So it happened that I really almost forgot something: my handkerchiefs. Though I don't expect to sweat much in that kind of weather, perspiration isn't the only thing they are good for. Like tissue paper, it's never a bad idea to keep some on myself at all times.
One thing I did forget, though, was that my flight time required that I travel during the morning peak hour. I don't recall why I didn't choose a cheaper time but I hope it wasn't because I forgot. Regardless, I will never find out now.
I am going to try to be as alert as possible to watch out for Murphy's Law, as I always do when I fly, but also like all the other occasions where I had to fly to a place I have never been to, I didn't sleep much last night, so I may not even realise I did anything wrong till tomorrow.
But last night's lack of sleep wasn't purely caused by anxiety; I was just too busy with Planetside 2. That game is a giant continuous match so there were no breaks to remind me to check the time.
And I just remembered that I forgot my earphones. Unfortunately I was already past the immigration when that happened. Couldn't find the padded earphones I use in the shops there.
Looks like I may have to use the iPad's poorly positioned speakers if I need the sound.
I had even made a list of things to bring last night, and I completely forgot to look at it this morning. At least l remembered to blog about it.
I'm going to have to write the list on paper next time.
Iran is going to send military personnels to North Korea's test missile site. That totally changes my impression of the purpose of the missile.
Strengthen cooperation my ass. These missiles are meant to be sold, with at least Iran being one potential customer. We shouldn't be judging the missiles' range by the distances between the DPRK and other countries in Asia; we should be looking at Israel and the US instead!
This is far from the first time North Korea is selling such things to Iran, so the real experts must have seen this right from the beginning. What is curious is that this link has been rarely mentioned together with those missile tests in most media.
Now that I'm on the plane, there was an announcement telling us that they are now waiting for instructions from the air traffic controllers.
This is certainly more eventful than most flights I've been on in recent years.
It's not just this delay but also the lack of tap water in the washrooms due to a breakdown of the water system. Yes, that's right, no tap water.
How fucked up is that?
They announced that while we were waiting at the boarding gate, adding that wet towels will be provided instead. Using hot towels instead of rinsing our hands after visiting the washroom actually sounds more luxurious but if I were taking a shit, I'm not sure if the luxury is worth it.
It's not like the towels will be left in the washroom in a gigantic pile.
The other thing about not having tap water is that we will also not be having hot beverages.
I only slept for 4 hours last night so I was really looking forward to the coffee.
Not anymore.
Looks like I'll have to settle for Coke instead.
Inflight ads. I thought these were all limited to the magazines and between the inflight movies but this airline has taken it to the next level by hanging and pasting them in front off all the passengers. One is printed on the disposable headrest cover while the other is pasted on the table. There is absolutely no way we could not notice them during out 6-hour flight to Shanghai.
IMO this really cheapens the image of the airline. It now feels like this airline is somewhere between non-budget and budget. A budget airline that isn't?
Apparently they did manage to find enough warm water to make tea and coffee.
They served the drink and then served the meal. The food looks nice.
They hand out the rolls separately, maybe to save costs, maybe because the mainlanders often skip it.
Anyways, this is fish steamed in black bean sauce with rice plus a side of shrimp salad.
That was gay. I typed a whole load of stuff and they all disappeared. Lesson learnt: never try to blog when it has been having trouble uploading. Instead, I should just turn on Flight mode before doing it.
The Shanghai airport wifi is horrible. There are only over 100 devices in the network and it already feels like it's overloading.
Boarded the plane and it feels bloody weird to be sitting here where everyone speaks languages that I don't.
But kind of exciting still.
I think most of them are speaking Korean but there were some Japanese too. And I wouldn't be surprised if some of these older people here are speaking Shanghainese.
Strangely enough, the rolls were given out together with the meal set.
Do Koreans like to eat their rolls as is?
Dinner's over. I was kinda wrong. The crew and plane seems to be from Korea Airlines but they also speak Mandarin and the videos are in Mandarin too.
They ARE Korean! The crew, they speak Mandarin but with a strong accent.
I know because I just got the arrival card from one. And fuck, the declaration card ( it's printed separately) is completely in Chinese.
