Exchange Day 85

It's the election period for the Dong A Student Union this month and it's funny to watch how the students campaign. Other than printing huge banners with their faces blown up, they also dance cheerleader style on the roads opposite the shuttle bus stop. I might start voting if the nominees start dancing back in NTU too.

Look at their zest hahaha I couldn't resist snapping a few pictures.

I had a late lunch after my group project meeting, which was very efficient (I like), at Bongusu Burger opposite the Bumin campus. My Korean friend brought me there, although I've had it once, because I think he wanted to show me how to eat the rice burger Korean-style. In Singapore, we eat our rice burgers like normal burgers but over here, they serve the burgers on plates and we use spoons to eat them like normal rice.

According to my friend, the first step (other than unwrapping) is to pour a little water on the burger, so that the rice grains will not stick to the aluminium foil. Then, you wrap your burger again and flatten the burger with your palm. Unwrap the burger and mix the rice and the other ingredients thoroughly before enjoying the burger! Honestly, I don't know what's the point of having the rice in a burger if we are going to mix it up before eating it.

My original burger, which has kimchi and tuna mayo!

His chilli chicken ribs burger, which he describes to be 'messier' so I should take a photo of.

It's interesting knowing a different way to eat the burger although I still enjoy it most like a normal burger. :)

Dinner was fried udon noodles from GGgo, where they serve all their food in cups. I had always wanted to try it for it looks cute eating from a cup and today I finally forced myself to do it. Other than udon noodles, there's also fried rice, buckwheat noodles, curry rice and chicken cutlet rice. For my udon noodles, I had a choice between spicy or spicier (which is actually not much of a choice) and I reluctantly took spicy.

I could smell the bonito flakes the moment I opened the lid and so could everyone who were in the same study area as I was. I apologise if I made any of you hungry. The octopus cubes were very chewy and some tasted a bit like it was fake. The udon noodles were very tasty but they were so spicy I don't think I'm gonna order it again.

xoxo, ❀

Exchange Day 76 - Fastfood and cafe hopping

Look at the pretty and red leaves on the way down the mountain! Autumn is indeed here!

Today is a 혼자있어부산 (alone in Busan) day, otherwise known as HIP day. I've coined a new term for such a day so it doesn't sound so pathetic and readers who are interested in traveling in Busan alone can find my blog posts easily. Actually, I'm supposed to be doing my homework but I feel so restless I decided doing trivial things would be more productive.

My professors have finally realised halfway through the semester that we students have not been doing enough so they conspired to bombard us with assignments all at once. Although it's nice that I finally feel like a student instead of a tourist, since I'm only left with one more month till exchange ends, I can't be bound by my academic obligations! They couldn't have picked a better time than now to start.

Enough about them. So like all previous HIP days (which weren't really HIP days as they weren't given a name yet), my blog entry will be about places in Busan that I've tried and tested that are okay to visit alone. I'm currently sitting in the Dong A University branch of Angel-in-us Coffee, a franchise cafe that proclaims they serve the world's best coffee. I wouldn't know since I don't drink coffee, but I've tried their lemonade previously and it was really refreshing!

Angel-in-us Coffee can easily be recognised by its angelic mascot (pun intended) and is one of the few ubiquitous brands of cafes around. There's at least one outlet in every big departmental store and for all you k-drama fangirls (or boys) out there, Angel-in-us is fronted by the face of prettyboy Kim Soo Hyun.

Poor Kim Soo Hyun is waiting for you to join him at the cafe!

I'd say that cafes in general are good places to frequent when you're alone and like in most parts of the world, you can find people hanging out in groups or just chilling alone here. I don't have the habit of chilling in cafes back in Singapore but I think this is one thing that might change when I go back.

I'd suggest to pick a window seat if you're alone! It feels good to have something to look at when you're bored of what you're doing, be it studying or reading a book or typing away at your computer!

My drink of the day is 핫국화차, which I'm guessing is hot osmanthus tea.

Okay a quick check on Google Translate tells me I'm wrong. It's not osmanthus, it's chrysanthemum. I'd hate to think that I actually paid 4,000W for chrysanthemum tea but this has a light fragrance and isn't sweet so I like it. It helps too that it has a cooling effect and helps neutralise the heatiness from lunch.

