Sunday, January 29, 2017

Cafe Life: Make Your Own Phone Case Cafe

Seeing as I need all the coffee, I am always on the lookout for new cafes. My friends and I recently learned about a new cafe where you can drink coffee and make your own phone case. This was a must as soon as we learned about it and I plan on going back a million times to make a phone case for every season.

DB Story is a cafe in Hongdae, Seoul. It's a small cafe that you can find on google maps but could easily miss if you don't look up (ALWAYS LOOK UP). You walk up some sketchy stairs to the smallest room known to man. For us, it was packed and we couldn't really move around. You can't just sit down, you have to go up to the front and put your name on a waiting list for a seat (a mistake we made by trying to sit down first... whoops). Seating is very limited and it can take awhile to get a table. But, they give you a tray to start picking out what you want on your phone and this could take forever as well. So the time balances out. They have lots of styles of phone cases to choose from but if you have an uncommon phone, you should probably bring your own phone case (my friend has a Sol, the shittyest phone on Earth and there are no phone cases for it). I have an I-phone and there were lots of options for that phone case.

Once you pick out your case, it's time to pick out the decorations. There are hundreds of pieces to choose from. You can go with any style you want for your phone. It can be super cutesy, or a little punk, and even really sporty. There are shelves with lots of little bowls and you can pick out anything and everything you could imagine for your phone. There is also a large selection of decorative glues in lots of colors. But if you don't want decorative glue, they provide super glue when you go to pay.

After you have picked out all the decorations you need and don't need. You go up to the front counter to pay. All my decorations, black glue, and phone case cost around 15 dollars. (none of us actually ended up ordering coffee, so I cannot tell you if the coffee is good. We were too excited for making the phone case). They provide tweezers and you can pick out a nozel for your glue, depending on how you want the glue to turn out.

We all had a blast laughing about how terrible we were at making our phone cases. We honestly had no idea what we were doing but we loved every minute of it. I also am totally in love with how my case turned out. When you are done putting everything on, they stick it in a cake box to dry for a few days. Then you can pop it out and put it on your phone. If you have time, I highly suggest giving this cafe a visit, especially with friends (you can make a game of making phones cases for your friends).

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Adventure Time Korea: Bukchon Hanok Village in Seoul

Accidental shot from my selfie stick
Just because you are living in Korea and even in Seoul, doesn't mean you shouldn't take the time to do the touristy things. I think a lot of the time people want to be distinguished as a local rather than a tourist. But.... there is nothing wrong with being a tourist. It's fun to see things and do the tourist thing every once and awhile. It's great being a local and knowing the best dives and having the ahjumma at the kimbap restaurant know your favorite roll. However, it's also fun trying new things and going to the popular places that the tourists are flocking too.



This brings me to one of our many tourist weekends in Seoul. This weekend's focus was the Bukchon Hanok Village, which is a small area filled with Korean traditional houses. If you take the subway line 3 and get off at Anguk Station, you walk right into the village. It does take some walking but you can follow the crowds of people or just wonder around until you find something. There is a lot of walking with this and many hills to go up and down but these are well worth a look. You can roam up and down the streets looking at traditional houses. There are shops along the way and if you would like you can even rent a hanbok (Korean traditional clothing) to wear as you walk around. Great for pictures and the experience. When you walk up to the top you get some great views of Seoul.


There are a lot of museums in the area. One of the best is the Traditional House Museum. It gives you the opportunity to walk through a traditional house and yard. You can read the history and use of each room. It was really interesting to look through and had a beautiful garden. I couldn't tell you how to get here though... we literally happened upon it while we were exploring the houses. (You are going to read that a lot in this post.... actually in this blog). You can't actually walk through the rooms in the house. But you can look into the windows and doors like a peeper. The museum is free. You can walk right in and start exploring. (Pro Tip: It's also the only free bathroom in the area, so you get a free museum trip and a free bathroom. Complete score!)


