KOREA SNACK HAUL!

KOREA SNACK HAUL!

We got a recommendation from our friend to go to the huge Lotte Mart in Seoul Station.

Directions:

Literally, go up the escalator and turn right and you will see the entrance of Lotte Mart.

This cost around £50 pounds altogether including some utensils we bought for hot potting at home and this is tax free and so we were able to claim some money back.

Asia Adventures: Day Seven- Lotte Mart Snack Overload!

Lotte Mart Snack Overload!

There was still so many things we did not get to see and do in Seoul, so upsetting that day was our last day...

In the morning we headed out to Myeongdong shopping high street to eat at a dumpling restaurant Kyoja both popular with Koreans and foreigners. This was the restaurant we were planning to eat at on the day we came back from shopping at Ehwa, you can check out my previous blog post from that day.

We came out just the right time so we did not have to queue for long....

 I was so impressed with this restaurant both with their fast and polite service with excellent food quality. The dumplings were by far one of the best I have tasted in a very long time. Those little parcels of delight soaked in that meaty broth that has probably been boiled for hours to produce that intense flavour was so flavourful.

After our meal, we shopped around for the last time on the high street of Myeongdong. I had noticed whilst shopping in Myeongdong that there were three stores of the same brand scattered all over the place. Each one with different deals.

I wanted to get some hydration masks before heading off back to Hong Kong so I went into Etude House, seeing as I have already tried Etude House hyaluronic acid masks from a while back, I thought I'd buy some more. They were doing a deal of buy 10 individual masks and get 5 free. Each mask cost ₩950, so it was ₩9500 for 15 masks!

I noticed Nature Republic was having a massive 50% off sale on nearly everything. But we already bought everything we wanted in the massive Nature Republic store which did not have a sale. Word of advice: Check other stores of the same brands for different deals.

After our last visit to the Myeongdong Shopping district, we dropped out bags off at our hotel and headed off to Seoul Station for Lotte Mart!

Directions to Lotte Mart:

• Go to Seoul Station from Seoul Metro
• Go up the escalators
• Turn right and you'll see Lotte Mart

Lotte Mart is massive, there is even cosmetic stores selling famous brands such as Iope, Thefaceshop and Etude House. The place was packed with foreigners and Koreans too, I could see that Lotte Mart provided a shipping postal system in the corner for foreigners to ship their snacks and treats back to their countries.

We headed straight to the snack section to pick up my favourite, Chocoboy! I love this snack, they sold Chocoboy in the local station in Hong Kong but since coming back I saw it was not there anymore. No more Chocoboy :(, so I stocked up loads.

A snack haul will be coming up in the next few posts so stay tuned!

I heard from my friend that Honey Butter Chips were all the craze in Korean ever since Calbee released it in South Korea around two months ago, so we went searching for it only to realised the whole thing was sold out. I hear it is so popular that people buy the stuff in bulk now and sell it on at a higher price. There is a business to be made through this!
Sadly, we couldn't get hold of the beloved chips so we opted for other flavoured crisps such as banana flavoured chips and honey and apple crisps.

My dad decided to buy equipment for hotpot and he went a little bit overboard and bought a gigantic ladle, a bit too big for hot pot.....



Look here is our receipt from that trip!

We then dropped our snacks off back at the hotel in Myeongdong and headed out to eat at the famous ginseng chicken place back at Gyeongbokgung. South Korea is famous for their Korean ginseng and so we just had to try their speciality Ginseng Chicken.
The soup had a whole chicken and inside the chicken was glutinous rice and chestnuts, the whole thing cost around ₩8,000 which is crazy cheap for such a huge pot.

Koreans do like their soups!

It was also our first experience sitting in a tradition Korean house and sitting on the floor to eat our meals, like a traditional Korean!

We finished our meal at around 9:00pm, our day has not ended yet, we then headed off to Dongdaemun to have a look at the shopping plazas. In Dongdaemun there are four shopping buildings, we went into Doota (the most popular one amongst tourists), the clothes there were at a much better quality than in Ehwa University Shopping area but much more expensive. Doota sells individual Korean brands and have so many floors, we all had no intention of buying anything in the shopping centre. None of the clothing styles appealed to me or I was just too tired to look. After about a twenty stroll in the building, we went straight back out, there was another shopping area which was underground heading towards the Seoul Metro station, it was nice to have a look in there. They sold mostly shoes, men's clothing and phone cases.

