This is a review of the popular studio Goguan in Seoul, where tourists go to dress up in Korean traditional outfits and have their photos taken professionally. To save you from reading the post in case you’re in a rush, TLDR my conclusion is that it’s not really as great as people made it out to be. It definitely is once in a lifetime experience to get your photo taken like that, but I don’t think it has to be Goguan, if you’re adventurous i’d strongly recommend shopping around and trying other studios.
myeongdong
[Food] 홍콩 반점 0410 (Hongkong Banjum) – Jjambbong & Jjajangmyeon
Giving this shop its own feature because of how much I liked it! 😀
We stumbled upon this shop by pure accident as we were walking along Bukchon Hanok Village. I think this shop has several branches everywhere and I even spotted it in Sinchon, so if you’re looking to visit, it shouldn’t be hard to find~
We were attracted by the jjajangmyeon 4000 won sign haha it stood out amongst all the expensive bukchon hanok village restaurants. We went in and the menu was on the wall. It’s in Korean though, so it might be a bit of a problem if you can’t read. It’s a chain eatery so they might have english menus, no harm asking them~ nevertheless this store specializes in a few things so it’s not really hard to order even without any menu at all.
We ordered our food and in around 5 minutes it was already served! Love the fast service!
Just FYI since I didn’t really know what was Jjambbong until that day, it’s a spicy seafood soup dish served with noodles. Usually they have rice variance of this dish too, Jjambboong-bab, in which they serve the soup with rice in or out of the soup. Jjajangmyeon is a noodle dish served with thick black soybean paste and chopped pork and vegetables, but you all probably know this already haha. Gunmandu is just panfried mandu.
When I was eating this food I kept thinking my parents would have loved to visit this store because they get so happy when they find such Chinese-inspired dishes in Korea xD
We ordered one 짜장면 Jjajangmyun (4000 won), 짬뿡밥 Jjambboong-bab (4500 won) and half serving of 군만두 (4 pieces, 2,000 won).
Special shoutout to the Jjambbong. At first we thought it was a Jjajangmyun specialized store because of the advertisement at the store front, but we realized afterwards based on the store decor and its website that it’s specializing in its Jjambbong. And truly it deserves to! The soup was super tasty ❤ I have to admit it might have some ramyun seasoning or msg in there to make it that tasty, but heck it was cheap and tasted so goood! Usually you don’t get Jjambbong that cheap so I was just appreciating every bite. The seafood was fresh, the soup not too spicy and has the right amount of savory, and I absolutely love rice in soup so that dish was basically made for me ❤
I’d recommend this place for sure, if you want something cheap for 4000 won that isn’t those typical Korean branch eateries. I’ve never made a post about those Korean eateries but basically they are eateries that provide almost every type of common Korean food all under one roof, and they are literally everywhere throughout Korea. Haha. Those are cheap and good but if you want something with more quality and taste, definitely Hongkong Banjum 0410 is where you can try to go.
Hongkong Banjum website: http://www.zzambbong.com/zzambbong/index.asp
They have plenty of branches but since we’re at it, I’ll list down the more common branches for easier viewing for those who don’t read Korean.
Sinchon Branch 2: (along what I term as ‘ sinchon madjib street’ with all my favorite food places~) via exit 3 or Uplex exit of Sinchon Station
Hongdae Branch: Via Exit 9 of Hongik Univ. Station
Myeongdong Branch 2: Via Exit 6 of Myeongdong Station. They have another branch further in Myeongdong and closer to Euljiro, but thought to leave this one here instead since the directions are simpler.
Gangnam Branch: Via Gangnam Station exit 11.
They have so many chains it’s impossible to list them all haha, if you can read Korean it’s gonna be a lot easier. If you can’t, well, if you’re really that keen to find one near your area, you can always contact me to ask and I can check for ya~
That’s all for this lovely 맛집! Do try it if you have the chance to 😀 The red/orange signboard is easy to spot so you might just spot one walking down some road. Haha.
Day 2 and 3: Myeongdong, “Moon Embraces the Sun” Musical, Digital Media City and Gwanghwamun
On Day 2, I received a Facebook message from Sam and she and Matthias just reached Seoul the day before! So we decided to meet at their place in Myeongdong because we needed to get EG sim card and they are only available in certain places in Seoul, Myeongdong being one of them.
So it’s Myeongdong again yay!
I like this place although it’s a rip-off to tourists, please do bargain when you purchase stuff, usually they’d allow cuts of 2000 won, any more is usually hard and depends on how good or convincing you are. For the sake of it, here are some terms:
깎아주세요 Gga-gga juseyo: “Please lower the price”
깎아주면안돼요? Gga-gga ju-myeon an-dwe-yo?: This is my own way of saying it, it’s a little more of a sad plea LOL “Is it not possible to lower the price? :(” and it gets the shopkeepers looking a little more flustered/somehow LOL.
저는 학생인데요… jeo-neun hak-saeng in-dae-yo: “I’m a student…” which is a way of saying you have no money. I tried this a few times and one time the shopkeeper replied “I’m also a student!” so i failed oh wells but it should work most times LOL.
We chatted with one shopkeeper and he cut the price for us nicely. He was asking us which country we liked better, Singapore or Seoul? And praised our country for being clean. It was awkward cuz it’s not that we couldn’t understand but how do we praise his country in return and even begin to answer if we like Spore or Seuol better?? I wouldn’t be able to answer these questions even in English.
