Books, Travels & Life in Between

Annyong, 2017. Annyong, 2018.

January 6, 2018

2017 came and went, and I only managed to blog nine times. Can you believe it? I couldn’t even post at least once a month.

I started writing a post on the last day of the year, but I didn’t even finish it before my mind drifted off elsewhere. It wasn’t my best blogging year. And to be honest, it wasn’t the best year in general.

I tried a couple of times to keep the blog active, but soon enough, I ended up not posting anything for months at a time. There was rarely anything particularly exciting or something I felt the urge to write about. I didn’t want to talk about work nor did I have the energy to write about it. There were days when I felt like nothing’s really working for me, but I pulled through anyway. [Read more…]

Seohwa Hanbok Rental in Seoul Near Gyeongbokgung Palace

November 5, 2017

Everytime I visit South Korea, it’s mandatory to try on a hanbok and pretend to be a sophisticated lady from the Joseon period. Out of all my hanbok experiences in Seoul, the most recent one had to be my favorite. We usually just rent hanbok for free in tourist centers in Seoul, but I got offered the chance to roam around Seoul wearing the traditional clothing. It’s an experience that I just couldn’t pass up. I mean, how can you say no to wearing pretty traditional dresses, right? [Read more…]

Lunch at Bok Chicken: Weightlifting Fairy Kim BokJoo’s Filming Location

October 29, 2017

No trip to South Korea will be complete without visiting a K-drama filming location. With so many dramas released every year, pretty much every tourist spot in Seoul is a shooting location. However, there are still some hole-in-the-wall spots that you really have to go out of your way just to reach. Such is the restaurant used in Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-Joo, and it was the first spot we visited for our South Korea trip last spring.

But out of all the Weightlifting Fairy filming locations used for the drama, this was my priority! Watching the show, I could hardly believe that a chicken restaurant could look so pretty so I was surprised to learn that it’s a real restaurant in Seoul. I just had to visit it, and I was glad my sister agreed. So far, it’s my favorite 2017 K-drama, and it was the one that pulled me out of my drama slump. (You can read all about it here if you want, hehe.) I couldn’t visit all its filming sites, but I could fit in at least one. It was more than enough for me because at least a fourth of the series was filmed here!

When I said that it’s out of the way, it’s really out of the way. It’s not a tourist spot and it’s near Kookmin University. However, it’s still pretty easy to reach, and we didn’t even get lost looking for it. But I guess I just have to attribute that to my killer sense of direction, or I can just really sniff out K-drama spots. (Seriously though, every corner in Seoul is fit to be a K-drama filming spot. The city is just that photogenic.)

After quickly dropping off our bags at Hotel Maui DDM, we went straight to Bok Chicken. But of course, it wasn’t really called Bok Chicken but Jak-eun Ma-eul, which I think means Small Town. But please don’t quote me on that. [Read more…]

South Korea Itinerary: Seoul and Busan for 7 Days During Spring

September 24, 2017

After n months of dawdling and procrastinating, I finally got the time to compile my South Korea itinerary for Spring 2017. Images of falling cherry blossoms, sizzling samgyupsal, and piping hot odeng were starting to haunt me so I decided that it’s finally time to stop watching Kdramas (for a few hours) and try to get something done for once. Hey, I have a chronic case of blogging laziness, and it’s not something that can be fixed easily. But I try, and here’s a little show of trying.

Unlike my previous travels in South Korea, our trip last April was impulsive. It wasn’t in my plan to go back early this year, because I wanted to go back right when Changmin gets discharged from the army, lol. But once my sister asked me if I wanted to go, I answered a definite and resounding YAAAAAS. It had been two years and five months since my last visit, and I was itching to roam the streets of Seoul and to hear KPOP anywhere I go. My sister hadn’t been back in Korea since our first visit in 2012. I was just 22 and wore ugly ugg boots even though it was Spring.

This time, we booked a trip for seven days to explore both Seoul and Busan. I probably won’t be able to blog about each day like in my previous visits, so I’ll share our seven-day itinerary in Busan and Seoul instead. If time permits, I would love to rave about the new places I got to visit this time!

Please note that this wasn’t our first time visiting, so we avoid the usual tourist spots and focused on visiting Kdrama filming locations, hehe. This is a rather relaxed trip and we really tried to enjoy each location. We also spent too much time hanging out at Korean-style gazebos, which seem to be abundant anywhere in Seoul. Also, I didn’t bother including the travel time in the itinerary. Let’s just say that it takes us approximately an hour to get to each location, with a lot of convenience store and street food stopovers.

Enough with my rambling. Here’s our Seoul to Busan itinerary.

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Life Lately: On Reading, Staying In, and Trying Things for the First Time

August 23, 2017

Hello, dear readers. It’s been months since my last update and I have no excuse! I have photos ready to upload but they’re sitting on my phone waiting for months to be uploaded. My South Korea photos are basically begging to be posted. Hopefully, I’ll get to do it by next month once I get my lazy ass out of bed.

I have so many stories to tell, and so little time to tell it. I don’t want to use work as an excuse, but after work I just like resting and reading books and watching shows and shutting down my brain. I don’t want to do anything that would require me to think. Thinking what to have for dinner is the only thinking I want to do. I hope you understand.

These past few months, I’m spending more time indoors and less time being on the road. I do miss traveling, but I also enjoy wasting weekends in bed and just reading. And you know what else? I spent the last few months pondering about where I want to go and how I want to go there. It’s still confusing now, but I do hope that in the next few months, I’ll figure out what I want to do with my life. I’m not getting any younger and working with fresh grads reminds me this everyday.

Honestly, the time I was away from the blog wasn’t so bad at all. I just wish I could blog all about it in detail. I spent a lot of time reading books and binge-watching TV shows (not Kdramas!). Somewhere in between, I tried a couple of things for the first time.

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