Took me some effort but fortunately, I didn't bring shit so it was "No" all the way.
Filling the arrival card also made me notice another problem - I thought I had the hotel's address in Korean but it turns out I took a photo of the address of the wrong hotel!
Now I will have to show the cab driver the English transliteration of the address as provided by Expedia or try to pronounce the words.
Do I pronounce "ae" like the "ey" in "grey" or the "uy" in "guy"?
EDIT: It's "ey". "Dongdaemun" is pronounced dong-day-moon. My confusion comes from the fact that Dongdaemun is 东大门 in Chinese, and "大" can be pronounced the same as the English word "die" in certain dialects like Cantonese.
Didn't have to worry to much. Luckily the driver understood the English name when I read out "Chung muro". I didn't know how to say the numbers but he understood them when he read them on my iPad.
The trip cost me 52k wons but it was ok. He even played the closest thing to what Anglophones may listen to that he had - retro songs from the 80s and before.
Good thing he understood "receipt". I wasn't actually looking forward to pronouncing "yeongsujeung" because I don't know how I should pronounce the "eu".
I didn't think he'd like listening to me ruin his mother tongue either.
EDIT: the "eu" is really pronounced the way it appears to be, like the English exclamation "Ew!".
Tue
Didn't blog much last night. Too busy exploring the hotel, explaining my situation to a few important people and felt tired after an entire day of travelling.
Since you're clearly not one of the important people, I'll explain to you only when I hit that "Publish" button for this rant.
The issue is this: I am now almost completely uncontactable.
I tried it rent an iPhone at the airport but I need an actual credit card; debit cards are not accepted, and neither is cash.
Since South Korea uses different frequencies, this means my roaming doesn't work too.
At least I have the hotel wifi, so I'm still reachable through whatsapp and email. But no calls, no SMS.
And about the wifi, it's the same as the one in Shanghai - it's an Ethernet cable. I'm so glad I brought my portable modem this time, so I could plug it in and set up my own WLAN.
The verdict is in: it's better to buy Korean wons in Korea instead of Singapore.
Unless, of course, the won weakened against the Singapore dollar during the course of the day.
KR: 852 wons per dollar
But for most people, this difference is really nothing. 2 wons out of 850 is only 0.235%.
Anyway, at Shanghai, I finally learnt about something I was always wondering about.
When I reached my boarding gate 2 hours early, the opposite gate was calling out for some guy by name. I think they spammed his name for a full 10 mins before stopping.
Then 5 mins past before some dude came and tried to enter.
The guy blocking him sounded a little pissed. This latecomer tried to explain that he was not intentionally late and the airline guy just told him he can't give him special treatment. When the guy gave up, the airline guy told him to give his name to their office and they would find another flight for him.
So that's what happens if I'm late, although I'm not sure if its the same for all airlines.
Neither do I know if the airline will charge extra for this, or worse, charge the full price of the second ticket.
Anyway I had to spend like 2.5 hours waiting for the connecting flight. It's was actually supposed to be 3 hours but the flight from SG departed late and landed even later.
At least the airport had free wifi, although it still kinda sucks because China is still blocking Google, causing my Blogger app to be unable to save despite having Internet access for my games.
The hotel is fantastic. Not perfect but still way better than what I'm used to.
The room is smaller despite all being a double bed room, roughly 2/3 the size of the one I usually stay in Shanghai.
Amenities are nice but a little weird.
While there are most of the basic stuff, they omitted the toothbrush and toothpaste but included toner, moisturiser and I was given a free facial mask when I checked in.
I mean, what?
If that's not enough, they have a business desk for us to print stuff and etc covered with ads from this beauty product company.
The Etude House business desk. Etude House seems to be pretty big in Korea.
Only 5 in case anyone wants to steal them for whatever? Also, the wireless wifi can be used from my room but the signal isn't as great as my WLAN's.
A closer look.
Nail polish and remover samples. Seriously, at a business desk. I guess women paint their nails while working at their computers.
Water dispenser is available even though there is already a kettle in every room and Seoul's tap water is potable. The last point, however, is debatable, according to my google results.
