Wandering Fel

Showing posts with label South Korea Food. Show all posts

We are finally back on Incheon International Airport to board our flight back to Jakarta. Huhuhu. It's scary how fast the time flies when you are having fun travelling to other country. Oh well. Okay since we are at Incheon International Airport now, I just want to share with you my few observations (which can be useful I hope) at this airport. Incheon Airport is a busy airport and there are so many things to do in this airport while waiting for your flight to be ready for boarding. The first thing that you have to do after check in and go through the immigration line is obviously to settle all your VAT claims. The VAT claims procedure in South Korea is, I have to say, top-notch. It is fast and automated just like in Singapore and you don't really have to show your purchased goods unless the price of the goods exceeding threshold (which is pretty high amount). After you are done with your VAT claims, it's time to wander around the branded stores to see if there are sales to score. I managed to buy a clutch from Longchamp at a really really cheap price (like around USD 100ish) so you may want to check out these stores for good deals.

While checking around for good deals, you may also catch a parade. Yep, have you seen a parade at the airport before? South Korea is very proud of its culture and tradition, the country wants to introduce them everywhere and what's the best place to show them to the world? Yep, the airport.

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Incheon International Airport

It seems to be a procession for something, probably marriage? The men and women are dressed in Joseon-era clothes and the women will wave at you so make sure you wave back to them okay?

Traditional procession at Incheon International Airport

While we are claiming our VAT, we got voucher for skincare products so if you have not had enough stock yet when you bought your skincare at the city, this is your last chance to complete your skincare stock for the year (or years?). How about the 7 days mask which is endorsed by Song Joong Ki? Sadly, soon he will be out of bachelor's market. Aigoo.

Skincare sold at Incheon International Airport

When it gets pretty tiring to wander around in Incheon Airport, you can rest up at one of the many restaurants available in the airport. If you miss drinking Gong Cha (the bubble tea brand has pulled out from Singapore and I am still waiting for its return), you can buy one of their drinks here at Incheon Airport.

Gong cha at Incheon International Airport

I find Gong Cha in Korea offers some interesting flavours which I did not see previously in Singapore's menu. And Gong Cha is endorsed by handsome hunk, Lee Jong Suk.

Gong Cha menu at Incheon International Airport

That means, whenever you buy any Gong Cha drink in South Korea, you will be able to drink your bubble tea while admiring Jong Suk's cute face. Double woots, no? I ordered one of the drink choice which is not available in Singapore, it's a grapefruit with mango jelly. Yummy!

Grapefruit jelly fruit tea from Gong Cha Korea

While Paris Baguette Cafe is available in Singapore (at Bugis Junction, Wisma Atria and JEM), there are some items which I have not seen before in Singapore.

Paris Baguette Cafe at Incheon International Airport

Such as these sponge cake and swiss roll. They all look so yummy, we had difficult time to decide which one we wanna try. It's not feasible to buy a lot of this cake because of its short consumption period. At the end, we stick with the green tea sponge cake because the cake receives most votes from three of us. Hahaha.

Roll cakes from Paris Baguette at Incheon International Airport

Some yoghurt drinks and other beverages are available for puchase as well. The thing about Paris Baguette Cafe is that it's so popular up to the point we could not get any seat inside this cafe.

Beverages from Paris Baguette at Incheon International Airport

Ice creams and chilled cakes are available too but it's just too troublesome to carry these items around while eating them. Oh well, I suppose we are not meant to chill out at Paris Baguette Cafe this time.

Chilled dessert at Paris Baguette Incheon

That's a wrap for the 7D Korea Golden Rama Tour. Hope you guys enjoying reading the whole series. I will post a summary of the itinerary for the whole tour in the next post for easy reference. Until then, anyeong!

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

When you are thiking of Korean food, you will never forget about kimchi. Most (if not all) group tour itinerary to South Korea will include kimchi making lesson, Golden Rama tour is included. Our tour guide brought us to a place which looks like a cultural centre in Myeongdong where visitors can try out wearing hanbok and take pictures with the photo prop, see some exhibition about food, try out making kimchi and even buy some of the food products.

