Heart & Seoul: Day 1

Took me forever to go through and edit my photos but i'm finally getting my Asia posts up. After i got back from HK, i was immediately thrown into last minute planning for my joint 21st with one of my closest friends, since i only got back the week before it! But that's why i haven't been active on twitter/instagram/blogspot. I'm back now though, i'm ready to get back into blogging and boy do i have a lot installed for you c: 

First up, I thought i'd start with my short trip to Seoul! My mum and i had a bunch of frequent flyer points that were about to expire and it was enough to cover a trip to Seoul. Originally we were just going to go for an intense shopping trip for the two of us but in the end my entire family came including my aunties and my grandpa haha! The good thing was most of us have done all the touristy stuff before in Seoul so this was mainly a family/shopping/food holiday. 

I realised that we've never taken a big family trip like this and it was really nice to be surrounded by family since this past year hasn't been so kind to me. But no moping on this blog, this is a positive and happy space where i can focus on things i love :3 

We landed at 6am on our first day in Seoul. It was too early to check into our hotel but we went to drop off our luggage anyway. I thought that we'd at least be able to change and freshen up but since our rooms weren't ready, it wasn't really convenient. I felt really gross and tired the entire day since i had no sleep on the plane. We spent most of the first day in Myeong Dong and our first stop was 7-11 LOL. 

I'm not sure what my fascination with 7-11 is but I LOVE THEM IN ASIA. They're just everywhere and  super convenient and when i walk in, i just want to try/eat/drink everything.

I've had the famous banana milk many times coz we can get it in HK but i had never tried the strawberry one. Pretty sure i was just sucked into the packaging because it tasted like any other strawberry milk.

We were all starving so before doing any sort of looking around, we went looking for food. We ended up in a pretty generic korean restaurant. The thing i find about Korean food (and i hope i don't offend anyone by saying so), is that it's pretty easy to find good korean food everywhere.

My mum's sneaky photo of me ^ pretty sure this was the only photo of me that day too.

We ordered a couple of soup stews and a couple of rice dishes to share, i don't know why i didn't get any photos of those, i was probably too tired and lazy...

When we left the restaurant, the people just gave Charlie a photo of PSY because they thought my brother was cute or something. It was so random but hilarious coz Charlie happens to love PSY.

Myeong Dong is full of well known international and korean fashion brands, and the beauty market in Korea in general is dominated by local cosmetic chains. I didn't really shop much the first day because i didn't really do my research beforehand and i was completely overwhelmed by all the shops. Also the currency confused me so much but I was content just taking in everything visually and i did a lot of swatching on my first day haha.

Super random photo but these nail polish bottles were funny.

My mum and i love streetfood no matter where we go and we actually tried so many things that day (from food skewers to rice cakes to sweet cakes) but i only took a photo of this because i got too excited and ate everything before i could take a photo of it. I apologise. There were stalls everywhere selling this. I wonder if its the equivalent of hK street food such as curry fish balls and siu mai haha! But this is called Chungmu Gimbap and it is korean thin sushi with no filling served with spicy baby octopus and kim chi pickled radish!

I really loved taking photos of the streets, everything was so bright and vibrant! We were pretty wrecked by the time it was 5-6pm so we decided to go get a massage. EXCUSE THE FEET SHOT but while we were waiting, we got to enjoy fish exfoliation. This was my first time trying this and it is the strangest feeling. You wash your feet and then you dip it in a little pool and tiny fishys gently nibble at the dead skin on your feet (sorry if it sounds disgusting, i was really amused. It's a little ticklish and I didn't really think it'd be that effective but after 10 minutes, when i took my feet out, they felt so smooth! Definitely want to do this again some day.

I think the massage was the best massage i've ever had. My mum and i go to massages once in a while here in Melbourne but our problem is that people never put enough strength into it or it's not consistent but this massage was heaven. My family and i had a private room to ourselves and it was honestly one of the highlights of my entire trip ^^

Before heading back to the hotel, we grabbed dinner at some famous ginseng chicken place in Myeong Dong which i totally forgot to take photos of :c My body cannot handle strong medicinal plants such as these though. Everytime after i intake soups and stews made with these herbs, i get super lightheaded and i have blood noses so i sat this one out.

We got back to the hotel at around 9.30pm and pretty much passed out straight away. This was the view out our window ^^

This was Day 1 out of 4, I hope this post was enjoyable c: I'll save my haul for the last post!

=('.')=

chloé