25 April 2023
No more neon
Konkuk University area
Last night in Korea. I decided to go some distance away to the Konkuk University area and all of its neon streets. I went down into the subway and got on a train heading to Hongik University, so that was wrong. I then crossed the tracks and went back the other way.
The journey to Konkuk is only about 30 minutes on the circle line, and I have been there before. It is not only full of neon and uni students, but also fortune tellers, as you shall see.
My goal once I got there was to find a restaurant that would take cash, not all of them do these days, and also a cash taking place that charged more than pennies for a meal. I still have not spent all the Won I took out the day I arrived, Korea is almost cash free now, the only thing you need cash for is to recharge your t-money card for the subway. Why can that not be done on card anywhere in the world?
Anyway, tomorrow I fly home via Singapore. The flight leaves Incheon at 16:30 and my hotel allows you to check out at 12:00, so if I make a slow journey to the airport at 12 it will work out well. Often the waiting around from 10am until say, 7pm to go to the airport for a 10pm flight is the longest day imaginable, but on this trip it is far more manageable.
Konkuk university is far enough out of town that the subway is elevated, so yeah, not really a subway then.
This is the university side of the road, the other side is apparently a Chinatown of sorts, but it is a bit hard to tell.
The sun was setting, also, pollution came back.
There is a cinema nearby, and a few of these popcorn shops around. I wonder if you can buy popcorn from here and take it into the movie? I presume people do that with tea drinks in giant plastic cups, because I have never seen a person without one at all times. Presumably when you go to the mounding ceremony when someone dies, you stand around with some sort of tea drink in one hand and a smoke in the other?
More photos into the sun.
I tried earlier today to get into the Lotte basement at the branch near my hotel for lunch. Once again there were so many people there that the chances of me getting a seat on my own were zero. Here at Konkuk there is also a Lotte department store, but it is also joined to an Emart, and there is an entire underground street full of restaurants.
My mission to find a reasonably expensive restaurant that would take cash ended at the Japanese chain of Saboten. I normally don't go for Tonkatsu, but the advertised special was just a small pork schnitzel with spicy beef udon. There is a whole etiquette guide to eating here, which involves grinding your own sesame seeds. Anyway, it cost about $15 Australian, and they took cash, so I got to use some of my remaining Korean Won.
There are 50 or more stalls along here featuring fortune tellers, palm readers, tea leaf readers, tarot card readers. Weird.
Starting to get dark now. It gets dark later and later here, almost as if it is about to be summer.
Lots of neon.
I have ranted about the take your own photo and pay for it studios a few times. This one features a camera inside a dummy dryer. You pay for this. There are 20 pay to have your photos stored on our servers to be harvested for your biometric information places on this street alone.
Last one from Konkuk, this one has the train line going above. I waited for a train to come but you cannot see it from this angle.
And for the last pic this evening, just a random corner near my hotel to prove that I was out after dark! A rare thing indeed.