Shopping on Sunday

Basicly I spend my whole sunday shopping at Myeongdong so this will be a haul post.

I found out that Forever 21 is one of the best stores ever made.

Seriously.

This 3 story store in Myeongdong is the best thing ever.

Every floor has it's own style and I was able to find many cool clothes.

I finally was able to find the Kimbap place I went to with Heelim last year.

For some reason I want to find all the places I went to last year.

I was able to find almost all of them by memory so far.

I guess finding places and going places using books or maps is definitely my thing.

I ordered Tuna Kimbap and Pork Mandu.

Seodaemun Prison hall..

I was supposed to go to Lotte World with Seonghwan today but we both felt ill and canceled.

However I didn't feel like doing nothing the whole saturday so I decided to go to Seodaemun Prison Hall.

Dongdimmun exit 5.

You have to walk straight ahead until you see a park on the right side.

Go right and follow the path uphill.

You will see the entrance of the Prison Hall right in front of you.

I paid 1500 to get in.

Luckily there were about 3 groups of children..

It was so crowded and chaotic.

I thought it was weird why they put a prison complex in such a beautiful area.

You could see the mountains in the distance.

When I entered there was this huge miniature of the entire complex.

You can imagine how big it would look in real life.

Actually this "museum" made a big impact on me.

A lot of people who rebelled against the japanese law during the japanese occupation.

People had to learn Japanese and basicly forget their own language.

People fought for different causes but in the end it all came down to one thing : fighting for their freedom.

Ofcourse the Japanese wouldn't just let that happen though.

They tortured the rebels and put them in prison.

It reminded me of the book I read about Lee Soon Ok, who was tortured and kept in prison in North Korea.

Allthough her torture and imprisonment was probably worse I did actually feel the same kind of thing while being in the Prison Hall.

There was this room that really impressed me.

It was a memorial hall with pictures of all the people who fought for freedom in Korea.

Just a few of many people who died in that godforsaken place.

Looking at the pictures made me feel very sad.

The ways to torture people were pretty scary.

But somehow the kids where just yelling "Daebak" everywhere..

I guess they don't understand how much their own country suffered during this period yet.

Walking in the hallways that lead to the prison cells made me feel cold even though it was so humid outside.

Apparently there was also a prison for women in this prison complex.

It immediately shocked me how much smaller it was.

I guess there weren't a lot of women going to prison.

Which shocked me because I think in my country more women would have ended up in prison.

(By this I mean that more women would join the battle to fight for freedom rather than just doing nothing)

I feel like I should write more blogs about my opinion about certain situations or things in Korea.

Expect more blogposts about those kind of things in the future.

Going out with Heelim

I didn't do a lot on friday.
I slept till really late and then went to meet up with Heelim.
We wanted to go clubbing but it was raining a lot so we decided to just go and eat some dinner and have drinks instead.

You might remember Heelim from last year.
She was a friend of my best friend and that's how I got to meet her.
I was so suprised.. her english got 10 times better since the last time I saw her.
It's funny. A lot of korean people are able to read and write english quite well but their english speaking is usually below average.
You can immediately tell the difference between people who studied english like crazy in school and people that regularly speak english.

Anyway.
We went to eat Fried rice.
It was pretty good but pretty standard.
Heelim asked me if I could stand spicy food well.
Apparently some people told her they could take it well before but turned out to be sissies.
After I ate my best friends Kimchi bokumbap I think I am able to stand anything.
He threw so many spices in there i'm pretty sure that even Korean food is not THAT spicy.

After that me and Heelim went to drink cocktails.
She knew this great place that is called "Thursday Party"
The prices were really good and you were able to play Table football, Beerpong and Darts as well.

We decided to play darts and I found out that Heelim is a really good darts player.
She won without any trouble.
Oh.. I also had my first korean guy come up to me to talk.
Heelim said my face looked so funny because I was not interested.
He asked me : "Do you want to play darts with me and my friend?"
I just replied : "No, I'll just play darts with her."
And after a while they just went somewhere else haha.

I could only stay till 0:00 since the subway would close half an hour later.

Best Samgyetang ever,

I went to myeongdong to get an outfit for going out in the weekends.

I really needed shoes with heels.

So I came across the Forever 21 store and decided to buy everything there.

This store is so incredibly cool and it had 3 different stories.

I bought a pair of leggings, a top that looks a bit like a dress, a bag for clubbing and a pair of shoes.

It was a total of 105.000 which is about 71,51 euro.

I guess its not a bad deal.

Since it was raining I wanted to get back to my motel fast.

When I got back I decided to sleep some more.

I got up at 17:30 and I had to go shower and get ready for dinner with my friend Seonghwan at 18:30.

