Monday, July 29, 2013

Wolf and Go Ride.


 Errr, I dunno what to put as a title sooo yeahh...
Anyways, I wore this to school last Wednesday. I wore my Go Ride cap and Wolf shirt all straight up from my trip to Korea. Yaayyy!


The Go Ride cap was one of the first items I bought when I was there. I bought it ASAP because I'm such a fan of Sunny. Lol, she's my bias ok? (and Taeyeon is my Bias Breaker) Hahaha  I got it from Hongdae where all the kids (College kids) hangout because it's some sort of a "University Belt" so the prices are pretty affordable and the items are chic and cool. 

If you watch the video you'll see Sunny wearing the black version of the Go Ride cap :P

For the Wolf Shirt, that's from this kpop group called EXO. Their single is called Wolf loool.
It's funny how I got to buy this shirt. I was roaming around Lotte Young Plaza when I saw a pop-up booth of SM Entertainment in the mall. I was actually looking around for some SNSD merch but I guess I went to Korea a little bit too late. The winged caps that they wore in the video were no longer there (nor in Everysing, SM's main store for their kpop merch) so I was a little bit saaadd.

Apparently, the booth was just a teaser because there was a bigger place where they sold SM Merch in Lotte's basement! So I had my hopes up but it came crashing down when I saw very little SNSD merchandise being sold again in the basement. Aww saaad. Anyways, I was roaming around and the coolest sales lady wearing the Wolf shirt WAS JUST SO BADASS it made me want to buy one and so I did. LOL.



The choices were hoodie, t-shirt, raglan shirt or caps. I wanted something I could wear almost everyday so I decided to go with the shirt. I already have lots of raglan shirts in my closet anyways. I was also a bit hesitant to buy the shirt because it was expensive FOR A SHIRT but since I was already there and in Korea...YOLO on legit kpop merch! :))) It cost me around 1,500 pesos for that shirt. To be fair, the packaging was awesome. HAHAHAH.


Also, there were some kids in the cafeteria who approached me about my shirt. They asked me who my bias was but I had to be honest with them and told them I was still a noobie so I'm still trying to master all their names. Plus, they all look a like hahahah. They got my name and told me they'd add me to their EXO fan group thingamajig in fb and they were all fan girling about the shirt. I told them I just came from Korea a few days ago so it was still fresh and one of the girls smelled my shirt HAHAHAH omg. Kpop fan girls/boys are the best. I'd like to think they were going crazy over me but NO HAHAHHA they just like my shirt and that they found one of their "ownnn" or something =))) 
Kids these days.

Ps. I'd like to apologize for using the word YOLO too much in my posts lately but since I was in a foreign country, might as well do everything than regret it later, right? :))

MNT Seal


Woooo! Guys, I have my own seal naaa~~ I feel like one of those Empresses in Chinese/Korean movies lol. Jk. Anyways,  super lucky to have found this little store in Insadong. Insadong is where you can see "the focal point of Korean traditional culture and crafts." Everything being sold in Insadong is Korean and possibly hand-crafted by the sellers themselves.


Wee, here's my illustration without the stamppp~~


And there it issss. I got them to carve my initials MNT because I thought it could be similar to the one I made for my business card logo. Plus, it feels more serious/professional (I think lol). The sales lady who was super nice asked if I wanted it in English or Korean and I thought about that and thought I'd go with English since I'd be using the stamp back home. The price was 30,000 won (around 1170 pesos) which I thought was pricey but then I've always wanted to have a legit one so I YOLO'd it all the way.


Zooming in on the stamp :D 

The stamp is made of marble (i think, dunnoo...it feels like it tho) and the guy carved it by hand. We had to wait for about 45 minutes because the store had a lot of orders and when me and my brother got back it was already ready for us to take home :D

Totally cool and a good remembrance from Korea that I'd cherish forever. Yaayy!

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Annyeong Haseyo, The Land of Kpop and Kimchi!

Let's goooo~!


Weeee~ Our flight for Korea was last Wednesday at around 3pm and here's a view from the plane, yeaaahh. My brother booked his flight earlier than mine so I was seated in a different row with my brother.


