Wandering Fel

Showing posts with label Seoul Travel. Show all posts

Since we are back in Seoul now, it is finally time to do more shopping (there is practically not much thing to buy outside Seoul, really). When you are talking about shopping in Korea, most likely you will think of two famous shopping areas, Myeongdong and Dongdaemun. Since Golden Rama has included Myeongdong as the last stop for tomorrow, we are going to explore Dongdaemun Shopping Complex today.

7D Korea Golden Rama: Exploring Dongdaemun

The shopping complex is so huge and you can find all kind of retail therapy here. If you want to go for the local and international brand in boutique setting, you may want to check Doota Duty and Lotte FITIN. The price for the fashion items in these two shopping malls is on the higher end but the quality and the design of the clothes are really unique and fashionable.

Since our bus driver drop us near Doota, this shopping mall has become the starting point of our exploration of Dongdaemun. Doota is a fashion mall full of trendy fashion items (and this is where I managed to find my black cap from New Balance, woots!). There are cafes and restaurants available in Doota as well. If you are a fan of Shake Shack, you can find the famous burger chain from USA here at Doota. Line Friends store is also available at Doota Duty Free. I wonder if everyone in Korea is using LINE or Kakao Talk for instant messaging. I am personally a fan of LINE but only using it to chat with certain friends because not everyone is into stickers and such. Hahaha.

Line Friends Store at Doota Dongdaemun Seoul

Line Friends store in Korea sells the latest collection of Line Friends merchandise. I did not see the line of Choco's plush toys at any other Line Friends store before.

Choco dolls from Line Friends store at Doota South Korea

Aww, the couple plush toys will make a cute wedding decoration but the price tag for this couple plush toys is so high and it is not such a priority right now because I have not found my future husband yet. If you need any help at Doota, services for foreign tourists is available at the information desk at level 1 (they provide information in English, Japanese and Chinese). In addition, you can also process your tax refund here at level 5.

Cute Brown and Cony dolls from Line Friends store at Doota

If you are more into cheaper retail therapy (a.k.a. Wholesale), you may want to check out the shopping complex located next to Doota Duty Free, Migliore. However, while the clothes may be sold at cheaper price, you are not allowed to try the clothes. This is a challenge for me because my size is usually in between S and M and sometimes M and L. So I usually skip this kind of shopping concept.

Migliore at Dongdaemun Seoul South Korea

Doota Duty Free's opening hours:

Sunday to Thursday: 10AM - 12AM (next day)
Friday to Saturday: 10.30AM - 5AM (next day)

Lotte Duty Free's opening hours:

Sunday to Wednesday: 11AM - 12AM (next day)
Thursday to Saturday: 11AM - 2AM (next day)

Migliore's opening hours:

Daily 10.30AM - 4.30AM (next day)

One of my usual pet peeves about joining a tour group is the variety of the food provided. It is very common for tour group to give us Chinese food throughout the duration of the tour no matter whether we are travelling to China or not. I find it a huge waste not to try out the local cuisine while travelling to a certain country but then again, it is not easy to find a restaurant which is willing to accommodate 20 people at one go in some countries. But that does not seem to be an issue in South Korea and Golden Rama still manages to feed us local Korean food halfway through the 7D Korea tour. We are going to dine at Korean Restaurent (the sign really had typo error lolz) before exploring Dong Dae Mun. Yeahh!

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Bibimbap for dinner

The restaurant seems to have quite a good variety of homemade Korean meal from the cold noodle, samgyetang to variety of stews.

Price of the meal seems to be reasonable since it's around SGD 10 ish. Okay, that's not exactly cheap I suppose. Nowadays I have even more cheapo perspective on meal price since I am not earning any income yet.

Menu and price at South Korean restaurant

Omo! This is the first time we encounter egg as side dish. The rest of the side dishes is pretty standard like kimchi, beansprouts and cucumber.

It seems that Korean love to eat stew very much? We have been fed all kind of stew from the start of our journey until halfway. Not that I'm complaining though. Mushroom is after all one of my favourite vegetable. Yumz.

Mushroom soup at South Korean restaurant

Finally we are served the highlight of the dinner, bibimbap. Bibimbap literally means mixed rice. It is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with veggies and gochujang. Sometimes fried egg and meat are included in the bibimbap too. But it seems that the bibimbap that we are having that day is a very healthy vegetable bibimbap. There is no single sliver of meat inside this pot. While anything taste good with gochujang sauce, I would like it better if meat (especially beef, yumz!) is included inside the bibimbap. Hehehe.

