Day 4: Seoul (Look who's cooking tonight!)

Planning to do some cooking during this stay, so early morning I took the Fraser shuttle bus together with all the aunties to Lotte Mart. The only guy on the bus was the driver. :P Let's go marketing!

Lotte Mart
Located next to Seoul station, it is a big two storey hypermart. I quickly browsed the non food section on the second floor before proceeding to the food section for groceries. Not much time to slowly walk around because the bus will come back for us in two hours time.


Lotte Mart


The noodle dance

I love the fresh food section, the arrangement is very neat and pretty.


Seafood


Grilled eel, I bought one box.


Our favourite nakji galbi (marinated octopus). Will try this next time.

I'm so happy to know that now I can cook those Korean BBQ easily at home. The raw meats come in extensive kinds of marination. This will be exciting for days to come :D


Beef


Pork

It seems like Koreans do not eat a lot of chicken. It only occupies a small space at the corner and it doesn't come in parts. We could only buy whole chicken here.

I don't think there's much difference in cost whether to cook ourselves or eat outside. Rice is pretty expensive, it's 3,800 won per kg (SGD 4.30). Broccoli is 1,500 won each, but surprisingly the organic vegetables is very cheap, only costs 970 won (SGD 1.10) per pack! The white button mushroom which is so expensive in Singapore also very cheap. So I guess the living cost in Seoul more or less the same as in Singapore.

I'm not sure whether Lotte Mart is consider a higher end supermarket like Cold Storage. Next time I'll try to shop at E-Mart and Costco.

A new luggage
In the earlier post, I didn't mentioned that our luggage was damaged when we arrived in Seoul airport. The side handle was gone, one of the feet was broken and the wheels didn't balance anymore. Couldn't believe that the damages were so many while we had the "fragile" sticker on it. At first we didn't want to report it, but luckily we did!


The side handle was gone


Broken feet

We told the officer about all the damages, she took note and filled up a form very slowly. We waited for her and kept wondering what's next for us. Finally she completed the form and asked us whether we wanted a repair or replacement. Ours ain't a LV, of course we chose a replacement. :P Then she showed us the luggage catalogue where we could choose anything we fancied, the canvas or even the hard shell type in all sizes. We also asked her to measure our luggage because we wanted to get the same size luggage, if not we couldn't bring back all the things later. Finally we chose a 28" canvas expandable SPINNER luggage!!

I just couldn't believe that they really give us a new luggage. The lady told us that it will be delivered to our apartment in a week. The spinner is really my dream luggage, that day I was grinning from ear to ear on our way from the airport that our receptionist commented why I still looked so fresh after a red-eye flight. :P

And guess what, it only took them three days for it to be delivered to our door. Wow, I really admire their efficiency.


So here it is.


28" canvas spinner luggage


Not a branded luggage but it is good enough. :)

Moral of the story, no need to buy an expensive luggage unless you could afford not to feel the pain when it is damaged.

First home cooked dinner




Organic lettuce with fruit cocktail and green tea salad dressing


Samgyetang (chicken ginseng soup)

I bet everyone must be surprised that I could cook samgyetang. Well, this was not entirely cooked from scratch. ;)

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Tada... the ready pack, just boil it for 30 minutes. :D

Believe me, this tasted as nice as the one from the restaurant. :)

And the best thing after all the cooking, I didn't need to do any dish washing at all. It will be taken care of on the next day. :D

Day 5 >>