Seoul Trip, Part Four (서울 여행, 파트 넷)
All the hanbok studio fun starts in this entry. Also, I can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel wrt a day in which I might actually finish this write-up.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Monday, Aug. 5
Today was the day of our first experience with a hanbok studio! I know I sound like a broken record but it was so, so hot omg. We made our way to Insadong by public transportation, when actually we should have taken a cab. If you’d asked the Sarea and Adelagia at the end of our trip what to do, they would have definitely said to cab it, but current day Sarea and Adelagia had not yet broken that seal, though we often did mention that we should just take a taxi. Anyway, it was hot and Naver’s map was confusing, so it took us a bit of time to find the studio, and by the time we did, I was of course drenched in sweat. The owner/photographer guy led us into a small indoor space where we would do our fitting, and he gestured to the large air conditioning unit and told me to stand in front of it, LOL.
We were told to select a couple of skirts that we were interested in, and one of the gals who worked there would select the tops. Everything was sooooo cute and pretty omg, and there seemed to be a large selection. We also asked for the option to have our hair done, since it only cost ₩5000; they braided our hair and styled it up in a more traditional manner, though honestly I’m not sure that’s a look that works on me. Oh well, I wanted it to be “authentic” so that’s what I got! We also got like elaborate pins and what not placed into our hair, though that stuff doesn’t even really show up in the shots, and I’m unclear on whether those things would have been used on us if we hadn’t gone for the extra hair styling.
Since we were noobs at this whole thing, we basically only took this selfie. God we're lame.
The shoot took place outside, which was a bit torturous since we were in full hanbok, but the photographer dragged out a portable a/c to help us not die. Then we had an indoor shoot as well. Adelagia didn’t like the way they did her hair, nor the way the photographer posed us, but I liked his mannerism and he was nice. We were told that we would be emailed the photos in 3-4 days. We were told that we could roam around a bit and take selfies while in the hanboks, but we declined because of the heat.
We complained more about the heat and Adelagia suggested that we could cab it back to the little area of Insadong that we had gone to before, but to me it seemed a waste of a cab ride because we were literally minutes away, and a cabbie might complain about the short distance. (In retrospect, now having been in a number of cabs, I’m almost certain he would have.) If we were gonna take a cab, we should have done it from our apartment to the studio, so that we could have arrived fresh, without sweat-beaded foreheads and potentially runny makeup!
We managed to find our way back to the cute street in Insadong where we had seen many interesting little restaurants, but we couldn’t remember the turns we had made before and got a bit lost. (I swear, we could get lost inside a paper bag.) We had to map ourselves to O’Sulloc to get ourselves on the right path.
For lunch we ended up at a Japanese place called Paldo that we enjoyed immensely. They had an excellent uni bibimbap that consisted of a small portion of uni on the side, and the bibimbap was made up of like five different types of eggs. They also served live octopus, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with that. It was one of those lunches that was filling, but not SO filling that you didn’t consider ordering something else just because you thought it would probably be delicious also. I was only able to abstain because our plan was to go to O’Sulloc afterward, and the promise of hojicha and dessert gave me the strength to resist ordering more food at Paldo.
Seriously, looking at this right now makes my mouth water.
We bought lots of tea stuff at O’sulloc, including some loose green tea, boxed giftsets for family or whoever, stuff like that. This might have been the time when we bought enough items that they gave us free lotion, only for me to find out later that it was hand wash, which was disappointing because I actually really did need lotion, lol. We ordered hojicha (cold for me, hot for Adelagia) and a couple of dacquoise cookies (hojicha and matcha), which were initially okay for me, but ended up being too sweet by the end. Still, it was really cool to see dacquoise cookies at all, because we’ve only ever seen them at Midori, and they were rarely found there as well.
Looking at those green tea desserts now I kind of kick myself for not trying them all anyway.
Since we had enjoyed the experience of dressing up, and Adelagia felt we could be posed and styled better. Since it seemed that it wasn’t that costly to do, we decided to do another hanbok studio shoot, as we were already in Insadong and everything. Haha, it was like the first time we discovered escape rooms, all over again. After leaving O’Sulloc we found another studio on the same busy street where we had shopped last time. It was nicely air conditioned, and I decided to splurge on the royal outfit (₩60,000), which was double the amount of the normal fitting (which Adelagia opted for). I didn’t think it was realy worth that price, since all it was was a different outfit, but I also didn’t want cost to be the deciding factor on whether or not I did it, because it was pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime type thing. I have to say, I did quite enjoy wearing that robe; it did feel a lot more special than the regular hanbok I’d worn the first time (maybe because of the bigass sleeves). Adelagia was having some trouble with her fitting, so the lady was taking an extra-long time in the dressing room with her, and I complained, “Hey! Who ever heard of a queen waiting around for her maidservant?!” HAHAHAHA I cracked myself up.
I didn't want them to do the apple wig thing, despite the authenticity, because I have never liked that look, but the lady either ignored me or didn't hear me, lol. I didn’t push it once they began putting the headdress on me, though, because I talked myself into it by thinking, "Well, if I’m going to do the royal fitting, I might as well go all the way with it." The headdress was so heavy, omg, and also didn’t fit properly, so I had to hold my head/neck in a certain way in order to ensure that it would stay on. That made my posture even worse than it already was normally! But honestly, that headdress is NOT attractive, on anyone, even attractive actresses. Also, now we know why those old queens in dramas are always so grumpy; the thing weighs a TON, and after only a short while my back hurt! At this studio the photographer used one of our phones to take shots of us at the same time as he did his studio shots with his camera, which was cool. (More so since they never sent the studio shots, despite our reaching out twice, and now we've had to dispute the charges with our credit card companies.)
Afterward we wandered down the street of shops again, and Adelagia was able to snag a couple of souvenirs for her niece and nephew. We considered hitting a third hanbok studio, but decided against it because we likely didn’t have time due to a 5pm reservation at Korea House for a royal meal (today was our designated “royal” theme day, another reason why I decided to go with the royal robe for the second shoot), and because if we saved the hanbok studio fun for another day, we would have the opportunity to do it properly makeup wise - as in, take a cab to the studio in the morning, while our makeup was fresh and looking its best.
The royal meal at Korea House was a disappointment. Adelagia and I don’t seem to have very good luck with YOLO type meals; I don’t know if it’s that our expectations are too high, or if those meals really are subpar, but it seems to happen to us a lot. We go out of our way to splurge, and then end up regretting it, which is never what you want from a YOLO experience. In this specific case, however, I don’t think it was our expectations. The food was simply not that great. It didn’t help that one of the courses was samgyetang, which on top of following a really good example of samgyetang that we had just the other day, was not seasoned at all. Nothing tastes good when it’s not seasoned... I mean, any amateur cook knows that! It’s a good thing we'd already tried samgyetang elsewhere or this experience might have put us off it forever.
When we entered the restaurant, there was a podium in front of the hostess area with a magazine, and it had something to do with BTS. I intended to take a gander at it when we left, but forgot. However, once I was back in the US I realized it had to have been the Feb 2018 issue of Billboard, which featured BTS, and Korea House was where they had done the photoshoot.
Why did they put V in such an awkward pose?