It's like this whole place is somewhat designed for the ladies. Still, none of these interferes with what I do so they're alright. Regardless, I feel that all the effort has been wasted on me. All that entropy caused in the Universe for nothing. What a waste of resources too.
One thing I must really point out is that the front desk last night was exceptionally helpful. When I asked where I could get certain stuff, instead of telling me how to get them, she told me if she could do it for me instead.
Holy fuck! Mind blown.
Like the phone. I asked her if there was any way I could get a phone without a credit card, and she apologised that she couldn't and explained that the rental could only be done at the airport, where I had already tried.
Next, I asked her if there was some kind of phone directory for food delivery services. If you google for this, you may notice that these delivery services don't seem to have any online presence themselves. In fact, the only data I could get about them was from other blogs.
Yet instead of giving me the simple "Yes" or "No" that my question was meant to get, she tells me it's a little late for that ( it was 10.30pm). When I said it was for tomorrow, she told me to call the front desk and THEY WILL FIND AND ORDER FOR ME!
Shiiiiiit.
And I was expecting to have to ask her next about how I should pronounce the hotel name and address in Korean. The taxi driver didn't recognise the name "Hotel Skypark 1" when I said it before showing him my iPad, so that felt necessary.
Back to the room itself, though its tiny, I can feel that they really tried to maximise the space, eg the mirror in the bathroom. It's totally unnecessary to have a large mirror at the toilet bowl because I don't really want to look at myself take a piss, but it gives me the illusion of space.
And since I'm talking about the bathroom, I should add that this is my first time using this computerised bidet. I knew about the bidet function but it also warms the seat and water too!
Instead of hanging the card on the door handle outside, I simply press the button for "Do Not Disturb" or "Please Make Up The Room". Nice!
The room, as seen from the doorway. The door to the right leads to the bathroom.
The bed, now with my jacket and bag.
The desk. Comes with 2 versions of the same issue of Shilla DFS catalogues (one for right-handed peeps and another for left-handed), the standard hotel-issued stationery folder, a nice TV, a phone, an air-purifier (ioniser) and a 500ml kettle.
The wooden structure next to the desk, at the upper middle of the image, is the tiny wardrobe.
The power sockets were a problem. The absolute lack of space allowed only 1-2 plugs to be used at a time.
Just enough space for unpacking.
This I haven't seen before. An emergency torch. Also, that's the light switch for the entire room plus bathroom.
Bathroom is tiny but has a huge mirror spanning the entire length of that wall.
EDIT: I forgot to explain the four tubes just below the mirror. There were moisturising shampoo, moisturising soap, moisturising toner and a pink tube of Etude House shower gel.
You can even control the water temperature, water pressure, water direction and seat temperature (because it's heated).
The shower, on the other hand, was a little disappointing.
I KNEW IT! JUST LIKE SHANGHAI! Good thing I brought my own portable router, so I could make my own WLAN.
Outside my window is a fake scenery. This is probably better than having no window.
They even had spotlights placed there to make it look better.
Free coffee and tea. No sugar and creamer provided though. I think Koreans only drink kopi kosong (black sugarless coffee).
That's the ventilator, otherwise known as a "fan". One is placed in the room while another is in the bathroom.
It was snowing when I arrived, but it was just a few flakes here and there. Only noticed it when a little piece of what I thought to be dust fell on the windshield and formed a wet splatter instead.
Even foreigners think I'm from China. On the plane when I was getting the arrival card, I spoke English but she thought I was from China. During the hotel check-in, when she was filling the last blank on the form for me on nationality, she asked," China?"
Went out for a few hours. So many shops!
Came back partly because I needed to visit the loo.
But as I was looking for my way back, I discovered that my Wifi-only iPad can triangulate my location even without actually connecting to any network.
I was really just going to use the maps offline like a conventional paper map, but when I opened one of my map apps, it zoomed in to my location and the Maps 2 Go app even displays the direction I'm facing in the map.
At first I didn't believe it, thinking that maybe it was some kind of bug or it used my last known location in the hotel, but it moved as I walked and eventually led me back to my hotel.
I don't have to worry about getting lost anymore.
Also took a photo of the first real snow I've ever seen in years. It's snowing!!
