Dongdaemun

This day was an interesting one lol. BC was busy today, so we were left to fend for ourselves in the Korean wilderness without his translation. Our plan for the day was to go to Dongdaemun, a big shopping area. So we made it there with no problem... but most of the shops were closed on Mondays. We did end up going into one building called Hello APM, and there were many floors filled with all types of different clothes vendors. This area is known for these merchants and haggling is a must. However, we were pretty unsuccessful with that. I asked for the price of a dress but the merchant told me to try it on. So I did, and it was pretty cute... but it was $75!! I said I would pay $30 for it and she looked at me, pushed me in the "changing corner", and yanked down the zipper of the dress lol. No success there. It was pretty similar at some of the other stalls and we were shooed away when we asked for lower prices. We decided to leave and come back another day when things were actually open, so we headed back to the subway to go to Hongdae for a bit. Where we ended up was not Hongdae lol. We took he wrong train and ended up somewhere random, so we just walked around for a bit before heading back to our place near Seoul Station. We had a change of plans and went back to Myeongdong and explored what seemed to be every alley there. Also, we stumbled across a man making this Korean dessert I saw on YouTube. It's pretty much honey and malt boiled together and hardened, and he stretches it into 16,000+ strands and wraps almond or walnut inside it. He wasn't as exciting as the one on YouTube, but it was cool to watch! I bought some because I had to after seeing it lol.

It was getting late so we headed back and met up with BC at our place. Our next activity- NRB! Otherwise known as karaoke lol. Fun stuff, I think we were all close to losing our voices. Then, we wandered around Hongdae for the last time and had some street food for a late night meal. We came across some street performers later, two students playing saxophone and guitar. We chilled and talked to them for a few hours... super late night but it was fun!

Spa and R16 Round 2!

So all of the blogs after this point are being posted and/or written after I have already returned... lol. Blogging while in Asia didn't exactly work out...

Bright and early, at 10am, we woke up and went to.... another Korean spa! This one was called Dragon Hill Spa and it is one of the more famous spas. It was really big and had a lot of different things to do. There were also way more people at this one. In the sauna area, there were a lot more tubs and there were even outdoor ones! It is interesting to be naked outside lol. After the usual showering and bathing, we all met up outside in the co-ed areas and suffered through really hot and cold rooms together. There was a hot salt room with salt rocks all over the ground. It was painful to walk on, but not too bad to lay on. We tried covering our legs with burning salt but that was a bit unbearable. After some hot and cold switches, we had a snack of tea and hard boiled eggs. The eggs were black, I don't really know why but it was good. We also had a sweet rice drink after withstanding a burning room and it was very refreshing. Upon entering the ice room, the drink froze lol.

Next, we played around in the arcade for a bit. I tried to play Pump It Up, which is like weird Korean DDR with all the arrows in the wrong places. Too intense. After our spa day, we headed out to get some lunch! We took a bus and walked around the Han River kind of, but it was flooded from the rain so we couldn't walk along it. For lunch, we went to a Chinese-Korean restaurant. It was quite delicious! We came for the jjajangmyun, which was good, but I really liked the red spicy noodle soup! We made it back to our place afterwards and got ready for another night of R16!

Back at R16, we found that they ran out of tickets. But we were given free tickets to some unpopular seats or something, so we still got in. Tonight was only crew battles of breaking, while the day before was solo battles of breaking, popping, and locking. Sorry CS if I am writing everything wrong lol. I have no idea what count as good and bad but all of them were super cool. I didn't know people could be so bendy, and they also did a lot of interesting things like jumping on each other or being attached to each other while doing some very crazy things. I don't know how to describe it lol.

After R16, there was an after party at Club Able. We made our way to the area and looked for something to eat. There were also a lot of other foreigners in the area for the after party too. At the actual club, it wasn't really very crowded. Dumbfounded and Jay Park did a couple songs, but when they left the crowd also got much smaller lol.