We made some plans to do more hanbok studios the next day, and we would cab it to ensure we were at our freshest. After dinner we headed home... it was probably the earliest we’ve ever made it home (we usually were out until 10pm on average, I would say). We stopped by the neighborhood juice bar again for watermelon juice, but I once again found it to be crazily sweet, even though this time I watched him make it and all he put in the blender was chunks of watermelon and ice!
Tuesday, Aug. 6
In the morning we drank BTS coffees; V cold brew for me and Jungkook hot brew for Adelagia. (They tasted the same, let’s be honest.) Remember how I wrote the other day that they were expired? Well upon closer inspection it seems the date we saw was the date the coffees were brewed or something, because there was another date on the bottles that indicated a different expiration date.
Yes, I know. It barely looks like them.
It was 100°F today - and with the humidity and dewpoint who knows what the “feels like” temp actually was - so we splurged on cabs all day. I say “splurge” because sure, in comparison to the subway or bus, which costs ₩1250 per ride, cabs cost more, but when you’re splitting a cab between two people, and it’s taking you directly from Point A to Point B, and you’re in an air-conditioned vehicle the whole time without having to worry about having to miss transfers or whatever else, it’s actually a very reasonable cost. And made extra worth it when it’s so dangerously and uncomfortably hot outside. And let’s be real: We’re high-class clowns so obviously need to travel that way.
We made our way back to Insadong for hanbok studio #3, and it was sooooo nice to be dropped off right in front of where we wanted to go. I have in my notes that “this time we both wore palace costumes,” but I’m not sure how that differs from the first day, lol. Or did I mean that neither of us were royalty, and instead were simple palace maids? Who knows what then-Sarea was thinking? It wasn’t a super pleasant experience, because the lady who helped us was incredibly harried and rushed us through everything, even though we were the only people there. They also had a very limited selection of costumes for bigger-sized people like myself, which we thought was odd because this sort of thing is mainly catered toward tourists, so how can they possibly accommodate most Americans/Europeans -- not necessarily because they're overweight, but also because they are just taller and broader in general?! Also it was weird because neither of the places we had gone to the day before had any issues accommodating people of all sizes - in fact, when we left the second place yesterday, a very tall and broad Caucasian woman was being fitted for a queen's hanbok like the one I'd worn. I mean, I doubt Korean people come in to do these shoots as often as foreigners do, you know? Anyway, yeah, so it was kind of a letdown to be told that I only had a limited selection to choose from. Oh, the other weird thing about this place was that their price list and marketing materials seemed identical to the second studio from yesterday - like were these studios related or...?
The unique thing this studio seemed to have, which attracted us from their promotional banner outside, was that in addition to hanbok, they also had 20s era costumes. Both Adelagia and I were into the idea of doing one of those, as well. When Adelagia asked about it, she was told that it would basically cost the same as what we were paying for the hanbok shots, no discount for doing two shoots. Still, we were like, oh well fine, it is what it is. However, as I was finishing up my individual hanbok shots, the lady was helping Adelagia into her 20s costume, and I wondered then if she had missed the fact that we wanted to do it together, or maybe they were just doing Adelagia’s individual shots first. However, when she helped me out of my hanbok and directed me to where I could get changed back into my own clothes, I knew it was the former. I explained that we wanted to do the 20s-era shoot together as well, but unfortunately they didn’t have any costumes that fit me. There was one dress that almost fit, and she suggested leaving it open in the back. I would have even been okay with that, though I had my doubts on how well the photographer would be able to hide such a thing, except I thought the dress was hideous and felt that by going ahead I would just be throwing ₩30,000 down the toilet because I was not going to be happy with any of the photos. It was a shame because I think that would definitely have been a fun photo for us. Adelagia looked great, though!! She was born in the wrong era! She should obviously find a time machine and give up women’s rights in order to look great in a 20s-style dress and hat!
We tried to find another hanbok studio in the blazing heat, but it seemed that perhaps it had gone out of business at some point. We stopped at a small café in order to rejuvenate ourselves with rose milk tea and mango ice cream. At some point I tripped - as usual with no reason that I could see - and tweaked my ankle a bit. It was nowhere near as bad as the incident I’d had in LA, but I’m not sure I was fully recovered from that in the first place, so it was kind of like mildly reinjuring an injury that was already prone to it, ugh. (Even now it feels weaker than it should. Stupid ankle.)
There was an Innisfree nearby (honestly, where isn’t there an Innisfree? It’s the Starbucks of skincare places in Seoul), so I bought some lotion and makeup wipes, stuff like that. Because I spent over a certain amount, I was given the option of purchasing a box of cotton squares for only ₩100. Against my better judgment, I did it. Yes, $0.10 for a box of cotton squares is a crazy good price. But was it worth then having to figure out its place in my luggage later?
Just sticking this in here… We saw this sort of modern-day hanbok-style outfit and if only I still had the kind of body that could wear that, and had anywhere to wear it to, I so would have gone in there to try it on. I mean, I suppose if I could actually wear it it’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t mind wearing to work or just out, but after the experience with the hanbok fitting I had zero desire to go into the store and be told they didn’t have my size.
We went back to the cute little area of Insadong where we had lunch the previous day in order to find another place to eat. We ended up at a restaurant (surrounded by restaurants serving similar fare) where we got a multicourse lunch for ₩20,000 each, and there was so much food! A lot of it being quite good, even. Much more satisfying on many levels than our Korea House meal, which cost more than 4x that amount, grrr.
The table groaned with the weight of all those dishes!
We then went to O’Sulloc again (it took both of us to remember the correct turns to get there, we are so bad at directions omg) and enjoyed some hojicha lattes (once again cold for me, hot for Adelagia). Since I was getting increasingly hooked on their delicious hojicha, and was worried about the day that would come in which I could NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN (or at least not for a long time), I’d been looking for their hojicha latte mix. They had their other tea lattes available that way, but we struck out again, and I wasn’t sure if it was because it was just that popular (of COURSE), or because they didn’t actually make it to begin with. (In case you’re not familiar with hojicha, it’s roasted green tea. I don’t know if it would be accurate to say that it’s like if someone roasted matcha, but that’s how I’d describe it.) We didn't try any more of their desserts, because we were full from lunch, and because, due to our experience with their dacquoise cookies, it seemed likely they would all be too sweet.
Next up we took a cab to Myeongdong and yet another hanbok studio, this time run by apparently Chinese people, because that's what they spoke to one another when speaking privately to each other. (In Seoul there were actually quite a few Chinese shop assistants or at least Koreans who could speak Chinese. Now I get why my cousin B had said he’d found it easier to communicate in Seoul using Chinese than English, lol!) We took our sweet time choosing a package, because their prices were higher than we were used to, and the packages typically also came with printed photos, which we weren’t interested in, but couldn’t seem to avoid. The ridiculous thing was that we ended up going with the original package we had first discussed, and paid the extra ₩5000 for the “dancers” costumes. LOL. I’m sure they hated us.
The package we chose included hair and makeup (!!!). I didn’t particularly like the makeup they put on me (STEVEN!! STEVEN, WHERE ARE YOU! I NEED MY MAKEUP DONE), but figured they would know what would show up well on camera. I mean, I had no choice really. What was I going to do, throw a diva fit and demand they fetch my personal makeup artist Steven from Etude House, because their makeup artists did not have the appropriate skill level to work on a high-class clown such as I? Shit, that’s what I should have done.