Our last night in Seoul has come to an end and tomorrow is the journey back home to Hong Kong to continue our next Asia Adventures!

Asia Adventures: Day six- Myeongdong Shopping, Ehwa University & Hongdae Shopping!

Myeongdong Shopping, Ehwa University & Hongdae Shopping!

 Myeongdong is one of the favoured shopping districts to shop for mainly korean cosmetics in Seoul. We started our day off with the famous Isacc Toasts around Seoul, one store located in the heart of the Myeongdong shopping district and one in the outskirts of the main Hongdae shopping area.



Stopped off at Starbucks in Ehwa..

Street food in Ehwa!!

There will be more Korea Adventures coming soon!
I hope this give you a little idea of what Seoul is like and where to go if you visit South Korea...

My first OOTD post :)

OOTD clothing items:

Frilly long top- Collectpoint
High Neck jumper- Hongdae Roadshop in Korea
Leggings- H&M
Coat- Debenhams

Asia Adventures: Day five- Hongdae Street Shopping!

Hongdae Street Shopping!

We started our day off eating at Paris Baguette, a famous franchise bakery based in South Korea, which was literally a few minutes walk from our hotel. I saw this bun with a sweet crumb topping which looked exactly like the Pineapple bun in Hong Kong but the Korea one was peanut flavoured. We bought so much food and I order a green tea latte to wash all the food down with. That was my first ever green tea latte that I had made by somebody else. I usually make the drink at home, you can check out my recipe in the link below...

http://bobeauti.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/green-tea-frappe.html

I wouldn't think the drink would be strong in green tea flavour but actually I found it was stronger than the green tea frappes I make.

On the way to StyleNanda in Hongdae...

 We passed this cute little popcorn store called Poppers Kettlecorn, they sell popcorn in many different flavours from Salted Caramel, Green tea and Chocolate. I definitely recommend this place, the people there were so polite and friendly.

 I'm so glad we visited Stylenanda in the morning because just before we left, I could see the shop was beginning to get crowded.

I bought a few things from there, a haul post will be uploaded very soon and you will see what I bought!

My experience at Stylenanda was weakened by the rude staff, I simply asked for a new pencil eyeliner and they purposely made me wait a very long time while I could clearly see her chatting away with her work colleagues.

I was very disappointed with the service and I did not feel very welcome either.

After visiting StyleNanda's flagship store, we roamed around the cute individual clothing shops we passed on the way there.

I was quite impressed with the quality of clothing in each shop and they were quite cheap too from 8000 to 22000 won.

There is a main shopping street in the heart of Hongdae where the clothes are much cheaper at around 10000 won but in my opinion I think the quality is much worse. Therefore I much prefer the shops near Stylenanda. The area is less crowded too.

We did go off to the main shopping street and stopped off for something to drink and what better way to spend our time but in a Cat Cafe, Ycat Cafe. The place was quite hard to find so we asked a churro place to direct us there. The cat cafe was in an alley way on the 3rd floor, not going to lie the place smelted the closer towards the cafe.

Although he could not speak English, the host there was very welcoming and showed us where to place our belongings (in lockers).

Just to let you know, we had to take off our shoes and put on these slippers. There were separate colours for males and females.

Our next stop was the main Hongdae shopping street!

There were so many trendy looking clothes hanging outside every shop and we couldn’t help but wonder in to look. The whole street was full of youngsters wearing trendy looking clothing, I honestly felt like I was under dressed compared to them!

I didn't manage to find anything and it was getting kind of late so we stopped off at a famous fried chicken place called Kychon, it wasn't that far from the main shopping area so that was good..

There were so many different flavours of chicken, ones that we don't usually get in the UK such as butter chicken, honey glazed chicken and also Korean spicy chicken.

If you ever come to South Korea, Korean fried Chicken is a must try here, the batter is quite different to the usual fried chicken we get here and the only kind we get here is KFC. 

The chicken in Kychon was fried extra crispy, we paired the chicken with a good pint of beer, which is apparently really popular in South Korea.

I enjoyed that very much!

Artbox!

Our little haul from today! 



Afterwards we passed more shops and we couldn't stop ourselves from peering in and we ended up leaving Hongdae at around 11:30 pm, that was when most shops were closing. 

It took half an hour to get back to Myeongdong,  by the time we got back it was around 12:00 pm. 

I was so tired from all that shopping and was so happy to be back at the hotel! 

We bought some tteokbokki on the way home.

Stay updated for the next post to Ehwa University and Myeongdong shopping highstreet.