#gungnam

We decided to give Gungnam another go after lunch; clearly we'd missed it's 'style' on the walk to the restaurant.  

A crowded bus, driven by a man who learned his craft from a Singaporean taxi driver, and a short walk found us on Sinsadonggarodugil Street.  I was expecting to see a lot of overly plastic women in the vein that Korea seems to be building a reputation for, but there really weren't that many to be found.  I didn't even spot much eye work.  

There were two women who stuck out though.  One for all the right reasons and the other for all the wrong.  The former dressed in a way to appropriately highlight her newly acquired assets -- and there were a lot of them -- the latter looked like a watermelon stuffed into a tube sock.  I had to turn away almost immediately else I probably would have laughed at the absurdity of it.  She must employ someone to tie up her shoes; I imagine she'd suffocate in cleavage if she ever tried herself.

With all of our to see check boxes filled in -- or at least the one's we'd booked time to cover this trip -- we headed to Myeong-dong to do the next most important thing on every tourist's list: shop.  Tiffany led us to believe that men's fashion was pretty key in Seoul and that we wouldn't have much of a problem finding some good, unique clothes to take back with us.  The posters out front of most shops featured men too, or at least the boys from Big Bang and other Kpop bands fashionably dressed, so at first glance I was hopeful.  It all was a lie though.  After an hour and a half of wandering the district I knew the truth.  For the most part each store took up three levels.  The first two levels were always all women's clothes.  The third level, or basement, was out of season sale items and men's clothes.  The on sale section was the bigger of the two.

Clearly the posters and cardboard stand-ups out front were designed to lure unsuspecting teenage girls into the shop, not to display what the stores were actually selling.  That Seoul had started selling their fall/winter fashions didn't help things either.  I concluded my shopping excursion empty handed.

By this point I'd begun saving battery life on my phone; it's battery was below 20% and I needed an alarm to wake me up for my flight the next morning.  There was no clock in my room at the hostel.  It means I had to stop recording details, so while I remember what we did, specific shop and restaurant names elude me.

For the first time of the trip, we found ourselves seated at a restaurant for dinner that was both on our itinerary and had been recommended to us.  It was a famous chop noodle and dumpling house...who's name I cannot remember.  There were two items on the menu: chopped noodles and dumplings.  I went for the dumplings.  Everyone else went for the chopped noodles and an extra a round of dumplings was ordered to share.  

I could watch the video over and over It's just so catchy, freaken random and amusing!