Hey Hive!
So if you missed the last few posts, I've been sharing about our first trip to Seoul back in Nov 2022! We were waiting post-covid for everyone to go on their holidays before taking a big one and we finally decided to go on our honeymoon! It's also our first time experiencing Fall so we were double excited!
Last week, we continued our journey exploring Hongdae! It's known as the art district of Seoul and they have a special mural street where the art students from the nearby college get to express themselves with their own murals!
We did get to see a few walls of street art but I think most of the street was closed off due to some construction going on at the time. It was a shame but we were glad to see what we did.
After we had a nice healthy lunch we went to check out the LINE Friends store since Hongdae also has a lot of character shops, and being big fans of LINE Friends we couldn't pass this up!
Anyway, there's still quite a bit left to this day so let's continue!
12 Nov 2022. Saturday.
We found out there was a place called Love Museum not too far away from the LINE store so we decided to go check it out. We didn't know what it was about until we arrived there and it looked quite sus with a big naked cupid hanging right at the entrance.
Turns out this place is part of an indoor recreation place called Coconut Box they they self-proclaim is a hybrid metaverse play garden, which just sounds like some hipster marketing to me.
But in layman terms, they have a few different things you can enjoy including art galleries, a big ball pit, photo studio, VR gaming sets and the Love Museum as well as different huts they called bungalows that comes with an afternoon tea set.
I guess the main area is tropical themed since they have this huge painting just opposite the ticket counter.
There was also this statue of a man in a tux holding a bouquet. I'm not sure if this guy is a famous KPOP singer or anything but it seemed like a photo spot so I couldn't resist.
We initially just wanted to pay for the tickets to the Love Museum but since we were here already we thought it'd be cool to explore the inside of the Coconut Box as well.
So we went to check that out first and just stepping in it looked pretty cool already! There was indeed a huge ball pit just past the entrance, with some curious art inside it too.
The whole place had a nice resort feel to it with lots of bamboo and hanging vines.
There were also these cabanas around which I guess were the so-called "bungalows" that you'd rent for however long you were here.
Here's a shot of what one of the cabanas looked like on the inside. Sorry for the blurry quality.
It looked like a very relaxing place and we were glad there weren't many other people around.
It was actually a surprisingly big place on the inside, and there were so many cabanas to choose from, each with slightly different design and surrounding.
There was a lot to explore but the first place we had to visit was the bar so we could get our set of drinks that came with our ticket.
There was a menu of different drinks on this colourful surfboard but looks like they just had some normal drinks like bottled juices and coconut water, some coffees and teas and a croissant sandwich for a snack. Quite limited menu but I guess it's not technically a cafe.
We could actually choose alcohol though and since we hardly drink we decided to cut loose and try their champagne since it was our honeymoon after all.
We had an hour and a half to chill here and we were to put this board outside our chosen cabana.
After we ordered our drinks, we walked around to see which cabana was the most ideal, while appreciating the design of the place.
The whole place was carpeted with fake grass so it was quite comfortable and really felt like we were in an actual resort.
There was even an area with sand and lots of fake palm trees. The whole place just felt like an influencer paradise with lots of instagrammable spots.
There were so many cabanas to choose from we were kinda spoilt for choice! There were some secret alleys behind some of them as well.
Inside there was another huge ball pit with lots of art and some floating rubber cushions of sorts that you could sit on in the ball pit.
We didn't really want the cabanas near the sandy place since we didn't want sand in our shoes, so we chose a sensible one here.
We chose this one with the colourful lights hanging outside. There were slippers outside each of the cabanas that you could swap for your shoes so we did that.
Inside our cabana there were some cushions on the floor with a mat and some rattan furniture. It wasn't much but it was comfortable.
We dropped off our coats and things at the cabana before heading back to the bar. Some of the other cabanas has retro televisions that played the same videos on loop but we didn't want the extra noise to disturb us. It did look cool though.
There were even some tree house type cabanas that you could pick but we didn't want to have to climb up the ladders and potentially get hurt.
There was also a huge table for people to sit and relax, and I could see big groups of people sitting here chatting merrily and having fun.
Back at the bar, we got our champagne and I felt bad since they had to open a whole bottle just for us.
It was the most value for money though and since we wouldn't normally buy alcohol anyway, why not try it since we're here right? It was quite light and thankfully didn't taste that bad.
After that we went around taking lots of pictures with all the props they had lying around like these hats!
There were also lots of these hanging swings around too around some tables that I guess were supposed to be benches. It didn't seem that comfortable to be sitting for a long time though.
We went to go check out nearby the ball pit area which I initially didn't want to since I wasn't a fan of ball pits, especially after reading about a girl who broke her neck in one at Twitchcon so we made sure to be extra careful.
I liked these huge murals they had that were all very colourful and artsy.
The secret alley behind these cabanas was pretty cool and orangey so I got a shot of Sean since it's his favourite colour.
This ball pit was a lot bigger compared to the green one at the entrance. There were some floating spongey platforms and the music was playing louder here too. I guess this was the party area where they expected lots of people to hang out.
Since there wasn't anyone else around at the time it was pretty quiet so we thought it'd be cool to move our stuff to one of these cabanas so we could have fun in the ball pit.
We went back to get our stuff and found the NFT Art Gallery just behind our cabana. There wasn't much though.
We hung out in the ball pit and since we had an hour and a half here I thought it'd be cool to do a surprise IRL stream! My community knew I was going to be gone for almost 2 weeks for the honeymoon so this was a complete surprise and I thought it'd be fun to show them this place too!
There were some art pieces that were a little sus that I couldn't show on stream though just in case. It was surprisingly comfortable in the ball pit especially on the floats.
We had fun streaming and catching up with chat, showing them the place for a while to pass the time.
I honestly don't remember where this place is within the place but it was cool. After we "checked out" of our cabana we asked the staff to help us take a picture on these swings!
We thanked them for their hospitality and left for the Love Museum after that but we had lots of fun! I think it would definitely be lot less fun if it weren't for chat though.
There was no way I could show the Love Museum on stream since it's full of sussy naked artwork and other R rated stuff. But we'll get to that next week!
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels #239 (Seoul): Getting Lost in the Art-Filled Alleys of Hongdae! 🎨
