Short visit to Amore Pacific and N Seoul Tower!

1st of Feb

Our schedule today was visiting to Amore Pacific - a leading cosmetic company in Korea. However, you might not find any "Amore Pacific" cosmetic brand in the market as it is a company that develops other famous cosmetics brands such as Laneige, Iope, Innisfree, Sulwhasoo and others. Its factory is located in Osan and at 12.07pm, we took a train in Seoul Station. The journey took about an hour.

Before we proceeded to the factory, we had lunch in one of the famous restaurant in Osan - jjusam jjusam. We ordered korean style bbq pork and octopus and it comes with a table full of banchan!! 

Look at the amount of Banchan and those are only part of it.

Just by looking at how the owner of the restaurant helped us with bbq-ing the porks and octopus made our saliva dripped.  

Right: Pork
Left: Octopus

It was indeed delicious and the owner even told us how to eat it in a Korean way - which is wrapping pork, octopus and pickles in a salad kind of vegetables (no idea what it is called). Basically, those were what I ate. Before leaving, we saw a coffee machine and to our surprise the coffee is free!! And so, we all each took one cup of it. Free thing is always good~

Then, we went to the bus station to catch a Number 31 bus to Amore Pacific. However, after waited for about half an hour and the bus was not arriving, we decided to take a taxi. It costs 5500 won although it varies among all of us. 

As we arrived, we were welcomed by a "tour guide" in Amore Pacific. As cameras are not allowed, there will be no pictures and videos of it. As the start of this visit, we were all given a tablet to make our own personal lipstick. We were told to fill in our names, the words we wanted to engrave on it and the lipstick colour we want. It was definitely not easy to think a sentence out of a sudden and we all ended up having almost the same sentence about dream or having a date engraved on it. 

Then, the visit of Amore Pacific started. We were brought to visit Garden Story, where the stories of Amore Pacific are gathered in. The visit started with an introduction of Amore Pacific - history of the founder and how Amore Pacific came about. To cut the story short, the story of Amore Pacific started with a mother and a child (the founder) in a kitchen making a hair gel from Camellia, which unexpectedly became a hit among the commoners. Thus, Camellia is their company's logo and mother is the root of Amore Pacific.  

After that, we were shown the first product of Amore Pacific, which is ABC pomade made in 1951, and the first cosmetic product of Amore Pacific - Melody Cream. We were also shown the ingredients and products and were allowed to feel the nature by touching their raw ingredients, such as Ginseng, Camelia, Green Tea, Soybean and etc. Later, we were shown the advertisement and posters of Amore Pacific from the past and we were allowed to be a "model" for a short period of time. We posed in front of a camera (we have 2 chances) and then, we had to pick which pictures we preferred, choose the templates and adjust the size of our picture. Of course, we were given a chance to visit their factory and know the process of how they make their products to packaging (though not in details). 

What impressed us more is that how Amore Pacific made the Story Garden. It is luxury and advance. I do not know if they adjust the timing perfectly or that it has a sensor that can perfectly identify the "tour guide" and made everything seems like a magic show. I also like how they arrange the flow of tour as though we were really in a time machine. We were very satisfied and even our only guy in this exchange had fun with the tour. This tour took an hour and at the end of the tour, we received our special gifts.

A customised picture and a lipstick engraved with customised words

For our dinner, we were brought to eat chicken, this time not delivery but in a restaurant. We ordered a hot spicy chicken, a honey chicken and a garlic chicken.

Hot Spicy Chicken

Garlic Chicken

Honey Chicken

The chickens were tender and flavourful. However, we (girls) were not very fond of them after having eating too much meat these days. 

Moving on to the last activity, which is going to N Seoul Tower, previously known as Namsan Tower. We took a bus and then transfer to another bus (which we actually don't have to, but because it was said so in the net, so we followed it. We can actually took the first bus straight up to the tower). After we arrived at the final station, we had to climb a short road to reach to the tower and the night view is truly amazing. After about 10 minutes, we arrived and here is the tower. 

N Seoul Tower

We did not go into the tower but just walked around the tower. This place, I am sure most of you know, is famous for couple, where couple can lock a couple lock onto (fences?) or a tree.

Couple locks onto fences

Besides having a couple lock, couples can also write onto a magnet (I supposed) and stick it onto a wall, like below.

Also, it has a wonderful night view of Seoul and the view is definitely mesmerising, like stars or galaxy on the ground (though my pictures may not look like it due to the bad quality of phone camera and bad taking photo skills).

With all these beautiful sceneries and couple activities, it is definitely a best place for couple to visit!

2nd of Feb

Today, we were having discussion on what we think of K-wave and even drew a mind map after the discussion. We also discussed on the activities we Eps want to add in and also prepared on tomorrow's activity.