Adventurous as ever, I choose Thai as my lunch of choice today. I venture down into the Yeoksam Station where there is a pretty fancy mall located underground! Good thing I chose to wear a dress today haha. As mentioned before, the subways stations here are located underground and therefore have many flights of insanely steep staircases to traverse before you can hit ground zero. Now this is not so much an issue going down (although it gives you the impression you will trip and fall 30 feet on your face pretty much with every step you take) but going UP that is the problem. On the real, I could rock-climb up these damn things.
Anyways, I managed to order everything I wanted using my little Korean and when it got to me, the food looked amazing.
The smoothie was AWESOME, like the smoothest, freshest, most pure mango anything you could dream of, with a hint of spice in it. With this promising start I turned to my dish. The waitress had said something in Korean and indicated the gigantic pile of red pepper flakes sitting on my plate so I assume she meant if you need it more spicy, there are flakes for you. Thanks girlfriend, but I am the wimpiest of wimps when it comes to spicy and I won't be needing those.
I must have left my brain in the US because I paid dearly for forgetting that Korea is the CAPITOL OF SPICY SHIT. They are very proud of their little peppers that supposed to be like a thousand times hotter than ours. Well I can now attest to that :/
Literally ONE noodle and a small piece of basil chicken later, I was diving for the water jug, choking (I'm not kidding here), beading perspiration, and simultaneously stealthily glancing around me to make sure none of the other perfectly fine and happily munching Koreans around me had noticed my near brush with Dante's inferno on my plate. HOLY MOLY. I know I'm a baby but this was hot. Like burns your eyeballs and your insides and sears through all gazillion layers of skin you've got in your mouth until you're sniffling like mad and your face literally feels like its turning permanently bright red. Which it did. I have never had anything so hot; you could eat 15 bags of flaming hot Cheetos EXTRA HOT and it wouldn't come close. And the lady wanted me to put more red peppers on this stuff? SERIOUSLY WHAT ARE YOU KOREANS MADE OF?!
The smoothie was AWESOME, like the smoothest, freshest, most pure mango anything you could dream of, with a hint of spice in it. With this promising start I turned to my dish. The waitress had said something in Korean and indicated the gigantic pile of red pepper flakes sitting on my plate so I assume she meant if you need it more spicy, there are flakes for you. Thanks girlfriend, but I am the wimpiest of wimps when it comes to spicy and I won't be needing those.
I must have left my brain in the US because I paid dearly for forgetting that Korea is the CAPITOL OF SPICY SHIT. They are very proud of their little peppers that supposed to be like a thousand times hotter than ours. Well I can now attest to that :/
Literally ONE noodle and a small piece of basil chicken later, I was diving for the water jug, choking (I'm not kidding here), beading perspiration, and simultaneously stealthily glancing around me to make sure none of the other perfectly fine and happily munching Koreans around me had noticed my near brush with Dante's inferno on my plate. HOLY MOLY. I know I'm a baby but this was hot. Like burns your eyeballs and your insides and sears through all gazillion layers of skin you've got in your mouth until you're sniffling like mad and your face literally feels like its turning permanently bright red. Which it did. I have never had anything so hot; you could eat 15 bags of flaming hot Cheetos EXTRA HOT and it wouldn't come close. And the lady wanted me to put more red peppers on this stuff? SERIOUSLY WHAT ARE YOU KOREANS MADE OF?!
Naturally I didn't want to be rude by not being able to eat it and I didn't know how to ask for mild so I started eating with the strategizing skills of a general. I would eat one small bite and chew; as I chewed I drank some water on my left, swallowed quickly, immediately slurped some mango smoothie on my right, swallowed, sucked air in and out of my mouth quickly, did a little "I have hot coals in my mouth" body twitching, then did it all over again. Finally I couldn't eat anymore because my stomach was burning and rather ticked off at me so I asked for a box and paid. My nose was runny from the heat so I went to the restroom to blow my nose. It was such a trial I came back to my room to rest for a little instead of going shopping afterwards. But never fear, there is very little in this great, big world that could keep me from shopping for very long... :)
Bathroom = hwa-jang-shil 화장실
Food = eum-shik 음식
Lunch = chum-sheem 점심
Stairs = kye-dahn 계단