Chinese New Year means that we get a whole week off of classes, so it's time for adventure! Nathan, Chris and I planned our CNY trip to include 4 days in Seoul, South Korea and then 4 more days in the Philippines. Every day was SUPER packed, so for every day's post I'll try to put it in point form for brevity's sake (and so that I can throw in a whole bunch of photos!)
SEOUL DAY 1:
- Arrive at Icheon, International Airport @5:30 AM, get to the 6002 bus headed to our AirBnB place in Sinsol-Dong.
- Oops, we all fell asleep on the bus ride from the airport and missed our stop by 3! We had to run to quickly catch another bus back, thank goodness all the maps here are written in Korean AND English.
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| We all individually assumed that someone else would be awake to catch our stop. We were wrong. |
- Arrived at the accommodations without any other problems. Our Hosts Jo-Anna and Sanghyun were so awesome! Super helpful and really sweet - they even gave us some bottles of their home-brewed beer to enjoy (not immediately of course, as it was 8:30 AM!)
- Headed out again after a nap in search of the
Studio Ghibli exhibit, got ourselves hooked up with T-Money cards (Seoul's equivalent of an Octopus card)
Studio Ghibli Exhibit
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| Making friends with the soot sprites in the entranceway |
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| When you get your ticket, each person is also given a circular sticker to decorate and add to the outside wall of the exhibit. There were THOUSANDS of stickers covering two whole walls from top to bottom! |
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| I can't draw for my life, so this was my addition to the wall :) |
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| Yubaba from Spirited Away is much quieter but MUCH scarier in person. |
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| Everyone seems to love No-Face, but I'm not really the biggest fan. |
- After Studio Ghibli we headed to the Hongik University stop in search of the "Love" (Sex) Museum. That was a HILARIOUS time with many a picture taken, but they'll DEFINITELY not be seeing the light of the internet anytime soon. If you want to see them, it'll have to be in person :P
Have some photos of what we did in the surrounding area instead :)
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| Random street art - every single wall was done in a completely different style; this whole stretch was bursting with colours! |
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| *these are not my legs, we were outside the Trick Eye Museum |
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| Egg Buns (￦1,000-2,000/$1-2) Little did we know that this was the beginning of a whole WORLD of street food! |
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| My nose got a little excited for the BBQ-sauce drenched, melty-cheese topped chicken skewers (aka King Chicken Sticks - ￦3,000/$3) |
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| Then we found whole, deep-fried squids (￦3,000/$3) which I found very boring and not intriguing at all. |
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| The street also had a lot of shopping, which we didn't take nearly as seriously as all the food! |
- As the evening set in, so did the exhaustion. Instead of pushing our luck and running the risk of sleeping through the next morning, we decided to head back to the house for dinner. Jo-Anna was awesome and helped us order in Korean Fried Chicken, which we couldn't help but pair with beer (as we have been told is the only way to get the full cultural experience), and ￦1,000/$1 Soju (from 7/11)
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| MMMMMMM, KOREAN FRIED CHIC- oh hey Chris. |
Today’s Little Thing, Happy Thing: Wifi “eggs”! In Korea, you can buy or rent these little portable hotspots! Just turn it on and input the wifi passcode found on top of the battery to get onto the internet. Jo-Anna and Sanghuyn had one that they lent us which was a HUGE lifesaver all week!
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