My room here has a magnetic effect that prevents me from stepping out of the room, even to get food, which is a feat in itself. I woke up around nine today and breakfast was a measly sweet potato fish bread that I bought yesterday night from the convenience store, knowing that I'll probably lounge in my room the whole day.

So I was really really hungry (cue giddy spells) by noon but I couldn't bring myself to go out until I finished the blog entry that was for yesterday. So a few hours past just like that and when I finally stepped out, it was 15:00. I swear I would have fainted in my room had I left any later. I did 30 lunges in the room and my world started to spin.

Lunch was fast food, I wanted to have Mom's Touch again but I was too abashed to step in so I had Lotteria across the street instead. Although I haven't tried the McDonalds here, I wanted to have shaker fries so I decided to go to Lotteria. The McDonalds here doesn't have shaker fries. I ordered a shrimp burger and was so stunned by a question the staff asked I forgot all about shaker fries. I think she was trying to ask me if I wanted to upsize my meal, which I couldn't understand but she did it for me anyway. I ended up throwing half of my fries and almost all my cola away. The burger was pretty tasty though.

The set meal cost me 6,200W, which is a crazy price I'll most probably not pay in Singapore for McDonalds and I regret my decision even before I got back to my seat. I keep making lousy food choices these few days what is wrong with me! I haven't been exercising so I attribute it to that, but I'm too lazy to keep my mind active with exercise. What a vicious cycle.

I realised after that shaker fries only cost 1,000W so I could have just gotten a burger and a packet of shaker fries for less than 5,000W since I didn't drink soda and having a drink wouldn't matter to me. Moping about my folly didn't make the meal less tasty than it already was, but I did scoff everything down faster than usual.

Hopefully dinner will be better later! I'm going to have barley rice later with my friend! The imo cannot reject me now since I brought a friend. (cackles) I'll update the post again after dinner!

edit/
The shop wasn't open for business today... I guess the auntie somehow managed to have the last laugh sigh. Since we couldn't eat barley rice, we decided to try a new restaurant so we went to Vongole Pasta and Pizza on the other side of the street.

Stepping inside the restaurant revealed a homely and well-decorated loft, very different from what I was expecting as we trudged up the dubious flight of stairs that led to the place. I was really impressed by the tree in the middle of the restaurant where messages of previous diners were hung splendidly on its branches. Closer inspection left us a little discouraged as most of the diners were couples but we did see another pair of friends, which was great.

We tried very hard to slowly decide what to eat, but looking at the limited choices they have, it wasn't much of a decision so we took our order in a jiffy. If you have a party of more than one, I'd like to recommend that you order something from the pasta menu and another from the pizza menu such that you can have the best of both worlds. The pasta portion wasn't big so the pizza sort of helped to make up for it too.

It was really sweet of the restaurant to give complimentary croissants and marshmallows as appetisers while we wait for our food, but we wondered what would have happened if we came alone since everything was dished out in pairs.

The garlic croissants were delicious but slightly sweeter than your average garlic toast.

Roasting marshmallows over a candle light probably helps make your date more romantic unless you burn your marshmallows or set them on fire like us.

The food came in less than fifteen minutes, which was great because we were both starving and it helped take attention away from the awkward silence in the restaurant.

(left) Creamy vongole pasta and (right) margherita thin-crust pizza. 

You can choose to have your pastas cooked spicy or not and since I didn't take spicy, we chose not to have it spicy but their menu recommends having it spiced. I love creamy pasta and this one was not too bad although it would have been better was there more sauce.

They had five pizza options and out of the five, three were sweet. The other one was spicy so we chose a tomato-based margherita pizza, which was kind of disappointing as there wasn't much flavour to it. But I liked the thin crust!

After the meal, the restaurant surprised us with a complimentary dessert of vanilla and chocolate ice cream topped with sugary syrup and sweetened cornflakes. Talk about diabetes. I appreciate that they gave two scoops of ice cream instead of one big one (you would think that they'll make you share everything), so that the couple could secretly mark their food territory even in the midst of this lovey-dovey sharing. Well I don't know about the others, but personally I'd be upset if my boyfriend ate my share of the ice cream.

We paid a total of 14,500W for the meal and it wasn't too bad considering the type of food we ate so I'd say that this restaurant is worth a try, but I'd recommend that you come with friends so that you get to try more for the same price.

xoxo, ❀

Exchange Day 67 - Happy Halloween!

