August 11, 2010
10:56 PM
Korea Day 2, Wed Aug 11 2010
Woke up at 7+, sleepy of course. Taking the 1 hour time difference into consideration, thats 6 in the morning. Breakfast was in the hotel, western style. The omelette chef knows how to make a good omelette without spamming oil, unlike some others in Shanghai.
Remember yesterday when I wished that it wouldn't rain? I wish I hadn't wished for it. When the weather is hotter than Singapore, thats saying something.
Went walking around with mum. Took the hotel shuttle bus to the COEX area. We didn't see anything significant there, so we decided to head off to Dongdaemun. (I only found out later, aka now, that there's a huuuge COEX mall, the biggest in Asia. Why I didn't notice it? The whole mall is underground. -_-)
We took the train there. The subway system is more or less like Japan's. One complaint I do have is the fact that half of the time, the train track is in the middle, separating the two platforms. If you went the wrong direction, you'd have to walk up, cross over, then walk down. The problem comes when you have to pass through the fare gate to get to the other side. Once you tap your ticket out, thats it! You'll have to get a new one. I encountered this problem a few times. When you need help but don't speak the language, what do you do? Wave your hands and gesture like a madman, of course. So I did the wild hand movement to the station staff but surprising they immediately understood what I was trying to say. They opened the side gate and let me through to the other side. Apparently I was just one of the many tourists who'd done the same thing.
Dongdaemun was relatively dissatisfying. You read all the reviews online.. they say theres a large number of shopping complexes there. Unfortunately as I came to realise, the bulk of them are wholesale complexes. The proper shopping malls were generic, though there was a certain "Hello aPM" mall. You could consider it 7 levels worth of Bugis Street. Got 2 pieces of clothing, the only stuff I got today.
Had lunch in the same aPM mall, japanese food. Normally people would try out the local food, yeah? I would have too, if not for every single piece of korean cuisine containing spicy shit. What the hell.. spicy for breakfast, spicy for lunch, spicy for dinner? They even poured some chilli powder in my prawn udon. Why oh why?
After wandering around a bit more, we took the train back. Too hot is too hot. But you can't spend a holiday just sitting in the hotel room doing nothing. I took a bath and an hour later, I went back out the Gasan Digital Complex area. From what I read, its more of a shopping area rather than a digital complex. I got there.. took a look. To my surprise, other than the main road, most of the other areas were either very lowly travelled, or practically deserted. Isn't Seoul supposed to be capital? And this Gasan Digital Complex supposed to be a populated district? Where's everyone? Its awfully eerie to be walking in a ghost town.
Anyway, there were a number of shopping malls, but they're all of the generic departmental store kind. The malls contained significantly more people than the roads, but that's not saying much either. Perhaps its because I'm comparing them to Singapore's malls, but from what I remember, even Japan's streets and malls contained a lot more traffic. Perhaps I'm in the wrong area. I didn't buy anything in the end. A few things caught my eye, but I had a feeling I'd get better deals elsewhere.
Heading off for a full day trip tomorrow! Looking forward to it. At least I get to see stuff, unlike today's zombie walk.