Korea 2019| Coex Mall 코엑스 [Starfield Library, Pokemon Store, Pierrot Shopping!, SM Shop, Billy Angel Cake Company, Starbucks]

COEX Mall is like the Pavilion or the KLCC of Gangnam, a place that consist of multiple 

COEX Mall

10:30am - 10:00pm

It's a pretty fun place to be and you have a lot of shops to look around when you have a lot of time here. We spent only a handful of hours so we only visited a few popular places.

Starfield Library

COEX Mall, B1, 1F

TEL 02-6002-3031 10:00am - 10:30pm 

According to the website: 

"The Starfield Library is a 2,800-square-meter (850-pyeong) multi-story building in the centre of the Coexmall. The low key coloured lights gently fill the entire space of the 13-meter-high shelves. Especially, the first floor offers an independent space where you can view the sunken space on the first basement level and relax while reading a book.

There is a collection of 70,000 books. Various books such as humanities, economics, and hobbies are available as well as Foreign books corner, celebrity's study corner. E-books that can be viewed by iPads. The magazine specialization corner which collects a total of 600 magazines is the highlight of the library which separates them from the general library."

This place has a very unique atmosphere to it. It's an opened-space book store yet it serves as a library. It's not completely quiet yet it is not a noisy place. The interior design of the entire space gives you a very free, casual and calming sensation.

Not only that, in every corner, you will find yourself a pleasant surprise.

They have an information counter for you to inquire for books along with a cashier for you to check out your shopping cart. one of the corners also has a stage in which they sometimes will hold talking events or have musicians to play calming live music for the visitors.

You can also find seats everywhere to sit down after a long walk or for a quick read.

You can even sit here and do your thing without any disturbance.

Quick selfie before we proceed to the second floor!

View from the second level:

This is how the wide space looks like.

The second floor has flooring only on the sides.

All this space. All of them are for visitors to sit and relax.

It's worth to drop by when you're here in COEX Mall.

In case you're craving for something sweet, you can also find this bakery store right in the bookstore itself. It's located on the second floor! (Not the first floor!)

Billy Angel Cake Company

 210, Itaewon-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, 

 tel: 02-512-6257 | Website | Instagram

They are located at the far end of one of the sides. You will be greeted by the big sign and a menu stand. You can view the menu below or you can check out their digital menu here.

The interior design is rather lavishing.

During non-peak hours, you will definitely be able to find a seat.

They sell birthday items, cakes and macarons here like any other bakeries but...

One of their cake is their main speciality.....

... and it is the Galaxy cake! It doesn't look like it has multi-colour here but you can definitely check the cake out from their website or their IG profile.

They were also clearing their cookies at that time.

The price seems pretty okay for me.

As for the beverages, they do sell this expensive water and some bottled milk beverages. You're currently looking at strawberry milk and milk tea :p

When I saw this, my eyes fixated on it because... I CAN ACTUALLY BRING THIS BACK TO MALAYSIA FOR MY BOYFRIEND AS A SOUVENIR! Oh, he liked it of course.

As for myself, I got a citrus smoothie to refresh my taste bud for a bit.

There is another door on the other side of the store in which directs you to the outside. You can go out and take a breather but yoooooo it can get pretty chilly with the wind out there.

The outside was rather quiet and doesn't have any signboards so I decided to go back to the library. I genuinely didn't want to be lost in the middle of these buildings especially when I haven't familiarized myself with the floor map.

COEX Mall is great for shopping and they have plenty of familiar brands for you to feel home. At the same time, they also have abundant of uncommon yet interesting stores for you to look at.

Even the little stalls in the middle can be interesting as well.

You just need to walk closer for a better view.

There is also a food court here in case you felt too overwhelmed by the food option in this mall.

Nearby the food court, I found this really interesting shop:

Pierrot Shopping!

Oh man, this store. Let me tell you.

It's freaking overwhelming!

You can find almost anything here.

Like, anything!

Also, there are like, two floors for you to shop around until you drop and roll around.

Need food? Got em instant noodle, snacks, sauces, ingredients, etc.

Need accessories? Literally, rows of them for you to choose.

Actual makeup brands and skincare products? Tons of it.

Even contact lenses, like, hello????????

Toiletries, shoes, bags, kid stuff, adult stuff, toys...Everything.

They have almost endless choices for kids' toys man.

Even things like kitchen tools, utensils, phone cases, electrical appliances, pet items and gardening tools are available in this place. 