This was taken at the Lotte Young Plaza. I was walking out after buying something when I saw this. I got out and decided to take a photo, only to realize the snow might blur the camera. So I went back in, took out my iPad and snapped this.
Other photos I took:
There was also Din Tai Fung but I didn't take a photo of that big place.
A couple crossing the road while I was trying to take the photo.
Lotte isn't just big in South Korea; it's huge. I think those two guys on the right in coats are Lotte employees, but I'm not sure. Either way, it's a pretty big thing to have people directing road traffic for a mere department store.
The entrance of Lotte Young from the underground market. Check out the opening hours. I reached at 11am and almost tried to pull the door at the main entrance open until the security guy raised his voice and said something in Korean. Then I noticed the emptiness inside (except for the employees) and all the people around me just looking at me.
People once spoke of "Americanisation" like it's a bad thing. In a way it was, for the cultures it displaced.
But now I think another term needs to by made for the influence China has on other countries, and "Chinafication" sounds right.
It's just the feel I'm getting after all the browsing and street-food-sampling I did today.
There are people who can speak very bad Mandarin but not English; there are salespeople who asks,"你会讲国语吗？＂ when I say,"Sorry, I don't speak Korean."
Clearly, despite the American military presence in South Korea since the Korean War, it is the newcomer China that is having the greater influence on its people.
Of course when the term "国语" was used, I thought she was Taiwanese, but her accent revealed her mainland origin.
I don't know for sure but maybe she thought I was Taiwanese since I spoke better English than the average mainlander tourist.
Still, I feel that this is a sign of things to come that there is at least one country where hawkers and salespeople reply in Mandarin when I try to talk in English despite the latter language being part of the national school curriculum and not the former.
It's obvious why this is so - I've been hearing quite a number of mainlanders during my walk just now. Just like how we were all encouraged to learn English above all other languages in Singapore, people here are simply going where the money is.
And the most common currencies displayed at the money-changers? USD, JPY, EUR and CNY.
This may be old news but now I've seen with my own eyes the importance of learning Mandarin, and this is particularly true for the younger generations.
It used to be that English is where the money is, but now, English is old money while Chinese is new money. Both are equally important in this era of change we live in.
The street food takeaway spread.
The five sausages alternate between beef and another red meat, most likely pork. The beef sausages also contain a large piece of what I believe to be tendon. The one on top is just a hotdog with bacon.
These are really just fishcake with carrot bits. From left: plain, with hotdog, with seaweed.
These look fancier than they really are. The big thing is just a corndog with fries. The other is a bigger sausage that was definitely not Taiwanese despite the similarity in appearance.
This is the same set I had talked about above, just spread out better. The one in the middle is chicken and leek.
Random burger set meal from Lotteria, without the rest of the set. They was just fries and Coke anyway.
The burger used a sauce that tasted like the one used in the Samurai burger sold sometimes by MCD here in Singapore but mixed with mayo or something.
Dinner was ok. All those fried street food tasted the same after a while. They were all using the same fish cakes and sausages except for the beef one. The best was the chicken skewers that had leeks between them. I recognised it as a common Japanese food so if that's the best, I'm obviously not really heaping praises on the rest. Except for the beef one.
The Lotteria burger was bought mostly out of curiosity. I had thought Lotte only invested in malls, hotels and amusement parks, so I didn't expect the name in a fast food chain.
In Singapore, this would be like Capitaland getting its own brand of fast food. Capitaburger? Sounds... like the burgers would be made of money.
Anyway I couldn't finish the meal.
Wed
This is actually warmer than the -2 degrees on the previous day.
It's funny how the hotel provides free tea and coffee and then neglects to provide sugar and creamer. The tea is fine without those since its a local wheat tea but the coffee is a problem. So if I want to sample their coffee, kopi kosong is my only option.
I'm still trying it though. Somehow didn't sleep well last night and I feel that I need the coffee. Maybe I'll even fill my bottle with it instead of water. No sugar anyway, so I don't have to worry too much about it being hard to wash. At worst everything else after this will smell like coffee, which isn't exactly a bad thing.