The photographer was a woman - our first one, yay! - and she was quick and efficient with the props and backdrops. I did, admittedly, have a diva moment here, though I like to hope I was nice about it and not super diva-like. Basically, what had attracted me into agreeing to pay the extra money for the “dancer” costume was their promo photo of a gal in the dancer costume, playing the zither. I have romantic notions about that, all right? In any case, in my head, paying for this specific costume meant that I would get to pose with the zither, and in fact, when she had Adelagia pose with it, it all went in line with my thinking. But when it was my turn, she only used an umbrella, and no zither! Up until this point, with all the hanbok studios, there had been moments of disquiet, in which I wasn’t 100% on board with what was going on, but I swallowed it down and just accepted whatever was happening. BUT NOW I HAD TO DRAW A LINE. THE ZITHER WAS MY LINE. (“I don’t know why, but this is the last straw!” - Britta Perry) So I expressed my disappointment and to her credit, the photographer was like, okay, whatthefuckever, and posed me with it (without changing the backdrop, so it makes no sense if you look at it, but who cares lol). It wasn’t until after it was all done with that it finally dawned upon me that the costume was a “dancer” costume, not a “musician” costume, so I had no call to be as put out as I'd been with the lack of a zither.
Adelagia: Don’t you think ‘dancers’ is a euphemism for something else?
Me: What do you mean? We can play the zither.
Adelagia: We can all play the zither. That’s not where our true talents lie.
Me:（°o°；）
I mean, I was shocked and appalled, but where. is. the. lie.
Putting the pic of me with the umbrella here because now it's funny in retrospect.
After our studio shots were done, they needed some time to Photoshop us and print the images, so they told us that we could go upstairs and use the selfie zone. Man, the selfie zone was worth the price of admission alone. It was a whole big area that had various “stages” in which you could pose and take selfies, like a fruit/vegetable stall, or a jail cell, or a bridge, etc. We amused ourselves greatly for some time, and it was really nice that we were the only people there, so we could be as ridiculous as we wanted and not have to wait for others to finish or feel rushed when we were doing our selfies, etc.
So you know, despite our initial reticence due to their higher-than-average cost, at the end of the day we actually liked this hanbok studio the most, I would venture to say. They provided bang for our buck by doing printed photos (admittedly useless, and in which we were Photoshopped within an inch of our lives), an immediate CD of our images (unlike the other places, which all needed 3-10 days to deliver), hair and makeup, and of course, the selfie zone.
We started coming up with a whole story/drama using the selfies we took and the scenes we enacted, lolol. However, I didn't think anything can explain how Adelagia plays the drums or why we would be selling vegetables in the street. (I was wrong. We managed to come up with it. You might be wondering where all those images are; don’t worry, I have something special planned for them, but it’s going to take me some time.)
After that we went to Line Friends to look for a Chimmy umbrella (Adelagia’s umbrella had broken earlier in the day) but had no luck. Then we went to Mediheal, where I got a BTS shopping bag by spending ₩30,000 (iirc) on face masks, and Adelagia got mad because she needed to use the restroom but wasn’t allowed to, because their upstairs area “was closed,” despite the fact that the sign plainly indicated it should still be open. Her ire was the result of an accumulation of all the many times in Seoul when we expected things to be open based on their own signs, or didn’t know what to expect because of a lack of information. It seems that in Seoul business hours are rarely ever given, and even when they are, they cannot actually be relied upon. Very frustrating. Next, we stopped in a VT Cosmetics store, because they also had a collaboration with BTS. I had a vague recollection about BTS perfume, but thought the collaboration was with Atelier, so we went to the Lotte department store and tried to find it, to no avail, only for me to realize that the perfume collaboration was with VT and the collection itself was called L'Atelier, lol. Sigh.
We made our way to the nearby Lotte hotel so we could easily catch a cab from there, but then Adelagia noticed a “Star Avenue” just outside the taxi stand, leading me to spend waaaaaay too much time there trying to capture their BTS ad, esp the part at the end where Jungkook puts his arm around Tae. <3 I thought about giving up at certain points, but then I was like, fuck it, I’m in Seoul and will never have this opportunity again, so I just gotta do it. I also wanted to take pics of their still ads where individual members are on posters, but of course they kept changing and it took forever for them to come back once I needed a pic of the Tae one. ARGH.
Oh, AND. There were many other artists represented there, not just BTS (including Stray Kids!), and at each artist’s “section,” there were handprints on the wall where, if you touched a certain member’s handprint, a video with them started. Jungkook’s wasn’t working, but at least I got to see Tae. There was another thing Adelagia found where you could start up a video of all of them, but in the midst of showing me this and me VERY OBVIOUSLY FILMING IT with my phone camera, some ahjussi just walked right up to it and spoke loudly to his companion about how it worked. WTF? Way to be an inconsiderate douchebag, asshole.
Adelagia: (｡☉︵ ಠ╬)
Me: ლ(ಠ_ಠლ)
Both of us: ⁽⁽(੭ꐦ •̀Д•́ )੭*⁾⁾ ᑦᵒᔿᵉ ᵒᐢᵎᵎ
Finally I got what I wanted (though honestly I probably could have stayed there all night getting the video from all different angles - for what ultimate purpose, I don’t even fucking know), so we took a cab back to Hongdae because there was a VT Cosmetics store there. However, when we arrived it was closed despite the posted hours indicating that they should be open. But... it didn't matter anyway because they had a sign posted that said "no perfume." I guess people must go there all the time asking about the BTS set, LOL. Sigh. At least they had a BTS photo op outside so it wasn’t a completed wasted diversion.
We took a few turns from there and found ourselves on the same street as the sheep cafe, so we picked another random place to have dinner. It was Japanese-y, which seemed like a theme for this particular little strip mall. We both got the cold soba noodles and pork katsu combo. It was fine, but nothing special; we chose the place out of convenience and location, which we really needed to stop doing, as it rarely worked out for us. :/ Maybe I'm being unfair, and if I really thought about it we'd have our share of hits... but it sure felt like our luck in this area was not so good.
After dinner we stopped by the Hongdae Line Friends, where Adelagia managed to find a Chimmy umbrella (there were none downstairs, but we went upstairs and viola, there they were!).
We made our way home, and since we needed to buy more seasoned eggs and milk, we stopped at the eMart 24. It was CLOSED. Do they even know what the 24 means? LOL, I’m sure the one employee they had was on break or something, but it’s just funny because it was totally appropriate for the theme of the day, which was stores that were closed that weren’t supposed to be closed. :P We wanted to get eggs there because we had found we preferred the brand of seasoned eggs they sold to the others we’d tried. So we went to New Days, but they didn't have what we wanted. Perhaps most bizarre of all was what happened at Nice to CU... they had the BTS coffee back in stock, including V, and a 2+1 special going on. So we took V, RM and Suga, all that they had, but when we brought them up to the counter, we were told that Suga didn't count as part of the 2+1, because he was a latte (and cost more). And I was like, but you don't even have three of the other one! And the girl (who we had never seen there before) claimed that we could leave our name and get our free one some other day. O.o Like, what. I don't even know if I can trust that? But I wanted V, so I accepted her crazy proposition.
