2017 F/W HERA Seoul Fashion Week

On the second day, one of the things that we decided to do was to visit HERA Seoul Fashion Week that was in full swing at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP). Fashion week is always exciting and interesting. DDP was packed with people and you can felt the energy and excitement in the air. Fashion photographers—professionals and amateurs alike—were trying to get the perfect snaps of people who were roaming the area with their sniper like long lenses, trying to catch the perfect shot of the day. Models, actresses, actors, singers, public figures and just regular people in general all blending in together in this area, strutting in front of the photographers as if it’s their private runway showing off their look (or looks I should say) of the day. There were a lot of people who dressed up in all kinds of styles and the overwhelming visual stimulus was almost too much for me to take in all at once.

We ended up picking up a spot in a less busy part of DDP and did people watching for a while. First of all, there were a lot of good looking people that were present. I mean, like really ridiculously good looking people. Tall men and women with symmetrical faces, prominent noses and jawlines, and flawless skin (or maybe it was just perfect make-up? I don’t know. Couldn’t really tell). It was also fascinating to be able to see what these people chose to wear as their personal style and there were definitely some cool looks that we liked, and some which just made the eyebrows on our faces hiked up and our eyes widen in confusion.

My favorite shots were probably these little girls, who were dressed better than I did by the way, approaching this man with a cat mask on his face. They were really really curious about the cat mask and I thought it was so funny because at first, the catman only attracted one girl and in the end her two friends joined in on her curiosity. It was the cutest thing ever. In the end, the catman never took off his mask and the girls went away with their curiosity still apparent in their eyes when their moms called them to get going. And not long after that show was over, so did we.

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Seoul Spring '17 - Ep. 01

Travel Vlog: Took my friends around Seoul when they came to visit for spring holiday.
We explored Ewha & Sinchon area for the first day of the trip.

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Exploring Sinchon & Ewha

On the first day we touched down in Seoul, the cold early spring weather greeted us as soon as we walked out of the airport terminal. The four of us stood at the bus stop, waiting for the airport bus which was supposed to take us to our Airbnb to pull up into its spot.

I suppose I should introduce you to three people who were with me on this trip. Meet Marshellia, Grace and Christina. Childhood best friends who I’ll be taking around Seoul during the first week of my trip. My three companions were busy munching on the Honey Butter Chips that was bought earlier, partly for the purpose of a light breakfast replacement, partly because we all wanted to know if the Honey Butter Chips hyped that was going on then was really living up to the hype. (For me, it didn’t to be honest. Just not my thing)

As soon as the airport bus arrived and took us into the city, our first stop was our Airbnb in Hongdae. The place Grace has picked was really nice. Spacious apartment with two queens beds, living area, and dining area. We dropped off our luggages and took a little break before heading out for brunch.

Since it's our first day in the city and we took a red-eye flight the night before, my plan was to just explore the areas near our Airbnb so we don’t get too tired. The first stop for brunch was this Korean spicy soft tofu stew (순두부찌개) place in Sinchon. Everybody was feeling for something soupy and warm, so tofu stew was perfect for the chilly weather. After we stuffed ourselves with rice and stew, we went to one of the shooting locations of the popular drama ‘Goblin’, which happened to be around the area. Goblin was the big Korean drama at the time. The series has just ended a couple of months before so the excitement around the series was still there. I took them to tunnel where Goblin & Gream Reaper had their slow motion walking scene after they returned from buying groceries and we took a couple of pictures there.

After Sinchon, we walked over to Ewha to explore the area. The girls went shopping and we also tried some waffle for our afternoon snack.

When dinner time came, I took them to one of my favorite gyukatsu place and we each had a portion of the juicy tender deep-fried beef cutlets.

Shopping session resumed after we finished dinner. More clothing stores and shoe stores visits, resulted in more shopping bags being carried around as the night was getting darker.

When everybody was finally spent, we made our way back to our Airbnb and called it a day. And that was our first day.

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Seoul Spring 2017

These past couple of years, I’ve been doing my fair share of travels and realized that I have a lot of stuff from my trips that I never shared before. Partly because I never really the one who do editing or blogging during my trips (Instagram updates alone had my hands full and I don’t really want to spend more time than necessary in front of another screen during my travel to be honest) and partly because it takes time for me to sort through and edit all the photos I took from the trip.

Now that I’m (kinda) finished sorting through some of them out, thought I’ll try this new thing where I share stories from where I’ve been to on this blog. To be honest, I don’t really know what this whole series is going to be. It might change in the future, it might not. We’ll see. But for now, I’m just gonna start and see how things go.

So for the first of this Travel Series, I’ll be sharing my trip to Seoul during Spring of 2017. I’ll be posting different updates on this blog, as well as on my Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube account, so if you’re interested to see more stuff from the trip, you can check ‘em out there.

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