Korea 2017 – Day 4/10 ✈️

17 June 2017 – Saturday

Hey guys! I’m back with day 4 of my Korea trip! 😃

Itinerary for today: Shopping and lunch at Times square > Yeongdeungpo underground shopping > Bupyeong underground shopping > Express bus terminal underground shopping > Hongdae

First of all we started the day by getting these mini kimbaps at Hongdae subway station. YUMZ. They’re freshly made every morning too. They have other easy to go snacks like spicy rice cakes and fishcakes too that you can eat at their mini counter in the shop or simply takeout! 😋  [I really miss the fact that you can grab these food almost anywhere at most subway stations. ] 

On a side note, I use the app Citymapper alot like ALOT throughout my whole trip. As google maps does not work in Korea (Read it online), I literally shopped through the app store on my iphone to find an app that would cater to all my needs! The app is free, allows you to search in English, shows you the different stores according to distances, gives you gps direction including public transport and it even works in more than just Korea! Really recommended!! 👍👍👍

We then headed over to Times square mall first since it will be more convenient that way. We went into a few shops like Adidas, Aland and Shoopen too! My all time favourite store, Shoopen had so many things i liked. If you guys ain’t brand conscious, this is a really good replica of the Birkenstocks at 1/6th of the price. 😐 

We then headed to Lotteria, a korean fast food joint for lunch! Although I was still having a really bad sore throat and flu, I had to have Lotteria again from my previous trip to Korea. The previous time Shi Hui and I could not really enjoy our food since we were literally rushing for our flight and had to gobble our food down. I ordered the Bulgogi burger! JJang 👍👍

We then headed back to underground shopping at Yeongdeungpo station. The area is not the largest underground shopping, but there’re really some pretty good bargains especially 1000won earrings and 1000won socks.

Afterwards we headed to Bupyeong underground shopping which was a rather letdown although the place is quite big. The items there were not really the cheapest nor the trendiest although there are some that are pretty good and some korean roadshop cosmetics brand. The worst was the air conditioning being down. OMG WAS IT HOT. We left the place less than an hour upon arrival.

Our final underground shopping area for the day was the Express bus terminal station’s underground shopping (aka goto mall) which is also my favorite place based on my last trip. True to that, i bought most of my clothing items here and the place is just huge and have so so so many discounts. Most of the items are between the range of 5000 – 15000 won. From trendy clothes, gadgets and socks, all can be found here.  We spent the longest time here today since we stopped at nearly all the clothing stores. At the end of the stretch on the left hand side upon exiting from exit 8-1, there’s a really good korean snack store. It is a good place to stop at since you would have finished shopping 1/3 of the area by the time you walk to this end. My favorite was the Udon. 👍👍👍 As the rice cakes are pretty spicy, the kimbap is a good food to chill that spice. The udon is seriously so good as they added some bits of kimchi and korean chilli powder mixed in perhaps anchovies soup. 👍👍👍 I miss it so much. 😓 

After we were done shopping the area which really took a long time, we headed back to Hongdae area for dinner. All thanks to the influence of K-dramas, we really wanted to try the ‘Jokbal’ which is pig trotter. It is so so good omg. That bucket of rice is mixed with seaweed and anchovies and yes it is so good too! 😍 The only downside is how we had to wait ages for the trotter since there’s only one guy chopping it up, but it was worth the wait. 😋 Not to forget, it actually came with a complimentary pot of kimchi soup placed on a stove on our table too but we finished eating it before any picture because we were too hungry. oops 😂

We ended our day with a short walk around Hongdae. 😃

See ya guys on day 5!