Today was an exciting day because my friends and I would be having ice cream at Baskin Robbins before our late evening class! We were going to challenge ourselves to finish the mega huge ice cream monster pail! At Baskin Robbins, there is a promotion for every thirty-first day of the month, where customers will receive a free upsize with every purchase of a family pint, giving you savings of 5,000W and a whole lot more ice cream!

I had breakfast at the dorm as usual, which was a carbohydrate-loaded meal of gravy potatoes and fried fish fillet with rice and spicy tofu-radish soup. I have to say the soup was the best part of the meal, I don't enjoy eating normal potatoes that much and the fried fish today was tasteless if not for the salad cream.

For lunch, I met a friend, whom I got to know two days ago. It was a really random occurrence as I was standing outside the post office after having dropped off a parcel to Chubby. She came up to me and started talking to me in a flurry of Korean. Thinking that she needed directions, I smiled sheepishly and said that I was a foreigner, expecting her to understand that I could be of no help and she had to find another person for help. To my surprise, she kept on talking and we ended up chatting so much that we arranged for a lunch date today.

She was late so she offered to treat me for lunch, which I gladly accepted as it's considered rude in Korean culture to decline such an offer. We ate in the school cafeteria of Seunghak campus, which was new to me as I never had classes there. Like all other cafeterias, we had to buy a meal ticket from the vending machine but there were a whole lot more food choices here as compared to the rest. I'm a little sorry that I didn't take a closer look at the menu before deciding on dumplings as I didn't expect the dumplings to be fried and the fried chicken that I loved was on the menu today! Such a pity.

Lunch ended on a bit of an awkward note as more 'friends' turned up than I had expected and I felt a little pressured by them to take up activities at their cultural centers. My friend had told me about her cultural center that they offer dancing and modeling classes for lower prices and so I had agreed to find out more about the classes from her over lunch today. But I didn't get as much information as I would like to because I had to visit the center to find out more, which was fishy I thought. Coupled with the fact that I felt out of place and uncomfortable with everyone that was present, I thought I better leave. Thankfully they could sense my discomfort and didn't press for me to stay.

The next part of the day was the best as I fled to Baskin Robbins to have ice cream with my friends!!! Being indecisive girls, we took a long time but we finally decided on six ice cream flavours to enjoy! Each monster bucket entitles you to choose up to 6 different flavours and you won't just get a scoop of that flavour but the staff will use this thing that looks like a paint scraper and cut one whole chunk of ice cream for you.

Look at the mountain of ice cream oh my god this cost us 19,500W, which was really a steal. 

It took lots of pain and determination but we managed to finish every single drop of ice cream in the bucket. We have agreed that we will not eat any more Baskin Robbins for the next one month.

Dinner was fried chicken from a roadside stall and rice burger from Bongusu Burger, which was newly opened right outside the side gate of Bumin Campus. As I liked it sweet, the staff suggested a Mayonnaise Ribs Burger, which I accepted.

2,500W for my burger.

The cubes were chicken in bulgogi sauce and there was also tuna mayonnaise in the burger. It was really satisfying and we ate our burgers with a spoon although you can choose to compress it and eat it like a normal burger.

Fried chicken was 2,000W for a medium sized cup, which we shared, and there were also golden brown hashbrowns inside! So delicious!

T'was a fatty but really happy day for my tummy! I shall try to eat healthier for the next few days to mitigate the damage done by the ice cream and cake and fried food. Good night everyone!

P.S. My friend and I saw people in Halloween getup heading towards something that looked like a party so we decided to try our luck. Korea doesn't have a Halloween culture so we got really excited when we saw people in costumes, but it turned out to be a 'sensual' (as quoted from their poster) club event so we bailed.

xoxo, ❀

Exchange Day 61 - Where are the birds

I was supposed to visit the Gamcheon Cultural Village with my friends today but I bailed because I was too tired from stalking Scoot the previous night. I can't believe I went to sleep at an ungodly 4a.m. and the worse part was it wasn't even productive. I still don't have a flight back to Singapore.

Breakfast today was the chocolate log bread that I had been dying to try from PB! It wasn't extremely chocolatey to the point where you felt you gained ten pounds from a single bite, but it wasn't chocolatey enough to satisfy your inner chocolate demons. I don't know what exactly I was expecting from the bread, but it sure didn't taste as mind-blowing as I envisioned it to be.

This thing cost me 3,000W.

