Fxxk! We got scammed!
Day 6, 14 Sept 2017
Common ground: one of my favourite places of visit throughout my trip to Seoul. This is where I got myself a really nice phone cover. It was blue and had the common ground symbol on the back of it. It costs about 22SGD and yes I know haha but I hardly buy anything for myself when I am overseas so here's a start. No regrets cos I really love it :D
Hmm we had good looking and good tasting ice-cream at DARA cafe. The ambience was lovely and I am in love with pastel colours of the cafe. For the female readers: Here's a korean oppa
Kind of make me want to cafe hop and eat delicious ice cream when I get back in Singapore. Hahah. To me, I almost never visited such places in Singapore and travelling makes you find out things you never knew you enjoyed doing. We settled our lunch at the restaurant just beside it. I had seafood noodles while nathan and teng had mapo fried rice & jjangjangmyeon respectively. The chinese food here isn't too bad and the price ranges from 10-15 SGD.
I must say the shops and restaurants at Common ground are aesthetic in nature and they really make good photography spots. :) So dress well and bring along a good camera if you are part of the gram.You know the popular & mainstream blue container background which you see everywhere on instagram? It was under construction. Noooo.. So all we saw was planks and wood construction. What a pity!! But that alone was just a small down in my pleasant trip here.
Our next stop was Myeong dong. Its underground mall alone was good enough to make me splurge (like crazy) hahaha, I spent lots of money on the souvenirs. Also, I was looking for IU's Palette album. To my dismay, it wasn't there! The shop owner said it was out of stock and unavailable. It was the No. 1 item I wanted to get from this trip and needless to say I was pretty dejected. I have been a fan of IU since 2013 hahah. And I am so in love with her song Bam Pyeon Ji (Through the Night). We went up to the main streets and I love the street food , especially the chicken and potato twisters haahha & also the flashy signs everywhere.
Potato twisters that cost between 2000-3000 won, comes w cheese and onion flavour! It's a must try :)
It's like a cosmetic shopping paradise. We saw 3 or more Innisfree outlets within 50 metres. This applies to Etude house, Faceshop, Nature's collection and club clio. Yes you get my point. It's like running into a Rattata in Pokemon GO. They are literally everywhere!
Prior to my trip to Myeong dong, I had no intentions to buy cosmetic products. But seeing how my friends bought bundles and bundles of masks, I randomly bought some for myself haha. I bought masks, and some skin care products which I honestly doubt I will ever use it haha. Speaking of nature's collection, because we spent so much at the shop, the lady boss gave us one full set of Twice nature collection photocards FOR FREE. Omg, you could only get these limited photocards if we purchased some blusher or sth. Guess we had a good stroke of luck :) I felt like I was paying for these instead hahah, really happy that I got these cards :) #lootsoftheday What's funny was before this, I was actually taking pictures of the photocards on display because I thought I was not going to own them. Hahah
The LINE cafe was quite cute and appealing too. I decided this was where I should shop for souvenirs and shopped for almost all my souvenirs here. The things here don't come cheap but they are too cute to be left in the shop with a price tag. Oh wells, it's for my friends so I was willing to spend them. :) Anyways here's a rare pic of me hahah.
Walked a lot till my legs were tired and the cosmetics that we bought all in all were really heavy hahah. On our way back from Myeong dong, we had to walk pass the underground mall once again. And this time my instinct was right, a new Palette album was sitting there in the same shop. Of course, I bought it without any hesitation. :) So thankful for the buys I had today. It was literally the best buy for today 😬 Was really damn happy at that shop hahaha, I really love myeong dong despite it not being my top spot at all before the trip. Hmm I also realised that there were actually quite a lot of foreigners and chinese speaking koreans (or china hahaha not sure). And yesh pretty girls everywhere in myeong dong LOL
Sadly.. we ended the day on a very bad note again. We got scammed by a taxi driver. Apparently our ride that was approximately 2 train stations apart cost us about 30 bucks.. I should have made sure he started the taxi meter.
I was incensed and pissed that we got taken advantage and I could do nothing about it. Moreover the driver was being a pretentious and fake af. A huge slap across my face for thinking that he was funny and cool during the ride. Haishh, to me this is no different from extortion and I really hate dishonest people. It's such people that makes the world a disgusting place. But let's not let this incident affect me for long and also not let it put all the kind acts and friendliness of koreans to shame. Koreans are lovely people and I thank them for that. :) But I can't help but feel bitter for the night and I felt like I was to be blamed for this.. Sighs..
Btw we went back to Haha's bnb to seek help regarding the concert tickets & also to retrieve our luggage.
(Pre-amble: We ordered concert tickets online but it has been a day past the estimated time of delivery and the concert is tomorrow. Without which, our money will be gone to waste and we would not be able to see our favourite idols perform. Basically it was a worrying race against time!)
It was already rather late in the night. Felt bad for bothering Haha but she was our only hope and means of communicating with other locals. She offered to help us send the tickets via quick service if she manages to get through the ticket seller. Basically she was helping us to be the 3rd party to ensure that the tickets will reach us somehow. It was a mix of feelings - of both feeling bad and touched at the same time. She was very motherly and she went beyond her ways to help us in whatever way possible. Grateful, just grateful beyond words. I just hope that tmr the tickets will come & we will be able to watch the lotte family festival concert :)