Enma's Adventures
Quick disclaimer before we start:
I refer to the other two as Gozu and Mezu, but these are not their real names.
In Japanese mythology, Gozu and Mezu are the two demon attendants of Enma, the King of Hell.
As the King of Hell myself, it only made sense to drag my two travel buddies into the lore.
Their real identities stay private, but the stupidity is all theirs.
Day 1: only evening
We landed pretty late and had to stay longer than expected in the airport, due to some eSIM troubles.
We then arrived at our hotel and checked in between 18:00 and 18:30.
So basically most of the day was already gone when we left our luggage at the hotel.
Anyway, I love eating, especially when it comes to sweets and desserts, so I'll start off by posting a pic of our first meal: tteokbokki (떡볶이), which consists of rice cakes and fish cakes.
I made the mistake of ordering the spicy version of it, which made me almost vomit on day one...
I thought I was pretty used to spicy and hot foods, but Korea has spicy on another level...
A level I just wasn't ready for...
Return leveling up your spicy tolerance, noob.
I might be the King of Hell but even this hell was too much for me...
The only thing that saved me, was this godly peach drink.
We then went out and headed to the AK PLAZA tower mall in Hongdae (홍대), where we had dessert in a cafe.
Of course, you know me, I'm a matcha lover, so I picked matcha-flavored desserts.
After that great dessert, we returned to our hotel, relaxed a bit, showered, and got ready to go out again.
We split up with Mezu for the rest of the night because he had other plans, that bastard...
We stumbled upon a restaurant called HERO, consisting of private rooms, where you can eat, rent and play board games.
Although we didn't eat there that day, since we were already full from the Tteokbokki we ate earlier, we came back the next day.
I then decided to quickly get in a PC bang (PC방) which is a 24/7 internet cafe, take some pictures and leave because Gozu was waiting for me outside.
After that we just walked around, got into random shops, hunting for souvenirs to buy.
And then, we just went back to our hotel room and slept early, to have energy for the next day.
Because it was gonna be hectic!
Day 2: weren't we supposed to sleep!?
That day we went to an animal and cat cafe in Seoul (서울), so I'll just post pictures instead of rambling...
After that, we went to a shopping street, ate lunch, continued shopping around in Seoul, and finally got dessert in a Kakao Friends Cafe.
I don't have any pictures between lunch and dessert because we were mostly shopping rather than sightseeing...
But it's fine because the most important things that day were the cats, and the desserts.
We all ordered the small matcha cake! Matcha for life!
The reason we all ordered two cakes is because we had a coupon for a "free" Americano coffee if we ordered more than 10,000 KRW.
However, the most expensive cakes were all around 9,000 KRW, so we had to order two cakes each !
Ordering one cake and one non-free coffee would have cost less than two cakes and one "free" coffee.
Damned shrewd marketing tactics...
The coffee was so damn bitter that I ended up not drinking it, and giving it to Mezu.
After that, we headed back to the hotel to relax a bit, and sort our souvenir purchases of the day.
I wrote "some duck thing" because I have no idea what it is used for, it's not a magnet, not a pin, so no idea...
It's cute though, and that's what matters most!
Two of us stayed at the hotel room for a bit, to chill, while Mezu had other plans, once again.
Mezu is a literal fuckboy, went to clubs, drinking, dates, and having sex with random women every night.
After relaxing for a bit, we decided to head out and go back to that HERO restaurant to have dinner and play some board games.
As you can imagine, the board games were all in Korean, which we didn't speak a word of nor knew how to read.
So it was a slow but still fun session, heavily assisted by Google Lens' translation feature.
Bungeoppang (붕어빵) are those fish pastries he ordered, which are usually filled with red bean paste, but these ones were filled with chocolate.
After eating and playing board games we didn't understand, we went back to the hotel and went to sleep...
Right? Absolutely not.
For some reason we stayed awake, Gozu was laying in bed, using his phone, while I was sitting on the couch using my laptop.
Then at some point Mezu messaged us, and we decided to go out again to join him, at 02:00.
And that's where our "normal tourists" status went out the window.
We went into a PHOTOISM photo booth, found some accessories, and particularly these silly sunglasses!
The reason I love these sunglasses so much is because of a Drum & Bass artist called Venjent.
We then started fooling around and taking pictures with the accessories.
In there, we also found two women from Sweden, that were also fooling around, and we started talking to them.
As you can see in the picture above, one of the Swedes ran up to me while I was taking a selfie with the sunglasses on.
She was so determined to photobomb my selfie, it was hilarious.
Sadly there weren't enough of these sunglasses in that PHOTOISM store for Gozu.
Luckily, I stopped drinking alcohol pretty early in the night, so I was back sober at around 04:00.
After a long night, we then started walking back to the hotel because it was nearly 06:00.
We stopped by a convenience store (편의점) near our hotel, to buy lots of water, to avoid having a hangover.
In there, I bought a nice keyboard toy that lights up and does a satisfying clicking sound every time you press a key.
Day 3: only evening again, but for different reasons...
After that crazy night, we woke up at 16:30, decided to skip breakfast and have lunch at 17:00...
I ordered it spicy once again, but this time it wasn't as spicy as the first day.
It was absolutely fucking delicious, and it was at the same restaurant as the first day which meant we drank the godly peach nectar again.
That day too, barely any sightseeing and mostly shopping.
I found old Adidas pants in a vintage store for super cheap so I bought them.
My dinner that day was just a boxed lunch called dosirak (도시락), some yogurt and a Japanese pudding.
Day 4: we ordered kimchi (김치) at a park
We went to a park by a river, I forgot exactly which one though.
It was probably Han River (한강)...
That T-shirt was more transparent than white because I was sweating like crazy...
Pervert.
It was also an old hand-me-down, so it was getting more beige-ish than white, after all the cycles of wearing, sweating and washing...
Not long after that, Mezu left again so we went to get some super tall ice cream.
A few hours later and too much walking, right before going back to the hotel, we went back to the AK PLAZA and I bought this soccer game from ARTBOX.
I wanted something fun we could play on the train while going from Seoul to Busan (부산), but when I tried it at the hotel, it was so shit, and not fun at all.
We ended up not using it and it stayed stashed in my suitcase during the entire trip.
Part of me wanted to throw it away, but I didn't.
MAYBE I SHOULD!!!
And then we ended up chilling at the hotel for a few hours, just the two of us, until Mezu came back to the hotel and we decided to go out again.
For some reason, when we were walking, we walked past a convenience store, and I decided to buy a beer.
Of course, Mezu followed me in and bought a beer too.
We kept walking around, aimlessly, when at some point, he handed me his beer so I could drink from it too, and guess what?
I tried to dual-wield dual-drink the two beers at once.
Of course, that ended terribly, I spilled two different beers all over myself, and we all burst out laughing from the absolute disaster that just happened.
But thanks to that, we met a nice Korean guy.
Basically, I went to the side of the road, to let people who were walking behind me, walk past me.
Some Korean dude walked past me, was looking at me and smiling.
I smiled back and asked for some tissues to the poor guy, he handed me some tissues and he then started walking and chatting with us.
Finally, after some talking, at some point, Mezu decided to invite him to eat with us, and he accepted.
And that unexpected encounter is how our last day in Seoul ended.
The next day we had to take the train to Busan, so we just checked out of our hotel, went to the station, stashed our shit in some coin locker somewhere, then fucked off to get lunch somewhere, and finally wasted time until it was time to board the KTX train to Busan.
