I foresee a lot of sad faces in this post ): Oh look here's one

 Last breakfast ):

 Tenderly wrapping her box of cherries with clothes

 We decided to turn on the telly for the first time and flip through the channels. This was the only one in English.

 Apparently it was a kid's show.

Wow.

 We set off to Seoul Forest and were lucky enough to board this ridiculous cute train, which was decorated with such designs of weird, shapeless creatures. Every carriage in the train had a different design with the same recurring creatures, and in the carriage we were in, every door had a different design. One had a huge zipper "unzipping" the train door, another had a huge lock, and this one had two of the weird shapeless creatures crashing into each other.

Singapore mrt please.

 On our way to Seoul Forest! The "wild" flowers on the way were so colourful


 Seoul Garden Forest

There were so many gardeners around planting and taking care of the plants


 After a long walk under the sun, we finally reached the deer section.

They had two kinds of deer, one of which was the Chinese water deer, which I was pretty excited to spot since it has two walrus like tusks. Unfortunately we only saw the normal deer with big white spots .__. And we couldn't get close to them ):

 Totally windy

 Well at least they bothered to build a bridge over the deer enclosure for us to see them

 I don't know why, but I find it really cool/ fascinating how Seoul is surrounded by such huge hills, and the houses and buildings just crawl up, over, and under the hills like it's no big deal. Singapore's just... flat.

Like a pancake.


 Crossing the road to the other side of Seoul Forest, and boy was it congested. An unfortunate thing about Seoul: the air quality isn't very good. Every day I was there, I was quite certain I cleared my dirt out of my nose at the end of the day than when I am in Singapore.

After seeing the deer, it was off to Hongdae (again, but the place is really quite fun to walk around) for our 4000 won 짜장면 lunch~ :D

 Hidden Mickey

 짜잔(면)!

omg my first Korean pun

It was so delicious. I can't even... And different from the one at nex. The one at nex is nice too. I really love the flat noodles, the sauce is a little salty (less salty now, thank god), and they really shred the cucumbers to thin slices. This one had thicker noodles (still nice and chewy in their own right), fatter cucumber slices (not as fun to eat as the thin ones, unfortunately), and sweet sauce that was neither spicy (thank heavens) nor salty at all.

Unfortunately, there were loads of onions.

But it was still delicious (:

 The name of the shop we had our lunch at. We had to go downstairs to the basement, where the restaurant was. It seemed a tad shady at first, but downstairs, the place was super cosy and it was buzzing with activity. So we knew we'd picked the right place for our last (sobs) lunch.

Walked around Hongdae a bit and........ 킬미 힐미 omfg /HIGHS/

I know they also filmed the Yona bit in Hongdae, but coming across this... :DD

Speaking of Hongdae, the previous day when we'd first visited Hongdae, we came across this group of five guys in matching red varsity-ish jackets being followed around by a group of cameramen and attracting a bit of attention.

Of course the automatic conclusion was to assume they were some Kpop group. Unfortunately even Rachel didn't know who they were. So she spent the rest of the day wondering who they were. Ticked off the bucketlist: meet a Kpop/ Kdrama person in Korea even if you have no flipping clue who he/ she is.

 Check out the massive rainbow-coloured cotton candy. And Obama enjoying some Hawaiian shaved ice (?).

I don't really know why people buy/ eat cotton candy, really. I categorise them together with macarons: photogenic food, the bimbotic self-absorbed Barbies of the world of food. Other than that, they're just food colouring and sugar.

 Waiting for Belle's kanchiong gangjeong (강정) chicken.

 Tada!

We decided that we really wanted bubble tea after that, and spent quite a fair bit of time trying to decide between Gong Cha at Hongdae and Amasvin at Edae, aka the one Rachel and I had gone to the previous day.

 Amasvin won in the end.

This time, I had a jumbo earl grey milk tea with pearls. It was heavenly. The lavender taste was just... 👍

At the toilet of Chungmuro Station. That soap bar though.

 Selfie in the toilet, minus Rachel who was waiting outside.

 New socks! (and baggy hobo pants which I love)

 Hehe

 Waiting for 6015 to take us back to Incheon airport ))))))): And our pathetic-looking box of banana milk. I can't imagine the customs guy's face when he screened the box and all he saw inside was banana milk wrapped with towels.

N Seoul Tower in the distance DDDDDDDDDD:

 On 6015, we passed by the Namdaemun Gate, which we didn't visit when we were at Namdaemun Market.

 The view from the other side

 last banana milk in Korea siiiiiiiiiigggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh D:
 After customs, we came across an MCM shop. (context: Rachel has been wanting to get an MCM bag for a long time now, but they're pricey)

Me: who's that fellow
Rachel: EXOOOOOOOO
Me: oh. /pause/ now is that why you want to get an MCM bag
Rachel: 😁

The Korea designs for the Starbucks tumblers are freaking g o r g e o u s. So of course I couldn't resist getting this aquamarine one (too bad they didn't have Seoul, but hey at least this one has a couple of horses on it), which came with a free drink :D

 Waiting to board D:

 We had already boarded and were on the way to entering the plane. You know that connecting thingy between the airport and the plane where somehow there's always suddenly no more airport wifi.

Me: omg let's take a selfie and send it to the class
Hannah: omg yes
Me: /opens camera app/
Phone: /dies/
Me: oh shit. /tries to revive phone/
Phone: /still dead/
Me: /swears muchly/
Hannah: oh no
Me: your phone doesn't have any wifi right
Hannah: nooooo
Me: /swears muchly/ /connects phone to milk portable charger/
Phone: /still dead/ /starts charging/
Me: /swears muchly/ 빨리빨리빨리!!!

At this point of time people were streaming past us into the plane. It was awkward. Rachel and Belle had already entered the plane.

Phone: /REVIVES MIRACULOUSLY/

The story behind the ridiculously blurred selfie, with only one plane behind to indicate that we were in some kind of airport.

 I was over the moon when I discovered that the plane had a charging port.

 Taxiing off ))))):

You can see me in the reflection leaning over Rachel who had the window seat aha

안돼ㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐㅐ ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ

 omg no

 bye koreaaaaaaaaa ㅠㅠ

 The airplane dinner was good though. I had beef. And the rice was like fried rice.

 At Hong Kong

The toilet cubicles were huge

This was outside the cubicle by the way

 Close up (Belle's Busan tumbler, my Jeju tumbler, and Hannah's tumbler from Singapore Starbucks). The colours of all three actually go very well aha

 departed 대한민국 ):

On the bright side the customs guy stamped on the same page as the entry one. He didn't for Hannah and Rachel /sneaky look/

After 2h50 of transit, we were finally on our way to the gate...

  This looks suspicious

 ????????

/splat/

 Back in Singapore: OUR CUI BOX SURVIVED. albeit in a slightly misshapen state

At the conveyer belt/ carousel: idk how that happened, but I think someone tried to take out too many pieces of luggage at one go/ was too slow to take out the luggage, and Mount Luggage was born.


Breakdown of expenditure in KRW, exclusive of accommodation and air tickets:
Transport: 59 000
Entrance fees: 58 000
Food: 100 230
Banana milk: 22 390
Personal spending: 68 900
Gifts: 62 080

Total rough expenditure in SGD: 671.40 (flight) + 36 (insurance) + 188 (accommodation) + 448.70 (others) = 1344.10........?!?!?!?!?!