There's a restaurant not affiliated with the hotel that does brunch between 9-11am for just 9,900 wons. That's roughly S$10 only!
The hotel itself has even fewer facilities than the one I stayed at in Shanghai, seriously. This place only has 2 floors of hotel rooms and one for lobby. No wonder the front desk can volunteer to do things for me; she can't be very busy working here.
Too bad I can't. Yesterday it was because I took too long to get out of my room and forgot the time. I have yet to adjust my clock to 1 hour ahead and do not intend to for this short stay. By the time I was ready, it said 10am on my tablet. That would have been perfect if it had really been that time in Korea.
Anyway I must say that I really hit jackpot this time in choosing to stay in this location. I'm not just close to the shops - My hotel is literally located among them!
This hotel occupies the top three floors of this building surrounded by stores. The next two levels are under renovation. Fifth floor is the restaurant. Fourth floor is a music store. The bottom three are all SPAO, a fashion store.
The ground floor lift lobby is separated from SPAO though for obvious reasons, but even that area contains a jacket shop and a jewellery shop.
It really felt weird on the first night to drag my noisy luggage among all the shoppers.
Moroccan Mint Latte regular. Needed a break and this looked like a great location. This little Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf outlet is placed right in the centre of this half of the storey and completely surrounded by stores.
Found this canal in Dongdaemun.
Ducks! (I've never seen real living ducks before, only roasted ones)
Another street food I found at Dongdaemun. This stall is really different but a friendly local used a lot of sign language and a tiny sprinkling of English to show me how this stall works. I was trying to order one of each like I usually do with the ones I've tried before but the stall owner just stared blankly at me until the female customer corrected me.
This photo looks like this because it's really a screenshot. The weather, most likely the cold temperature, screwed up the iPad so it couldn't detect my finger and instead detected the snowflakes (hence the square on the upper right which shows where it is focusing on).
The stall has 4 large trays of food. Two on the left are non-spicy; two on the right are spicy. The four pieces of yellow paper on top shows the prices for the colours which code the sticks of food on the trays, ranging from 700 wons to 2000.
The woman who tried to explain the system to me translated the colours to English, the only English she used, but I didn't really remember since they didn't matter to me. That's just roughly $0.70 to $2 anyway. No big deal.
This is how you eat here:
Go in, just pick a stick and start eating. The food are all resting the the trays of soup which are refilled from the giant pot on the right.
On the left and right metal stands are tubes of paper cups that customers can take. Next to the yellow papers are the metal ladles customers use to pour the soup from the trays into their paper cups so that they can sip on the soup between bites.
All kinds of condiments are available on the table in those light blue plastic trays.
If you look closer, you can see the wooden sticks resting next to the blue tray on the right. That was how my meal ended. You take the sticks, eat, put them down and pay. The soup in cups can be finished immediately or brought out, although nobody really does the latter because the freezing temperature cools down the soup rapidly once it's out of the plastic tent.
The food are mostly fishcakes, so I guess they are really popular in Korea. Every street hawker seems to be selling them.
The snow. One thing about snow is that they don't flow away. Instead, if I remain outside long enough, they pile up on me.
Check out what it's doing to my shopping bags.
They also pile up on our hair when we don't wear any headwear. I didn't and I've seen people walking around with lots of snow on their heads.
Automatic public washrooms - another thing I've never seen before.
No idea what that was across the road but it looked big and traditional.
There's a street at Dongdaemun that really sells seafood throughout. Outside of every restaurant along it are roasted fish and a grill.
Found this really huge market at Dongdaemun. Not sure where I was because I was getting myself lost.
Clearly a night market because it was late afternoon and some stalls were only just opening while others are closed like these. There were, however, some that looked like they have been opened all day.
Next to one entrance of this place is a stall that sells something that looks a lot like ramly burgers. Korean ramly burgers.
I just randomly pointed at one of the 1800won ones and she said "Egg and chicken?"
I said, "Yes" and she gave me one that had egg and... cheese.
Egg with corn and carrots.
The toasted bread also had some kind of sauce spread on it. It's a sweet white sauce with bits of green like the one in Burger King's fish burgers. Pretty nice.
