Som and Noy Honeymoon

Finally we have found where the shopping malls are!

We have moved from our budget hotel to the Ibis Hotel which is located right in the heart of the shopping district. Its the more poshy shopping area tho like Channel, Gucci, Louis Vouton but there are also the more normal shopping stores and markets around too. The Ibis is literally across from the shopping malls.

I am very impressed with the big brand shopping malls tho its just endless like 8 floors of it and they are mighty expensive stuff! I mean even we in Sydney don't have anything like this does this mean there are more rich people in Seoul than Sydney??? Still no sightings of the outrageous fashion along the streets tho perhaps its in Japan and not Korea, they are pretty conservative here.

We also found Dongdaemun Markets yesterday which is a few train stop from here but its full of cheaper, market style store, there are like 4 buildings of this and each one has about 8 floors! Som and I was just exhausted we had to give up as our feet and legs couldnt take it anymore hehe You can find bargains here but some things are not that cheap, I think Thailand you can get it cheaper. I bought a pair of Everlast sneakers for just $29! Cant really go shopping galore here as there is still Malaysia and BKK to go.

We had Pizza Hut the other night. Pizza is not very tasty, in fact most of the western style food here is pretty bland. The large size pizza cost of $18 yep more expensive than in Oz and still not as nice. Oh oh and towards the end of our meal there was a protest just outside on the street. I tell you the there were so many people it was just endless we even managed to catch it on our camera on video mode. When you see it on tv it looks pretty scarey but it felt fine, we later came out to watched it. Wouldnt have a glue what they were protesting about tho.

Today Som finally had the boiled intestine which he has been eyeing for so many days. They sell it along the walkway but it doesnt look unclean, I've also included a picture of it too hmm appetising or what???

Our plan was to go out shopping again tonight but we just cant, no energy left. Gotta save our energy for tomorrow cos we are going to Daejungkum Theme Park, its about a 1hr train ride then a 30min taxi ride, lets hope the instructions are correct getting lost is very tiring esp when people dont speak English.

Tomorrow will be our last night here in Korea and we are off to Malaysia, cant wait for that as we are staying just above a shopping mall! More shopping YEAH! =)

Just going back to add an entry as we were both too exhausted from shopping to update our blog on this day.

We went to Deoksugung Palace and timing was good because they were doing some traditional performance outside the entry of the palace and we were able to take photos with them too.

There are a lot of palaces around here we dont intend to go to many because they all become the same.

We then found Dongdaemun markets, totally amazed at how many buildings and stores there are here even Thailand can't compete! For those who know Platinum markets in BKK well there is like 4 of them here!

This is a short entry as getting tired now...

We left Sokcho for Seoul at 9:20am this morning on a coach with a bit of rain. I slept most of the way of course hehe while Som barely got any sleep.

Getting to Seoul on the coach was easy. However once we got off the bus the next step was to find our hotel. We decided to take the subway, thought that was going to be hard but once again was pretty easy because we didnt have to change lines. The directions that was given to us was pretty clear, once we got to Myeong Dong station get off and take Exit 9. There were no lifts to get out of the subway so Sommy had to carry our big lugguage up the rather steep stairway, after much sweating he got to the top.

The directions told us that the hotel was about 40m away from Exit 9 BUT which way??? We didn't have a glue. We asked a Korean lady on the street and she did not have a glue where the hotel was or the street. Then we asked another Korean middle age man and man was he helpful! Thankfully he spoke some English. Dressed in the proper work pants and shirt holding an umbrella he tried so hard to help us find the hotel. He called a taxi for us and asked the taxi if he knew the hotel. Standing there in the light rain for about 5mins as him and the taxi tried to decide where the hotel might be but to no luck, we had to let the taxi go.

We did say that we'll just walk around and that he should probably go back to work BUT no he insisted on helping us. He just kept on asking other locals if they knew the hotel some gave us wrong directions so we were walking back and forth. By this time my Sommy was pretty wet and the man too as he offered me his umbrella and he carried my luggage.

