South Korea: Day 8 - Gamcheon Village

Out after 9am again this morning, and we headed straight to The Coffee Bean for our daily caffeine fix. The cups were massive and the coffee was pretty darn good.

Coffee at the The Coffee Bean.

For food, we headed on to Egg-Drop for a couple of 'Mr Egg' s with bacon. Only Eben and Claudia were brave enough, and that proved rather fortuitous as it turned out. With the sugary bread they used, sugared bacon and sweet sauces, the egg toasted sandwiches tasted more like desert than breakfast. A bit disappointing truth be told.

Egg-Drop. Expectations were high, and missed completely.

With breakfast under our belts, we grabbed a bus out to Gamcheon Village - a tightly packed bunch of basically slum housing that was established by refugees heading south from the Korean war. The bus dropped us few hundred metres from the tourist information centre (the starting point of our walk) and it was a rather steep up-hill trek to get us there. Arriving very, very warm despite the cool weather, we took a breather with a custard-filled fish before grabbing a map from the tourist information.

Gamcheon Village and The Little Prince.

We walked up hill and down dale, snapping photos and getting our map stamped at the various places of interest. It was a nice walk and our feet were pretty sore by the end. Eben was starting to feel a little ill, and we finally jumped a mini-bus back to the city. It was quite a hairy ride, with many many switchbacks at speed, and squeezing between oncoming taxis.

Once we got back, we were a little hungry so we headed back to the markets for a quick light lunch. More mung-bean pancakes and spicy tteobokki! Eben didn't eat much as he was feeling quite shitty by now.

More spicy tteokbokki and mung-bean pancake!

After eating a little, we grabbed an idec latte from a "Draft Coffee" place we'd seen a few times walking the market. It was pretty cool with all the taps lined up. Shame I didn't think to snap a photo.

We finally made it back tour room and Eben lay down to rest with Neurofen, Katrina, Claudia and I ventured out for korean pork bbq at "Nampo Galbi-jip" just around the corner from our hotel. The non-marinated pork (what they call 'raw') was fucking amazing, and the marinated wasn't half bad either. 5 stars!!

Amazing pork BBQ at Nampo Galbi-jip.

On the way back to the hotel we managed to get our T-money cards topped up at the local 7-eleven thanks to a very helpful lady at the register. Back home we relaxed in our room, and watched a bit of Pulp Fiction on Netflix.

Postscript:

Both Eben and Claudia threw up during the night. My guess is Egg-Drop as the culprit, but we'll wait until we've got some covid tests done in a day or so.