Adventures in JHJ country (3)

COEX, Seoul

The pear

This morning (5/4/09) we went on an important mission -- to deliver our birthday present to JHJ. We have already mailed him a birthday present (in mid-April) -- nothing fancy or expensive, just something we thought he'd like. Then we saw this 10,000-piece TIMEWARP model (for assembly) and we remembered Ryu Jin said JHJ spent his (limited) spare time in between shooting of "Seo Dong Yo" working on the model of a dinosaur. We have taken a photo of the box but we do not advertise here, so use your imagination. We can tell you that when completed, the model looks like a very intricate roller-coaster, and you can roll a steel marble and it will race all over the tracks at high speed. Assembly requires brain power, care, concentration, and patience -- all qualities which we believe JHJ possesses. We just want him to have some fun. Since we're coming to Seoul, we would just drop it off at the Star n Hit office which is within walking distance from our hotel. And that's exactly what we did.

Then we went to the COEX Mall (photo 1) which is also very near to our hotel in Gangnam-gu (south of the Han River.) COEX bills itself as the largest shopping centre in Seoul and the largest underground mall in Asia, with an area of 85,000 sq.m. COEX actually stands for "convention" and "exhibition". Apart from shops (and it has all kinds of shops under the sun), it has facilities for conventions, exhibitions, and seminars. The anchor hotels are the COEX Inter-Continental Seoul, the Grand Inter-Continental, and the Oakwood, as well as the World Trade Centre.

We went to the basement shops, first to the very large Bandi and Luni Bookstore which had everything except JHJ magazines, and second to the supposedly very large Evan Record (that's how they call themselves -- singular!) which made us very mad. We asked the man at the cashier where the OST (original sound track) of Korean dramas were and he said: "No Korean drama, only Japanese." We were incredulous! How could that be? So we asked a young man who was busy rushing around the premises, and he tried to look for the CDs that M wanted but without success. I was so afraid he would find the OST of "Forbidden Love" and it turned out to be 15,000KW! They had nothing of JHJ's except (in the DVD section) "Seo Dong Yo" (110,000KW = US$90) and "G.P.506" (25,300KW = US$19), both with English subtitles. But we already have these, in fact, multiple versions of SDY. We wonder why JHJ's DVDs and OSTs are out of stock. There are only two explanations: 1. they sell too well, so they're sold out; or 2. they don't sell well, so they're not replenished. What do you think?

We needed more fruit, so we went to the basement supermarket of Hyundai Department Store (also in COEX) which was as expensive as Lotte. We wanted to get the brown pear which featured so prominently in"3 Dads/1 Mom". Remember that scene when the JHJ character, the stingy Han Soo Hyun, is paring the pear for Na Yong, all the while complaining how expensive it is? Well, we can confirm that pear is really very expensive (about US$10 for a big one.) In the Han Soo Hyun tradition, we decided to forego the pear for some strawberries, a whole box of which cost less than a pear.

For dinner we decided to try another restaurant recommended by my friend. Last year when my husband and I were in Seoul, this friend who's working in Seoul treated us to a "Dae Jaen Geum" type of dinner, you know, with about 15 dishes prepared in the royal palace style in the famous traditional Korean restaurant Gogung. But what I remember best was the coffee shop he took us to after dinner, in a trendy part of Seoul called Samcheong-dong. I wanted to re-visit that area and asked him for the address. M checked it on the map and said let's take a taxi since it's only two metro stops from our hotel. That was the start of our epic journey.

After 15 minutes, I asked M if she was sure it was very near our hotel and she said "Sure!" After another 10 minutes, we suddenly noticed our taxi did not have GPS (global positioning system -- for navigation.) While we were wondering, the driver took it out from his doorside and stuck it above the meter and turned it on. Then he started to key in the address, one stroke at a time, while we watched in concern as traffic was very heavy. But nothing happened even after he hit ENTER about a dozen times. He kept muttering to himself and we could not communicate with him. We showed him the address (in Korean) again and he entered the last four numbers and voila! map appeared! Sigh of relief -- from both the front and back seats! No sooner had that transpired than I screamed: "We're crossing the river!" We're crossing the Han River which meant we're going from South of the river to North of the river. And the restaurant was supposed to be just a few miles from our hotel. Want to know what happened? My friend gave me the address of the resturant in both English and Korean. M chose to read the Korean address, and with her kindergarten Korean, mis-read "Samcheong" as "Samsung"! It took more than an hour to finally reach the restaurant, and I couldn't find it in my heart to tell you how much the fare was. All I'll say is: if the fruits cost as much as a JHJ CD, the taxi fare is the DVD!We were watching the meter with eagle eyes, and every time it jumped, our hearts jumped as well. Now this taxi meter had a horse racing next to the numbers. I wasn't sure whether the horse raced faster or my heart!

By the time the taxi driver dropped us off at 8 Steps (yes, that's the name of the restaurant, interesting, isn't it?) we were a little dizzy. We had to climb the stone steps up to the arty-looking restaurant, and I counted 10, not 8 steps, which already prejudiced me against the place. Then we were given a table outside (because inside all booked.) The wind was starting and the temperature was dropping, and the little boy at the next table was coughing. So we decided we could not survive the cold and the possibility of catching a virus and decided to leave. By that time it was nearly 8 p.m., so we walked around the area to try to find another restaurant, but discovered many only served coffee and cakes. We were afraid by the time we finished dinner, we might not be able to find a taxi (like last night), and this place was more remote. So we hailed a taxi and got back to a part of town that I knew from last time -- to an Italian restaurant called "My Ex-wife's Secret Recipe". My husband has said: "No man would divorce a woman who could cook like this!"

We had prided ourselves that we managed to get around on the metro (subway) most of the time on this trip to Seoul. But this one taxi ride wiped out all our savings for all previous trips. M was feeling very chagrined, but I told her now we have experienced everything, including crossing the Han River by taxi (we'd only done it on metro before.) We crossed the Han River a few times a day (on the metro), and this time we used a different bridge since we were travelling by taxi. We had said that it would be fun to walk along the many bridges than span the Han River. So I threatened M that we had to walk back to our hotel after dinner since we'd wasted so much money, but when I saw her blanch I hastened to add: "Just kidding!" We got back to our hotel (by metro) and started to work on this blog at once. Tomorrow is our last day in Seoul.