[Part 3] 152. Last day of the year

Today's the last day of the year and it's the first time I'm spending it quite differently! Back in Singapore, I would celebrate the new year's countdown together with my family at Temasek Club's countdown party or outside watching fireworks or on the 3rd floor of my house where we would jump up and down to glimpse some fireworks from Esplanade and toast with champagne. This year, I spent the day with Nasir and his friends- Calvin and De Rui in Myeongdong, the night with YW and 2 countdowns in a bus on our way to Donghae 동해 (Korean and Singapore time).

It was great meeting up with Nasir and his friends! I missed my internship days at UOB and Nasir was one of my closest friends there. The days of taking the shuttle bus together to Alexandra Building, having AB Interns' lunches together, going for dinner at TCC near the Singapore River, going for dinner with him and Cyn in Vivo after our last day of work, going for dinner with Bailyn and him in Kovan before I left for Korea...He was supposed to stopover in Korea for a few days in August and we had planned to go to Jeju together but couldn't due to his flight scheduling issues. Today, we finally got to meet in Korea after nearly 5 months! I brought him and his friends to 명동교자 Myeongdong Gyoza for 갈국수 kalguksu (knife-cut noodles soup) for lunch. We were lucky that we went to the restaurant early because there was no waiting time. After we had our lunch, we saw a snaking queue into the restaurant comprising of nearly 30 people. If you're in Myeongdong, drop by this eatery if you can because its kalguksu and mandu (dumplings) are delicious! You have to make payment right after ordering though. After having some donuts at Krispy Kreme, we headed to Namsan Tower and it was so cold!!! After awhile, I couldn't talk because my face was rather frozen :(

Electric bus!

Back in Myeongdong, they headed to Cafe Bene for drinks while I went to Daehangno to look for YW. While waiting for him, I shopped in Banila Co for the first time! I've always seen the makeup brand around in Myeongdong and other parts of Seoul but never bought anything from there. Today, I got 2 marshmallow-textured glitter eye shadows, a lip scrub for my very dry and flaky lips, and a bright orangey-red lipstick on impulse. It's the last day of the year...one last time to be an impulse shopper! We had ramen for dinner in a Jap eatery and again, our timing was perfect. We didn't have to wait for our seats and shortly after we had started eating, a queue started forming for the eatery. After having desserts at Cafe Luwak, we took sticker photos before going back to Anam for me to get ready for our day trip to watch the 1st sunrise of the year at Jeongdongjin 정동진 with Jeannie and Phyllis as well. We went with Hana Tour so that we wouldn't have to worry about transportation and all and each of us paid 47,000KRW.

YW looking much better with a haircut :)

Hate the ice :(

Oops...didn't know the shade was so bold! The shade is called "crazy". Crazy, indeed!

But we didn't have a nice start to our day trip because we were almost late in catching the bus! It was due to set off at 10pm and we were supposed to meet at Cityhall at 9.45pm. But at 9.45pm, we were still on the subway on our way to Cityhall and poor YW had to field calls from the anxious and angry tour guide who even said that the bus could leave without us. WTH. Some Koreans are just so nice...We managed to reach the station at 10pm but exit 11 where our bus was waiting at was so far away and there were too many steps to climb! I yearn for escalators in subway stations :( We huffed and puffed our way there, got too much cold air inside our lungs, perspired and panted but made it into the bus within 5 minutes so we weren't that late. Phew, thank goodness! But everyone on the bus were staring at us when we got on.