Must have shot of our coffee
When we came down from the Village, we needed coffee because well we always need coffee. There is a road with tons of restaurants and coffee shops. I'm not going to lie, most of the places in the area are overpriced because it is for tourists. The word bougie went through my head when we passed by a lot of the shops. But we did end up finding this really cool coffee shop. It was up a steep stairway and the name is definitely what drew us in. The shop was great with tons of paraphernalia and cool artifacts around the shop. The guy behind this counter was super nice and his English was great. It is mainly coffee and juices, we were actually hoping for smoothies, but the coffee was not a disappointment.It was a great break from the heat because we were sweating like pigs.

We did it! Yeah!
I don't know if I should be in here
After our coffee break (read air conditioning break because summer in Korea is death), we went on with the exploring. Once again.... this is one of those things where we just kept walking and happened upon a mountain. We decided it was a must to climb up it. Samcheong Mountain was the name and we were determined to see what was at the top. There were a million trillion bijillion stairs. I love exercising.... however I was dying up these stairs. We had to take so many breaks (embarassing side story, I sweat from my knees pretty bad.... I know it's weird. Anyways I was wearing red jeans that day and it looked like my knees were faucets leaking water. My friends haven't let my knee sweat go to this day). I wanted to give up a lot but it was well worth the climb because the top was amazing. We ended up on a wall with cubbies (sniper holes that we don't know if we were supposed to climb in... it didn't say not to go in.... please don't deport me) to climb in and views of Seoul that were amazing. Apparently if you keep going you need your ID or military clearance... I don't know... We stopped because we had left one friend behind because she was scared of heights and crying on the wall.


Once we came back down, you would think we were done. But no we kept walking and found the Korean Folk Museum (once again, happened upon... it's a pattern). This is also a free museum you can walk through. There are restaurants and lots of other museums in the area. There are some beautiful temples and more historical things to look at. There is a kids zone with fun crafts to do. You can see men and women walking around in traditional clothing. We had fun walking through it and taking pictures and reading the signs (all of these were in Korean and English). There were some statues of the Chinese zodiacs that you can take your picture with, so of course we did that.

After walking through the Folk Museum, we were officially done. Our feet hurt, we needed a shower, and we stank.... like super stinky foreigners walking around. We decided it was time to head back. But if you want to keep going, there is a lot more to see. You don't have to know the way or use your phone to find anything. We only knew the first stop and from there we were constantly "lost". We did lots of fun things and all of this was just happened upon while walking around. Don't forget to be complete tourists and take lots of pictures for the gram. And definitely don't forget your selfie stick, you'll need it and you won't be a proper tourist without it.








Friday, January 27, 2017

Adventure Time Korea: Being a Hongdae Tour Guide

A few months ago (read like 6 maybe 7 months ago), I found out that my friends hadn't been properly introduced to Hongdae in Seoul. For anyone who has ever read anything about Seoul, Hongdae is mentioned A LOT. Hongdae is known as one of the places to go to party. There are many great places to go to party in Seoul, but if you want a crowded place with a lot of English speakers and other foreigners (that's not Itaewon) then Hongdae is for you. I took it upon myself to properly introduce them to Hongdae.... By properly, I do mean I took them to exactly the same places that my predecessors at work showed me.

We stayed at a great hostel that we have stayed at a few times since then. It was close enough that it was maybe a 5 minute walk to the main street. But far enough off to the side that the noise and drunk people didn't effect us. The owners are really nice and the beds are comfortable. Also, they have kpop posters on the wall and usually some band is singing on the TV. The showers are always warm (see previous post). We stayed in a 6 bed dorm for all girls. (Family House Tel Hongdae shout out).

First, I took them down the main street in Hongdae to look at a few of the murals and explore the shops. There are lots of street vendors and places to get cheap clothes and accessories. You could spend hours walking up and down the streets shopping and eating. A trip to Hongdae isn't complete without stopping to watch the street dancers. There is usually a few groups of competing street dancers. They are usually promoting something but they speak too fast and I can't understand them. However, I have gotten free coffee a few times while standing there. They are usually there from late afternoon and then leave to the clubs at maybe 10ish. There are also singers and magicians. Depending on your Korean level, you may or may not like the magicians. But most of them are really funny and entertaining to watch (magic is it's own language).