Eventually we found the hotel inside an alley! Believe it or not it was very close to Exit 9 but we just went the wrong direction! and yep the man was with us all the way, we would be so lost without him! I had my suspicions when we got to the hotel that maybe he was a tour agent or something and tried to get business from us but no not at all, when we found the hotel there was just relief on his face and a smile and he said his goodbye and left us. We just kept on saying "thank you". I am til now still amazed how he stayed so focused on helping us without wanting anything in return. There really is very kind people out there, we hope to bump into him again so that we can at least shout him to lunch or something but that's probably unlikely. From todays experience we will now be more helpful when we see lost tourist back at home

So our thoughts about Seoul so far? We are supposedly in the heart of the fashion district in Seoul but we are not really seeing that. Fashion is not outrageous as we thought it would be. I was so keen on finding a shopping centre/mall and after almost an hr of walking around we did not even find one shopping centre! We thought we found one called Lotte Mall but when we got there it was a commercial building! So disappointing!

We had KFC for lunch. Yeah we are suppose to avoid chicken but we were getting very hungry and I didnt want Korean and didnt want to battle with the language in trying to order something. Not as tasty the KFC price is not too much of a difference to back home. Serving was pretty small tho.

We came back to the hotel and rested a little as I was getting dizzy. Then headed back out for dinner. We had Korean BBQ it was basically beef with chopped onions and garlic on the side and this almost kimchi style salad. That was pretty much it, very basic its not the like the wide variety we have back at home at Charcoal Mine in Parramatta!
And this meal ended up costing us about AU$31! Oh plus two bottle of coke and "sa-ke" which taste like methylated spirit! yuck! And yeah as we thought we finished our meal, got up to pay the restaurant guy tells us to sit back down....I said to Som oh they must be giving us desert or they will come to get the bill from the table. What came out was a bowl of noodles, but this is not the hot noodles we are use to...its COLD noodles kimchi flavoured! Oh my gosh I almost fainted as I was full already and really felt that if we didn't eat it we would offend them. So down our throat it went slowly....eww cold noodles was not very appetising. Damn forgot to take camera with us so sorry no photos.

Oh forgot to mention that the city is not pretty as I imagine to be, the streets are pretty dirty and congested. We feel a bit glusterphobic right now. Tomorrow going to walk more and sightsee the place a bit more - hopefully we'll have more luck finding the shopping malls Ney I'm trying to get to Daejumgum Theme Park, it looks easy on the map but god knows if it is easy!

Okies thanks if you manage to read this to the end I'm sure we'll have more stories to tell tomorrow!

The weather is about 17 degrees and its not like 17 degrees at home that's for sure. Considering we have the balcony door open with the sea breeze coming through and I'm in a sleeveless top I still can't say its cold. Before we came we checked the weather and it was about 12 degrees here so I told Som to pack some warm clothes, what a waste of space it was!

Also we rung front desk asking how to switch on the air con as the remote was nowhere to be found in the room, they said the air con is disconnected because its too cold apparently.

There's hardly any sun. Yesterday it was very very misty. We are really relaxing here lazing about the hotel most of the time so that Som can recover from his ankle injury - want to save all the walking for Seoul. We are heading off to Seoul on Wednesday via express bus which will take about 4 hrs. Looking forward to Seoul missing the busy city life actually as its just way too quiet here in the north eastern part of Korea.

Cant wait for shopping in Seoul too! There's nothing much here in Sokcho to my liking.

Just came back from buffet lunch at the hotel so stuffed! I think I'll be over kimchi flavoured food shortly lol Cant wait for Seoul more variety of food AND Som can't wait for Laos food haha he'll have to wait a while for that!

Hey guess which pot do we cook in?? look carefully at pic below

Today we decided to go into town - Sokcho.