Wednesday, Aug. 7
In the morning, I decided I wanted to finally break out my Cooky umbrella (that I had purchased on my first real day) to use, but after looking all over, I realized it had been missing for who knows how long because while I had thought about it almost daily, I never actually saw it. I found the receipt proving I'd definitely purchased it, but it was just... gone. I even consulted my daily pics of loot (I put all my purchases on the second bed in my room, and at the end of the day, added to it and took a pic, so that I could slowly see all my loot accumulate), and even from the Day 1 loot pic, the umbrella was not there. That could only mean that it had already been missing by the time I took that first picture (which was actually the second night, because I didn’t think of doing the loot pics until then - but I remembered what I’d gotten each day so was able to do a Day 1 and Day 2 pic separately). The only thing I could think was that the Line Store employee had somehow neglected to put it in my bag, or that, with all the purchases I’d made that day, it had somehow dropped out of my bag, or someone had taken it. (;﹏;) I happened to drop my phone at the moment of realization, and joked that Cooky being missing made Tata want to commit suicide at the news.
My shipper is showing... Tae doesn't much look like Tae in this fanart, but Jungkook is done well.
For lunch we went to Han6gam, another recommendation from J - this time far more successful (for me) than Passion5. Han6gam specialized in hanwoo beef, which is Korean beef, and Koreans take an immense amount of pride in it. He’d gone for dinner, but at lunch they had lunch specials, and since all the servers recommended the beef bowl, that’s what we got. They only sell 50 of them per day, and there was an explanation on the steps to take to eat it. (1) Eat about 1/3 of your beef with some rice; 2) Mix up the remaining beef and rice with the provided veggies and eat; 3) Pour the “secret broth” into whatever rice you have left over and finish.) It was super delicious, and we decided we had to return for dinner at some point.
I could seriously eat this every day.
After lunch we made our way back to Itaewon to go to the Samsung Museum of Art. The signs made it seem like it was close to Passion5, but you have to walk like 150m (I looked it up -- about 500 feet) up a hill to get there! In the heat! Seriously, that hill made it seem a lot further than it was, because I got so tired already just from walking there. We got the audio guide for the exhibits, and boy do they go on and on. I spent too much time trying to appreciate pottery, and my feet were KILLING ME before we had even finished with Museum 1. So we raced through Museum 2, which was modern art and thus kind of bullshit to us anyway, and skipped Museum 3 (which was outside) entirely. If it wasn’t already obvious, we aren’t much into culture.
The guy who did this installation had various people count from 1-10 at the speed they felt life went, so the lights have numbers counting at those speeds. If I’d done it I would have clicked them very quickly. Or if possible, clicked slow at the beginning, then faster and faster.
Afterward we went back to Passion5, and my selections once again underwhelmed me: a croissant, a macadamia nut "stick," and a mini-dacquoise. (The mini-dacquoise did, at least, confirm that the texture of a “real” dacquoise is the same as the cookies I love so much, so maybe if I ever want to make it, all I have to do is make dacquoise and simply shape it into cookie form.) Then we went to Line Friends, and they disappointed me too, because they didn't have any regular Cooky or Tata umbrellas (since now I needed to buy an umbrella... again). I did, however, find some overpriced scrunchies, so bought those.
When we were in the subway underground to take the train to our next location, we passed a place that sold cell phone accessories. Adelagia's cell phone protector had broken the day before, and I wanted to replace the protective film on mine. Only... it cost ₩20,000 for both of those things together (one of them cost ₩5000 and the other cost ₩15,000, we’re not entirely sure which was which, but it doesn’t matter because either way it was TOO MUCH)!!!!!!!! WHAT THE WHAT. Like I was expecting it to cost ₩2000 at the most for a replacement film. I mean this is shit I can get on eBay from China at three for $1. So I felt totally ripped off... the only saving grace is that the guy “installed” the stuff for us, so if you consider that the price included his labor then FINE, since he did it better than I ever have or could (damn you air bubbles!). Then Adelagia stopped in at Tony Moly for some sunscreen, which she didn't end up liking because it was too sticky.
Because we had already hit up every exotic creature café still in commission in Seoul, we decided to go tamer and went to the Bauhause Dog Café. There were many wonderful dogs there so we spent houuuuurs cuddling them. ʚ♡⃛ɞ(ू•ᴗ•ू❁) I spent a lot of time in the "big dog" zone, and while a lot of the dogs there weren't really that big, some of them were HUGE. None of the dogs in that zone seemed particularly interested in hanging out with humans, unfortunately. The small dogs were a lot cuddlier... I know that's not because small dogs are innately cuddlier than big ones, so I'm not sure why their big dogs were so uninterested for the most part. I alternated between finding all the dogs so cute, and feeling super sorry for them for being stuck in such a situation where they didn’t really have a forever home, just strangers that came by (then again, when you consider homeless animals, they are actually lucky I guess???), especially the big guys who needed a lot more exercise than they were probably getting. The place also doubles as a dog hotel, so I hope many of those dogs were simply being boarded for the time being and it's not their permanent home.
How did they get so many derpy dogs? Is that something you can breed for? “Extra derp with mine, please.”
When we finally extricated ourselves from the dog cafe, we went to dinner, this bossam place Adelagia and K had found. They seemed to have better luck with trying out random restaurants than Adelagia and I did, because it was delicious! The bossam rocked! And I actually liked their fish cake banchan, which I normally don’t care for at all! We also tried their haemul pajeon, which was quite tasty. It wasn't crispy enough, but of the many haemul pajeons we have tried over the years, very few of them actually come to the table crispy, who knows why. We also found haemul pajeon in Seoul to be ridiculously pricey (₩25,000, on average) for some reason, but this one was "only" ₩19,000 won.
If you haven’t yet tried bossam, it is like... AMAZING. The wrap you make with pork belly, seasoned spicy radish, ssamjang, and a bit of saeujeot (fermented shrimp), is one of the most delicious things you will ever put in your mouth. It’s the perfect (large) bite.
After dinner we made our way back to Hongdae, and stopped in at Nice to CU to get my +1 coffee that I was owed. An older ahjussi was working the counter, and initially he SEEMED to know what we were talking about. But then he rifled through some papers and said he couldn't find anything about our +1 drink, and told us to return the next night, when the same girl would be working again (or at least, that’s what we got from our interaction - but possibly he was just saying “come back tomorrow, when I’m not here and you won't be my problem”). I was so annoyed. I couldn’t believe that girl hadn't put our name down after it was so obvious we were uncomfortable with the whole situation. And tonight they even had a V replacement!!!!!!!!! The paranoid person in me was like, “THEY KNEW THEY COULD SELL V AND THUS DIDN’T WANT TO GIVE HIM TO ME FOR FREE.” The less paranoid person in me (and Adelagia) said, "This ahjussi has no idea who V even is, you're just being paranoid." Still, I was upset by the idea of returning the next night to get an undesirable member instead just because this ahjussi couldn’t find our name and/or the girl didn’t write it down. Or worse, not being able to get the coffee I was owed at all because the girl didn't remember us. Actually I didn’t know which would be worse. What I did know was that you shouldn't do promotions like 2+1 if you don't have the stock for it!!!!!!!!!!!