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Kimchi Making Lesson

After trying out hanbok and taking pictures for uncountable times, we were ushered out to the classroom for the kimchi making lesson. On the way to the classroom, you will see a lot of exhibit about Korean traditional food.

Laver (seaweed) is one of the important staple of food in Korea and there is an exhibit explaining in detail on the making process of laver. Based on what I watch on The Return of Superman, I think the kids love eating laver so much.

Some farming tools are on display in the artsy manner.

Laver are usually eaten as it is with some sauce together with rice. Or rolled as the wrap for the kimbap (Korean version of sushi).

Okay, we have finally reached our classroom. You will see that the ingredients and tools for making kimchi are already prepared on the table for each of the participants. The basic ingredients are the cabbage and the red sauce. There is no basic rule on making the red sauce and I have seen a lot of variety available on the internet on how you want to make your own red sauce (some even use srichacha sauce). But if I recalled correctly, the instructor explained to us that the sauce si basically made with a mix of sugar, pepper, garlic, and red chili.

Right before we are about to slap on the red sauce on every layer of this cabbage, let's just wear our apron and plastic gloves shall we. The instructor taught us the correct way to smear the red sauce to the whole cabbage. In a gist, you have to smear the sauce evenly on all sides of the cabbage.

Once you are done smearing you should wrap the kimchi in a certain manner so that the kimchi will be bundled together. I'm quite surprised I managed to do it though because I am usually pretty bad at a-good-wife-related skill. Turns out, I'm quite ready to find my hubby now. LOL.

Once the kimchi making lesson is over, the instructor will continue her explanation on laver, rice, kimchi, and red sauce because she wants to sell the food products and the laver snacks are quite good for tea time snack, really.

Food products sold at kimchi making lesson

If you are interested to join the kimchi making lesson, you may want to check out this place:

Seoul Kimchi Academy House

2F, Dongyang Building 12-27, Chungmuro (2)i-ga

Junggu, Seoul

Estimated fees for the two hours course: from USD 13.28

Operating hours: 10AM - 7PM

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

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 you join any tour package, it is important for you to check whether breakfast, lunch and dinner is provided in the itinerary. Surprisingly, Golden Rama is pretty generous with food for its 7D Korea Tour Package because full meal is provided nearly on everyday (with the exception of dinner on the last day). The thing about having meal when you are touring is you don't really have a say on the timing to eat. For example, Jenny brought us to have dinner at 5PM since the dinner venue is just opposite the entrance of Dragon Head Rock at Jeju Island. Yup, it is the white building right opposite the entrance. Oh right, this is Jenny, our local Korean tour guide, from behind. Hahaha.

7D Korea Golden Rama Tour: Seafood Dinner at Yeongdam, Jeju Island

Obviously at 5PM, the restaurant is somewhat deserted. But immediately after all the tour participants are seated on their respective seats, side dishes are provided and placed on the table. Oh anyeong again, kimchi! Instant noodle is provided this time, it kinda makes me wonder what we are gonna having for dinner tonight.

Side dishes and instant noodle for seafood dinner at Yeongdam

A plate of one fried fish (hmm, mackerel?) is also provided on top of the side dishes. The fried fish taste pretty good. Just a simple flavour of saltiness combined with the taste of the sea nearby.

Fried mackerel from Yeongdam Jeju Island

When the pot is placed on the gas stove, all of us were looking at the pot full of big seafood items such as prawns, abalone, mussels, clams and crabs. We had a seafood steamboat that day. Jenny explained to us that all the seafood items that we ate that night were actually caught by Haenyeo women divers. Originally, diving was an exclusively male profession however, since a lot of men lost their lives at the sea (life was tough back then), the women has to take care of the family and embark on a diving profession. Until now, sea-diving has become a skill which is passed from generation to generation and it is female-dominated profession now. But with modernisation, the profession is now mainly done by females over the age of 50. Oh my gawd, I am pretty much impressed by now.

Seafood steamboat from Yeongdam at Jeju Island

The soup taste clear and healthy since the restaurant owner does not add any sauce or whatsoever inside the soup. Hmm, not bad I suppose, we should eat healthier sometimes. But I hope Golden Rama is not gonna feeding me clear soup all the way till the last day.