I stayed in my room the entire morning and I didn't even go out for lunch because I was too engrossed in the Internet. I can't even remember what it was that I did today oh my gosh. If not for my room mate, I don't think I would have stepped out of the house at all today.

She came back in the late afternoon and said that they were trying to claim their transport fees and asked if I wanted to tag along. Well of course I did, it's free money. So I finally took my first step out of the house and thankfully I wasn't looking too dishevelled because we ended up staying outside for a couple of hours and even had to visit the school's office to submit our applications. Special mention goes to David, a Korean buddy of ours who is the nicest person I have ever met, I can't believe such a person exists actually. (and it was his birthday today I didn't even know until a few days later)

The cavewoman caved in (yay punny!) to her hunger so she bought an ice cream from the convenience store for 1,000W. I love ice cream cakebreads (actually I just love ice cream) like this and this one is blueberry-cheesecake-flavoured! I made it a point to try every single prepacked ice cream from the convenience stores here and I am nowhere close to even half the list because I keep rejecting those temptations.

Anyway, the ice cream was cold, creamy and smooth, deliciously sandwiched by the soft spongy cake slices but I don't think I should eat it again. There're too many other ice creams waiting in line. But this one was really good!

We spent an hour bumming around after we went to the office (I learnt that guys can be as indecisive as girls sometimes) and by this time, the cavewoman has evolved into a hungry monster and we all know what she's like when she's hungry! So she fled down the mountain to grab herself some food.

I've always wanted to try Mom's Touch, but I didn't have the guts to go in and order a takeout I don't know for what reason since I have been through much worse embarrassments. But since David was around, he could help me order and I finally got to try the highly raved Mom's Touch! I got the mango chicken burger, which was huge (true to its picture) and tasted like a non-spicy version of the Zinger burger back home. It wasn't half bad but I was disappointed because I couldn't taste any mango in all of my bites. Are they not in season? The fries were fantastic though! Best fries I've had in Korea!

My room mate wanted a drink so we all got bubble teas! I try not to drink bubble so often but I've been wanting to try the bubble tea here in Korea to see how it differs from the ones back home. The shop we went to was called Bubble Tok (bad pun) and each cup bought is worth one chop on the loyalty card. The cute part was that you could play rock-scissors-paper with the staff and if you win, you get an additional chop! And we both won. (grins)

I ordered an iced pumpkin latte which costs a crazy 4,300W and only tasted so-so. The tapioca (that's what they call it here) was really chewy, but it was kind of tasteless so it was a chore for me to avoid the pearls when drinking the latte. I ended up throwing the drink away at the halfway mark. Although I would like to try their sweet potato drinks, I probably wouldn't go in again.

After dinner, I joined my friends for bird-watching at the Eulsukdo Bird Sanctuary. It's just round the corner from Hadan and across the Nakdong River. It's within walking distance actually from Hadan Station but if you don't like to walk, you can take Bus 58 from the station but it only comes once every twenty minutes.

Through a series of misfortunate events, by the time we got there, it was really dark and the birds were all gone. Well, not all the birds, we managed to see one crane and three unidentified flying creatures but that was it. We have to come back another day. (sigh) I read online that the birds are not always around throughout the year and that October is the best time for bird-watching.

It was really dark but I managed to spot a crane perched on top of a wooden gate! (happy)

I'm glad we got to see the beautiful night view of Hadan though.

My friends were hungry and they wanted to have dinner at 본죽, a franchise porridge house they found online. We walked for miles and miles no thanks to Google Maps but we finally found it! The long search whetted our appetites and we wasted no time ordering our food.

As the servings were huge, us three girls got two bowls to share whereas the guys happily polished off one bowl each. The girls wanted to try the popular Bulgogi-Octopus Porridge so we had that and I picked Pumpkin Porridge for our other choice. The guys were boring and both got Mushroom-Chicken Porridge. Each bowl of porridge ranges from 8,000W to 15,000W and I felt that it was really too expensive to be justified even though the servings were very generous.

The bulgogi-octopus porridge (9,000W) had lots of ingredients in it and looked really appetising, but tasted very bland. The pumpkin porridge (8,000W) had more flavour, but it lacked the abundance of ingredients. It tasted more like a dessert than a proper meal, especially with the rice dumplings inside it. I'm not a porridge person, so I guess I'll not be coming back, but it was definitely worth a try.

xoxo, ❀