Ahh, seriously, the view never ceases to amaze me. This was around 6pm in the air. Lol. Pretty interesting sight as we saw the sun set. To kill time I watched Escaflowne in my laptop when my brother moved near my seat because the plane wasn't packed. Also, it was because we felt turbulence and he was worried about me (I think) hahaha.


Anyways, we dropped off in Incheon Airport at around 8:45pm (KST) and used the commuter's train to get to Seoul. It was a pretty long ride (about 45 minutes) and we had to take loads of escalators just to get from Seoul station to the line where a train could take us to where our hotel was.


They were waiting for the train too which took a while.
Surprisingly, there were still a lot of people taking the subway at that hour. It was about 11:30pm at that time and luckily, their trains were longer than the once used here in the Philippines hence more passengers can take the train. That's why even at rush hours their trains aren't that full. Sighhhh, if only we could use longer trains as well.


We were really exhausted and starving when we got to our hotel. We fixed our things first and checked out our room which was awesome for its price. Hotel Prince's location was super efficient too because Myeungdong was right in front of us. Yaayy! We ate a very late dinner and called our mum because we know she'd be worried haha. After that we decided to go back and rest because we have a whole day ahead of us.


What you can see outside my window. Lol. The next daw was kind of gloomy at first...and it was drizzlingg like crayyy so we kinda had to shift and mix up our itinerary for the weather which was super unexpected but turned out really nice.


Drizzledrizzledrizzle~
We had brunch in Myeungdong and started travelling. Yay!






Hello Lotte...I love u.


I was really not expecting Seoul to have big streets, I imagined it to be somehow similar to Hong Kong where the locations are easy to get to. Apparently, I was wrong. The map may show that your destinations are near one another but you have to walk a block or two pa and of course, since we were newbies in a foreign country, there were times that we felt like we were lost. Luckily, they had maps in different areas which saved our asses most of the time. Also, we had this one brochure/map that had everything we needed to see so that was cool.


On our way to Migliore and Doota in Dongdaemun.




I have to say Doota was one of the places that I would love to get back to. Probably because it had a lot of cool stores that I still needed to visit/discover. What we had in mind was to go to all of the cultural destinations first then go shopping. That's what my brother wanted to do so I followed his orders. So we had to spot items that we wanted to buy and places we wanted to go back to after we've seen all the tourist-y places.


Chongechon River everybody!


Dongdaemun Gate~



I first saw that in Invincible Youth where Kim Taewoo carried Goo Hara on it when they were searching for wood in the forest. I thought they only used it in their provinces but apparently, everyone still does and even their motorcycles have it. Haha, I guess it's really efficient when using it for their everyday lives carrying packages from one place to another.


We visited almost all of the palaces.


It's pretty cool how they kept everything clean how it could still be part of an ever-growing city. The first time I entered one of their palaces I thought that it was super cool. The place was huge!


It always made me wonder how they made the intricate parts of the palaces back then when they had no special tools and everything was made by hand.








Everything was just DAEBAK! Hahahha Daebak means "big win", successful or awesome (this is what I get for watching loads of Running Man hahaha)




We're on our way to the next palace~



It was also one of those long walks that I was talking about.


What I wore that day lol.


Poop food! Haha, I've always wanted to taste one of these. It had red bean paste inside and it had nuts in them. The bean paste I could still eat but the nuts I just really can't enjoy haha. It would have been better (for me) if it was chocolate or something else inside. But nonetheless, it was actually yummy!



If you're going to visit the palaces, I suggest you visit Gyeongbokgung Palace. From all of the palaces that we visited, this one was the liveliest and coolest palace. Sure, the palaces have different stories in them but visually speaking, they all look very similar anyways and if you want to go spend more time shopping (like me hahaha) Gyeongbokgung is the palace to go to so you can skip the other palaces and make room for other places to visit.



We even got to see the guards in action! Pretty kewlll.



Oh, and if you enter from the main gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace, if you look at your left you will see a small "house" where you can try the clothes of the guards for FREE! YES, FOR FREE. I have this thing where I try NOT to say NO to free stuff (and my bro really wanted to try it hahaha) so we did. It was superrr funnnnn haha.

We can only try it for 5 minutes and we can't go around the palace too but since it's free, why not right? hahaha


Heheheheheeeee, my broooo~~



The switching of guards in front of Gyeongbokgung Palace.