Writing this post kinda makes me want to eat bibimbap now. Hmm maybe I should eat one for dinner. Yumz.

When mom initially suggested to join a tour group to South Korea, I was not particularly interested about the idea. I went to South Korea before and I think it's more fun to go there on your own. However, I do realise that going on your own is easier done when you are travelling with friends instead of family. Lured by sponsored expenses by mom, I agreed to her idea and we signed up to join Golden Rama's 7D tour to South Korea. Golden Rama is one of the popular tour operator from Jakarta and Mom has heard pretty good review from her peers who joined tour packages from Golden Rama before. The name of the tour package is rather lengthy i.e. Favourite Jeju Ecoland + Petite France & Trick Eye Museum but in a gist, the tour package covers Seoul, Jeju Island, Mt Sorak and some attractions in Gyeonggido.

We met our tour guide, Nico, at Soekarno Hatta International Airport in Jakarta and took a night flight by Asiana Airlines to Incheon International Airport in South Korea. The flight took 7hrs+ and we were kinda relieved when we finally reached Incheon (more like our butt were relieved).

7D Korea Golden Rama: Arrived at Incheon Airport

As the first leg of the tour itinerary involves visiting attractions which are located at Jeju Island, we practically did not have time to do a lot of stuff in Seoul except having a quick lunch before catching up our next flight at Gimpo Airport to Jeju Island. I could not read the name of the lunch venue but if you are able to read Hangul, well, this is the name of the restaurant.

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: First Meal in Seoul

As what the food display show us in front of the restaurant, this Korean restaurant specialises in spicy stir fried squid. Do you realise that a lot of restaurants in Korean drama has low table where diners are supposed to sit on the pillow on the floor? This restaurant has the exact same setting. It's gonna be hard on those people who can't sit on the floor but thankfully none of the our participants have difficulties sitting on the floor. LOL.

Low tables for first meal in South Korea

Price of the food served in this restaurant, if you are interested to know (and can read Hangul).

Price and menu for first meal in South Korea

As usual, it is customary for Korean restaurants to serve banchan (re: side dishes). I was particularly curious on the side dish which is placed in the middle.

The tour guide explained to us that the white side dish is actually konyaku (something with jelly texture) but interestingly it is served with gochujang sauce. It is served cold and I'm not really sure if I like this kind of side dish to be honest with you despite the QQ texture.

Oh well, never mind the side dish, because all attention were directed at the big plate of seafood pajeon (re: Korean pancake) served on our table after that. I freaking love pajeon and this is the reason why you are supposed to eat in a group which at least consist of 4 people when you are having pajeon, because it's huge and filling.

Next is the rice which seems not supposed to be eaten on its own as it has some cabbages and scallions at the side. Korean rice is kinda different in texture compared to the Thai's rice or even Indonesian's rice. It's rounder in shape and texture-wise, it's those texture which is more suitable for sushi-making. Kinda similar to Japanese version of rice I suppose. The tour guide forbid us to eat the rice at the moment.

The reason is because we have to eat the rice together with the spicy stir fried squid, which I wish can be served in a bigger portion as we need to share this plate among the 4 of us. I see mostly veggies compared to the squid on the plate. Hmm. Feels like asking ahjumma to give us more squid but scared that she will throw tantrum and slap me with kimchi.

Okay, managed to mix rice + small bits of squid + veggie with the sauce of the spicy stir-fried squid as instructed by the tour guide. Oh right, talking about tour guide, Golden Rama provided us with service from local tour guide in addition to Nico. Her name is Jenny and she's so fluent in talking in Bahasa Indonesia.

Jenny also explained that clear soup always be a part of the meal. Initially, I thought the soup has mandu (re: Korean dumplings) inside but turns out they are just the skin of the dumpling with no meat inside. Hmm, kinda wondering what's the purpose of this soup but anyway, always keep an open-mind when dining in other countries.

Overall, our first meal in South Korea taste pretty good especially the pajeon and the spicy stir-fried squid. If only the ahjumma can give us more squids instead of cabbages. Must feedback to Golden Rama but not sure if they can help. Probably they are also scared of ahjumma slapping them with kimchi on their face. LOL.