I was afraid I wasn't gonna make it in time so I told him that he should meet me at 7 instead.

But what I didn't know is that this time is rush hour in Korea..

So it was incredibly crowded and people were pushing eachother into the train.

Somehow I managed to get to the meeting spot but I was 30 minutes late.

We went to his favorite samgyetang restaurant and he told me it was different from the normal samgyetang.

Samgyetang is a chicken ginseng soup.

He told me this restaurant definitely served the best samgyetang he ever had in his life.

I was so suprised.

His english was really good and he would just talk really calm without feeling nervous to speak english.

I think because he has many foreign friends his english speaking skill is very good.

We talked about a lot of different subjects and I was impressed about his common knowledge about other countries even though he never travelled outside Korea.

After eating the samgyetang we went to a place where he always went with his coworkers.

So we drank beer and ate chicken.

He would tell me all about his military service and about his college life.

He was a really good talker actually and he had a lot to tell.

After staying there for a few hours we both went home.

I'm meeting him again on saturday to go to Lotte World, an amusement park.

I hope it's gonna be fun.

Staying in a love motel

Today was the day I had to check out at my guesthouse in Hongdae and go to my motel in Yeungdeungpeo.

Yeosub helped me check-in since the lady seemed a little confused about my booking..

Then she started to talk to him in chinese because she thought Yeosub was chinese.

Ah. That always gets me because you could just see the hurt in his eyes.

Hahaha. Ni hao beibei.

And yes. It is totally a love hotel.

I immediately spotted two condoms when I came into the room.

I don't really care though since this room is really cheap and it has everything I need.

The whole desk is covered with all my stuff already.

We didn't do a lot that day though.

There was a huge TV so we just watched some TV.

Luckily one of the dramas i'm currently watching was on TV.

(The queen of the classroom)

I guess Yeosub liked it as well.

(By the way.. I found out that the main girl in the drama has the same cat keychain as me!)

by the way.. look how gigiantic the key of my room is:

I guess everyone can see that I'm staying in a love motel this way.
haha xD.

We went to this place where you could grill your own food.

You pay one certain price and you can eat unlimited food.

It was great! They had so many different stuff to eat!

But the thing about it was.. if you would waste food you would have to pay for it.

Yeosub asked me "Do you want some more?"

And I said yes.. but didn't realize he would come back with 3 plates filled with food.

Somehow we managed to eat everything even though we were both so full.

Yeosub went back to Cheonan that evening.

Actually I was a bit worried because his muscles were doing these weird kind of stuff and he seemed to be ill.

I sent him off early because I didn't feel good about it.

That evening I watched all the kpop live performances.

I seriously LOVE watching the performances and seeing all the kpop groups rock their concepts.

I guess I will be a kpop fangirl forever.

Itaewon.. nothing special.

We went to Itaewon today.

Itaewon is basicly the place all the foreigners go.

It definitely had the most foreigners I've seen in Korea so far.

But really.. I'm not sure why foreigners love Itaewon so much..

Maybe it's cool because they have a bit of their own culture everywhere.

I, myself prefer Hongdae.

There was this cool bookstore we went to and they had a Dutch language guide so I decided to buy it.

Then I gave it to Yeosub because obviously he didn't study Dutch for a long time and he should get started on it again.

I did see the crappy neighbourhoods you always see in the dramas when a family is really poor.

Still I don't think it's that bad.

It definitely has a certain charm to it.

Yeosub kept saying he wanted Indian food.

I'm not sure about Indian food because I never had it before and I really don't know anything about it.

We went to the Mcdonalds instead and somehow ended up staying there for hours.

By the way.
I just saw this randomly on the streets.

I went back early that day because I had to pack everything since I was checking out the day after.

Masyeora! Masyeora!

Monday wasn't anything special.

It was raining a lot so we only stayed at Hongdae.

I wanted to go shopping so we went to H&M.

There is a huge H&M store in Hongdae so I was able to see a lot of different clothes.

I thought that the prices of the clothes were sometimes too expensive.

I'm pretty sure that the H&M in the Netherlands is less expensive.

That's pretty weird because I'm sure that H&M is worldwide even though it's a swedish brand.

I bought a really cool necklace and rings that spelled the word "Swag".

I also bought a top that reminded me of 4Minute Hyuna in the MV of Muzik.

Later we went to a coffeeshop (yes I always get confused with this word)

A coffeeshop in the Netherlands is a place you can buy pot.

But coffeeshops elsewhere sell coffee.

I still need to get used to it.

I really wanted to tell about how I think Korea is so damn smart.

