Day 2 - Anguk Station, Namdaemun & Dongdaemun

Woke up early, had breakfast at the hotel and proceeded to Bukchon Hanok Village at Anguk Station. By the way, I loved our hotel, Myeongdong Skypark Hotel. It was located near Exit #6 of Myeongdong Station and was perfect for our needs, which was to basically shop till we dropped! We kept dropping by to drop off our shopping bags or buying some food from the many street stalls littering the streets of Myeongdong up to enjoy in the comfort of the hotel room.

If the price difference between the twin and double room isn't too big when you're booking a room here, go for the twin room! It's so worth it. The room is much bigger. Even the bathroom is bigger! The twin room has a bathtub but the double room does not! The only thing separating the shower area from the toilet in the bathroom of the double room is a shower curtain. So basically the whole bathroom gets wet everytime you take a shower.

Anyway back to posting about the day, we began the day with a stroll around Bukchon Hanok Village. There were a few traditional guesthouses there which looked pretty cool.

This is the only photo I have of the place. Lol idek.

There were a few hanoks that you could go into, but for a fee of course. We decided to go into this one about Korean royal costumes.

For ₩30,000 (SGD$35) you can dress up like this and take a photo:

After our walk, we went to a small tteokbokki restaurant, also near Anguk station that's supposed to be famous for their sauce. It's called 먹쉬돈나 (Mok Schwei Don Na) which translates to Eat, Relax, Pay & Go. I read about this on Seoul Eats and apparently it is the place to have tteokbokki. We went to the Tourist Information Center to ask for directions and tried to find it by locating the Korean Travel Bureau but the guy didn't know where it was. But when I told him the name of the restaurant, he immediately knew what I was talking about and showed us where it was on a map.


We ordered Seafood + Cheese tteokbokki and added fried dumplings and noodles. The entire pot cost us ₩11,000 (SGD$13) which I thought was pretty reasonable, considering it had super fresh seafood, and a small bowl of tteokbokki in the street stalls with just some fish cakes cost ₩3,000! And the rice cakes used in the street stalls can't be compared to this one. This was soft and chewy and the ones in the street stalls were a bit hard in comparison.


After eating we ordered a drink to share at Amandier, near exit #1 of Anguk station.

After ordering, I was given this. I was puzzled initially, what was I supposed to do with this? Then I figured it would probably make a sound or something to alert me to collect my order when it was ready, and I was right! After waiting for a while, the thing lit up and started vibrating, when I went to the counter, my tea was there waiting me.


I thought to myself, wow this cafe is pretty cool. But after staying for 10 days in Korea, I found out that nearly all the cafes have this little gizmo, even fast food restaurants like Lotteria. This is a great system that works well. You don't have to stand stupidly at the counter, waiting for your order to be ready. And the staff don't have to shout out your order or look at your receipt and try to figure out if that is indeed your order.

Iced ginger tea with a small cookie :D

Next we went to Namdaemun Market which was kind of reminded me of Chinatown in Malaysia. Seoul weather in June is kinda hot, almost as hot as Singapore, only less humid.

Shaved Ice and red beans with green tea ice cream @ Paris Baguette

Went back to the hotel for a nap after that and then went to Dongdaemun to shop! Managed to somehow get out of the wrong exit at the train station and walked like 3 blocks in the wrong direction lol fml. Finally decided to ask for directions and a kind stranger led us to Doota.


I don't have any pictures of the stuff we bought now, but will probably do a post on the haul at the end ;)