We knew it would be a day of walking...after walking for about 5mins what happens? Well my sommy sprain his foot again due to the uneven concrete walkway. He blames it on me because he was concentrating on the walkway then I asked him to look at the sign above...men they really cant multitask

Well it finally happened we both knew that eventually we would be ripped off as tourist. The Koreans have all these strange and exotic fruits in the markets that we just had to try, we went for one large nashi looking fruit and another fruit which Som thinks is a melon, the lady charged us 5,000won which is equivalent to 5 bucks our money. We will upload the pics of the two fruits and you can judge for yourself.

After walking and walking We managed to find the fish markets. There were no sashimi to be found! They had heaps of crabs and squid. We bought 5,000won of squid and that bought us heaps. We bought some marinaded crab as well, guess what the marinade was? of course its our favourite, your favourite! kim chi!!!! planning on having it for dinner tonight. There is alot of squid for me and for Noy, but as much as there is I am positive that it will never be enough for me, maybe if Noy doesnt have any then it would last me for 2 days, maybe.... hehehe.

There was lots and lots of weird and scarey looking fish, but there was even more scarier looking LIVE "fish" there too, saw a couple of massive octopuss there, quite a decent amount was in netted bags still swimming around, now what I would do with one of these things? i have no idea so we just left it alone, it was too big to deal with, how would I even go about killing one of these biggies ???? no idea.

We had lunch today, at a very homey Korean " restuarant " it was run by a family and Noy pointed out that when the boy waiter brang our food over he was very concious of himself to not look at us in the eyes for some reason, she reckons its because its rude to look at someone in the eyes, now that she has mentioned it I would have to agree with this but anyways back to the food. We had no idea what to order, they didnt bring a menu, there was no pictures on the wall cept the menu on the wall with prices and written in Korean, it was just luck again that the guy at the next table had the breakfast, it consisted of crumbed beef ad crumbed fish meat, deep friend of course and the side of salad consisted of shredded cabbage with mayo. I had the tempura prawn, they were whole prawns head and all, it was difficult to eat but I couldnt be bothered peeling it so I ate it whole as well, the tempura wasnt that nice actually, it didnt taste that fresh eventhough it was deep fried right then for us, its much nicer back home in Sydney. I also had some pasta dish that looked like sausage and every second store had it ready for people to have for breakfast, guess what it tastes like? of course kim chi heheh. We even had kim chi with our breakfast, with some more preserved pickled veggies.

Did I mention that we are in South Korea? well its more like Kim chi land cause even the omlette had kim chi going through it. But the good thing is that Noy and myself love kim chi, if we didnt it would have been very interesting indeed.

Another thing we werent too happy about is the miscommunication we had with the taxi driver. We got in the taxi at the markets, showed him the card of the resort we are staying in, he quickly looked and said " Kensington Hotel " and we said " Yes yes! Kensington " We took a ride through the mountains and the national park, the same way that was taken when we came from Seoul, up and down the hill and we looked at each other and said Noy said he must be taking us the long way because we are tourists, cause we saw the meter and it was $17 our money so he must be taking us the back roads, the trip from the resort to Sokcho City was only $7 so it must have been a very very long backroads. Anyways we turn into a driveway and we saw a massive sign, " Kensington Star Hotel " and we looked at each other and said NOo, No No to the taxi driver. He insisted this is the Kensington Hotel and he was right, the only problem was it wasnt the place we were staying LOL. Gave him the card and he looked at it more closely and he spoke in Korean and blah blah blah Beeech, Seorak Beech blah blah blah Kensington etc etc, we both said YES Seorak Beach, Kensington Beach.

Initially we werent sure if the taxi driver was angry at us but then realised he was trying to explain to us that next time we should say "Kensington Beach Condo" not Kensington Hotel. In the end that trip back to our hotel cost AU$30 instead of the usual AU$7 hehe - lesson learnt!

Just finished dinner - kimchi crab with squid and mushroom stew with steam rice. We suprised ourself as it was actually very nice considering we NO seasonings here at all, the kimchi taste did it all. Watch out guys Som is keen on making this dish when we get back home!

Tomorrow will probably be a quiet one hanging around the hotel waiting for sommy to recover a bit from the accident.

Until then cheerio! =)