Saturday, March 1, 2008

Day 7 (19 Feb 08) Pictures of Kimchi Making, Dressed in Hanbok and Dongdaemon Market

We had yummy buffet breakfast at a restaurant before going to our first stop of the day, Ginseng Showroom. I also managed to buy some cute souvenirs for my friends and relatives at the restaurant.






This is the part I hate the most as I feel that I’m wasting my time there. I would rather spend my time going to places where I can shop for things that I would buy like “The Face Shop” or Myeongdong which I had no time to go. However as it is part of the itinerary, we had no choice but to just go along and pray hard that we would not end up buying things that we would regret.

Most of us in the tour group were not interested in buying Ginseng as it is so expensive. One of the sales staff actually tried to sell a US$800+ Ginseng package to hubby and me. We had a hard time getting rid of her and ended up joining most of our tour group members outside the showroom to avoid being pestered by the sales staff. In the end, one family actually bought $3000 worth of Ginseng! I would rather use the money on gadgets haha but I guess maybe they appreciates the benefits of Ginseng, so good for them :> at least we don’t feel so bad about not making any purchases.

We next proceeded to my favourite part of the tour, our Kimchi-making session where we also had the opportunity to take photos while dressed in hanbok, the traditional Korean costume. I also bought 2 packs of Kimchi so that I can also eat it when home. After eating Kimchi for the past few days, i have gotten used to the taste and I especially like eating it with rice or porridge as it tastes very good. We had alot of fun making Kimchi and taking pictures of us wearing hanboks.










After all the fun, we went for lunch at a Chinese restaurant.








After lunch, we went to an amethyst factory where we saw a wide selection of crystal jewellery. This part of the tour was bearable as at least we found some things to buy that were not as expensive as Ginseng :> We then proceeded to Korea's largest wholesale centre, Dongdaemum Market. Specializing in wholesale clothing, the market has grown large, having more than 20 shopping malls. We only had about 2 hours there which was very rushed and we only explored one of the shopping mall. There was alot of nice stuffs and fashionable clothes and accessories but most of the stuffs were not cheap. I saw a very nice winter jacket but it cost more than $100 and i decided not to buy in the end. I ended up buying a bag which costs S$78 after bargaining. The salesgirl was able to speak in English and she gave me about $15 discount if i pay in cash. I also bought some very nice pouches at the souvenier shop. We did not have time to explore the whole mall as 2 hours passes very fast and we have to go to Lotte World Adventure Park next. I would post more pictures of it tomorrow. Have to go back to watching my Man U match :>







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