar to one another.

Traditional Jeonju bibimbap from Gogung Myeongdong

I personally think bibimbap is one of the comfort food which cannot go wrong because of the magic sauce named Gochujang. It taste good enough to eat rice + fried rice + gochujang sauce, let along mixing all of them together with veggie and meat. Oh right, you know you are supposed to mix all the ingredients (despite they look oh-so-pretty in the bowl) together with the gochujang sauce before eating? Once they are all mixed up, it's time to pop them into your mouth. Massiseoyo~~

Gogung Myeongdong's address:

37, Myeongdong 8ga-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul

Operating hours:

Daily 10AM - 10PM

I really love Myeongdong. I think it is way better to shop in Myeongdong compared to Dongdaemun but then again, I never really had a lot of time to explore the shopping scene of Dongdaemun in full. However, if you are looking for skincare and cosmetic products, Myeongdong is the place to go. As you can see, one skincare store is located next to another skincare store. I think I have seen a repetitive number of Laneige, Etude House, Innisfree and other famous Korean skincare brands.

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Shopping at Myeongdong, Seoul

Myeongdong is best visited at night time because there will be more food carts to see at night. In this case, you will not go shopping with a hungry stomach.

Street food stalls at Myeongdong Seoul South Korea

There is an ahjumma (re: middle-aged lady) who sells spicy Korean rice cake, ddeokbokki. My Mom and I were salivating looking at it and we decided to just buy it since my brother is nowhere in sight yet (he's getting overwhelmed by the 4-stored Uniqlo I suspect). The ddeokbokki really taste oh-so-good. And there are some pieces of fish cakes too in the mix. Yummy! Massiseoyooo~~

Spicy Korean rice cake from Myeongdong Seoul

This particular stall is quite interesting too. It seems to be fried egg pancakes. Too bad we were seriously full from the early dinner of bibimbap and the ddeokbokki that we just ate. Oh well.

Egg pancake from Myeongdong street food stall

Did I tell you earlier about the abundant skincare stores in Myeongdong? Holika Holika, Too Cool for School and Club Clio are located next to each other. Myeongdong is really an open market for all skincare products in Korea. Sometimes, the price of the skincare products sold in Myeongdong can be way cheaper than those sold at department store though. So far I've stocked up my skincare regime which I'm sure are sold at cheaper price in Korea such as: Laneige's grapefruit lip gel, Faceshop's collagen eye patch + CC cream, and Etude House's pencil eyeliner.

If you are looking to buy clothes in Myeongdong, you may want to check out SPAO and ROEM. SPAO is more for street casual style (for both guys and girls) while ROEM (which is advertised by Park Shin Hye) leans more toward feminine/sweet style for ladies. Uniqlo is also available here at Myeongdong and it has four levels (no wonder my Brother took forever inside Uniqlo).

Oh there is also another Line Friends store in Myeongdong and while this store may not be the biggest Line Friends store in Seoul, I managed to find phone casing for my S7 Edge and it was on sale woohooo.

Anyeong Brown and Sally. This huge version of Brown doll is always popular for photo taking with visitors. Hahaha.

Line Friends Brown and Sally at Myeongdong

Line Friends store in Myeongdong sells food and drink but to be honest, I was more attracted to the ddeokbokki outside the street at Myeongdong.

Food and drinks from Line Friends store at Myeongdong

Line Friends snacks like peanuts and chocolates are available too if you would like to buy some to give out to friends or families as souvenirs.

Snacks from Line Friends Store at Myeongdong

The postcards look so cute but I don't really write postcards nowadays. Let's check out the level 2 of the Line Friends store shall we?

Photo spot at Line Friends Store Myeongdong

The mini Brown lamp looks so cuteeeee. If only I have enough space to put him on my desk. Not having your own place to live is kinda troublesome sometimes. But that's the price to pay if you want to work in another country. Oh well.

Line Friends cute lamps at Myeongdong Seoul

We are finally at the last leg of our Korea tour with Golden Rama. For the last two nights in South Korea, we are staying at Staz Hotel which is located at Myeongdong area. While it's not exactly near to the main shopping area of Myeongdong, it is still situated in reasonable walking distance (despite Mom's complaint for two nights in a row because she's tired of walking) for a late 20s pair of legs. It may considered a bit far for your elderly parents though.

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Staz Hotel, Myeongdong

The tour guide did inform us that the triple bedroom in Staz Hotel is a tad special compared to the normal twin/ double bedroom. We were pretty much surprised when we came into our room because we only saw two bedrooms and it's a bunk bed. While I'm used to sleep in this kind of arrangement especially when travelling with friends but Mom is totally gobsmacked upon seeing this...uhm, bed scene.

Level 1 of triple bedroom at Staz Hotel Myeongdong

There is a small wooden stairs leading to the level 2 of the triple bedroom which leads to...

Staircase to the level 2 of triple bedroom at Staz Hotel Myeongdong

... another single bed on the top of the wooden floor. My brother immediately claimed his stake on this bed obviously. The room is quite cramped for the three of us but then again I suppose this is how Golden Rama keep down the price of the whole tour, by giving you a combination of luxury, normal and budget hotel. At least, the hotel room is clean.

Level 2 of triple bedroom of Staz Hotel Myeongdong

Despite it looks like a budget hotel, Staz Hotel provides breakfast which comprise of salad bar, Chinese hot dishes, bread and fries and cereals too.

Salad spread at Staz Hotel breakfast Myeongdong

Bread and fries station. Completed with the tomato sauce for the fries.

Bread and fries for breakfast at Staz Hotel Myeongdong

I wanted to keep some space in my stomach since we're gonna explore Seoul further later so let's start the day with little and yet, filling breakfast.

Breakfast at Staz Hotel Myeongdong Seoul

Since the hotel is situated within walking distance from the main shopping area of Myeongdong, you should go out and do some shopping at night. This is the place to be when you are looking to buy skin care and cosmetics. A lot of freebies will be thrown into your shopping bag upon purchasing any products. I don't think I need to buy facial cotton pad again for the next 6 months since one big bag of it has just been thrown to my shopping tray for free. Woots!