About a month ago, we reunited in Hong Kong and finally got to do our Korea trip!
We’ve been talking about visiting Korea since college days especially because we both had our Kpop phase (lmao) and it finally happened. Yay!
There was so much we wanted to do there, and since we’re both adults with limited vacation days now (boo), that meant our trip was going to be jam-packed, with only 3 days in Seoul and 2 days in Busan. In case you are planning to do a quick visit there any time soon, here’s what we managed to do on our short trip!
DAY 1
After landing in Seoul at 5 pm and passing through all the necessary gates, we quickly picked up our wifi egg at the airport. This is a portable wifi device that is commonly used in Korea and can be rented daily. Here’s the one we rented — it was super cheap and we highly recommend getting this so that you can access Google Maps/Naver Maps to navigate your way around. We then wasted no time after and took the train straight to our Airbnb in Hongdae.
Hongdae
We were craving for some good ol’ KBBQ and found Meat-ing, a pretty cheap all-you-can-eat place near our Airbnb. They had a whole buffet bar of meat and side dishes to choose from, and there’s even some extra stuff like tteokbokki and rice dishes if you feel like you need your daily carbs intake. We’d say this was a satisfying first meal, although it’s not exactly the highest quality meat. Anna though loved the brisket and claims that it’s better than the brisket in California. The whole meal cost us only around $14 USD each which was a great deal for what you are getting.
After eating way too much meat until we couldn’t breathe, we decided to walk around Hongdae to help our stomachs digest faster (lol). We loved how lively Hongdae was at night, with lots of people walking around and indie street performances to watch. One guy was singing Way Back Home and Praisella immediately made a beeline towards him and sang along in classic karaoke fashion (shoutout if you know that song too!). There’s something romantic and wonderful about all these street performances, and we had a lot of fun just enjoying them. Eventually, we realized that we had made a whole loop around the area after we ran into the same Bingsoo place called Sulbing, and decided that this was a sign from above. Yes. It was dessert time. We got a serving of mango cheese shaved ice (which was a HUGE bowl and more than enough for the both of us) and sat by the window, which overlooked the busy streets below.
An interesting thing we noticed about Korea, especially Hongdae is that it feels very much like a vertical city. A lot of shops are located on the second, third, fourth floor of the buildings with huge windows which make it a fun place to people watch. That’s exactly what we did while munching on our Bingsoo. They also had this photo booth thingy inside the place for $5 so we jumped on that before we left the building, too. Jokes on us though because the photo strips that printed out had “Merry Christmas 2018” for the frames which we had a really good laugh about. Since ya know. It was in the dead middle of summer in 2019.
At this point, we were incredibly full, but we were determined to at least go to one bar just to see what the bar scene is like here. We went to a popular pre-gaming spot (supposedly) called Thursday which seems to be an expat-friendly sports bar. They had quite a lot of games like darts, beer pong, foosball tables, etc but they were all taken so we just grabbed a seat near one of the beer pong tables and watched the game unfold. There was this girl who we both loved — she was super sassy in the funniest way and kept making digs and throwing up the middle finger to the friend she was competing with.
At this point we were exhausted so we called it a night and started walking home, but not before we ran into another performance, this time at a mini-park with Ed Sheeran performances AND rap performances going on at the same time. After some singalong time (to Ed Sheeran because we can’t rap for life, and especially not in Korean), we finally went back home and slept like a baby.
DAY 2
Bukchon Ginseng Chicken
We woke up bright and early (ish) for our first full day in Seoul! We had a long day planned ahead of us, but first, we needed food. We heard that ginseng chicken was a specialty around the area so we headed straight in to a ginseng restaurant we found near the Palace (which was our next stop) and found that we were the only people in the entire restaurant (lol). We noticed the soup was on the pricier side at around $24 so we thought we’d share one and split another dish together. This was a mom and pop run establishment though and the owner was lowkey strict with how we could order the dishes. When we brought up splitting the bowl with the dad-owner, he basically would not let us share the dish and semi-forced each of us to order our own bowl after saying that one bowl is not enough for two. Turns out the bowls were massive. We got one bowl of the special Bukchon one which had octopus and abalone, and another of just a regular ginseng chicken, which we felt would have been fine.
Tip: The owner does push you to get the specialty Bukchon seafood soup but if you’re going with someone else, ordering just one bowl of this is fine because you can split the seafood after the owner leaves lol.
Despite that weird interaction with the owner, the soup was honestly super good and heartwarming, so, all in all, we would still recommend coming here. It had that home-cooked food that your grandma used to make kind of feel. The broth was creamy yet light but the chicken was definitely the star. We’ve never had any chicken this soft, tender, and easy to pull from the bones before. We were able to do that with just a spoon so we could tell they really took their time making the soup. We were about to order some rice when we discovered that the chicken was actually stuffed with sticky rice inside — it was glorious and tasty because it had absorbed the chicken soup flavors whilst cooking. It really was a lovely lovely meal despite the judgment from the owner (lol) and we left feeling happy and full.
