A photo with my lunch buddies before we left the school (again) to head to the neighbourhood in search of a nice place for lunch! Absolutely love these girls and I'm so glad that my lunches are never boring with them around! (:
So I've been mentioning about Myeongdong so many times in my blog. I've been to Myeongdong 12 times (or was it 13) in my short 46 days there. It's like if I go to Myeongdong every 3-4 days. And considering that I spent 3 days in Jeju, 10 days on a road trip, I went to Myeongdong 12 times in 33 days. So there must be a reason why I love Myeongdong.
First, let me introduce Myeongdong. Once you exit from Exit 6/7 of Myeongdong station, you should see this sign after a few steps. (The chinese words translate to "Welcome to Myeongdong") I remember Myeongdong so well that I don't even need to google to check which exit in order to blog about it. And just an additional info, exit 7 has escalators but exit 6 does not. So if you are carrying luggages, head through the underground shopping mall and at the end, you will reach exit 7 which has the escalator. Once you exit, you will first see a very huge Nature Republic store, by then you should know that you are at the right place.
So why I love Myeongdong. I love Myeongdong because it's always lively and buzzling with people. I love Myeongdong because it has a great mix of tourists and locals, unlike certain tourist spots like Dongdaemun (which my Korean friends say they hated going). I like Myeongdong because occassionally, I hear Chinese and English while walking on the street. It's a place that makes me feel like home, and whenever I felt like I just couldn't fit into the Korean culture and miss home terribly, I love to head to Myeongdong. Best of all, you can get all your cosmetics and clothes and shoes here. I have to say again, Korean shoes are really the best, especially their heels. Myeongdong is also a place where you can get so many different kinds of food, and if you are looking for street snacks, do head there! They have almost everything there! I'm going to stop here because if I blabber on, this point is never-ending. I hope you do feel how awesome Myeongdong is and do head there. Anyway Myeongdong is #1 tourist spot in Seoul. :)
So that day, I was supposed to meet with a friend, R, who is also in Seoul for summer studies, but he is from another university. We were supposed to head to Apgujeong, then Dongdaemun. Even though I really hate Dongdaemun despite not stepping into it before, I decided to maybe give it a chance and besides, I really wanna meet R. Turned out R needed to change more Korean currency and Myeongdong offers by far, the best rate, as stated in most forums and blogs. We decided to head to Myeongdong in the end, as R wanted to get some shoes as well.
I chose the place for dinner. I am really bad at deciding the choice of food, because honestly I am not a picky eater in terms of how good it tastes. (I pick as in I hate fatty oily stuff though). We decided to settle for Myeongdong Gyoja which was very highly raved, and I was craving for something soupy, and R didn't want something very Korean. So apparently, a long queue will form by dinnertime and lunchtime, and the wait could be an hour long, so R and I met at 5.30pm for an early dinner to avoid the dinner crowd.
By the way, this bowl of noodle costs 8,000KRW and as I have read in certain blogs, they are refillable. The noodles, not the dumplings of course. The minced meat is however pork, and hence, definitely not halal. R and I ordered THE EXACT SAME THING. We knew it was refillable but we didn't see anyone refilling it, so we were worried to look like fools hahah. We also figured that if you had this refillable, and ordered another tray of dumplings (8,000KRW) it would have costed the same. So we decided to eat the same thing. To be honest, it didn't taste as exceptional, maybe because I had high expectations of it. Another selling point is their kimchi, which is known have an exceptionally strong garlic taste. It was alright, but not something that I would keep eating. Two Japanese grandmothers beside me passed me their kimchi because they thought I loved it. I had to force myself to eat it so as to not make them embarrassed hahah.
My advice: Probably not worth the wait if you have to queue for more than 15 minutes.
So the street snacks after dinner! O'sulloc green tea icecream!!!! There was a sale, and it was at 3,000KRW. Still expensive I know, but R said that he had it at 6,000KRW at Jeju Island and it was good! We decided to give it a try. It was pretty good but not fantastic, I wouldn't get it at 6,000KRW. If I see it at 3,000KRW and I have a green tea craving, maybe I will. But then again, the 30cm long icecream only costs 2,000KRW if I am right. So... your choice :)
Next one: Hotteok/Hoddeok. Which I have been wanting to try since forever! This was at 1,500KRW and it is some sort of a pancake with melted brown sugar inside. It tastes heavenly~~! But 1 is enough, because it is too sweet and after a while, you will get sick of it.
I had the noodles with the above two street snacks and R was amazed how I can stomach so many things. But then again, R just had a KFC meal an hour before meeting me because he was starving so badly, so no surprise that he cannot eat anymore after the ice cream. But more street snacks!!! I took these pictures on another day. I really head to Myeongdong every other day.
I'm not sure what this is called. But it consists of sausages and the other two are fried ddeok (rice cakes). Yes it's the ddeokbukki that you eat but they fry it! I really don't like ddeokbukki but I can accept this version. For 2,000KRW I think.
Sugar cane juice! If you have been to Singapore, or are a Singaporean, this is not the sugar cane juice we all loved. T.T This tastes like brown sugar juice, I feel so cheated. No doubt it's refreshing but I was (for a moment) proud that Singaporean food made its way into Korea, but no~~~
Some other snacks I bought before but didn't have a picture of were: tornado potato (the spiral potato), kimbab (5 small ones for 2,000KRW), egg bread. You can just eat street snacks the entire night and you could be full as well. Except that they are so addictive you probably will spend quite a bit of money buying them and eating them.
All in all, Myeongdong is definitely my #1 favourite place in Seoul. I've also booked my tickets back to Seoul again in May, so 8 more days in Seoul (so short T.T) and I'm staying in Myeongdong again. My guesthouse in Myeongdong was good, cheap, quiet, clean and just so awesome, except that it's situated on the slope up to Namsan cable car station. Which can be a dread but I'm willing to brave it because I want to stay 10 minutes away from Myeongdong. (:
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