Every tourist wanted to have a picture with them! I had one too but it's in my brother's phone.


We went to NAMSAN TOWAAAHHH! Lol, yeah, I remember seeing a post on Tumblr way waaayyyy back about the locks in Namsan Tower and thought it was pretty cool. I wanted to visit it too so we did. The tower and view was cool and yes the other pics are in my bro's camera. I'll make another post about it. 


Gundam Base! These kids were cute hehe reminded me of me and my bro when we were kiiidsss. Yuck, TBT? :)))


Cute. We found this in their subway. Sad that someone broke his legs and nose :(


But yay because he is not alone! :D


I guess it's a way to cheer their commuters up while waiting for the train which is actually a good idea :)


This one was found in Bookmark (a concept store) in Myungdong. Pretty cool, huh?


My friend and I are big fans of Stylenanda! =))) WE LOVE THEIR ONLINE STORE and we wanted to see their products irl. My friend requested I take a picture of the store so I had to hunt it down. I didn't find their MAIN store but this was good enough I think?


Haha, this one was located in Lotte Young Plaza in Myungdong too and THIS PLACE WAS HEAVEN. Hahahah I wanted to buy everything but obviously that is just impossible. :P 

Also, I was lucky enough to find out that SM (as in SM Entertainment not our SM in the Phils, lol) had a pop-up event at the basement of Lotte Young Plaza.


The basement was PACKED WITH GIRLS I TELL U. I was really excited because I'm a fan of SNSD/Girl's Generation and I went to Every Sing but their caps with wings ARE ALL GONE. They were more focused on promoting EXO merchandise though so I was quite sad. But since I really like EXO's song Wolf and I saw this chick wearing one of the Wolf shirt so cool-y (lol) I decided to go YOLO and buy myself the same shirt that the sales lady was wearing HAHAHAH. (WHEN IN KOREA...do what the Koreans do, I guess? hahaha)

Really sucked that there were barely any SNSD merch that I wanted to buy! :| But oh well. haha.


STYLENANDAAA!!! 

Located in the second floorrrr. Their pieces were really COOL but their pricing of their items was not. I had to control myself because I know that I'd find more things in Hongdae or in Ehwa University and I'd rather spend it there than in the malls.


Nonetheless, it's really hard to hate on Stylenandaaa huhuhuhhu. 
Soooo gooooodd.



On the way to Hongdae...


There was a flea market where different artists gathered during Saturdays! Lotsa cool stuff and there was "live paintings" too :D


She said "No picture!" when I clicked the shutter...oopsss. Sorryyy but her items were so cute tho.



This guy had a lot of people in front of him. I don't know why but I'm guessing its because he could either be famous or maybe it's because he offers a 10 second illustration of yourself...I'm guessing it's the latter tho?



Artbox! Cool place that sells different kinds of cute things from passport holders to pjs and stationeries. :) 
This place was in Hongdae, sorry I have very few photos of Hongdae because I went crazy shopping here and forgot to document things. HAHAHHA.


Our hotel beeedsss~~


Incheon Airport. D'awww :< FAREWELL KOREA. WE WILL MISS UUUU!



His lolo gave him his jacket which was SUPER big on him and it was too cute not to take a picture of. I missed that moment but I got this instead so it's all cool. :D



Our final dinner Korean dinner :(
Me and my brother felt really blessed after this whole trip. We never knew we'd be able to see Korea in such an early stage of our lives. We are grateful to JC for this lol (JC is Jesus Christ HAHA) seriously. We are. Knowing that we used our savings for this trip is twice as awesome-rrrrrr than it should beee and we also learned a lot in lyff which I think should be the main point in every trip that you do~~



Annyeoong!


ANNYEEONNGG KOREAA! IMISSUALREADY :( #iamclingy 

Korea is awesome. It is my new HK. Hahaha. If you love to shop clothes, this is the best place to go to....aside from Hong Kong. I promise I'll comee baackkk! :D

PS. I still have lots of photos (from my bro's camera and my films) to upload so wait for iiittt and I also collected some videos to. When I have free time, I hope I get to be able to post it. So yeah, that's it. 

FIGHTING!