Today's plan was to visit one of the most famous theme park in Seoul, Lotte World. Lotte World is an amusement park with a mixture of indoors and outdoors activities. There are 4D theaters, roller coasters, water park rides and so on. We had to cross the Han River in order to reach Lotte World from Itaewon.
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| On the Subway Crossing Han River to Jamsil |
We took a subway to Jamsil station and after exiting the station underground, there were clear sign boards that points us towards Lotte World. It was connected to the subway station via an underground shopping mall. There were regular tickets and one-day-pass tickets sold. The regular one was for entrance only and you cannot take any rides. I think it caters for parents who are accompanying their children there. If you'd like to have fun, you have to purchase the one-day pass. It was quite early so not as crowded. We tried a 4D shooting game. Shi Keat was pretty good at it. After that we went on to take the Sinbad ride. We queued for 45 minutes but the ride was a huge let down. No excitement at all, just riding on the boat into dark passages. It was already lunch time after the ride. We wanted to take the indoor roller coaster but the waiting time was 90 minutes. I entered the queue and at about half an hour the waiting time was increased to 120 minutes. Queuing behind us were two young kids. They seem to be so excited about the ride, showing no fear at all. I wonder where are their parents. After queuing for about an hour and 45 minutes it was finally our turn. The ride was fantastic, with the roller coaster making 360 vertical turns and 540 degrees horizontal revolution at pretty high speed. The ride was only about a minute or so but it left us dizzy and high. After that I had waffle for some light lunch. The wafer girl was really cute.
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| Lotte World |
By then it was already around 3pm and it was getting super crowded. We later found out that that day was a public holiday, an election day. We went outdoors. The sun was scorching and was very crowded. The Hong Kong girls recommended us to try the Atlantis ride. It looked really exciting but the waiting time was 3 hours! In fact most of the outdoors rides had more than 90 minutes waiting time. We decided that we could not afford to queue for so long under the hot sun and headed back indoors. We tried another 4D shooting game and also some arcade games and decided to leave Lotte World. For those who decide to go Lotte World, I strongly recommend to get a "Magic Pass" whereby they fix the ride schedule for you and you don't have to queue (at least the queue for magic pass line is way shorter). I'm not sure whether you need to pay extra but what I heard from others after that day was that there is no extra cost.
After Lotte World we went to Gwangjang Market. It was very crowded. It's something like our pasar malam here, with many stalls selling foods and also groceries. The food stalls have stools around it for people to have meal there. We found that although there were many food stalls, it was mainly comprised of Kkalkoksu (knifed noodle), fried pan cake, seafood and Bibimbap. We sat down at one of the Kkalkoksu stall and ordered. Quan Yen ordered a soy milk noodle. It was a cold noodle immersed with soy milk "soup". He had a hard time finishing it. It was arguably one of the worst food we tasted, besides the prok elbow in Jeju (more on that later). However, the lady sitting beside Quan Yen seemed to be enjoying the soy milk noodle. After that we continued to explore the market and had some pumpkin porridge for dessert.
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| Gwangjang Market |
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| Kkalkoksu at Gwangjang Market |
Next we went to Dongdaemun. It was already 8++pm but the sky was still quite bright. In summer, the day in Seoul starts early and ends late, quite a good way to live actually. Dongdaemun looked a bit like Orchard Road. We were at a cross junction and were surrounded by famous shopping malls such as Doota, Migliore and Max Style.
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Doota! At Dongdaemun
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We went to Doota first as Shi Keat said it sells more fashionable clothes. And indeed the clothes sold there were top class albeit a bit more expensive, mostly at least 40000 KRW. The design was nice and elegant and there were many local brands too. I bought three shirts there and the good thing was they had tax rebate so all the items there are tax free if we declare it at the customs upon leaving Korea. We Later we headed over to Migliore, just beside Doota which sells cheaper but not so "atas" clothes. After shopping at Doota, Migliore's clothes were a bit ordinary. There was this shop owner who asked us where are we from. We told him and asked about the price. He was not very polite, a bit pushy, and spoke to us in Korean and took out a calculator and asked us to enter the price that we want for that shirt. We were a bit taken aback and decided to leave. We were not really interested in the shirt anyway. Nonetheless, it's another side of Korea that we experienced, the more straightforward facade.
On our way back to Itaewon, we bought Makgeoli and Soju to drink later that night at Mely's. We played Dai Dee and drank soju until around 2am. Holiday was fantastic. The next day would be our last day at Seoul. Time really flies.
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