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Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Monday, Aug. 5
Today was the day of our first experience with a hanbok studio! I know I sound like a broken record but it was so, so hot omg. We made our way to Insadong by public transportation, when actually we should have taken a cab. If you’d asked the Sarea and Adelagia at the end of our trip what to do, they would have definitely said to cab it, but current day Sarea and Adelagia had not yet broken that seal, though we often did mention that we should just take a taxi. Anyway, it was hot and Naver’s map was confusing, so it took us a bit of time to find the studio, and by the time we did, I was of course drenched in sweat. The owner/photographer guy led us into a small indoor space where we would do our fitting, and he gestured to the large air conditioning unit and told me to stand in front of it, LOL.
We were told to select a couple of skirts that we were interested in, and one of the gals who worked there would select the tops. Everything was sooooo cute and pretty omg, and there seemed to be a large selection. We also asked for the option to have our hair done, since it only cost ₩5000; they braided our hair and styled it up in a more traditional manner, though honestly I’m not sure that’s a look that works on me. Oh well, I wanted it to be “authentic” so that’s what I got! We also got like elaborate pins and what not placed into our hair, though that stuff doesn’t even really show up in the shots, and I’m unclear on whether those things would have been used on us if we hadn’t gone for the extra hair styling.
Since we were noobs at this whole thing, we basically only took this selfie. God we're lame.
The shoot took place outside, which was a bit torturous since we were in full hanbok, but the photographer dragged out a portable a/c to help us not die. Then we had an indoor shoot as well. Adelagia didn’t like the way they did her hair, nor the way the photographer posed us, but I liked his mannerism and he was nice. We were told that we would be emailed the photos in 3-4 days. We were told that we could roam around a bit and take selfies while in the hanboks, but we declined because of the heat.
We complained more about the heat and Adelagia suggested that we could cab it back to the little area of Insadong that we had gone to before, but to me it seemed a waste of a cab ride because we were literally minutes away, and a cabbie might complain about the short distance. (In retrospect, now having been in a number of cabs, I’m almost certain he would have.) If we were gonna take a cab, we should have done it from our apartment to the studio, so that we could have arrived fresh, without sweat-beaded foreheads and potentially runny makeup!
We managed to find our way back to the cute street in Insadong where we had seen many interesting little restaurants, but we couldn’t remember the turns we had made before and got a bit lost. (I swear, we could get lost inside a paper bag.) We had to map ourselves to O’Sulloc to get ourselves on the right path.
For lunch we ended up at a Japanese place called Paldo that we enjoyed immensely. They had an excellent uni bibimbap that consisted of a small portion of uni on the side, and the bibimbap was made up of like five different types of eggs. They also served live octopus, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with that. It was one of those lunches that was filling, but not SO filling that you didn’t consider ordering something else just because you thought it would probably be delicious also. I was only able to abstain because our plan was to go to O’Sulloc afterward, and the promise of hojicha and dessert gave me the strength to resist ordering more food at Paldo.
Seriously, looking at this right now makes my mouth water.
We bought lots of tea stuff at O’sulloc, including some loose green tea, boxed giftsets for family or whoever, stuff like that. This might have been the time when we bought enough items that they gave us free lotion, only for me to find out later that it was hand wash, which was disappointing because I actually really did need lotion, lol. We ordered hojicha (cold for me, hot for Adelagia) and a couple of dacquoise cookies (hojicha and matcha), which were initially okay for me, but ended up being too sweet by the end. Still, it was really cool to see dacquoise cookies at all, because we’ve only ever seen them at Midori, and they were rarely found there as well.
Looking at those green tea desserts now I kind of kick myself for not trying them all anyway.
Since we had enjoyed the experience of dressing up, and Adelagia felt we could be posed and styled better. Since it seemed that it wasn’t that costly to do, we decided to do another hanbok studio shoot, as we were already in Insadong and everything. Haha, it was like the first time we discovered escape rooms, all over again. After leaving O’Sulloc we found another studio on the same busy street where we had shopped last time. It was nicely air conditioned, and I decided to splurge on the royal outfit (₩60,000), which was double the amount of the normal fitting (which Adelagia opted for). I didn’t think it was realy worth that price, since all it was was a different outfit, but I also didn’t want cost to be the deciding factor on whether or not I did it, because it was pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime type thing. I have to say, I did quite enjoy wearing that robe; it did feel a lot more special than the regular hanbok I’d worn the first time (maybe because of the bigass sleeves). Adelagia was having some trouble with her fitting, so the lady was taking an extra-long time in the dressing room with her, and I complained, “Hey! Who ever heard of a queen waiting around for her maidservant?!” HAHAHAHA I cracked myself up.
I didn't want them to do the apple wig thing, despite the authenticity, because I have never liked that look, but the lady either ignored me or didn't hear me, lol. I didn’t push it once they began putting the headdress on me, though, because I talked myself into it by thinking, "Well, if I’m going to do the royal fitting, I might as well go all the way with it." The headdress was so heavy, omg, and also didn’t fit properly, so I had to hold my head/neck in a certain way in order to ensure that it would stay on. That made my posture even worse than it already was normally! But honestly, that headdress is NOT attractive, on anyone, even attractive actresses. Also, now we know why those old queens in dramas are always so grumpy; the thing weighs a TON, and after only a short while my back hurt! At this studio the photographer used one of our phones to take shots of us at the same time as he did his studio shots with his camera, which was cool. (More so since they never sent the studio shots, despite our reaching out twice, and now we've had to dispute the charges with our credit card companies.)
Afterward we wandered down the street of shops again, and Adelagia was able to snag a couple of souvenirs for her niece and nephew. We considered hitting a third hanbok studio, but decided against it because we likely didn’t have time due to a 5pm reservation at Korea House for a royal meal (today was our designated “royal” theme day, another reason why I decided to go with the royal robe for the second shoot), and because if we saved the hanbok studio fun for another day, we would have the opportunity to do it properly makeup wise - as in, take a cab to the studio in the morning, while our makeup was fresh and looking its best.
The royal meal at Korea House was a disappointment. Adelagia and I don’t seem to have very good luck with YOLO type meals; I don’t know if it’s that our expectations are too high, or if those meals really are subpar, but it seems to happen to us a lot. We go out of our way to splurge, and then end up regretting it, which is never what you want from a YOLO experience. In this specific case, however, I don’t think it was our expectations. The food was simply not that great. It didn’t help that one of the courses was samgyetang, which on top of following a really good example of samgyetang that we had just the other day, was not seasoned at all. Nothing tastes good when it’s not seasoned... I mean, any amateur cook knows that! It’s a good thing we'd already tried samgyetang elsewhere or this experience might have put us off it forever.
When we entered the restaurant, there was a podium in front of the hostess area with a magazine, and it had something to do with BTS. I intended to take a gander at it when we left, but forgot. However, once I was back in the US I realized it had to have been the Feb 2018 issue of Billboard, which featured BTS, and Korea House was where they had done the photoshoot.
Why did they put V in such an awkward pose?
