Adventures in Korea: 쇼핑

After our night out two nights ago, we all added each other on Facebook and begin throwing around ideas for how to spend last night. It was decided that we would grab dinner, and then go to Dongdaemun (동대문) to go night-shopping at their many outdoor stalls. I woke up around 3:00pm after going to bed at six, and we all decided to meet at 8. Out of the 16 of us from the night before, four of us met up in Anam, and we had plans to meet up with three more at Dongdaemun in a couple of hours. The four of us who met in Anam were me, Kirsty, who is from Vancouver, Peter, who is from the Netherlands, and Torkel, who is from Sweden. We decided to go straight to Dongdaemun and eat there, since we were all curious about Korean street food.

We took the subway, and thankfully Kirsty knew the way really well and we made it there fine. We walked around for about half an hour looking at the many stalls selling clothing and accessories, not really stopping at any, but just enjoying the scene. Eventually, someone asked if we should get food, and there was a unanimous and instantaneous "yes" from the rest of the group. It was around 9pm, and we were quite hungry. We saw a stall selling 붕어빵, "Bungeoppang", literally meaning "Fish-Bread". It's a type of bread filled traditionally with red bean paste and grilled in a waffle-iron sort of contraption that leaves it shaped like a fish. The stall we saw however had about 10 different filling options; I got the potato filling and the rest of the group got pizza filling. It was served to us piping hot out of the iron wrapped in a piece of paper, and I thought it was really tasty!

We walked around some more, and ended up at the Cheonggyecheon (청계천), a river that's been partially man-made to allow people to walk/sit along side it. We took the stairs down to the bank of the stream, which was flat stone tiles, and walked alongside of it for a bit. At one point, we saw some children walking around on the edge of the river, and convinced Torkel to do the same, since he was in sandals. Eventually, however, one of the guards blew his whistle and made him get out.

We walked around a little more, then it was getting close to 10pm, which is when we had told the other three, Polly and Philomena from Hong Kong and Anna from Korea, we would meet them at exit two of the subway station. We took the stairs back up to ground level, then walked a little bit down the road, where we saw a subway station marked exit 2. We still had ten minutes until 10, so we all grabbed some more street food from a vendor next to the subway station. Torkel and I had chicken on a stick in some sort of sauce (I'm noticing more and more that I have no idea what most of the things I eat here are), Peter had a Korean style corn-dog, and Kirsty had Soondae, a type of Korean sausage made from pig intestines, organ meat, and blood. I tried a bite, but didn't enjoy the taste it left in my mouth. Eventually, it was 10:20 and we still hadn't heard from the others, when Peter got a call from Polly saying they'd been waiting at exit 2 and still hadn't seen us. We were all very confused until we looked up and noticed that we'd walked so far away that we were at the exit 2 for a completely different subway station. We apologized and went to go meet them at the right station, arriving about 15 minutes later.

We all walked around some more, looking at the stalls and wares, when we decided to go to a covered market advertised in Polly's tour guidebook. We walked back to the Cheonggyecheon, then alongside it for about 10 or 15 minutes to the market. Upon arrival, we discovered that, save for a few food stalls, it was closed for the night. We still walked through to see what it looked like, and then, as it was nearing 11:30 and the last subway leaves at 12:30, decided to leave. Before we left, we decided it would be nice to find a cafe and have some drinks together. Normally, in Korea, there are tons of coffee shops, but of course since we were looking for one, we couldn't find any. Eventually, after walking for twenty minutes with no luck, we decided to just go to Lotteria (the Korean equivalent of a McDonalds, owned, like pretty much every other food item in Korea, by the Lotte corporation) and get soft-drinks there. At 12:10, we decided we ought to get to the subway. When we went to walk down, we were stopped by a guard who informed us that the subways close at 11 on that day. So, Anna called her dad to pick her up, and we waited with her, just talking since we were now in no rush. After she was picked up, we went to go catch a cab. While we were deciding how we were going to split the 6 of us up to get back to Anam, a taxi-van, advertising "6 PERSON TAXI" on the side, pulled up right in front of us (I'm pretty sure we were giving off the "desperate tourist" vibe), and we took it back to Anam.

Today, I have to write a short essay about the struggles of North Korean refugees in South Korean for my Korean Mass Media and Popular Culture class, and make sure I have the first 6 chapters of my new Korean textbook memorized, as per the (Korean) instructions of my Korean teacher. This weekend was definitely very fun, and I hope the rest will be just as great!