KOREA DAY 7

Korean Taekuk Ginseng Gallery -> ART Korea-> Korean Amethyst Factory -> Lotte Duty free -> Lotte World Adventure Park -> Sindorim MRT

Rise and Shine at 7am! Last second day in Korea and starting to have ambivalent feelings. Happy that we no longer have to face pork and kimchi for every meal, but sad that our Korea holiday is coming to an end soon :(

Seoul at 7.30am

Practically in Seoul, we see a lot of skyscrapers like what we see in modern countries like Singapore. Nothing much different.

Helicopter landing pad

We saw a few helicopter landing pad for a few condominums/hotel(?) from our hotel window. Speak about rich koreans heh! Or maybe its for popular pop stars to land so as to avoid the crowd of fans at the entrance of the building? *fangirl mode on*

Level 1 of the Sheraton building - concierge

Itinerary for the day is shopping in the morning and Lotte Theme park in the afternoon. By shopping I don't mean shopping for apparels, but shopping at tourists places: ginseng gallery and cosmetics stores...

But first, we head off for breakfast which is a 20 minutes drive away. Along the way, we spotted the KBS broadcasting station !

Korea KBS broadcast centre!

KBS is the biggest out of the 3 major South Korea television networks which includes MBC and SBS.

Breakfast @ K turtle

We reached breakfast place - K turtle @ 8.30am. K turtle is a huge restaurant that is meant for holding convention and wedding.  It's dining area is pretty big and can house perhaps 300 or more people at one go.

There were already a lot of tour groups in there when we reach. They serve international buffet however the variety is once again quite limited, especially for meat choices. There's practically no meat served there unless you consider egg as meat.

They serve unsweetened soya bean milk too and despite adding quite an amount of sugar, it still tasted bland. You might want to reconsider taking it, if you have a sweet tooth. Additionally, they serve 'you tiao' too.
Out of all the dishes there we like their bee hoon soup ( separated. you have to take the bee hoon first and add soup over it). Their bee hoon is somewhat like a mixture of Singapore's 粗米粉 & Mee Sua.

We headed on to our first shopping destination, more for the health conscious people - Korean Taetuk ginseng Gallery.

Korean Taetuk Ginseng Gallery

We were prepared to see inflated prices of the ginsengs since this is the standard tourists place. Batches and batches of tour groups come at a time and somehow another tour group just left when we reach. And when we left an hour later, we saw another group came. The timing kinds of fit perfectly!

First, there's a sales personnel walking us through their Ginseng gallery. I must say he gives concise and good explaination and we realised that ginseng that has grown up till 6 years, is no longer heaty. As usually, people tend to have the concept that Ginseng is very heaty and more suitable for woman after labour. However thats only the case for Ginseng that were harvested before 6 years. 6 years is when ginseng reach their optimum growth - most nutritious persay. After 3/4 years, Ginseng can be very vulnerable and requires high level of care. As no photographs were allowed, we were unable to take any of the educational information.

After explaining to us the usefulness and stages of ginseng, we were lead to the main store where *ahem* major brainwashing was done. 

We have another sales personnel explaining to us in Mandarin, the usefulness of Ginseng and she recommended ginseng powder/capsule to us as she understand that people nowadays are either lazy or do no know how to cook the raw ginseng. By taking ginseng powder/capsule it will allow us to get the same benefits as eating the ginseng - like improve immunity. Korean ginseng tea was given out as 'prizes' to people who can answer her questions like what kind of ginseng has a cooling effect, etc.  

Korean Ginseng Tea

we were each given a cup of Korean ginseng tea to try too. The Korean Ginseng Tea was given as free gifts when you buy the ginseng extracts/powder/capsules with them too.

They have around 5 sales personnel around the counter, and this lady from Taiwan attended to my family. We were already interested in buying some form of ginseng for our relatives but not too many. As usual, they did some form of hard selling. They gave us many samples to try to assure us the the quality is somewhat different from what we ate outside - as theirs is thee top quality. We believe what they said about the quality of the ginseng, however the price is an important consideration.

As my family is not too interested in capsule form since it appears to be like taking medicine, we are more interested in Ginseng powder. We were advised to take the ginseng powder every morning when we wake up as that's when the body can absorb it well. Otherwise, if we are afraid of the taste we can  add it to our dishes when we cook them. The sales personnel was boasting about the many benefits of ginseng and that korean tend to take ginseng, and thats why their immunity increased, and miraculously, we did not hear about South Korea getting affected during the SARS period in 2003.