They have this device for umbrella's; You put your umbrella in a long plastic bag and then you pull it out.

This way your umbrella won't make the whole place look like the ceiling just leaked out an entire swimmingpool.

It's probably because of the monsoon season but still.. we should have these kind of things in the Netherlands too because Dutch weather is pretty much like this:

Right now it's sunny.. and 5 minutes later it rains for hours.

Dutch weather is the most random and confusing weather all time.

Anyways..

We went into the coffeeshop.

I chose a green tea / red bean combination drink.

It was pretty good.

After that I also had some grapefruit juice, which was delicious.

Yeosub said he never went drinking before so we went to a bar that night.

Actually.

There was only bar I've been to last year and I could remember the exact location so we went there.

I was so happy because they played the music I like.

This place is probably now one of my favorite spots to go in Hongdae.

I'm not even sure how the bar is called.. I just recognized it because last year my best friend said:

"Look!, that wooden place up there looks pretty cool.. let's go there!"

Actually.. I wanted to get the exact same thing as I got last time.

Fried chicken and soju.

Yeosub told me : "Wait.. it's my first time drinking.."

"Shouldn't I start with something less strong?"

And I just told him he would be fine.

Everytime he would drink soju he would just cringe and pull really funny faces.

I had to laugh every time I saw him having a hard time.

He would fill up half soju and half water so it wouldn't taste that bad.

I guess he did pretty well for his first time even though he drank lots of water with his soju.

Eventually we also drank some Cass, it was pretty good.

I was worried Yeosub wouldn't be able to get back to his guesthouse because he normally walks through the subway but the subway closes after about 00:30.

In the end he walked me back to my guesthouse (what a gentleman.. even though I was supposed to walk back alone)

We both got back safely in the end and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Sunday cycling and Noraebang

Today we wanted to go cycling around hangang.
We went to look for the park where they rented out bikes.
There were a lot of foreigners riding bikes and it seemed a lot of fun
So we rented bikes and cycled around the park.
And then.. it rained.. a lot.. really bad.
We rented them for an hour so we had to keep going.
But eventually we got used to it and it was kind of nice cycling through the rain.

After an hour we went back and went to Hongdae to eat some KFC since I really craved KFC.
It wasn't anything special.
Just plain old KFC.
I remember that last year my best friend told me that I thought the chicken at the KFC in Korea is so much better than the KFC in the Netherlands.
I didn't really notice any difference this day though.

That evening we went to noraebang.
Which means "singroom" in Korean.
Basicly what you do is renting a booth with a tv, sound system and microphones to sing your heart out for a few hours.
I like to sing rock songs and few korean pop songs i like.
But this time I also sang some TLC, Backstreet Boys and N'Sync.
Yeosub sang mostly korean songs but he also sang a song by Taylor Swift.

He started with "the lazy song" by Bruno Mars.
Since I knew the lyrics I waited till the awkward moment where he would have to sing out these words:
"Tomorrow I'll wake up, do some P90X"
"Find a really nice girl, have some really nice sex"
Ofcourse when he was supposed to sing it he just blanked out for a few seconds.
And I had fun laughing at him.

After Noraebang we both went back to our guesthouses.
Since it was sunday.. Hongdae looked like it was cleaned up by a huge zombie attack.

Forcing Yeosub to hike up Namsan.

Today me and Yeosub went to Namsan Tower.

Can you believe he has not been here before even though he is Korean?

I told him we would go hike up all the way.. but somehow we started on the half already so he was lucky.

While we were going up the mountain he kept nagging.

"It's so hot", "We should walk in the shadow instead", "We should sit there by the water stream like the ajumma instead".

That day Yeosub was crowned King Nag.

Yeosub always has trouble saying "shade" so I always have to remind him about the pronounciation.

And then he said : "Yes, but there is something wrong with my thong".

And then I laughed because he said thong instead of tongue.

I bought some kpop stuff at a store before going up to Namsan.

I bought Jang geun suk and TVXQ changmin and yunho socks.

And also 2 keychains from Block B members Park Kyung and P.o.

It was one of the few sunny days until now and it wasn't crowded at all.

Yeosub wanted to buy a lock to hang on the lock railing.

In the end he didnt buy one.

It was nice sitting around the namsan area.

Since it was not crowded I felt really relaxed.

So we stayed there for an hour just sitting and enjoying the view

Afterwards we went to myeongdong.

Yeosub would give me all his stuff to carry in my bad so I told him:

"You are the worst"

I guess I hurt his feelings when I told him that because he suddenly became very quiet.

In myeondong I was trying to find the kimbap place we went to last year.

But I didn't find the exact one.

Because it's a chain it was easy to find a similar one.