Ate this while standing in the snow outside just because I couldn't get enough of that. I was probably walking around with a potental avalanche on my head after that.
Neither did I zip up my jacket most of the time. The cold feels just right. Then again, I was wearing a t-shirt and a polo shirt underneath my jacket.
After some random wandering I think I got back to the same place, except a lot of the food stalls were opened.
I have absolutely no idea what the red things are. Maybe they're some kind of shellfish.
This is apparently how they pickle their crabs... I think. Crabs are so cheap they can be preserved? Or is that not a form of preservation? Crab soup?
Anyway I didn't buy any of these. I had to take a train back to my hotel and I didn't want to be lugging all these on my way back.
There were also some cooked whole pig faces together with pork tripes on sale but I didn't snap any pictures of those. I think they eat the pork cheeks.
Waiting for my second Lotteria burger. Its red LED lights lit up and the whole thing buzzes when my order is ready for pickup.
I went back to put down my shopping backs before coming back down to explore the neighbourhood again. More street food, most of them repeats of the first night except for the corndog. Now that's really just a corndog.
Since there were so many beauty product stores where I lived, and they were ALL having major sales, it was impossible not to be tempted. Some of the things I bought for people and not work:
For my bro. Shampoo and conditioner from LUSH.
EDIT: I thought this was from Nature Republic until the following Monday.
The marketing gimmick by this brand is that everything is supposedly handmade and they all have labels stating who made it. Except they don't state their last names so I have no idea which among the millions of Bens and Kris's made these particular bottles.
For my staff. This purchase included 4 free facial masks.
Man or woman? MAN OR WOMAN?
It's a guy. A GUY!! I'm not in Thailand, am I?
I think MP Foo Mee Har is being groomed for high level positions in the PAP. Either that or there's a big scandal in the bank being covered up. Bank directors don't simply quit to focus on civil service. One does not get to that level in a banking career without being extremely ambitious.
Thu
The international taxis in Korea run on LPG. Is it the same for the other taxis too?
The last view of Korea I'm getting this year.
The flight from Shanghai was bad. The plane was good but I don't know what model it was. Not a big plane and it used a 2-3-2 seating arrangement.
The leg space was awesome and there was even more leg space for the several rows next to the emergency exits. Very nice.
Also, this flight was particularly confusing because at the airport it was described as a Qantas flight operating under China Eastern. That was normal because China Eastern seems to be borrowing a lot of planes from a lot of airlines at Shanghai.
What made it different was that the plane itself had "Shanghai Airlines" painted on it while the crew wore China Eastern uniforms.
The flight was bad because there was like a big Chinese mainlander family probably spanning 3 generations on the same plane sitting across the aisle and behind me.
Being a family wasn't bad; being a restless family was. Even the grandparents were only slightly less restless than the children and they kept saying,"到了。" (We have arrived) when we haven't. It's like their way of asking,"Are we there yet?" incessantly.
Moreover, they keep walking and standing around talking to each other throughout the last 2 hours of the flight, and that includes a few of the older men and the little children.
When they weren't walking to each other to talk, they were trying to talk to each other while seated. Like in the 3-seat in the middle, the guys on both ends would shout at each other over the constant hum of the plane to communicate.
I'm not saying mainlanders are all bad, but that family was, all three generations of them. Yet I can't blame them because it's not their fault their country is so frigging backward that they don't even know how to behave on a plane. That blame would fall on their ancestors for helping to bring the Communists into power in the first place.
Most of the people on that plane were mainlanders, so they aren't all bad at all. Just that family.
I think that was exacerberated by my fatigue too. See, my first flight from Seoul was at 0855 Seoul time, ie 1 hour ahead of Singapore/Shanghai time. Since it's a 9am flight, I had to be there at 7am to check in. I always play safe and check in 2 hours before any flights unless online check-in is available. Unfortunately, China Eastern only offers that service for domestic flights.
Since I had to be at Incheon at 7, I had to board a cab by 6. If I had to board a cab by 6, I wanted to play safe and check out of the hotel at 5-5.30am in case they take long for anything.
But I found out that morning that another good thing about the hotel was that they don't check nor clean the room immediately when someone checks out. Instead, I just hand over the keycard and the front desk told me I could go.