They introduced two types of Korean Ginseng powder: Platinum and Gold. Both are ground from Ginseng thats of 6 years, but the platinum one is better as the ginseng chosen is the best of the crop.

Ginseng Powder - Gold

Ginseng Powder - platinum

Each set comes in 6 small can of ginseng powder. Of course the one in platinum contains more ginseng powder too - explaining the difference in cost.

1 set ( of 6 cans) of Heaven 1 Korean Ginseng Powder (Gold) cost: KRW460,000 (SGD$529)
1 set ( of 6 cans) of Heaven 1 Korean Ginseng Powder (Platinum) cost: KRW1150,000 (SGD$1322.50)

You might wonder why is there a 'Samsung' logo at the top right hand corner of the
We wanted to walk off with just two sets of that - sufficient for own consumption and for giving my relatives, however we were sort of pulled back by Colin. He went on to advertise to usthe Korean Taetuk honeyed ginseng. It is a whole ginseng that is steamed and glazed with honey over and over again. It can be eaten by cutting it into small pieces. They gave us sample to try too. Colin told us that usually that will cost KRW 230,000 but now he gives us free gifts: 1 small box of ginseng powder capsule and 1 pack of Korean ginseng tea.

In another words, all three (above) cost KRW 230,000 (SGD 267.58). I guess we couldn't resist the hard selling and we actually bought it :/ 

FYI, Some of the tour sales transactions in these tourists exclusive places, are used as performance gauge for the tour guide too. It is to determine whether they will be able to get a larger tour group in the future, afterall larger tour group means total tips collected will be more.

Most of the people in our tour group bought someginseng products in the store. I guess the problem with credit card is somewhat clearly evident here - you have no limit on your money spending capability. But when the bill comes month end, you will feel heartache :( Apparently, we tried out different credit cards for different transactions at the later part of our trip, and we find that DBS offer a better exchange rate than other banks like OCBC and Citibank. However the exchange rate differs per day too.

We spent around 1 hour there before we left for our next stop, cosmetics duty free shop.

Vegetables/fruit vendor that we saw along the way

Cosmetics Duty Free

ART KOREA is the cosmetics duty free shop stop! there's only limited brands selling here, in another words if you want to find the popular korean skincare/cosmetics brand in singapore, here, you might not be able to find. They have face shop corner here in the store but the goods sold are pretty limited. If you are interested in The Face Shop mask, do buy it here! It's pretty cheap - KRW10,000 (SGD 11.40) for a packet of 10 masks. We missed the chance to buy it there and when we compared it to Lotte Duty free and at the airport, despite being duty free it still a little expensive as they are being marked in USD. So do buy it here if you wanna buy The Face Shop face mask! It has a large variety on sale too.

Duty free card

We were each given a duty free card, which is exclusive to foreigners like us.When we made any puurchases, we just have to go to the counter and show this card and one passport and we do not need to pay additional taxes. However as this place is a tourist area, most of the prices marked here are already duty free.

We were brought to this counter that sell 'Carino' skincare products. Carino is a company under Samsung's subsidiary, Enprani, and has been in the market since 2007. It is more widely known as 麗仁堂as their advertising campaigns are more towards Taiwanese. 

The sales personnel, demonstrated a lot of products to us and that includes their cleansing, CC cream, waterdrop, peeling gel, night mask, eye gel and snail cream. 

They did sampling on our hand, etensively in a bid to convince us the effects of their products. 

Overall we are quite impressed with their peeling gel as after applying we can really see the difference between our both hands. We are however more interested in their 'multi Ampoule'. This is otherwise known by Colin as Botox. He was mentioning it to us that he used botox and we find the results quite effective. Since he doesn't look like his age! Haha! So we keep pestering him on where we can buy that and he told us we can buy it over here, at ART Korea. 

So what's so special about this botox. This is a rolled on kind of botox while those that we commonly know of is through injection into your skin. In another words, it seems safer to use! You have to rub it on on your face daily for 2 months, and the effect is lasting for 2-3 years! This is done together with applying the snail cream after.

1 set: 2 boxes of Ampoule and 1 box of snail cream

We were told that one whole course of treatment - 2 mths will require that 1 set. We were allowed to buy separately however we were recommended to buy one set. Also, they have restriction like 1 set per foreigner. 