Changdeokgung Palace
Our next stop was a hanbok rental shop before we head over to the palace. We wanted the full palace experience and it sounds like a fun time to dress up. We chose this place on Klook and found that it was a better deal to book online than directly at the store. We ended up choosing the 1.5 hour package for themed hanboks, which is what they call the “costume hanboks” in the shop. We chose this over the traditional hanboks because the themed/costume hanboks had prettier designs and colored cloth. It ended up only costing $12.10 USD for each of us so it really wasn’t too expensive.
After some decision making time going through the racks of hanboks, we got into our selected hanboks and got our hair done by the staff there too (another plus to this package/shop!). It was super nice and felt like one of those makeover scenes in those movies (lolol). You get to choose whether to have your hair up a half up, half down hairdo, or to have a complete updo in a low bun. We both opted for half up and half down.
Tip: Depending on the staff who helps you, you can also choose what color hairpins to use. Speak up if your staff doesn’t ask you!
One thing that was a bit of a con though was that both of our hanboks were really short, so you could see our non-hanbok-appropriate shoes while we were standing. For reference Praisella is 5’ 4” and Anna is 5’ 7”. When Praisella went to another hanbok rental place a few years ago, she didn’t recall having it so short so we’re not sure if this is a common thing or not or if this particular hanbok shop just had shorter dresses or did not adjust the length to our height properly.
We then headed to the palace, which by the way is free if you are in a hanbok. We had planned to go through the two palaces in the area plus the Bukchon Hanok Village but we were on a really tight time crunch so we just wandered around the Changdeokgung Palace for a bit while taking (an insane amount of) pictures. We couldn’t help it, these hanboks were so cute!
After an hour we realized that once again we were behind schedule (HAHA what is new) so we hauled our asses back to the shop to return the hanbok and sped walked back to the subway station. We had a dance class to catch near Konkuk University!
Tip: If you have time in your itinerary, we would definitely recommend renting the hanbok for longer so that you can check out the Bukchon Hanok Village after the palace. From what we’ve seen from other people’s pictures, the Hanok Village is beautiful. It overlooks the palace and has traditional Korean houses so it really looks like you went back in time. We personally feel like going to both palaces isn’t necessary (since Praisella got to experience the other palace in her last visit to South Korea) so going to just one palace is enough. The Klook hanbok rental service we found offers 2.5 hour hanbok packages (which was only a few dollars more to $18.19 USD) and even 4 hour and whole day rentals if you wanted to spend a long time here.
Dance, dance, dance
In order to live out our teenage Kpop dreams, we booked a Kpop dance class on Airbnb Experiences where we soon realized we had vastly underestimated our dancing abilities. This class was filled with locals and the teacher didn’t really speak much English so it was quite a fun and interesting experience. Somehow though, through a lot of motions and simple English, she made it super easy and clear enough to follow just by watching her do the dance. She also was hilarious and was quite the jokester — we laughed even though we had no idea what she was saying LOL.
The instructor was honestly pretty amazing at teaching the steps by breaking each part bit by bit at a good place. The song of choice was Kill This Love by Blackpink, which for the record, Praisella hadn’t even heard of before the class and hence, had zero clues on the dance moves. It was a great bop with moves that made us feel very badass.
Even though we did not perform incredibly well or get anywhere near a successful dancer because we (or more like Anna because she sucks at dancing and has 0 hand-eye coordination), this class was super fun especially because the instructor separated us into mini teams and made us “perform” at the end and filmed our dance. Ours, in particular, was uh ummm not great PER SAY, so the world will never EVER see them, but it was genuinely such a fun time and we’d recommend her class if you’re looking to try this out too! She was a terrific instructor who made us feel super comfortable despite our varying skill levels and there was a lot of laughter throughout the session.
Myeongdong
We had planned to visit the Dongdaemun Night Market after our class, but what we didn’t realize until we were about to go is that the market closes every Sunday which of course, happened to be the case that day. So instead, we went to Myeongdong and got ourselves lots of street food goodies.
Praisella’s favorite was the chicken with tteokbokki in red chili paste sauce whereas Anna loved the mandu glass-noodle dumplings and the sweet brown sugar and rice hotteok pancakes she got. Each of the street food cost around $3-$6 USD each so cheap enough to sample a bunch (but also dangerous lol so keep an eye on your non-existent bill). In between our meals and walk, we spotted some stands with earrings for only $1! If you didn’t know, we’re both very into earrings, so we definitely bought lots of pairs there. Wish we got more!
Since Myeongdong Is known for its shopping and skin care, we stopped by a few shops to take a look around but didn’t end up buying anything, surprisingly. Neither of us is super into skincare or cosmetics so that helped haha.