Of course I didn't. I then handed over the survey form that promised a free gift for providing feedback and a membership form to get discounts when I book a room directly from them and discounts when I shop at The Shilla DFS.
Next year, I'm going to see if booking my room and flight directly will beat the prices of Expedia.
Anyways, since I had to check out by 5.30am, I had to get up at 4.30am latest in order to get a hot shower (great for waking up) and triple check the room after I'm done packing up.
Then I got too anxious and woke up at 2.30am. Made myself sleep longer and eventually got out by 3.30am.
By the time I got on the first flight, I was so tired I fell asleep even before they played the safety briefing video. However, I would never miss a meal for any rest.
Same thing happened in the second flight from Shanghai although I couldn't sleep about 2-3 hours before arrival. Somehow, I guess my night-person genes just made me alert by later afternoon regardless of how much rest I had been getting.
Told my bro I brought him some Korean 土产 (local product) before I unpacked, then later handed him the last complimentary bottle of water from the hotel. He was not amused.
FRI
All in all, I think the trip would have made a female traveller very happy. I'm not, but I'm satisfied enough. I only feel pity for all the resources being wasted on me.
Still, I'm totally going back to that hotel just for the fantastic location. Right next door to SPAO is Uniqlo. Around the corner, H&M, The Body Shop and Lotte Young Plaza. And that's not including all those beauty product stores. I think Nature Republic and The Face Shop both have multiple outlets within a small radius around my hotel.
On the other hand, Korean stuff aren't really that cheap even with the crazy 50% off I saw for a lot of those cosmetic shops.
Also, there is a subway station at Lotte Young Plaza but that line is not the same one that goes to Myeongdong station which is closer to my hotel.
Also, the floors were slippery. Counter-intuitively, the snow was actually safer to walk on than the non-snowy pavements, especially the fresh snow.
This is because the non-snowy parts may be covered by snow that was melted and refroze, aka ice. Extremely slippery.
The same can be said for the semi-melted snow, a sludge that can be found everywhere at night in Myeongdong around the hotel. Very slippery.
Throughout my stay I keep almost slipping, the split-second squeak from under the shoes kind of slip, but once I stepped on this really smooth floor at Dongdaemun that made me feel like I accidentally entered an ice skating rink.
At least I didn't actually fall.
But now I'm going to find something to prevent this from happening again the next time I go.
...
Apparently, that's not very possible. The best I can do is find a pair of shoes with good traction for icy pavements. Or get butt armour. I had already been walking very slowly throughout the trip.
Anyways, fresh snow poses another danger when it's piled high. It's really not a good idea to let snow fall into the shoes because wet socks causes cold feet, and it's not very nice to take off one's shoes in public to warm one's feet.
Hence winter boots. Now I know.
But for the rest of the body, wetness is actually a non-issue because of the dry air. All those shopping bags that had snow on and inside them in one of my photos were dried by the time I got back to the hotel.
Still, it's a good idea to wear a water-resistant jacket just so that the moisture does not get inside and freezes the wearer before it dries.
I've seen people wear only a sweater on the outside without a jacket but they probably bring umbrellas with them. Speaking of umbrellas, that's the normal way to handle snow other than wearing something on the head. Not everyone is as hardcore as me to be a walking avalanche.
Almost forgot to mention this issue I had about the tax refund. Some malls in Seoul offer tax refunds for travellers like we do in Singapore. The system can be quite confusing though (not sure about what we have here).
The thing is that I was too tired to do much reading so I did not know I had to get the customs stamp.
Step 1: Get the stamp and special envelope at the mall.
Step 2: Get the stamp at customs just outside the departure gate (it's the step after checking in at the airline booth and is before immigration where you get your passport stamped)
Step 3: Go to the tax refund counter in the departure area where all the duty-free shops are to get the cash.
I didn't know there was a step 2, so when I got to the counter, I couldn't get it. It wasn't important though; I didn't even plan to get it until I accidentally found the tax refund counter at the mall, at which point I thought I might as well get it. Free money anyway.
But I didn't get it in the end. Oh well.
