CHAPTER 2

I felt like my phone memory would end up being full even before I reached halfway through my trip.

I definitely needed to keep check of my photography skills because filling up the space with pictures of every passing street might just be a bit too much. How I wished there was a concept of unlimited memory because I just wanted to have every single moment of my trip captured and stored with me forever for me to go back to it whenever and wherever I wanted.

I just wished I could capture the whole trip in a small bottle and relive it as many times as I wanted to but alas! This is the muggle world and I’m no Dumbledore.

The ride to my AIRBnb was fairly short, located in Hongdae near the Hongik uni station. It was good forty minutes away from the airport but it was one of the cheapest but best reviewed properties. I was actually in awe of the place and everything about it, from the locality to the secure entry system, the cleanliness, the accessibility to necessities and transportation, and then there was the room itself .

Whoever was the owner, I’m pretty sure loved this place and definitely cared a lot about it, and not just treated it like some money making machine.

It was clean, it smelled nice, it was beautifully decorated, there were these pretty little fairy lights around the bedpost, a few beautiful paintings on the walls and small little potted show plants on the windowsill near the bed. The flat or room whatever you may call it was not humongous but it was big enough and most importantly it was cozy and homey.

There was a nice flat screen television in the sitting area, not too huge but big enough, a small coffee table right in front of it followed by a small loveseat instead of a typical sofa. This place even came with a hairdryer provided by the owner for god’s sake, like wow!

As soon as I entered the bathroom I was met with a full sized reflection of myself. A full sized mirror instead of the usual small ones was placed on a wall next to the shower.

The reflection I saw was so similar but still different somehow. The girl staring back at me was practically glowing. There were no frown lines on her small round face, the big brown eyes sparkled with hope and life, the plump pink lips stretched into a wide cheek-hurting smile.

Even the simple gold nose ring shined brighter and the blush on my cheeks was more prominent than it ever was.

I was happy.

The owner had been kind enough to even leave a few snack and juice boxes in the fridge and a nice little map to guide me through using the train system and how to reach the station from her place.

Ah god bless her soul!

After giving a few hours of rest to my jet lagged body I managed to get up from the comforts of the bed and nicely heated room and get into the shower. Getting dressed in plain blue jeans, a fitted white shirt with sleeves rolled up, my faithful black converse and my long dark brown hair free of ties I was absolutely ready to explore my first ever destination on this trip –

The Hongdae main street.

It was after a few minutes of walking along with a few minutes of trying to get directions that I finally reached and boy was the place worth all the trouble of having to try and speak whatever little broken Korean language I knew.

It was around 8PM and the place was buzzing. The first sight for me was the one street artist singing EXO songs, he was pretty good too and had quite an audience and then suddenly he wasn’t the only one I could spot an artist of a group of them everywhere, some singing, some dancing , some playing an instrument. Some of them were doing the whole kpop song, like the singing and the choreography, the whole thing.

BEAUTIFUL.

My stomach managed to pry me away from the arts and music by giving me a loud reminder that it had yet to be fed. Such a needy little thing.

The street food.

Okay now I’m going to be addressing a very, very important topic here, the street food here in Korea specifically. To say it is awesome would be an understatement.

It's insane. It's WOW.

Not like I didn’t have street food back at home but we definitely did not have soft serve ice cream in the cone shaped like a fish back home. I mean can you blame me for this level of excitement?

Nu uh nobody can.

The first item I made a beeline for was the all too famous tteok-bokki, spicy rice cakes. Thank god for making Indian food spicy as well, and I was thankful for having been fed spicy food all my life because the rice cakes were red hot and I was so glad that my face wasn’t sweating and red from all the heat.

The lady on the stall serving the tteok-bokki was a sweet old Korean lady. The minute she realized I was a tourist who was absolutely pathetic at speaking Korean she started teaching me some basic words and greetings while the food was being prepared. It was such a sweet gesture and it made me feel so special. I loved it.

Then there was the fried chicken, the Korean sweet pancakes, fish soup and yes the fish shaped cones with soft serve. But the one food item that topped them all was the Maya Kimbap. Seaweed rolls with rice and some veggies and sesame oil, and my god was it amazing. Interesting fact Maya Kimbap actually translates to addictive kimbap.

So true.

After all of this binge eating I was ready to call it a day, that AIRBnb bed and heated floors looked way too appealing right about that time.

By eleven-thirty PM KST I was passed out, exhausted but fully content just waiting for the next equally magical day.