Cost of 1 Carino Multi Ampoule (rub on botox): KRW 173,630 (SGD$199.70)

Cost of 1 snail cream: KRW86,330 (SGD$99.30)

Cost of 1 set ( for 2 mths usage): KRW 433,590 (SGD$498.70)

They have a promotion for the other skincare products. You can mix and match the cleansing lotion and cc cream to attain buy 5 free 1 promotion. Or you can mix and match the waterdrops (moisturiser) with the peeling gel to attain buy 5 free 1 promotion. however you cannot mix the cleansing lotion and peeling gel together. 

The cleansing lotion and cc cream costs the same price of : KRW 33,950 (SGD$39.05)

The Waterdrops(moisturiser) and peeling gel cost the same price of: KRW32,000 (SGD$36.80)

So in another words if you get 4 bottles of cleansing lotion and 2 bottles of cc cream, each bottle will cost: KRW28291.70 (SGD$32.50)

They have a promotion too, which I am not too sure whether it is because of the summer sale in Korea at the moment or they have the same promotion all year round, but they are giving free luggage and free facial cream depending on your spending. They will give you a free luggage if you spend KRW 500,000 and above.  You can trade it for facial cream (东医真) if you prefer that instead. On top of that they will give you that facial cream depening on your spending too.

We had the luggage and a few bottles for the facial cream. Most of our tour members including us exited the shop with an additional luggage. Looks like everyone spent quite a fair bit there!

On the bus to our next destination - Korea Amethyst Gallery, Colin gave each of us a red ginseng collagen face mask. For people who dislike ginseng smell, you may not like this mask!

Red ginseng Collagen mask

The Korea Amethyst Gallery was a fast stop for us as all of us just view and left without buying since we had all spent quite a fair bit earlier on in the two stops. Heart ache :( Once again they did attempted to do hard selling. The jewellery contains amethyst and a small basic necklace can cause almost USD 200. We must agree that they are exquisitely manufactured, but we are also not too sure about the purity level of the amethyst and the price is a major concern.

We spent no longer than half hour at the place and left for our lunch which is seafood buffet!

Dolphin Seafood Buffet

It is arguably our last lunch in Korea. Since the next day, day 8, we do not have lunch included. We reached the place at 1pm.

wide variety of uncooked and cooked food

They replenish the food pretty fast and there's a wide selection of food. We have a steamboat pot on each table to cook the raw food. Lastly there's also an ice cream section, where we can get ice cream ( 3 assorted flavours to choose from). The buffet place occupies quite a fair bit of space and have no problem hosting a couple of tour groups at one go. 

After our lunch, we had a one hour bus ride to Lotte World!

given by Colin, along the way to Lotte World

Lotte World is another cosmetics shopping paradise for people who has yet to buy the cosmetics of their choice since there's a lotte duty free shop there. We reached Lotte world at 3pm where Colin bought admission tickets for us at the South Gate entrance and lead us to the Lotte Duty free shop & departmental store first.

Admission price board of Lotte World

Lotte Duty Free

Lotte Duty free contains many different brands of korean cosmetics and accessories like bag. They house branded goods like Louis Vuitton too.

Floor plan Level 9 of Lotte Duty Free. Image courtesy of Lotte hotel Official Website

Floors below 9 are Lotte Departmental store, which is somewhat like Isetan in Singapore. While level 9-11 house the cosmetics and upper tier branded goods. You can find The face shop, Tony Moly, Laneige, Etude house, etc products at around half / 3/4 of the price as those sold in Singapore.

Do note that at level 1, they have a couple of lifts with some alighting at every floor, and some that head straight to level 9. Take note of which lift you are taking and your destination.

Colin brought us safely to the duty free shop at level 9 then give us F&E time to shop around. We were given our tickets to Lotte World too. We can go there at any time after our shopping and we can deposit our shopping loots with Lotte World lockers before heading off for play time in Lotte World. We were each given KRW 10,000 (SGD11.40) to settle our dinner. I believe this is included in our package, however giving us straight, hard cold cash seems a bit weird. By then it is around 3.15pm, we have till 8pm before we have to gather outside Lotte World (South Gate Entrance) to head back to our hotel. Colin reminded us that, Lotte World Theme park admission pass is only valid for entry once. In another words, you are unable to enter and exit and re-enter again.

Prior to our shopping in Lotte Duty free, Colin gave each of us a duty free card. Once again it is to exempt us from taxes, however most of the prices quoted on the rack is already duty free. Passport need to be presented upon making a transaction.