In the middle of shopping we stopped to try the latest rage here, Light Bulb Drinks. They are ades but they put them into light bulb shaped cups and the straws have lights. We went to one of the vendors with the longest line because there was a whole ritual the vendor had while making it. (You can see a video on my instagram). They don't taste any better than a normal drink and are actually quite small for their price. To be honest, it's just an experience to have. We enjoyed watching it being made and taking pictures with our cups (we did it for the gram) (see gram photo below).

This street is packed and sweaty as the depths of hell in summer (which is when we were there). But you can dip in and out of shops and cafes all day. You can see the sweaty sheen in all the photos (aka that glow life). We had to take quite a few showers over the course of the weekend.

Anywho, once you hit dinner time, there is a plethora of restaurants to choose from. You can get anything your heart desires. But as anyone who has lived in Korea for more than a few months will tell you, LOOK UP! There are so many restaurants and cafes on the second and third floors of buildings. You are cheating yourself if you don't look up and try the restaurants above eye level. Word to the wise, don't try to eat dinner too late, you won't have many options. I have mentioned before that most drinking places also serve food. But this is not proper dinner food, it is usually snack foods. If you want a proper meal, you need to go out at dinner time.

Speaking of drinking places, there are tons where you can sit and drink for hours with friends and meet new people. However, if you are a foreigner or want to meet foreigners, there is a place known for it's abundance, The Park. Do I know the name of this park.... no.... but I know how to walk there(hashtag foreigner life). But, honestly, I have not met anyone who has been to Hongdae more than once that doesn't know what you mean when you say The Park. Since it was my friends first time, I had to take them there. Now, let me paint a picture for you. There is a graffiti covered park with trash stacked up all around the sides. In this big open place, there are tons of people standing around with soju, beer or maeggoli(spelling is hard) bottles, just drinking. There is usually a group having a rap battle in one corner and maybe a few singers performing off to the side. You will see lots of foreigners just getting tanked. Soju is really cheap from the convenience store, so this is a cheap place to go that you don't have to buy food to drink there.

From there, many people (I think... maybe.... so I've heard) go to one of the millions of clubs in Hongdae. I decided to take my friends to one of the most popular (or was one of the most popular.... I may not be "with it"). NB2 is a hip hop club. Usually clubs in Korea play EDM music, but NB1 and NB2 both play hip hop. NB2 is a giant club but it's always packed to the point of sardines. The line stretches way out to the street. (Pro tip: go to NB1 first, they will give you a wrist band for both clubs and leave your stuff at this much smaller club across the street. Then you can skip the line head into NB2 and by head in I mean try to push into the pit of people). Summer time in this club is stinky and death. The moment you step in, you are in a sauna of sweat and there is no relief. (Note: Winter time it's a nice warm place to dance). If you go onto the stage, there is an air conditioner and there is a back way onto the stage by circling the outer corners of the club buttttttttt the stage is still hot and packed. That being said, we still danced for hours and it's always a blast even through the uncomfortableness.

The next day we went to Sinchon. This is actually one stop over from Hongdae. There is every makevup brand you can imagine on this street. For any make up lover, this is the place to go. There is lots of shopping, cafes and food places as well. On the back streets there are a lot of drinking places for later at night. There is also usually some sort of singing or dancing exhibition going on. We happened to go on the day the Summer Water Festival was happening. There were blow up water slides and blow up pools with floaties. It looked like a lot of fun but unfortunately we were not dressed appropriately to play in the water. We took a few pictures and then went to a cafe to cool off. One of the best parts of summer in Korea is bingsu. Bingsu is a bowl of ice flakes filled with fruit and other sweet things. It is a great way to cool off on a hot day.

After lunch and desert we headed to Ewha Women's University. Also just one stop away from Sinchon. Ewha has great outdoor shopping in all of the latest styles in Korea. The clothes are really cheap but the quality isn't great. However, it is good shopping if you want to keep up with Korean fashion without breaking the bank. You can buy a whole new wardrobe without being too broke to buy food for the next month. I could write a whole "How-To" post about shopping in Korea. But I digress.....

After our millionth shower, we went back out that night and did it all over again. We called it an early night because we had to go back to Cheonan the next morning. My friends said that it was a great introduction to that area of the city and we got to do all of our favorite things. I can't speak for all the foreigners (duh) but from what I've read and heard (and learned from predecessors) this is a pretty normal introduction to Hongdae.





