Korea Day 7 Overnight Shopping 23/8/2012

Woke up in the morning to visit another guesthouse that we were supposed to move to for the period of 25th to 27th August. It is quite near from the one we are living in now! Anyway, after visiting, the guesthouse owner of the current guesthouse Lavender Story drove us back. On the way, he stopped by a bubble tea shop and treated us a cup each!

From what I see, the bubble tea trend just kind of started in Korea. I have seen quite a few bubble tea shops, but they are really small. It's hard to find bubble tea here in Korea. Haha, but there is GongCha in Myeongdong! And the queue was so long I decided not to buy. Yup. So this was my first cup of bubble tea in Korea. Surprisingly it tastes quite nice! Not too sweet and not too bland. :D

After that we went back to rest for awhile before heading out again at around 5 or 6pm to Itaewon. Itaewon is like a place that Westerners frequent. Probably because of its history. Itaewon is located in the middle of Yongsan-gu. In the aftermath of the Korean War, American soldiers began to stay in Yongsan Garrison, and probably the influence spreaded till now. Here, you can see alot of imported brands, and restaurants of cuisines from different countries. This place is very multicultural.

Regina and I walked around just to see how the environment is like. There are really alot of westerners. Unlike in Myeongdong, where most of the foreigners are from China or Japan.

When settling our dinner, we decided to get....

KFC!!! Haha. well it is always nice to try fastfood in different countries. I was actually quite surprised they had crispy chicken too! and the crispiness is much more crunchier than the KFC crispy chicken in Singapore. It is less spicy as well. The cheese they use for their cheese fries is that used for nachos if I'm not wrong. The meal is not bad!

So after dinner, it was around 8pm so we decided to start on our overnight shopping trip! And so we headed to Dongdaemun!

Dongdaemun is full of buildings that has apparel shops that does mainly wholesale. Most of the shops do sell their clothes individually as well. This area is usually opened overnight, and closes at about 5am in the morning. Many people recommended this place since it is a place where people buy their clothes in bulk and so it is supposedly cheaper. However, I beg to differ. In most of the buildings I went to, the bags and shoes are rather expensive, the clothes are priced normally. Tried to haggle, but mostly it's not possible. The sellers does not really care about people who come here to buy clothes individually, hence they don't really entertain your bargaining. Even if you bargain, the most you can cut is around 3000KRW?

I bought mainly shorts in this area. Somehow their shorts are considered cheap. I got mine at 10000KRW each. And the design and material is really nice! I bought jeggings as well. But that's about all I got. The other apparels are priced abit too high than I expected. Nevertheless, it is not a bad experience. I guess if you look more closely, you should be able to get some good buys. :)

We were tired by the time it was around 2am, so we decided to cab back to hongdae..