Zenn was telling me to pull the ‘oppa’ card if the shopkeepers refuse, it COULD work but I never tried it! Oppa is a friendly way of a younger female person greeting an older male person. Oh yes on this note, Koreans typically ask for age pretty early in any conversation, in fact they hardly ever ask for my name before my age, cuz they wanna find out first how to talk to us. I’ve been lucky to meet Koreans younger than me so far so if I slip up on my formalities it’s okay hahaha. But when I meet older Koreans, especially elderly, I’m going to have to formalize my speech like by three levels OTL I’m REALLY bad at that…
Oh yes fun fact! 네 ‘Nae’ means ‘yes’ in Korean, and is a typical general response when talking to people to acknowledge what they said or answer their questions. For elderly though, we’re actually supposed to say 예 ‘Ye’ as it’s more polite, I had no freaking idea and we have been saying nae to everyone including the elderly asking us stuff ._. sorry!!
The street food too!! Super amazing and cheap :’) mostly ranging from 1,500 – 3,000 won (less than $5)
Ah btw here’s some explanation on EG Sim card for foreigners that we obtained on Day 2: https://darmawanders.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/eg-sim-card-for-foreigners/
Anyway it was a short trip because we had to head to Seoul Arts Center for Seohyun’s muscial! Yay finally!
The musical was great, based off a drama i really loved “The Moon that Embraces the Sun” ahhhhhhh i loved that drama so much I had to attend the musical, specially since Seohyun was playing. I understood less than half of it but oh wells it was still great :’)
As we left, we were lucky enough to bump into Taeyeon and Yoona who were leaving from backstage after watching Seohyun’s musical :)))) Really lucky to have seen all three of them up close in just the 2nd day of Seoul!! ❤
(As promised, no spazzing here, spazzing remains in IGAT. Let’s just say i had no idea they attended the musical and it was an amazing surprise :’))
Fast forward to 3rd day!
3rd day was a lot more lazy. We again slept in till the afternoon and headed down after that to Digital Media City because we heard the notice was up for MCountdown! For those who are unsure what it is, basically Korea holds 5 weekly music shows for music artists to promote their latest albums. M Countdown is one of them. Zenn and I wanted to go for at least 1 because currently both Taeyeon and Jonghyun are promoting TOGETHER for SM the Ballad and it’ll be so awesome to watch them perform live. The best part is that it’s free lol.
So how it works is that as soon as the notice is up, you’d have to head down to CJ E&M Center at Digital Media Center (at least for M Countdown) and take a selca with the notice and send it to the number posted there. The notice would be at some random wall in the area LOL. They’ll reply you with your queue number, mine was 23 and Zenn 24. What this means is that we were 23 and 24 in line for the non official fans queue. Official fans are those who paid to register membership and so they get in first no matter what. So let’s say on the day itself 300 official fans turn up and 300 is the quota that day, then you will never get through. But still, 23 and 24 were good numbers so it was pretty hopeful we could get in. We would have to return at night for a ‘roll call’ where they will confirm your registration and slash out those that didn’t appear. They’ll then tell you what time to come the next day to catch your artist’s recording live. Still no guarantee tho cuz as i mentioned, official fans always get priority.
Regardless, it’s nice we don’t have to physically queue, just get down early when you know the notice is up, so you can get a good number, and turn up for the roll call. Next day is a designated time so you can relax and if you’re not meant to enter cuz of the official fans, getting earlier isn’t going to help anything!
After this, we headed down to Kwanghwamun to explore, meet Shaun (another Yonsei student and also to get SM the Ballad album because we need it to enter music shows. Lol. Turns out it’s pointless though, because we found out later on there’s gonna be two fansigns going on and you have to purchase an album from the organizing party to qualify for the lottery/lucky draw! So we’d probably head down tmr and get those 🙂
Oh yes and SM the Ballad got cancelled .____. we were so disappointed to find out! They rarely ever cancel shows but I think it was a rare circumstance. So we won’t be going any music shows, but instead try to get a fansign.
We also met Shaun going to Yonsei!! He just arrived today so we had dinner with him~ nice to meet another Korean speaking Singaporean!! He said apparently Kwanghwamun was also a Running Man filming location but i didn’t take photo 😦 We walked around abit and ate somewhere with a really nice ahjumma but the food portion was so big lmao. When you see food prices a little pricey, e.g. 18000 won for one portion ($20ish), sometimes it’s not that the food is actually pricey, it could just be the portion was huge. We packed them back.
Good news is I seem to be catching on Korean a little faster now! After all the speaking with service staff I could catch on a bit faster when they speak, but my talking is still weak. Haha.
Two new Koreans from Jeju moved in today! They’re super cute and are EXO fans and we sat down together at 2am+ to watch Kim Yuna skate and own everyone. Koreans are SO proud of Kim Yuna it’s really cute ❤ she’s like their national treasure. The Koreans I watched with just kept sighing and proclaiming 멋있다 which means ‘She’s so cool’ haha. And she didn’t let them down yesterday – 1st place!!
That’s all for now! Today we’re separating to help each other get the albums for the two separate fansigns, so it’ll be interesting i think. We promised to get each other a 5000 won gift from the different sides of the world we’ll be in~ I’ll prolly explore Ilsan while I’m at it! 🙂 Shall plan my itinerary~
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~
darmawanders 