Day 1: Mamas and Papas Hongdae Guesthouse, Ewha University and Myeongdong

After a long terribly restless flight and a bittersweet goodbye, we finally (barely) made it to our hostel via airport bus (only 10,000 won!), dragging our luggages and stuff. I have to say the location was a little more disappointing than I expected but I don’t regret my decision because I really love this little hostel. It’s more like an apartment with dorm rooms rather than a full guesthouse, which is the best part. Since I’m on this topic I’ll write a review of this dorm in case anyone is looking for one.

First off, this dorm is located 10-15 min walk away from Hongik Univ. station exit 9. The walk feels really long when you’re dragging your luggage and when it’s cold, but personally it hasn’t bothered me yet because I see a lot of interesting sights on the way.

So the host of this hostel is actually this guy, didn’t catch the name cuz he disappeared, but there’s this girl from Malaysia called Nisa who works here. It’s super cool cuz she travels a lot and works here when she’s in Seoul. And she’s really friendly and always willing to talk to the guests. She told us we can only come in at 2pm so we went off to explore Yonsei and Ewha area! Which were pretty and we even did our own photoshoot otl.

We returned around 2pm and checked in to the hostel, where we met this girl Ran from Texas. She’s pretty cool because she’s been to Yonsei for exchange, and is currently here because she’s getting a teaching job in Korea. Pity we met her when she was going to leave.

There are also people from our cohort going for exchange that are currently staying here, this guy named Patri, and this girl Alexandra whom we just met briefly and will be moving in here today (i’m typing this on Day 2 so yep). Alex is going Sogang too and is staying all the way till 28th like me, so she’s practically my roommate for the next 10 nights stay in this guesthouse. Haha.

I digressed from talking about the dorm. So the room is actualy very very tiny, the whole place looked tinier than on picture of course, I was disappointed at first but later on I found out there is basically everything I”m looking for so I’m quite happy. There’s a mirror in the dorm, small lockers to store our stuff, a table top and a rack hanger which was important for hanging our coats and stuff. They also provide hangers and like this thingy which was so useful fot storing stuff:

I also utilize the ledge for my own purposes cuz basically i think i gt the best spot in the room. HAHA.

Cuz it’s a girls dorm, typically people leave pretty fast. There were this two Korean girls who stayed overnight, nice people, nursing students one year younger than us, they were sweet and talked to us as unnies. Well technically I said 22 but they thought it was 22 Korean age so they assumed we were same age at first and used banmal on us. But after that when they found out 23 they looked really sheepish and treated us as unnies LOL. Yep age really matters a lot here. One of them was called Young-un but unfortunately we didn’t get to hang out with them or get the other’s name or kept in touch. But it was a nice encounter.

Like I said, small dorm and both me and zen have turned our beds into our own fortress so not a neat room, but everything is there. And it’s super warm and cosy at night with the heater and a thin blanket, but it gets hot and stuffy when we dress up and close the door so we leave it open in the day. They have lockers so it’s quite safe.

This is the living room area! Small but comfy to laze around and talk to people. I talked to a couple of people yesterday together with Nisa (the girl on the sofa), but they were drinking Soju and beer and I zoomed back to my room with the excuse of wanting to bathe LOL cuz I didn’t really want to drink with people I don’t know at all. /anti-social

As you can see it’s 230pm and we ony just finished breakfast and getting dressed. but it’s okay we barely slept on the flight so we slept two nights’ worth. Haha.

The wifi is here is awesome btw!!

The bathroom’s also nice because of how complete it is. Like i said, apartment converted to hostel rather than a guesthouse with cubicle style toilets which i hate because most times they turn out disgusting. Mamas & Papas provide shampoo which made my hair really smooth like im totally gonna buy that for the rest of my stay here, and soap and conditioner. Toothpaste too. Towels I’m not too sure, I brought my own so I didn’t ask.

The nice cosy bathroom! There are only two bathrooms but it’s okay to use the guy’s one to bathe as well.

Breakfast supposed to close at 11am but well we just ate today at 1.30pm so *shrugs* It’s just bread / toast, coffee and eggs you can cook yourself. Not much but honestly more than enough, i don’t eat fancy breakfast.

Ewha was really as beautiful as people said it was. But I was disappointed because there wasn’t as many places to shop in as Myeongdong, although people said that Edae was supposed to be a good area to shop sigh.

The main gate that every other tourist always takes pictures of

Loving the style of the buildings!

We even did photoshoots *insert hipster quote here*

We had street food as our lunch, awesome ddokbokki!!

At night we went to Myeongdong to explore the area, it feels very much like Japan. Myeongdong is awesome, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be my fav shoping area very soon. Korea has these leggings with a skirt thing which is super convenient because they are so so warm and snuggly and the skirt makes your outfit pretty. Only $10 bucks btw. Everywhere in Myeongdong and Edae. They also have short-leggings combinations and various designs. Gonna stock up on those!

Koreans are apparently very fascinated with us because we are creatures who seem Korean and can speak basics and sound like a Korean, but when they speak to us in Korean we always blank out for 3 seconds before understanding and they often have to repeat slower with a couple of English words. So to them we apparently speak Korean pretty well already LOL but nah i disagree, we have so much to improve on. I’m sure by the end of it we’ll become better if we continue trying to speak in Korean more. It’s more of training the speed in which we conjugate sentences in our head rather than anything else.

And also, we’ve been approached by at least 3 different groups of Korean in just one day and they asked us for directions. Which got us very stunned cuz first of all they speak fast, next they are all Koreans, and lastly we have no idea how to reply cuz we don’t have direction and we can’t speak well enough. Most of the Koreans we met were just shocked when finding out we weren’t Korean LOL.

Ciao~