Whirlwind pt.8

(or more celectronics than you can imagine and the continuation of the search for merrell shoes - OR finally the end of these posts on seoul!!!)

monday morning we had to get up early (10ish) since check out was at eleven... check out at kim's guest house means dropping your keys and sheets into a box in the living room...everything is paid for when you check in, so there's no hassles when you leave... we had our coffee and toast and headed to seoul station to find a locker to drop off our many bags. cyndi's flight was leaving at 8pm so we had the whole day to do more exploring and we knew we had to go to the electronics market.

yongsan station

after dropping our stuff in the locker, which turned out to be more difficult than it should have been, we headed to yongsan station and the yongsan electronics arcade. there are over 7,000 stores in 24 buildings covering an area of nearly 900,000 square meters! i was like a kid in a candy store!

the first building we saw when we came out of the subway was the park mall... we walked in and it was like heaven had fallen from the sky and into this building... there were cameras lined up as far as the eye could see:

there were six aisles this big, selling only cameras,
and that's just the first floor... of the first building.

i was so close to buying a digital SLR that i'm regretting not doing it... i knew i would regret it, but i think that paying off my bills in canada instead was the responsible thing to do... right? i know that i'll go back and get one before i leave korea... if not sooner. it's not the kind of thing i should buy on the spur of the moment... i still wouldn't have been able to afford the canon that i really want, and i haven't really researched the lower end bodies... so it's probably a really good thing i didn't buy one....

anyway, this was the first of eight floors of electronics, in one of the malls...

the mp3 player area... everything you could want... iPods were dirt cheap too...

one floor was all mobile phones... every make and model you could imagine... we didn't even stop on that floor...

after wandering around park mall we left to try to find the bootleg dvd's as we had requests from peeps in gimhae... so we wandered across the train tracks to the rest of the malls:

yes, all electronics... all the time... miles of them!

we started searching for the dvds and got directions from a salesman in one of the stores in one of the malls, but his directions were pretty bad and we couldn't find them... we wandered around then decided it was time for lunch. we found an "orange cafe" (a chain where they serve traditional korean food like kimbap, jigae, and bibimbap). then we called a friend in gimhae to get directions to the dvds... which we found at long last across the street from where we started!

after finally getting the dvds that we wanted, we headed back to seoul station to see cyndi off to the airport. and then there were two. kim and i were left to our own devices... the other kim had sent me the info on where to go find my shoes. as it turned out the address i had from the merrell website was for a distributor, not a retail store, even though that's what i understood from the website... oh well, i finally knew where to go, and it was so simple all along! lotte department store! it just seemed so easy, and as it turns out, it was.

shoes???

we hopped on the subway to lotte, when we got there, the sales person told me "upsayo" which basically means "we don't have them". they told us we had to go to another department store down the street, on the 8th floor... yay! i was elated... finally i would get my shoes! as we wandered out of lotte, we happened upon this area that was full of pucca... trisha, this is for you!

me and pucca!

we walked to shinsegae department store. keep in mind we'd been walking for the past three days... my feet were angry with me, but they were also so excited to soon be walking in a nice new pair of shoes! we got to the eighth floor and i wandered around showing my merrells to sales people who kept saying "upsayo" finally i got kim on the phone to talk to one of the sales people who told her that the shop that sells them was no longer in business there and she didn't know where i could find them... i nearly cried. but there was hope... one other store in seoul, but it was back near the guest house... we had nothing else to do until our train at 9:50 so we headed to the subway.

no, really, shoes???

after 45 minutes on the subway we arrived at dangsan station. the directions said it was out exit 6 and walk 50 meters... of course, we walked in the wrong direction... a nice man helped us though and we found the building, and then the store 'okoutdoors'... as soon as i walked in i saw the boxes of merrells lined up on the walls and i was so happy i nearly dropped to the ground and kissed it.

i showed the salesman my shoes and said "merrell"... we walked to the shoe section and he started looking around...kime pointed to some merrells, i saw others, but there was something wrong... none of them were womens' shoes. i said to the man, "woman merrell" and "shoes for women" and he just looked baffled. then he tried to show me mens shoes. normally it doesn't make a difference, but merrells are special... and one of the reasons i want them so bad is that they use a different 'last' (mold) for womens and mens shoes... this makes them more comfortable since they are designed for the way that women walk... so i wasn't going to buy mens shoes... i felt like sitting down and crrying when he said "no" to my repeated queries of where are the womens shoes?

i was so disappointed... after all the searching and wandering and everything, we were on a wild goose chase. i felt bad for making kim come along with me on this pointless trek to the other side of the world for a pair of shoes... i'm angry that the merrell website isn't clearer about their dealers in korea. so, after all, i am STILL on the eternal hunt for merrell shoes. i've heard that there is a store in ulsan and will be going there so hopefully i will have some by the time i actually post this in a few days...

after the shoe fiasco, we were both really tired and kind of cranky, so we headed to seoul station to see if we could get an earlier train home... which we did by about an hour and a half. we pulled out of seoul at 8:30 pm on monday, after an incredible weekend. i was home by 11:45 and started writing these posts. i didn't know what else to do with myself... life in gimhae just won't be the same aafter experiencing seoul... i feel like i live in a little backwards hick town... :(

not bad for three days...

so seoul was incredible... i hope you enjoyed coming along for the ride...as much as i enjoyed reliving it for you... i ended up spending a lot of money, but not as much as i thought i would... i bought, 2 purses, 2 t-shirts, jeans, 2 pairs of socks, two books, a magazine, a mini tripod, a pair of genuine JLo track pants, a korean sweater dress, and some lipgloss... not a bad haul... but it could have been better...oh merrell... where art thou???

**
i've been writing these posts for two days now... i'm only posting one a day, so i don't overwhelm you... so it should be monday feb. 5th by now... my vacation is over and i'm back at work... but i will have been to ulsan to visit kat and hopefully bu now i have my shoes... so stay tuned for the adventures of kat and liz... and the continuation of the eternal search for merrells...

...and thanks for staying with me this long! i never said i wasn't detailed!