Day 7 — Gangnam, South Korea

  6/7/2024 Friday

Itinerary:

• Hong Kong Banjeom
• Ppeum Global Gangnam
• Namsan Tower 
• Fried Chicken 

We woke up late today as today is a free day where I don’t have much planned. The main thing that we want to do is to go for some skincare treatment for Mason as he has a cyst on his nose which we took him to see a dermatologist in the US. Even after several doctor’s visits, antibiotics and cream treatments, he still has a bump on his nose. The laser at US would have cost $5000 and even the dermatologist don’t recommend it as it’s too expensive. So we decided to see if he can get it done at Korea for a cheaper price.

First, we had lunch at Hong Kong Banjeom which is opened by a famous Korean chef and have multiple branches. We have one near our hotel, so we went there for lunch. We have to order and pay first before we get to sit at our table. The food was quite good and cheap. 

After lunch, we took the metro to Ppeum Global Gangnam to get Mason’s skin checked. There are many skincare clinics in Gangnam and I chose Ppeum Global as it has a very good review of 4.8 stars out of 5. We saw a lot of people at the clinic and since we didn’t booked an appointment, we had to walk about 1 hour and 30 minutes for the consultation which was complimentary. We saw the consultant for about 30-45 minutes and she suggested different treatments based on what we want to remove. For Mason, he had to do a laser to remove the bump on his nose due to a cyst and also some collagen injections to smooth out his entire face. It cost a little over $400. Anthony also want to remove his dark spot on his face, so he has to do a different kind of laser and she suggested the entire face so that the color looks more even instead of just one area. His treatment was less than $200. Over all, I  paid a little over $600 for both boys and can get a tax refund of about 8%. VAT is 10% but due to administration charge, we are only getting 8% back. The receipt show that they have skin regeneration, skin whitening, anti aging and pore tightening. The cost when the consultant presented to us didn’t include tax. She also gave us 5% discount as first time guest. The clinic also has tax refund machines but it will take 2 months for the refund while at the airport, it will be refunded on the same day.

The treatment for the boys will take about an hour each, so Maddie and I got a drink at Gong Cha while we waited for the boys. It’s kinda of funny that we two girls are not getting any treatment and the boys are.

The treatment for Anthony was only 45 minutes or less but for Mason, it took longer than 1 hour. By the time he was done, it was already 5:30pm and his face was full of needle holes. He mentioned that it hurted quite a bit even with numbing cream as they didn’t apply enough in some areas. He had to hold hard to the chair due to the pain but he toughed it out. 

We were planning to shop around Gangnam but Mason wanted to go back to the hotel and rest, so we took the metro back. After sending borh kids back to their rooms, we left to head to Namsan Tower. It was a short walk to the elevator to go to the cable station. However, there was a huge crowd, so it took more than 30 minutes of waiting just to take the elevator up to the ticket station. Then we had to queue up to buy the cable car tickets. The price for one way is 12000 Won and roundtrip is 15000 Won, so we bought the roundtrip tickets. It was a 45 minutes wait to take the cable car. Once we got to the top, it was already dark. My original plan was to watch the sunset at Namsan Tower but after the long wait, we missed the sunset. The view was still very nice and we saw the area where locks are put up.

We took some pictures and enjoyed the view before heading back down. It was a much shorted wait and by the time we reached back down, it was close to 10pm, so there was not many restaurants open. We picked one that sells fried chicken and ate our late dinner.