Tip: Anna did get a bunch of facial masks from this one beauty shop that had a variety of all the brands (so it wasn’t a brand-specific store like innisfree). This shop was one of the latter shops towards the end of the walking path. The prices are great, you get to try a bit of each brand, and the staff here are not pushy like the other brand stores where typically a staff member would follow you as you walk throughout the store.
We also made a stop at the famous Stylenanda Pink Hotel — which let me tell you, is the most millennial and instagrammable shop we have ever seen. It was super pink and the decor was amazing. They even had different themes for each of the floors! Our favorite (for some reason) was the laundry floor and we HUJI-ed the crap out of this place (lol).
Oh, and in case you saw some pictures online about a pool in the store, we’ll save you the ask, that is actually at a different Stylenanda store in Hongdae.
Namsan Tower
We finished off our day with the Namsan or N Seoul Tower, an iconic landmark for Seoul. We bought our tickets on Klook again for a good deal and headed to the top of the tower. Not sure if that day was particularly cloudy, but it didn’t seem like there’s much we could see from the top. The 360 window view experience on the lookout floor was cool but we kind of expected more (maybe because P is privileged from seeing HK’s beautiful skylines). It’s one of those things that you do just because it’s iconic, but we probably wouldn’t be going back again.
Tip: If you do go to the Namsam Tower, we’d recommend going during the day, either in the morning or during sunset instead. The night view we saw was rather underwhelming so we imagine that you can see a lot more of the view in the daylight.
DAY 3
Time flew by, and it was already our last day in Seoul before we knew it. Our flight was that night at 7pm so we still had the whole day to explore the rest of town.
Han River / Kyochon Fried Chicken
Another iconic place we wanted to visit was the Han River. We heard that this is a massive park where you can picnic and bike ride along the river – except that it was way too hot for this and we were lazy af haha. Instead, we hunted down for some fried chicken for lunch first, found Kyochon, and was greeted by the cutest grandpa waiter ever (talk about a huge contrast to the owner at the ginseng chicken restaurant lol). He was so nice in explaining the menu to us even with limited English vocabulary. We got the honey one which was one of their popular choices and it was SO SO GOOD.
The skin was crunchy and sweet and salty and the chicken was just so tender and juicy, everything about it was right and really satisfying. We were really trying to get that full chicken experience so we also got Cass beer on tap (at noon lol we swear we’re not alcoholics) and that combination was a godsend in such hot weather. No wonder why the chicken and beer combo is so popular in Korea.
Also, we’ve had Kyochon in other countries before but we the one we had here was by far, the best one we have ever had. It was so yummy and we kept thinking about it even days later.
After eating our hearts out (with extra chicken leftovers in a to-go box), we walked to the Han River and chilled there for the longest time under the sun. The really cool part about the Han River is that there are these netted hammock-like benches all over that you can lay on without having to touch the grass (and stain your clothes or get bugs all over you). Food coma hit us hard, so we lowkey just laid there on one of those net thingies with our umbrellas popped open, took some pictures, napped and rest until we felt like moving again lol.
2D cafe
Our last stop before the airport was the 2D cafe, something we had been seeing around Instagram for months. This place happened to be in Hongdae so it was the perfect pit stop to make before leaving Seoul since we had to swing back to our Airbnb in Hongdae to pick up our luggage. We went really late in the afternoon though so the place was packed.
The drinks were okay (Anna really liked the oat latte drink though) but the concept of the cafe is what sold it. It was a really cool trippy experience walking around the place where everything looks drawn and not real, and we got some cute pictures there, which tbh is what we came for 😉 If you’re looking to experience a unique cafe that can only be found in Seoul, come check out this one!
BONUS ROUND
We actually came back to Seoul for a hot second after Busan and we had our second KBBQ experience at Sodamhan Yeonsan Earther Pot (which we found on the Naver map) which was supposed to be close to the Gimpo airport. Jokes on us though because we got on the wrong bus, then got lost, and ended up having to walk for 20 minutes with our suitcases across a bumpy sidewalk (fun).
It was well worth it though because 1. the lady there was sooo sooo nice to us. She gave us recommendations and actually helped cook the meat for us (probably because we looked incredibly lost) and also 2. because it was so damn delicious. We had grilled pork at the first KBBQ place too but you can tell that this one is much higher quality and was cooked properly.
The owner lady had a nice conversation with us about how she ran the restaurant with her husband and how she visited Hong Kong before and how her family loved it. She even thanked us for choosing to visit Korea (which made Anna cry on the inside) and honestly showed us such a hospitable experience. This meal made Praisella RUN to the airport with literally minutes left to spare and almost caused her to cry from the stress (lol), but honestly, it was worth it. Go just for the sweet owner lady!!
AND that’s a wrap on Seoul!
We hope this helped you plan your visit to Seoul, even when you are on a time crunch! Think we missed anything? Let us know because we’re definitely coming back!
We also went to Busan and made lots of great memories there. Take a look at our Busan guide for more stories and recs 😉