Lotte Duty Free card

All of the sales personnel knows how to speak basic chinese. I guess they were trained in view of the influx of mainland tourists. Hence asking for prices/more details about the product is not an issue for us, chinese friends. Do take note that all goods are priced at USD. When you charged to your credit card, you have a choice of whether to charge it in SGD or USD but not KRW.

We mainly bought skincare products for our friends who ordered with us prior to our Korea Trip.

Laneige Water Bank essence @ USD 53 per set

We went to the laneige counter and it was crowded with so many visitors in comparison to the other brands around it. Their Laneige Water bank essence set ( 2 bottles per set) cost USD 53 per set. We charged SGD price and it cost around SGD$71.50 for one set. In another words, 1 bottle cost around SGD$35.80. This is much cheaper than in Singapore when the price is around $50-60!

They have 1 person manning the cashier and 2 other sales personnel. However clearly the crowd is more than what they can managed. For customers who have chosen the product, there's no space for us to queue and we were actually required to hand over our passport to one of the sales personnel where she will place our duty free card, passport and the products that we want to purchase at a counter which is within reach by anyone. while waiting for my turn, I see a few customers looking and touching the products that me and other customers intend to purchase and were placed on the counter. My main concern, is actually my passport. Wouldn't that mean that anyone with unethical means will also be able to get my passport and flee when everyone is so busy choosing products? Perhaps they can have a queue system and let us handle our own stuff instead of placing it on the counter?

Our next stop is at the Face Shop. Over here the face masks are priced at USD $10 (SGD 12.80) for one set of 10 facial masks. No doubt its still cheaper however the ones that are sold at ART Korea are still cheaper, by a dollar.

At USD 20 per bottle

We bought two bottles of the 美人图全效美白水. It cost USD 20 per bottle and when we charged it to our credit card, it cost approximately SGD$ 26 for one. Once again, it is cheaper than in Singapore!

If you are looking to buy Korea branded bag - MCM label, there is a flagship store at Lotte Duty Free too.

We left the duty free store and explored other levels of the building. We didn't really explore the departmental store as its somewhat similar to the standard high class departmental store in Singapore, Marks n Spencer/Isetan. Instead, we went to the basement - where they have a lotte mart and many food places there!

Basement at Lotte Duty Free

Guess what we saw? 

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts!

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts

We have heard about their name for a long long time but never had the chance to try it since its not available in Singapore. Finally we got a chance to try!

Krispy Kreme selection of doughnuts

We didn't get their popular original sugar glaced doughnut but chocolate flavoured and blueberry flavoured doughnuts. It cost KRW 1500 (SGD$ 1.80) for one!

And we have all come to a consensus that it tasted heavenly good! The bread tasted better in terms of texture too, as compared to Dunkin donuts. Gonna support it when Krispy Kreme comes Singapore in October!

We wandered around and saw this take away food outlet - RES 2GO. As it was odd hours they were having a promotion of 2 rice sets at KRW 15,000 (SGD $17.20) . Usual price is around KRW 8900 for one set.

RES2GO

We can choose from  Chicken teriyaki, beef teriyaki, spicy pork teriyaki or shrimp teriyaki. 

food prices for the set meals

We hesitated on buying, but we saw many korean locals buying the take away, and we reckon it might be good! Also, we considered perhaps food prices in lotte world will be quite expensive since a tourists area, we decided to buy 4 teriyaki chicken set since we are quite sick of pork already and my family do not take beef.

Chicken Terriyaki Meal

The picture above does not do the food great justice. The terriyaki chicken is more appealing than what it seems like in the photo! There's salad + bread crumbs as the side and they provide mustard sauce.

We then went to their Lotte mart to walk around. Surprisingly, we find fruits in Korea are quite expensive. We can find cheaper ones over in singapore, and I am talking about the normal tropical fruits like watermelon. One watermelon (see image below, left), one watermelon cost a whopping KRW 21,000 (SGD$24.20)!

Fruits at Lotte Mart

They sell a bundle of fruits (assortment) [see image above bottom right]- grapes, apple peach and it cost KRW 139,000 (SGD$ 160)! August is the starting of the season for peaches! We tried them in day 8 and Korean peaches are extremely sweet! We love them! However they are quite pricey too, take for instance the price of one carton of peaches ( around 16-20) cost KRW 42000(SGD $48.20), which means that one peach is priced at around $2-3!

We wanted to buy seaweed any other korean food products but since we are going to the local produce convenience store tomorrow, we decided to get all tomorrow. We only bought a bottle of chewing gum to satisfy our chewing gum craving, since its banned in Singapore :(

Lotte Xylitol chewing gum: KRW2550 (SGD $ 3.00 )

We then headed over to Lotte World Theme park at around 5pm.

