My Shopping Spree

Cait and I went down to Seoul on Saturday for some long-awaited shopping - not frivolous stuff, I assure you, but a basic human need: cellphones. Yes, I am now connected to the world via a little white box with Korean symbols mysteriously written all over it. And wellies, which are a basic human need in Korea during summer.

So! We'd been up the night before with a bottle of wine and an amateurish curry made from a packet thieved from our boss during tea last week, and then in my case, even later watching The Holiday on TV. It wasn't too early a start, but the lack of sleep didn't help when we ventured out to the bus stop in pouring rain and thick mist. The bus finally came, 10 minutes late as usual (except when we're late, then it's 10 minutes early. Sometimes I think the bus driver just doesn't like foreigners and tries to make it as difficult as possible to catch his bus from our stop.) We headed to Yongsan first.

I wanted to share this photo with you which I took in the subway. Clearly afraid of a repeat of the subway attacks of 2003, Korean platforms are filled with emergency torches, radio contact with ground-level emergency services, and these cupboards containing gas masks and oxygen tanks. Worrying prepared, but quite soothing to know it's all there!

Yongsan is an amazing place, and I was so glad I'd already been there once with people who knew where to go. I was thus able to proudly lead Cait straight to the section we wanted to be in. This was over a bridge, down through the computer section, over a road and sideways into a covered alley where all the cellphone merchants of Korea were gathered. This is one of the weirdest things about commerce in Korea. Instead of spreading out, the Koreans gather all their shops into little enclaves. Everyone knows that if you want clothes you go to Dongdaemun. Electronics are Yongsan. Indian food is Itaewon. Trendy US style shops are in Myeongdong.

Even within Yongsan, each type of electronic product is gathered into certain areas. To buy a camera, you go to a particular floor, where you emerge from the door into an enormous area filled with stalls all selling exactly the same thing at prices within a couple of thousand Won of each other. Musical instruments are on another floor; computers get a building to themselves. The photo on the left is from when a friend and I went to buy our new cameras. You can see the stalls stretching into the distance... all selling the same camcorders and cameras and cases...



Our cellphone section was lined with little shops with dusty displays of the latest cellphones outside. I particularly loved the gold one you can see in the photo, but restrained myself as you could only buy that model brand new and I had to buy second-hand. Shame.

We were lucky enough to stumble onto a lovely man who smiled at us and told us he could only speak a little English, and then proceeded to guide us through the whole complicated process of registering my new phone in my name. In English. Oh, Korean reticence.

Korean phones work on a different system to the rest of the world, so you cannot use foreign phones here, even on Roaming - making for a healthy trade between foreigners. The cellphones don't have removable sim cards and are locked to the network that is connected to the phone manufacturer. You cannot unlock them or change them. I have an LG phone, therefore I am on the LG Telecom network. When I bought the phone the shop owner and I had to fill out a 3 page form which was then submitted by the shop owner to the phone company, then we waited for 30 minutes while they filed everything and registered the phone. And this was just for pay-as-you-go! The phone is now in my name and if it were to break or get lost, I can instantly transfer my number to a new one. Which I guess is cool. It just seems like a lot of effort just to have a simple, second-hand, pretty ugly phone!

Once I'd popped across the road to the Computer Peripherals Market, and bought a webcam (hooray!) and a gig stick for work (teeny tiny little thing that is going to get lost), we walked back over the walkway to the main building, and after just a little stop for Baskin Robbins ice cream (one thing the Americans have definitely gotten right), and a completely unsuccessful attempt to decode the subway station, we got in a taxi for Itaewon - otherwise known as Little America, and, oddly enough, close to Hooker Hill. There is an enormous US military base there and the streets are filled with soldiers and American tourists buying cheap Ralph Lauren and Hard Rock Cafe. Not my scene at all, but Cait expertly led the way through the wet and miserable streets to a side street and then into a lushly decorated Indian restaurant where we gorged on curries and naan bread and delicious dhal to our hearts' content.

Tea is a natural follow-up to a good lunch and so we headed to Insadong where, yes, all the tea sellers and tea shops of Seoul are gathered into one long street. The main street is currently being renovated and the buildings are very modern, but the side streets are something special - little hanok buildings line narrow alleys filled with green trees and trickling streams. It was still raining however, and so Cait and I simply ducked into a little cafe which defied the promise of its narrow glass doorway to stretch into a calm space with chunky wooden tables, lilies and trees, ending in a tiny courtyard which really should have been too small for the amount of garden squeezed in there. Cait was mostly preoccupied with fixing her phone's ringtones and settings - and then the lovely girl fixed mine too :) I think I might be getting too old to understand phones? :)


By now it was nearly 5pm, we had been in Seoul for six hours, and we were wet and tired, and my feet were cold. We decided to soldier on to Myeongdong where we hoped to buy wellies. We'd been half-heartedly looking for these for weeks, asking everyone we saw wearing them where we could find some (mostly America...) But now the rains were starting, and we were envisaging teaching classes for two months in wet takkies. The hunt was on.

Most stores laughed at us when we pointed to the little kids' froggie wellies (what's wrong with an adult wearing rubber shoes painted in rainbow colours? Huh?) Eventually, after climbing to the seventh floor of a clothes department store, we saw two Korean girls very stylishly flaunting their wellies (sorry, rain boots) and plucked up the courage to stop them. In flawless English, one gave us the directions to a store in the back streets of Myeongdong. I think the store assistants were a bit taken aback when two very wet foreign girls came rushing in, grabbing wellies from the window display and asking for Big Size Please? Thankfully they didn't bat an eyelid at our elephantine feet. Hurriedly buying socks from a street vendor, we retreated to a coffee shop and sneakily snuck our new boots on to our feet under cover of the table. No funny looks from the Koreans around us, but then, this is a nation where the girls will interrupt a conversation in public to check their faces in mirrors. Perhaps changing your shoes isn't such a big thing.

Once our frozen feet were safely ensconced in warm socks and boots, and our tummies full of caramel mocha latte, we were on our way to our bus stop in Hapjeong. Within 40 minutes our bus pulled up outside EV and we wandered off to bed.

And yes, it was still raining.

Welcome to the Asian summer ;)