We made some plans to do more hanbok studios the next day, and we would cab it to ensure we were at our freshest. After dinner we headed home... it was probably the earliest we’ve ever made it home (we usually were out until 10pm on average, I would say). We stopped by the neighborhood juice bar again for watermelon juice, but I once again found it to be crazily sweet, even though this time I watched him make it and all he put in the blender was chunks of watermelon and ice!
Tuesday, Aug. 6
In the morning we drank BTS coffees; V cold brew for me and Jungkook hot brew for Adelagia. (They tasted the same, let’s be honest.) Remember how I wrote the other day that they were expired? Well upon closer inspection it seems the date we saw was the date the coffees were brewed or something, because there was another date on the bottles that indicated a different expiration date.
Yes, I know. It barely looks like them.
It was 100°F today - and with the humidity and dewpoint who knows what the “feels like” temp actually was - so we splurged on cabs all day. I say “splurge” because sure, in comparison to the subway or bus, which costs ₩1250 per ride, cabs cost more, but when you’re splitting a cab between two people, and it’s taking you directly from Point A to Point B, and you’re in an air-conditioned vehicle the whole time without having to worry about having to miss transfers or whatever else, it’s actually a very reasonable cost. And made extra worth it when it’s so dangerously and uncomfortably hot outside. And let’s be real: We’re high-class clowns so obviously need to travel that way.
We made our way back to Insadong for hanbok studio #3, and it was sooooo nice to be dropped off right in front of where we wanted to go. I have in my notes that “this time we both wore palace costumes,” but I’m not sure how that differs from the first day, lol. Or did I mean that neither of us were royalty, and instead were simple palace maids? Who knows what then-Sarea was thinking? It wasn’t a super pleasant experience, because the lady who helped us was incredibly harried and rushed us through everything, even though we were the only people there. They also had a very limited selection of costumes for bigger-sized people like myself, which we thought was odd because this sort of thing is mainly catered toward tourists, so how can they possibly accommodate most Americans/Europeans -- not necessarily because they're overweight, but also because they are just taller and broader in general?! Also it was weird because neither of the places we had gone to the day before had any issues accommodating people of all sizes - in fact, when we left the second place yesterday, a very tall and broad Caucasian woman was being fitted for a queen's hanbok like the one I'd worn. I mean, I doubt Korean people come in to do these shoots as often as foreigners do, you know? Anyway, yeah, so it was kind of a letdown to be told that I only had a limited selection to choose from. Oh, the other weird thing about this place was that their price list and marketing materials seemed identical to the second studio from yesterday - like were these studios related or...?
The unique thing this studio seemed to have, which attracted us from their promotional banner outside, was that in addition to hanbok, they also had 20s era costumes. Both Adelagia and I were into the idea of doing one of those, as well. When Adelagia asked about it, she was told that it would basically cost the same as what we were paying for the hanbok shots, no discount for doing two shoots. Still, we were like, oh well fine, it is what it is. However, as I was finishing up my individual hanbok shots, the lady was helping Adelagia into her 20s costume, and I wondered then if she had missed the fact that we wanted to do it together, or maybe they were just doing Adelagia’s individual shots first. However, when she helped me out of my hanbok and directed me to where I could get changed back into my own clothes, I knew it was the former. I explained that we wanted to do the 20s-era shoot together as well, but unfortunately they didn’t have any costumes that fit me. There was one dress that almost fit, and she suggested leaving it open in the back. I would have even been okay with that, though I had my doubts on how well the photographer would be able to hide such a thing, except I thought the dress was hideous and felt that by going ahead I would just be throwing ₩30,000 down the toilet because I was not going to be happy with any of the photos. It was a shame because I think that would definitely have been a fun photo for us. Adelagia looked great, though!! She was born in the wrong era! She should obviously find a time machine and give up women’s rights in order to look great in a 20s-style dress and hat!
We tried to find another hanbok studio in the blazing heat, but it seemed that perhaps it had gone out of business at some point. We stopped at a small café in order to rejuvenate ourselves with rose milk tea and mango ice cream. At some point I tripped - as usual with no reason that I could see - and tweaked my ankle a bit. It was nowhere near as bad as the incident I’d had in LA, but I’m not sure I was fully recovered from that in the first place, so it was kind of like mildly reinjuring an injury that was already prone to it, ugh. (Even now it feels weaker than it should. Stupid ankle.)
There was an Innisfree nearby (honestly, where isn’t there an Innisfree? It’s the Starbucks of skincare places in Seoul), so I bought some lotion and makeup wipes, stuff like that. Because I spent over a certain amount, I was given the option of purchasing a box of cotton squares for only ₩100. Against my better judgment, I did it. Yes, $0.10 for a box of cotton squares is a crazy good price. But was it worth then having to figure out its place in my luggage later?
Just sticking this in here… We saw this sort of modern-day hanbok-style outfit and if only I still had the kind of body that could wear that, and had anywhere to wear it to, I so would have gone in there to try it on. I mean, I suppose if I could actually wear it it’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t mind wearing to work or just out, but after the experience with the hanbok fitting I had zero desire to go into the store and be told they didn’t have my size.
We went back to the cute little area of Insadong where we had lunch the previous day in order to find another place to eat. We ended up at a restaurant (surrounded by restaurants serving similar fare) where we got a multicourse lunch for ₩20,000 each, and there was so much food! A lot of it being quite good, even. Much more satisfying on many levels than our Korea House meal, which cost more than 4x that amount, grrr.
The table groaned with the weight of all those dishes!
We then went to O’Sulloc again (it took both of us to remember the correct turns to get there, we are so bad at directions omg) and enjoyed some hojicha lattes (once again cold for me, hot for Adelagia). Since I was getting increasingly hooked on their delicious hojicha, and was worried about the day that would come in which I could NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN (or at least not for a long time), I’d been looking for their hojicha latte mix. They had their other tea lattes available that way, but we struck out again, and I wasn’t sure if it was because it was just that popular (of COURSE), or because they didn’t actually make it to begin with. (In case you’re not familiar with hojicha, it’s roasted green tea. I don’t know if it would be accurate to say that it’s like if someone roasted matcha, but that’s how I’d describe it.) We didn't try any more of their desserts, because we were full from lunch, and because, due to our experience with their dacquoise cookies, it seemed likely they would all be too sweet.
Next up we took a cab to Myeongdong and yet another hanbok studio, this time run by apparently Chinese people, because that's what they spoke to one another when speaking privately to each other. (In Seoul there were actually quite a few Chinese shop assistants or at least Koreans who could speak Chinese. Now I get why my cousin B had said he’d found it easier to communicate in Seoul using Chinese than English, lol!) We took our sweet time choosing a package, because their prices were higher than we were used to, and the packages typically also came with printed photos, which we weren’t interested in, but couldn’t seem to avoid. The ridiculous thing was that we ended up going with the original package we had first discussed, and paid the extra ₩5000 for the “dancers” costumes. LOL. I’m sure they hated us.
The package we chose included hair and makeup (!!!). I didn’t particularly like the makeup they put on me (STEVEN!! STEVEN, WHERE ARE YOU! I NEED MY MAKEUP DONE), but figured they would know what would show up well on camera. I mean, I had no choice really. What was I going to do, throw a diva fit and demand they fetch my personal makeup artist Steven from Etude House, because their makeup artists did not have the appropriate skill level to work on a high-class clown such as I? Shit, that’s what I should have done.