Thursday, January 26, 2017

Adventure Time Korea: Going Down to Gwangju

Hello, my name is Amy and I am going to tell you about the Great Chuseok Adventure 2016. During the Chuseok holidays some friends and I decided to take a trip down to Gwangju. A couple of friends and I packed up and took the long bus ride down to Gwangju. Before I tell you about the trip, I'll give you a short background as to why we decided to go there.

When I first decided to move to Korea, I was between two job offers. One was in Gwangju and the other was in Cheonan (where I currently reside). Gwangju is one of the larger cities in Korea and I was tempted to take that job offer. However, Cheonan is a transportation hub and a lot closer to Seoul. But I was always curious what I was missing from not moving to Gwangju. I finally decided that I should see what I missed by moving to Cheonan. I by no means know for sure what my life would have been like if I had moved to Gwangju and the short four days there by no means gave me the most proper look into life there. But curiosity killed something that one time and I thought maybe it would spare me, it didn't.

As I mentioned, Gwangju is one of the larger cities in South Korea. It is known for its art and beautiful scenery. My friends and I were really excited to see the new city and did a lot of research into what we should see when we went there. We went there armed with a list of things we should do, see and, most importantly, eat.

First things first, the bus ride was an hour longer than expected. I think this was due to the holiday traffic, it was a total of 4 hours sitting on the bus (note to self by train tickets months in advance for holiday trips). We made the most of it, taking pictures and eating snacks along the way. When we arrived, we had no idea where to go from the bus station. We were a little confused because near our bus terminal back in Cheonan, it's like the downtown of the city. But it was quite empty around this bus terminal. We came to the conclusion that this was probably because of the holiday. Most of the big cities are empty on Chuseok and the people are at home with their families. Once we found a taxi stand, we spent a good amount of time trying to explain to the cab driver where we wanted to go and he kept pushing the address away when we tried to give it to him. Eventually we convinced him we could give him directions in Korean and he didn't need to use the translate on his phone. We got dropped off close to our hostel..... however.... I don't know how to put this in great terms. I was the one who booked our hostel, it was cheap but had great reviews and photos. But I may not have chosen the best location. We were dropped off around a lot of abandoned buildings that look like they had been taken down by fire or just fallen into disrepair. The area was probably one of the shadiest areas I have seen since I moved here (shady being a relative term, South Korea is one of the safest countries and even through the rough looking surroundings we never felt unsafe enough to walk around at night. Although ghosts seemed like a fair assumption of something that would attack us).

The Gwangju Adventure Crew
On to more positive things. After our trek through the ghosts and ghouls, we found our hostel in the middle of a lot of love motels. But our hostel was a beacon of awesomeness. It was super clean and seemed to be recently updated. The owner was really nice as well, he was always trying to feed us all the food all the time. We were not too far away from most of the things we wanted to visit. However, upon talking to coworkers, we were located on the wrong side of the city. I totally recommend it though, I Am Guesthouse in Gwangju.




Ducks falling into soup pots T-T
We had read that Gwangju was known for two different types of foods, Duck Soup and Galbi. We were very close to a road known as Duck Soup road. There were supposed to be tons of soup restaurants. We decided that this should be the first thing we did because we love food. We immediately found the marker for it, it was a statue of ducks falling into soup pots. It was funny but we felt a little bad for standing and laughing at it. We walked around the streets and got lost. We found a restaurant in a back alley where no one was walking and no other people were eating, This is always a good decision.... not.... not always a good decision. We order the Duck Soup. It came with barbecue duck before the actual soup. It was very delicious. But we were getting a little full by the time the soup came out in this huge pot. The soup was quite tasty. The texture was different than anything else we had tried in Korea. It was creamy, except it was lacking any sort of cream. It had a lot of leafy greens and big pieces of tender duck. The sides (because you always have a million sides at any korean restaurant) were a bunch of types of kimchi. They all had a unique flavor and were interesting to try. All in all  it was a pleasant experience and the food tasted great going down..... Fast forward to a few hours later when we were all laying in bed feeling nauseous. One of us (not me) was puking her life away in the bathroom. Two of us (this included me) were just nauseous but not as bad as the third. Now, this cannot be blamed on the restaurant. Duck is a much greasier meat. None of us usually eat  very greasy food (although there are many fried chicken restaurants in Korea, we just tend to avoid them). And the puker.... well she did admit that she has puked every time she eats duck.

