Grand Adventure Day 12

Dragged myself out of bed late. I realized that I've been on vacation for 12 days now and, according to my journal, I contemplated how hard it was going to be getting back to the real world, especially back to "working everyday" mode. Basically, vacation-mode Alan just walks slower and with less purpose, makes excuses to sit around and do nothing, and smokes more often. Like, light-one-once-I-step-outside more often. Well, I skipped out on toast and coffee at the hostel and just made my way to the train station. Ended up getting into a confusing situation at the Dunkin Donuts at Hapjeong station. The cashier was trying to explain that they stopped selling breakfast sandwiches after 10am, and I kept trying to order a sandwich with hot coffee. We went back and forth for too long before I figured out what was going on. Ended up with two donuts and a coffee, and possibly an enemy for life (I really should've learned a little bit of Korean before coming here). As I was eating at the station, not even one half-eaten donut later, my ignorance saved me from getting into a conversation with two older Korean women handing out religious pamphlets. The dumb foreigner look saves me again!

Took the train today to Dongdaemun. I know I've said before that I don't care much about food, but the highlights of the rest of the day is basically just me eating food. That, and playing Pokemon.

Outside the station, there was a preserved ... fort, I think it was. I think, back in the past, it was supposed to connect to the larger wall on the hill (which I didn't get a picture of). There was a small, kind of swap meat area near the station with a bunch of people selling stuff out of stalls. Bought that cornbread and egg thing twice from two different vendors, a chicken and leek stick, a packet of mandoo, and a giant dry cracker that I thought was hoduk (it was not). Surprisingly, I managed to finish all of it as I walked to the Dongdaemun Design Plaza

Surprisingly, though not really, I forgot to get a picture of the Design Plaza and its weird shape. There's a bunch of Pokemon gyms around and with basically all the time in the world, I managed to take all of them. With the rest of my spare time, I sat outside the cafe, had a coffee, and read and wrote. And this is what I meant by "vacation-mode Alan" - in the real world where things like Time and... other things like Time, okay, maybe I just meant Time ... in the real world where Time is important I don't have this kind of free time to just sit and read and write.

After wandering more and playing Pokemon, I decided to try to find something to eat in Itaewon. When it was described to me, I basically just thought it was a street filled with bars as far as the eye could see. Instead, all along the main road were stores and shops, a lot of them selling clothing. Eventually, I got off the main road and found all the restaurants I was originally looking for. I settled on an empty Mexican restaurant that had a sign in English. Two tacos and an order of loaded fries later and it felt like my mouth was on fire - I expected that with all the Korean food I'd been eating, I would have built up a higher tolerance to spicy foods, but I was wrong. Also, no one else came in the entire time I was there.