Afterwars I wanted to go to the photosticker place I went with Heelim with last year.

Because I remembered they had really cool photobooths.

In the end we couldn't find the exact one either and we just went to another one.

I really wanted to shower so we both went back to our guesthouses.

We were supposed to go out since it was saturday but I was so tired..

So I fell asleep xD.

The multi purpose 63 building and tricking the eye.

Today Yeosub and I decided to go to the 63 building.

The building has an aquarium, a wax museum and a sky art gallery on the 60th floor.

The aquarium didn't have any cool sharks though..

I think we should have gone to Coex aquarium instead.

I did see some sea lions, mantarays and some really beautiful fish.

And they had all the fish that were in that animation mvovie Nemo as well XD.

In the wax museum I found 2 dutch people.

Could you guess who they were?

Yes.

Ofcourse one of them was Guus Hiddink ( the hero of the world championships soccer in 2002 )

Our dutch football coach got them really far in the competitions and that made the Korean people very happy.

The second one is a dutch painter.

Yes.

It's Vincent van Gogh.

I didn't think he looked anything like I've seen in his selfportraits though.

For some reason some people in the wax museum looked a bit Korean even though they are foreign.

They even had Leonardo Dicaprio.

Which is one of my favorite actors (NOT BECAUSE OF TITANTIC)

On the 60th floor there were these art works you could see but they weren't anything really special.

We also found these blocks which you could spell your name with.

Yeosub took me to this great place where they grilled this beef and kimchi dish.

It was so good.

The ajumma there were so nice but they were constantly argueing about food and ingredients.

I experienced that when Korean women age they work 3 times harder and seem much stronger.

They take care of so much. They definitely become more impressive when aging.

I really wanted to go to the trick eye museum since last year.

Because last year we never went I was dedicated to go.

Actually.. the trick eye museum is quite hard.. it takes effort to take really good pictures.

It turned i'm not good at the optical illusions thing.

We took some great pictures though.

After that we walked around the Hongdae area.

Because it was friday night it was really crowded.

Yeosub normally isn't the party kind of guy so I thought it was hilarious that he was getting excited about going out.

We saw this photo sticker place and we decided to take photo stickers.

I can't believe this was Yeosub's first time taking them.

He's korean and he never took them before? So strange..

After that we went to Burger king to eat.

Yeah I know.

I shouldn't go to Korea just to eat something at Burger king.

I didn't eat much because I felt so ill suddenly.

I went back to my guesthouse early.

Going back to Everland... again!?

So we decided to go to Everland.

It shouldn't be raining a lot today so let's go!

I went to Everland last year as well but I seriously love themeparks so I decided to go back.

Yeosub hadn't been there for like 10 years.

Everland has this really famous rollercoaster called "T-express", which is a crazy wooden rollercoaster.

Yeosub was going to go in the T-express with me even though he feared for his life haha.

But when we arrived at Everland we found out the T-express was closed.

Argh, such a disappointment.

So we decided to go in the Flume ride first.

I explained to Yeosub that this ride featured canoes.

But he seriously thought we had to peddle everywhere ourselves haha.

Ofcourse Yeosub got wet since he was sitting in the front.

He was so stressed when there was a suprise drop after the first one hahaha.

There were a lot of children in Everland.

They were probably on some kind of school trip.

Some of them greeted me with a "Annyeong haseyo" or a "Hello"

Later that day I saw a great scene when a group of kids lost one kid because he was just looking around forgetting about his group.

I made a picture of the scene.

I thought it was so funny how he just forgot about the group while looking entirely impressed at the gardens.

We went to eat at a place called "China moon" and I had jajangmyeon for the very first time.

I could immediately tell that this is my kind of dish.

It was so delicious!

I found out that a the life of a Korean kid is anything but easy.

You are told by your parents to eat a lot!

And when you tell your parents that your done eating they will tell you to eat even more!

You can see that eating is incredibly important in Korea.

And I can understand why.

The Korean cuisine is amazing!

Because it started raining they closed a lot of the rides.

How can they close rides because of a bit of rain?

I don't think they would close rides because of a little rain in the Netherlands.

I thought it was really weird.

So we decided to go home early because of the rain.

we took the bus back and when we were almost there it started raining really bad.

The little umbrella I brought wasn't really handy since I still got super wet.

We went back to Hongik station and we decided we should go somewhere fast to eat dinner.

Basicly we just ran into the first shop we saw.

It happened to be a Seolleongtang shop ( which stands for beef bone soup)

Actually.. it was really really good.

After that I went back to my guesthouse only to get lost for a complete hour because I made one wrong turn.

Luckily I made my way back using the map I happened to pick up the day before.