Our Gwangju adventure wasn't having the best start. We woke up the next morning with new hope. However, it was shortly dashed when we learned we didn't know how to use the hot water and we all had to take cold showers (the whole weekend was a slew of cold showers.... other people took warm showers and we asked how it worked but time and time again we could never get the showers to work. On top of this it was a big community shower, none of us are exhibitionists. So we were all running into the showers when we were sure everyone was asleep and trying to shower as quick as possible so no one else would see our lady bits.) After a cold awakening, we decided to go back to the bus terminal, where most the life seemed to be. We got coffee and plotted our day.

Pungnam Lake
World Cup Stadium
This whole build up has brought me to what we did and what I recommend you go and see in Gwangju. We started the day going to Pungam. It is a lovely lake with a lot of hiking around it. It gives some great views of the city and is a wonderful place to have a picnic. We wondered around the park having photoshoots and stopping to eat the millions of pounds of bread we brought for our picnic. There were some really fun exercise parks there as well, with some equipment we have never seen in Cheonan (we stop at every exercise park to play on the equipment). A short walk from there, you can visit the World Cup Stadium. It's worth taking a quick look at and there are some stairs that are good for a quick photo op. But now came the hard part, getting a taxi back to our hostel. We couldn't find a taxi for ages and did a lot of walking. But hey, cardio.

View from atop a random trail
Art Street Photo Op
That night we went looking for the famous art street. We had tried to find it our previous night but only ended up getting lost. Finally, we found it, it was very quiet at night and made for an interesting view. We made note of a lot of cute coffee shops and brunch places to visit the next day. Finally, and I do mean finally again, after being in Gwangju for almost two days, we found the people. We finally found the people. Everywhere we had gone, the people had been so scarce. We were getting worried that the zombies had taken the city. Around art street there are lots of cool statues to look at and a few murals. We found lots of excuses to stop and pose for the camera. Our walk back to our hostel that night was filled with running and screaming. We all talked about how if we had been back in our home country walking in a place that looked like it did around our hostel, we would have DEFINITELY been robbed. But we were never bothered and our pockets were unscathed.

Coffee Made by a Handsome Man
Angry Bear Cookies
By day three we were desperate for our two favorite activities, sitting at cute cafes and shopping. We had read that there were some really artsy cafes and great street shopping in Gwangju. One of these was not a disappointment. We had coffee at the cutest cafe named Full House Coffee. The shop was filled with knick knacks that were all for sale. It was covered wall to wall with notes and pictures from people all over the world. Our coffees were delicious and made with love. We also got the cutest cookies as service with the coffee. The owner was chatty and easy on the eyes ;) . Fueled by coffee we decided to go down to the underground shopping we had seen the night before. There were lots of little stores filled with things we usually see in the underground in Cheonan. There were a few resale shops and trendy shops that had some really unique pieces. But overall, the shopping was nothing special.

Cutest of the Cafes



We decided to go out that night since we had finally found the people. We went to a drinking place. People in Gwangju seemed friendly enough. We enjoyed sitting around and chatting and went home much later through insane amounts of rain. We slept in the next day(read hungover) and lounged around because it had been raining on and off our whole trip.

Graffiti with a message?

After four days in Gwangju we finally made our way back to Cheonan. The bus station was starting to fill up again as people came back to the cities from their hometowns. Gwangju was an interesting trip and it was great to see what life could have been had I moved there instead of Cheonan. I would recommend it. But if you are planning a trip to Gwangju... make sure to stay in the right area of town. And don't go when it is raining all weekend. And maybe go when there are more people (if you like people, if you hate people then Chuseok is a great time to go). But a few suggestions 1) make sure to have an itinerary, even down to the restaurants 2) contact a person who lives there or has traveled there to find out what is good and bad 3) have some sort of knowledge of how to read a map.