my first day in seoul was composed of the following: an overnight flight, massive morning traffic (and a wee nap), a few hours of brainstorming/work, getting acquainted with the seoul metro system, an hour and a half traipsing around gyeongbokgung, another hour traipsing around outside gyeokbokgung looking for a metro station, yet another hour getting lost in and around the anguk metro station only to arrive at the most hideously disappointing "vintage" store ever (eksklusibo! lonely planet, sumablay!).
i had planned to write about it for my shopping article, but i was crushed to find out that manila mrt-side ukay-ukays had better stuff than this crappy place. so naturally by the time i met up with marlon and his colleage (and our mutual college friend, kaisy) at myeong-dong, seoul's frenetic central shopping district, this was the state of affairs: i was cranky, my feet were sore, and everything was a complete blur.
okay maybe not a complete blur. a couple of things did register, like sitting down to rest my poor feet at gusttimo, an italian gelato chain with branches all over seoul.
i'm not a glutton, the default serving really is three scoops! promise! i had tiramisu, coffee yogurt (which was a little weird, i should have just had the coffee), and hazelnut. summa that plus a cappuccino was enough to haul me back from zonktown.
we walked around myeong-dong for just about fifteen minutes, which was enough time to buy myself a really adorable umbrella (you don't believe that an umbrella can be adorable? i shall show you proof in my next post!) and a red leather sling bag. i also ducked into a couple of stores and turned up my nose at the kukur fashions while marlon tried some of the street food.
and that, folks, is about all i have to say about myeong-dong. how sad no? consider it proof of how zonked out i was on my first evening in seoul. marlon, by the way, went straight to six hours of focus group discussions upon arriving. the poor dear's eyes were terribly bloodshot by the time we met up.
marlon's colleagues in seoul had written down a couple of recommendations for dinner. we did not get to any of them, thanks to a rather strange taxi ride where the driver suddenly got all agitated and sputtery after a relatively placid fifteen minutes of driving. and i mean literally sputtery -- poor bewildered kaisy, who was sitting shotgun, had to wipe off a considerable amount of spit from her face!
the driver zoomed into the nearest narrow sidestreet (we were somewhere near gyeongbokgung by this time) and deposited us at a restaurant that was most definitely not where we had intended to end up. but, as randy jackson would say, he worked it out, dawg... because dinner was actually quite fabulous and something i would never have discovered on my own. and for that, as ali g would say, respect!
yes yes i know. mukha siyang lugaw na may squash seeds... pero huwag ka! what we were told was "chicken soup" by a harried middle-aged waitress with limited english turned out to be a whole chicken in a rich, thick broth served bubbling hot. in the mix were over fourteen ingredients, including chestnuts, spring onions, ginger, and yes, squash seeds. the absolute best part -- breaking open the chicken meat with my chopsticks to discover gloriously fatty, sticky, starchy rice inside. yum! this beauty stayed piping hot for the whole forty minutes that we sat down at low tables, for our first korean-style dinner.
obvious ba na masaya kami?
obvious ba na masaya kami?
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