Gwangjang market (food market) + night club in Korea

Back to my throwback diary.

13th of Feb

Today, is the warmest day throughout this whole winter. It is 12 degree Celcius!! Thus, I decided not to wear my down jacket, but instead I wore a normal UNIQLO fleece jacket. 

Introduced by my friends, I went to yet another traditional market in Korea - Gwangjang Market. Yes, although this is a traditional market, the "departments" are well-sectioned. What I meant when the "departments" are well-sectioned is that they have the food department, household departments, fish and poultry departments,... While this may seem ok to me, but I was surprised is that the food department is well-sectioned too. Well, it is definitely not the kind we usually see where they separate fruit from vegetables. They section stores that sell Korean style pancake (or jeon in Korea), bibimbap, seafood, inners of poultry and many more food into 4 main streets. This means that when you go into a street, you will see different stores that sell the same Korean style pancake, with maybe a few stores that have more varieties; and another streets that sell solely seafood; and another streets that sell bibimbap and mandu. It is definitely a headache to choose which store to go to as they all sell the similar thing. What I can say is that if you opt for the safety, go for the one with many people; and if you want to have more challenge, you can try stores that have less people. 

Anyway, our main purpose to go Gwangjang Market is because of this:

빈대떡(Bindaetteok) - ground mung beans pancake [above]
Some meat pancake [below]

Well, actually not totally because of these pancakes. My friends came here and especially to this store because some celebrities came here. If I'm not mistaken, running man filmed in here cause I saw many stores are hanging the posters to attract customers.

Anyway, the pancakes are especially delicious especially the mung beans one, probably because it is something different from the usual meals I had. However, it is really pricey as it costs 4000 won for one piece. And you know what, we only ordered 1 piece of mung beans pancake and 1 piece meat pancake to share among 6 of us. The aunt was really mad as there were a lot of customers and here we were only ordering so few for so many of us?! Well, that was our plan to try as many food as we can here, so we had to save some spaces for other food, right? So, yea, we did receive a few "ugly faces" and we decided to finish it up fast and move on to other food.

As there were too many people, we decided to split into 2 groups so that we could move around easily. And, thus, the food hunting started. We, basically my group, surveyed around to see what food they have here and decided on the food we wanted to eat the most and shared them among us. So, we had sweet fried chicken, again, as my Indonesian friend is obsessed with chicken. We also had bibimbap as my Malaysian friend has always wanted to try it ever since she arrived Korea. The bibimbap is the usual bibimbap without meat and it tastes average. You know, rice, some vegetables and the sauce. That's all.

Bibimbap

She also had red bean tteok, her favourite red bean~ Well, this store has a long queue. However, the taste of it is not up to my expectation. Even my friends who love red bean said so. We preferred it to be sweet but this tteok was, unexpectedly, salty, which taste horrible for me. If it is sweet, I totally would have bought one.

Red bean tteok

And as for me, I chose to have mandu. These mandus were not up to my expectation as well. I still prefer the mandu we had in Insadong. Their fish mandu, which I don't really like is still way better than the mandu I had here. The design of this mandu, however, is cute. It is like a jelly fish.

After this "lunch", we decided to go to Dongdaemun as my friend wanted to shop for clothes, and as usual, I tagged along. But before we were leaving, it starts to rain (first rain in Korea!!). Luckily, we checked the weather forecast, which we did almost everyday to decide what clothes to wear, and we brought umbrella.

Well, the place we went is basically a shopping mall, and the clothes in shopping mall are usually more expensive. So, all I did is just following around them. However, one of my friends recommended me to try the soft ice cream here - remicone. They were famous for its milk ice cream with mint cotton candy and it is called "Thunder Bomb". The taste of the ice cream is unexpectedly milky, which is a good news for those who like strong milk taste.

Thunder bomb

If you do not favour the special menu, you can also customised the ice cream that belongs to you by following the steps below.

14th of Feb

Today, is the day I woke up the earliest or should I say yesterday was the day I slept the latest. Can you guess what we did that we had to stay awake all night? We went to a NIGHT CLUB - nb 2 in Hongdae!  Apparently, it is a club operated by YG entertainment and one of the BigBang members frequently visit to this club. Of course, my friend was hoping to meet them, which was why we took a long time "drawing" our face...XD I was planning to go in bare face but I was forced by my friends to "draw" as well. They gave me an excuse,"Please do not embarrass us", and that was how I obediently, but reluctantly, let them "decorate" my face.

We managed to catch up the last subway and went to Hongdae. Like yesterday, it was raining. So, we had to be careful to not get wet. Being a person that hates noises and smoke, it was my first time going to a club and I was nervous all the time. As we arrived, we saw a long queue and naturally we went to the back and wait.

The queue

Apparently, the later it is, the more expensive is the entrance fee and we had to pay 15000 won for it. The 15000 won comes with a free drink and apparently we could hop to nb 1 to get another free drink, but we did not. As we entered, we had to show our passport or ID to show that you are legal to enter. Then, we had to pay and they helped us with the entrance band wearing, together with a free drink coupon. Later, we had to be inspected if we had the valid entrance band. Overall, the security was strict.

As we entered, the smell of the smoke came *poof* with the noise of the music and the "how long can I withstand these" came into my mind. We were then lead to put our luggage into a bag and put it into a locker. As it was so noisy and so crowded, we got separated as soon as put our luggage, leaving me and my another friend. We were panicked on whether we should go to the floor below to look for them or wait for them in the second floor. We decided to wait a little while looking at the stage floor below hoping to search for their shadow. After waiting for about 30 minutes, we decided to go to the first floor to search for them.

The crowd in the first floor was scary. Passing through all these people was literally nightmare to me as I didn't expect the people to be so bold as to touching without permission. (Maybe this is how club works?) At first, it was shoulder. Then when I went pass another guy, my waist. As Taeyang's eyes, nose, lips, song was released, the situation got worse where another guy, literally wanting to pull me off my friend. I was so scared, nearly to crying, that I hold my friend's hand tightly. That's when a "fight" occurred between that guy and my friend. He was pulling me and my friend was pulling me as well. With the mind of getting of the guy, I pushed myself towards my friend, giving my friend a "helping hand" and of course she won. Yay, to finally getting off. My friend was worried about me going through the situation again that she sacrificed herself (she got touched instead... sorry) by having her arms over me while pushing through the crowd, despite her smaller frame.

The craziness of the crowd

Thankfully, after all this nightmare, we immediately found our friends. After staying below for a while, we swam our way up to the less crowded second floor and found a spot for all 7 of us to stand and enjoy the music. Of course, once in a while my friends got hooked up and me being ignorant to anyone who came close as I am not used to being around with guys and especially around with strangers. Since it was my first time in a club, I had no idea what to do and I just followed what my friend did (seriously, I'm lost and looked like a robot).

That night, we stayed until 5 am. I had an eye-opener of how does a club look like, and of course, the another part of my friends. The music, I had no idea if it was good or bad, but according to my friends, the DJ and the sound system are pretty bad. The guys in the club are mostly youngster (less old men), bold and having some good-looking bartenders and hot guys, for that, my friends were satisfied about it. However, all of these made me out of place and with this, I decided that having experience the club once in my lifetime is more than enough.

Since we were hungry and cold, we decided to drop by at Holly's cafe and had our breakfast. I think it was my first breakfast in Korea as I always sleep in. I ordered this wonderful toast:

Look at the cheese~~ so satisfying.

As we got back to our guesthouse, I had a shower before sleeping and after waking up was just lazing in the guesthouse.