Lotte World Pass

Lotte World theme park is divided into two sections - indoor and outdoor theme park. 

It is a theme park filled with thrilling rides, an ice rink, different kinds of parades as well as a folk museum, a lake, and much more.

- http://visitkorea.or.kr

Lotte World (indoor)

Not everything in Lotte world is free, some admission like into Mirror Maze requires additional fee.

Mirror Maze

We didn't really enjoyed our time there as there's plenty of people. It's too crowded. It wasn't raining, but the indoor theme park was already brimming with people and we have to jostle through crowds.

150minutes ( 2.5 hours)waiting time?!?!

Sea of people

We couldn't try out any rides since most of the rides have a waiting time of more than 2 hours. Given our limited time in Lotte World, we cannot afford to wait and queue for a ride for more than 2 hours. In the end, we decided to go to the outdoor section in dismay hoping to be able to take some ride or even visit the Folk Museum.

Lotte World Outdoor

Once again, as expected it was filled with people. We couldn't take the rides again as the waiting time is too long. you even have to queue to enter the Folk Museum which is connected by a bridge. The queue seems to be never ending :(

Most of the crowd were Korean students. This is understandable since its their summer holidays. So yup, if you are looking to enjoy Korea Theme parks, never go during August when it is their summer holidays period or you will have to waste your time waiting for each rides.

We were already quite disappointed by then and in the end, we re-entered the indoor area of Lotte World. They have a rest area which is a cornered corner with plenty of benches and water cooler station in it for people. It's quite empty and we went there to sit and have our take away dinner which we bought earlier at Lotte Duty free basement!

As we slowly make our way back to the entrance to gather at 7.30pm, there's some exotic parade/performance going on!

performance/parade

When its night time, they will switch on the lightings for the infrastructures within the indoor Theme Park.

There is also an ice skating rink in Lotte World however additional charges apply.

ice skating rink

Overall we didn't really enjoy our time in Lotte World since everywhere is overcrowded and we didnt get to try out any rides except for the monorail, which we went to take around 7pm. We waited 30-45 minutes for it. The monorail is an indoor monorail and the whole ride lasted around 5 minutes only. Everland is still the best choice for theme park in Korea since its more family friendly and it has other features like a water lagoon/zoo/flower garden other than just solely a theme park.

Our bus ride back to hotel is around 1 hour. Along the way we passed by the famous bridge - Banpodaegyo Bridge. It is the world's longest bridge musical fountain!

The Moonlight Rainbow Fountain’s water jets are dynamic and can move in time to music creating spectacular ever-changing displays. Add to that the hundreds of rainbow-colored lighting combinations when night falls, and it is easy to see why Banpodaegyo is a magnet for tourists year-round.
The Moonlight Rainbow Fountain operates from April to October every year, however the schedule of the fountain shows varies from month to month.

  ( http://www.visitseoul.net/en/article/article.do?_method=view&p=06&m=0003001006008&art_id=54403&lang=en )

But sadly we didnt get to see the performance. It only operates from April to October and the timing varies each month. If you happen to be in Seoul, do check our the bridge fountain!

If you are lucky, you should be able to see something like that! 

We ended the day with the tour group at 9.30pm back at our hotel. Since its our last night we decided to wander around our hotel vicinity. We wanted to head to H&M and Uniqlo at the shopping centre near our hotel to compare the prices to Singapore's branch, but sadly it was closed by the time we come down from our room :( Korea shopping centres tend to have shorter operating times. 

We headed to their subway station instead. Our hotel's building is connected to Sindorim Subway Station. 

Sindorim Subway station

Nothing much of a difference compared to Taiwan or Singapore's MRT. They have signs in English. Their ticket operating machine have English/Chinese instructions too. It's not too difficult following the instructions to purchase a one way ticket however you must do your homework well! Korean subway system is much more complicated than Singapore's and their subway stations tend to have similar names. If you are going on Free & Easy, do look up the names of the subway stations you are heading to and the position it is on the subway map for easier ticket purchasing!

Side-Note:

Notice in Lotte World

Most of the places in Korea still have signs in Korean only. Even purchasing items in stores, with the exception of tourists outlets, most do not know how to speak languages other than Korean. Take for instance the convenience stores (even those near hotels), do not understand chinese/english. One thing I can conclude is, if you are looking for F&E in Korea, its possible, but your pre trip homework preparation must be very adequate!