Lots of food...

What did we do today? Well.... as usual, it's too hot, and we don't really want to walk outside with no plans, so we again tried to find something indoor to do. So we settled on noraebang (karaoke). We went to this one that was highly recommended by many websites... but I think it's not better than the one I went to last year. Maybe it's because there were only two of us, or maybe it was just overrated. Either way, here are some pictures of the noraebang and us singing (or Joyce singing).

It kind of smelled like cigarettes in there, and the A/C wasn't cold when we first got there (I was sweating while singing)... but it got better a little later. We went around 1pm, so we got a good price of 10,000 per hour. We sang for two hours since we really had nowhere else to go anyways.

After that noraebang experience, we again sang in our own noraebang at the hostel using the Smule app. Here is Joyce and I singing "Part of Your World" (please excuse the special effects. I think they were trying to make us look like we were under water...)

So we actually shopped around Namdaemun for a little while after the karaoke... and found some interesting stuff. First, hodeok... which was really good :)

Next, some strange clothes we found. Like this one. A 10,000 won styled shorts. Joyce was really tempted to buy it.

We were gonna meet my friend's friend for dinner in Sinchon, which meant taking the subway back during peak hours. It was CRAZY. This had to be the craziest peak hour ride we've ever been on. It was not just packed, it was jammed. We couldn't get out of the subway from downstairs to upstairs... it was just CRAZY (I know it doesn't look like it, but we were deadlocked for a while).

Finally made it to this BBQ place in Sinchon... so glad to have a Korean take us around because we would have never knew this place, nor would we know what to order and what to eat!

Lots of people today because it was Fire Friday. This was actually the upstairs of the place because it was packed.

So this is my friend's friend, who also took me around the other day for make up shopping.

We first started with samgyepsal, which is the fatty pork belly.

She showed us how to wrap the meat with the lettuce, then radish, meat sauce, grilled garlic, and marinated onion. She said she doesn't really do that because she doesn't eat vegetables when she eats meat. Haha. She even showed us that a good way to eat kimchi is to grill it. It really takes out the sourness and spiciness from it!

She says that we have to eat the whole wrap in one shot.

And she says she doesn't eat BBQ without soju, so she got a bottle. I've never tried soju before, so I asked if I can have just a little bit to try. I drank a bit of it and it really didn't taste like anything.... just like water (the little bit I tried). Joyce downed the rest of my soju..

They even have a service button just for getting alcohol. I guess it's faster this way.

Next, we had the beef. She said that this is probably American beef, so it's not expensive. I asked her why the Korean beef is so expensive, and she said that it's because it's pretty much the same quality as Kobe beef, with a lot of marbling, so it's expensive. Now I understand why variety shows kept giving those things away as gifts....

The beef was very tender, since you don't have to grill it until it's entirely cooked through to eat it.

In between the meals, we got steamed eggs, which she said was "service" (meaning "free" in Korean). It was good :)

Last meat we got was marinated pork ribs. It was also good! She said that we had to eat in that order because we have to eat marinaded meat last since it has the most flavor.

Lastly, she asked if we wanted "dessert". Dessert is actually the cold noodles, because they want to eat something refreshing after a meal of oily meat. Since we couldn't decide which one, she ordered both noodles - the regular one and spicy one. She said to eat the spicy one first, since we can then use the regular one to cool off.

By this time, we were seriously super full. Just wayyyy too much food. She said that we actually ordered like 5 people's amount of food! So they usually give you about 150g-250g of meat per serving, which is about 9,000-13,000 each, depending on the type of meat. That's what they consider a one-person serving. She had ordered two servings of samgyeopsal, two servings of beef, and one serving of marinaded pork ribs for all of us. No wonder we were super full!! The meal turned out to be probably $80+? 

There were a lot of younger people eating next to us, which many of them seemed to be couples. I asked her if a couple eats BBQ together, who usually grills the meat? She says that usually if they're dating, the men will do it. But when they get married, the wife will do it. Haha. To be honest, from observing Korean couples the past few weeks, I've noticed that the Korean guys are really good to the girls, just like what I see in the drama (maybe a bit "over"). Our suspicion is that maybe the guys uses the drama as their "guide" to how they should behave around their date, haha. We could be wrong though.

I'm really glad to have made some Korean friends on this trip! Thanks to Joyce's friendly nature, we've made some good friends along the way. I think this trip wouldn't be the same without some real Koreans taking us around Korean places. I remember always feeling really sad seeing Americans coming to nice Chinese restaurants, but only eating a plate of fried rice to share between them. I always wonder if it's because they are afraid to try more obscure Chinese food, or they just don't know what to order. I would hate to have that happen to me in Korean - having Koreans look at me thinking "awww.... all she knows to eat is kimchi stew..."

Alright, it's much to late here now. More adventures tomorrow!