korea

Although, the day before, we set out to go shopping at Dongdaemun, which is known as Seoul’s main shopping district, we found that the shopping experience there wasn’t quite what we were expecting. With further research the night of the day we went to Dongdaemun, we found out that Edae was actually a better place to visit. The shopping streets along Edae are known to sell products similar to the ones in Dongdaemun, but for a cheaper price. This is mainly because their target market is the students from the nearby women’s university; thus, setting the prices cheaper for a younger market. If you will are looking to go shopping for cheap(er) women’s clothing, I highly suggest you also visit Edae (apart from Myeong-dong).

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We wanted our second to the last day to be a more laid-back day, since we didn’t want to stress out the night before our flight. Well, in the case of half of my family, their flight was scheduled earlier, i.e. the night of the fourth day, so the more we wanted to give them the freedom to what they wanted to do on their last day in Korea. However, we decided to have Dongdaemun as a fixed schedule during the morning, then it was up to us how we wanted to spend the rest of the day.

We got to visit Zaha Hadid’s famous Dongdaemun Plaza design!

Towards the afternoon, we accompanied those who missed out Insa-dong on the previous day/s to the aforementioned location once again. We wanted them to get at least a feel of what the traditional souvenir area had to offer!

Dinner, dessert, and street performers you can commonly find in Hongdae during the evening.

I didn’t get to take much photos during the third day since we spent the entire day in Everland. And because of that, I didn’t want to be bringing my bulky DSLR around, so I stuck to taking photos with my mobile phone. I apologize in advance that the photos I took aren’t of high quality since I spent a lot of time moving around and trying to enjoy the theme park. It was a day that went by pretty fast and in a blur, so the photos I took of that day were pretty much in a random mix-up as well. Continue Reading

We decided to cap off the day by having our dinner in a good old Korean BBQ restaurant in Hongdae (which is also an abbreviation for Hongik University). Since it’s in the vicinity of the school, you’ll be sure to see much of the youth around the area. Apart from that, Hongdae has also become the ‘go-to’ place for young street performers who aspire to be discovered and become professional artists of their own specialty one day.

(P.S. Please forgive me for the photo quality, since I was only able to use my mobile phone to snap photos during the part of the trip!) Continue Reading

After the quiet and peaceful stroll along the traditional streets of Insa-dong, we decided it was time to take a glimpse of what the hustling and bustling city life of Korea was all about. We had Myeong-dong, the famous shopping strip, listed as our next destination in our itinerary. And as we were still adjusting to the lifestyle of Koreans in relation to public transportation, it was another tiring walk for us from our current spot to the nearest subway station. We still had much of the day ahead of us! Continue Reading