The photographer was a woman - our first one, yay! - and she was quick and efficient with the props and backdrops. I did, admittedly, have a diva moment here, though I like to hope I was nice about it and not super diva-like. Basically, what had attracted me into agreeing to pay the extra money for the “dancer” costume was their promo photo of a gal in the dancer costume, playing the zither. I have romantic notions about that, all right? In any case, in my head, paying for this specific costume meant that I would get to pose with the zither, and in fact, when she had Adelagia pose with it, it all went in line with my thinking. But when it was my turn, she only used an umbrella, and no zither! Up until this point, with all the hanbok studios, there had been moments of disquiet, in which I wasn’t 100% on board with what was going on, but I swallowed it down and just accepted whatever was happening. BUT NOW I HAD TO DRAW A LINE. THE ZITHER WAS MY LINE. (“I don’t know why, but this is the last straw!” - Britta Perry) So I expressed my disappointment and to her credit, the photographer was like, okay, whatthefuckever, and posed me with it (without changing the backdrop, so it makes no sense if you look at it, but who cares lol). It wasn’t until after it was all done with that it finally dawned upon me that the costume was a “dancer” costume, not a “musician” costume, so I had no call to be as put out as I'd been with the lack of a zither.
Adelagia: Don’t you think ‘dancers’ is a euphemism for something else?
Me: What do you mean? We can play the zither.
Adelagia: We can all play the zither. That’s not where our true talents lie.
Me:（°o°；）
I mean, I was shocked and appalled, but where. is. the. lie.
Putting the pic of me with the umbrella here because now it's funny in retrospect.
After our studio shots were done, they needed some time to Photoshop us and print the images, so they told us that we could go upstairs and use the selfie zone. Man, the selfie zone was worth the price of admission alone. It was a whole big area that had various “stages” in which you could pose and take selfies, like a fruit/vegetable stall, or a jail cell, or a bridge, etc. We amused ourselves greatly for some time, and it was really nice that we were the only people there, so we could be as ridiculous as we wanted and not have to wait for others to finish or feel rushed when we were doing our selfies, etc.
So you know, despite our initial reticence due to their higher-than-average cost, at the end of the day we actually liked this hanbok studio the most, I would venture to say. They provided bang for our buck by doing printed photos (admittedly useless, and in which we were Photoshopped within an inch of our lives), an immediate CD of our images (unlike the other places, which all needed 3-10 days to deliver), hair and makeup, and of course, the selfie zone.
We started coming up with a whole story/drama using the selfies we took and the scenes we enacted, lolol. However, I didn't think anything can explain how Adelagia plays the drums or why we would be selling vegetables in the street. (I was wrong. We managed to come up with it. You might be wondering where all those images are; don’t worry, I have something special planned for them, but it’s going to take me some time.)
After that we went to Line Friends to look for a Chimmy umbrella (Adelagia’s umbrella had broken earlier in the day) but had no luck. Then we went to Mediheal, where I got a BTS shopping bag by spending ₩30,000 (iirc) on face masks, and Adelagia got mad because she needed to use the restroom but wasn’t allowed to, because their upstairs area “was closed,” despite the fact that the sign plainly indicated it should still be open. Her ire was the result of an accumulation of all the many times in Seoul when we expected things to be open based on their own signs, or didn’t know what to expect because of a lack of information. It seems that in Seoul business hours are rarely ever given, and even when they are, they cannot actually be relied upon. Very frustrating. Next, we stopped in a VT Cosmetics store, because they also had a collaboration with BTS. I had a vague recollection about BTS perfume, but thought the collaboration was with Atelier, so we went to the Lotte department store and tried to find it, to no avail, only for me to realize that the perfume collaboration was with VT and the collection itself was called L'Atelier, lol. Sigh.
We made our way to the nearby Lotte hotel so we could easily catch a cab from there, but then Adelagia noticed a “Star Avenue” just outside the taxi stand, leading me to spend waaaaaay too much time there trying to capture their BTS ad, esp the part at the end where Jungkook puts his arm around Tae. <3 I thought about giving up at certain points, but then I was like, fuck it, I’m in Seoul and will never have this opportunity again, so I just gotta do it. I also wanted to take pics of their still ads where individual members are on posters, but of course they kept changing and it took forever for them to come back once I needed a pic of the Tae one. ARGH.
Oh, AND. There were many other artists represented there, not just BTS (including Stray Kids!), and at each artist’s “section,” there were handprints on the wall where, if you touched a certain member’s handprint, a video with them started. Jungkook’s wasn’t working, but at least I got to see Tae. There was another thing Adelagia found where you could start up a video of all of them, but in the midst of showing me this and me VERY OBVIOUSLY FILMING IT with my phone camera, some ahjussi just walked right up to it and spoke loudly to his companion about how it worked. WTF? Way to be an inconsiderate douchebag, asshole.
Adelagia: (｡☉︵ ಠ╬)
Me: ლ(ಠ_ಠლ)
Both of us: ⁽⁽(੭ꐦ •̀Д•́ )੭*⁾⁾ ᑦᵒᔿᵉ ᵒᐢᵎᵎ
Finally I got what I wanted (though honestly I probably could have stayed there all night getting the video from all different angles - for what ultimate purpose, I don’t even fucking know), so we took a cab back to Hongdae because there was a VT Cosmetics store there. However, when we arrived it was closed despite the posted hours indicating that they should be open. But... it didn't matter anyway because they had a sign posted that said "no perfume." I guess people must go there all the time asking about the BTS set, LOL. Sigh. At least they had a BTS photo op outside so it wasn’t a completed wasted diversion.
We took a few turns from there and found ourselves on the same street as the sheep cafe, so we picked another random place to have dinner. It was Japanese-y, which seemed like a theme for this particular little strip mall. We both got the cold soba noodles and pork katsu combo. It was fine, but nothing special; we chose the place out of convenience and location, which we really needed to stop doing, as it rarely worked out for us. :/ Maybe I'm being unfair, and if I really thought about it we'd have our share of hits... but it sure felt like our luck in this area was not so good.
After dinner we stopped by the Hongdae Line Friends, where Adelagia managed to find a Chimmy umbrella (there were none downstairs, but we went upstairs and viola, there they were!).
We made our way home, and since we needed to buy more seasoned eggs and milk, we stopped at the eMart 24. It was CLOSED. Do they even know what the 24 means? LOL, I’m sure the one employee they had was on break or something, but it’s just funny because it was totally appropriate for the theme of the day, which was stores that were closed that weren’t supposed to be closed. :P We wanted to get eggs there because we had found we preferred the brand of seasoned eggs they sold to the others we’d tried. So we went to New Days, but they didn't have what we wanted. Perhaps most bizarre of all was what happened at Nice to CU... they had the BTS coffee back in stock, including V, and a 2+1 special going on. So we took V, RM and Suga, all that they had, but when we brought them up to the counter, we were told that Suga didn't count as part of the 2+1, because he was a latte (and cost more). And I was like, but you don't even have three of the other one! And the girl (who we had never seen there before) claimed that we could leave our name and get our free one some other day. O.o Like, what. I don't even know if I can trust that? But I wanted V, so I accepted her crazy proposition.
Wednesday, Aug. 7
In the morning, I decided I wanted to finally break out my Cooky umbrella (that I had purchased on my first real day) to use, but after looking all over, I realized it had been missing for who knows how long because while I had thought about it almost daily, I never actually saw it. I found the receipt proving I'd definitely purchased it, but it was just... gone. I even consulted my daily pics of loot (I put all my purchases on the second bed in my room, and at the end of the day, added to it and took a pic, so that I could slowly see all my loot accumulate), and even from the Day 1 loot pic, the umbrella was not there. That could only mean that it had already been missing by the time I took that first picture (which was actually the second night, because I didn’t think of doing the loot pics until then - but I remembered what I’d gotten each day so was able to do a Day 1 and Day 2 pic separately). The only thing I could think was that the Line Store employee had somehow neglected to put it in my bag, or that, with all the purchases I’d made that day, it had somehow dropped out of my bag, or someone had taken it. (;﹏;) I happened to drop my phone at the moment of realization, and joked that Cooky being missing made Tata want to commit suicide at the news.
My shipper is showing... Tae doesn't much look like Tae in this fanart, but Jungkook is done well.
For lunch we went to Han6gam, another recommendation from J - this time far more successful (for me) than Passion5. Han6gam specialized in hanwoo beef, which is Korean beef, and Koreans take an immense amount of pride in it. He’d gone for dinner, but at lunch they had lunch specials, and since all the servers recommended the beef bowl, that’s what we got. They only sell 50 of them per day, and there was an explanation on the steps to take to eat it. (1) Eat about 1/3 of your beef with some rice; 2) Mix up the remaining beef and rice with the provided veggies and eat; 3) Pour the “secret broth” into whatever rice you have left over and finish.) It was super delicious, and we decided we had to return for dinner at some point.
I could seriously eat this every day.
After lunch we made our way back to Itaewon to go to the Samsung Museum of Art. The signs made it seem like it was close to Passion5, but you have to walk like 150m (I looked it up -- about 500 feet) up a hill to get there! In the heat! Seriously, that hill made it seem a lot further than it was, because I got so tired already just from walking there. We got the audio guide for the exhibits, and boy do they go on and on. I spent too much time trying to appreciate pottery, and my feet were KILLING ME before we had even finished with Museum 1. So we raced through Museum 2, which was modern art and thus kind of bullshit to us anyway, and skipped Museum 3 (which was outside) entirely. If it wasn’t already obvious, we aren’t much into culture.
The guy who did this installation had various people count from 1-10 at the speed they felt life went, so the lights have numbers counting at those speeds. If I’d done it I would have clicked them very quickly. Or if possible, clicked slow at the beginning, then faster and faster.
Afterward we went back to Passion5, and my selections once again underwhelmed me: a croissant, a macadamia nut "stick," and a mini-dacquoise. (The mini-dacquoise did, at least, confirm that the texture of a “real” dacquoise is the same as the cookies I love so much, so maybe if I ever want to make it, all I have to do is make dacquoise and simply shape it into cookie form.) Then we went to Line Friends, and they disappointed me too, because they didn't have any regular Cooky or Tata umbrellas (since now I needed to buy an umbrella... again). I did, however, find some overpriced scrunchies, so bought those.
When we were in the subway underground to take the train to our next location, we passed a place that sold cell phone accessories. Adelagia's cell phone protector had broken the day before, and I wanted to replace the protective film on mine. Only... it cost ₩20,000 for both of those things together (one of them cost ₩5000 and the other cost ₩15,000, we’re not entirely sure which was which, but it doesn’t matter because either way it was TOO MUCH)!!!!!!!! WHAT THE WHAT. Like I was expecting it to cost ₩2000 at the most for a replacement film. I mean this is shit I can get on eBay from China at three for $1. So I felt totally ripped off... the only saving grace is that the guy “installed” the stuff for us, so if you consider that the price included his labor then FINE, since he did it better than I ever have or could (damn you air bubbles!). Then Adelagia stopped in at Tony Moly for some sunscreen, which she didn't end up liking because it was too sticky.
Because we had already hit up every exotic creature café still in commission in Seoul, we decided to go tamer and went to the Bauhause Dog Café. There were many wonderful dogs there so we spent houuuuurs cuddling them. ʚ♡⃛ɞ(ू•ᴗ•ू❁) I spent a lot of time in the "big dog" zone, and while a lot of the dogs there weren't really that big, some of them were HUGE. None of the dogs in that zone seemed particularly interested in hanging out with humans, unfortunately. The small dogs were a lot cuddlier... I know that's not because small dogs are innately cuddlier than big ones, so I'm not sure why their big dogs were so uninterested for the most part. I alternated between finding all the dogs so cute, and feeling super sorry for them for being stuck in such a situation where they didn’t really have a forever home, just strangers that came by (then again, when you consider homeless animals, they are actually lucky I guess???), especially the big guys who needed a lot more exercise than they were probably getting. The place also doubles as a dog hotel, so I hope many of those dogs were simply being boarded for the time being and it's not their permanent home.
How did they get so many derpy dogs? Is that something you can breed for? “Extra derp with mine, please.”
When we finally extricated ourselves from the dog cafe, we went to dinner, this bossam place Adelagia and K had found. They seemed to have better luck with trying out random restaurants than Adelagia and I did, because it was delicious! The bossam rocked! And I actually liked their fish cake banchan, which I normally don’t care for at all! We also tried their haemul pajeon, which was quite tasty. It wasn't crispy enough, but of the many haemul pajeons we have tried over the years, very few of them actually come to the table crispy, who knows why. We also found haemul pajeon in Seoul to be ridiculously pricey (₩25,000, on average) for some reason, but this one was "only" ₩19,000 won.
If you haven’t yet tried bossam, it is like... AMAZING. The wrap you make with pork belly, seasoned spicy radish, ssamjang, and a bit of saeujeot (fermented shrimp), is one of the most delicious things you will ever put in your mouth. It’s the perfect (large) bite.
After dinner we made our way back to Hongdae, and stopped in at Nice to CU to get my +1 coffee that I was owed. An older ahjussi was working the counter, and initially he SEEMED to know what we were talking about. But then he rifled through some papers and said he couldn't find anything about our +1 drink, and told us to return the next night, when the same girl would be working again (or at least, that’s what we got from our interaction - but possibly he was just saying “come back tomorrow, when I’m not here and you won't be my problem”). I was so annoyed. I couldn’t believe that girl hadn't put our name down after it was so obvious we were uncomfortable with the whole situation. And tonight they even had a V replacement!!!!!!!!! The paranoid person in me was like, “THEY KNEW THEY COULD SELL V AND THUS DIDN’T WANT TO GIVE HIM TO ME FOR FREE.” The less paranoid person in me (and Adelagia) said, "This ahjussi has no idea who V even is, you're just being paranoid." Still, I was upset by the idea of returning the next night to get an undesirable member instead just because this ahjussi couldn’t find our name and/or the girl didn’t write it down. Or worse, not being able to get the coffee I was owed at all because the girl didn't remember us. Actually I didn’t know which would be worse. What I did know was that you shouldn't do promotions like 2+1 if you don't have the stock for it!!!!!!!!!!!
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