Even adults' toys are available here. I actually went in to look around and phew the number of options is crazy. The prices are pretty crazy too otherwise I would've bought something just to laugh at the fact that I bought it. (I bought a hentai manga in Japan just because I find it funny that I have one in my possession.) (Is this called impulse buying? Idk. I genuinely just find them stupidly funny.)

Oh, I did take pictures but I'm pretty sure I can't put it up here for y'all to see... At least I got you a photo of what types and brands of rubbers they sell in Korea. 

Also, without even planning, we somehow came across a Pokemon event. It was for the Pokemon Festa and Pokemon Go week in Korea, which means the whole of Korea was having a Pokemon Go event for a whole week, specifically more rare pokemon in COEX Mall.

Pokemon Store

Pokemon Fiesta Official Page |  English Version

Ooh! There was a one-time event happening and we somehow managed to visit it when it was there.

This was what they have during the event. It was just nice that we were able to purchase the garden versions of Pikachu and Eevee.

The line was insane by the way. We also went to the wrong side to line up but nobody told us anything lel. It took us 2 hours just to get in and purchase something.

They also have a gachapon machine in the middle of the line in which I'm not sure if that was wise or not because you need tokens to play with this and in order to get the tokes, you have to be inside the store. Not to mention that, once you've got your token, you have to go back to the line and use the machine.

When we reached the entrance into the shop, we were like 'oh finally'

Quick selfie before actually going in!

The store was pretty small and that's pretty much the reason why they had to control the number of visitors. You can find a lot of plushies here but not the ones that are uncommon.

These are the plushies that they had:

It's a mixture of uncommon and common pokemon plushies but it doesn't have everything. I was looking for a Dragonite for my boyfriend but I couldn't find anything at all.

Plenty of Charizards tho!

I can't find all the prices but here's one: 

There were also special Pikachus available. 

Visitors can tend to leave a mess. That's when the staffs come in.

They quickly tidied up the sections and make sure that the pokemon look as good as they can!

Look at how tidy this is! They even restock every few 10 minutes.

 

Look at these leafy cutiesss~

Then, there were my fire babies~~ <3 

Here are the prices in case you're wondering:

They have the Kanto and Alola Vulpix too!!

You can also find these special Eevee and Pikachu plushies.

Oh yeah, they've got more stuff!

Like the random luck gachas that are more expensive...

Got the figurines....

More Eevees...

Ditto plushies!

Oh! They also have chibi Eevee keychains!

Big, big Pikachus and handkerchiefs. 

There was also the special garden event merch available too.

Gacha eggs, in case you want to try your luck!

Funny, funny items were a thing too!

Last but not least, Detective Pikachu merch!

You'd think I would buy a lot of things huh. I ended up getting the garden Eevee instead because I figured that I can just buy the rest from Japan, which will be cheaper and will cost me about the same flight ticket price anyway.

Nearby the exit from the Pokemon event store, there was a food festival and some performances going on.

It was very happening and the audiences cheered to the performers as through they already had a routine. I don't know who they are but they do seem to have a pretty big crowd.

Food stalls were available on that day as well but the queues were crazy.

Like, Bon Odori crazy but 3 times bigger. 

Eventually, we just walked back into the mall and see if there's anywhere to window shop. We walked for a bit and found this accessory shop near the Starfield bookstore.

LATEM

서울  강남구 삼성동 159  코엑스몰  C102

코엑스 라템

Instagram | Styleshare | Elandmall | Facebook

They sell a lot of Korean mix Western styled accessories. The differences between these and the once in Malaysia are that, they tend to be in petite sized but still maintain the quality without having the lightweight and cheap feeling.

The price range tends to be a little bit more expensive than street side stores.

I still like going to university districts to shop for accessories.

This was my cart filled with moon and stars related jewelry but I later on put them back to where they were from because the price really couldn't justify for me.

Before I leave the store, I also saw this very cute ring that looks like a mini/ring version of the infinity gauntlet. Imagine if Thanos made a ring instead. It would be even hard to remove from his hand, yo.

Starbucks

This is probably the biggest Starbucks store that I've ever seen in my life, mainly because we don't have one this big and I've only gotten the interest to explore Starbucks from another country lately.

It's located right before you enter the Mall if you used the entrance with the big tv advertisement banner on the outside. (The one with Mercedes logo from the picture at the top of this post.)

There are ample seats with nice lighting. You can feel that relaxing or calming aura from the interior design and the lighting but it may be a different experience for you if there are plenty of noisy tourists or kids.

There's a special brewing counter as well and the barista is there to work his magic.

You can find a lot of their merchandises here but I believe that seasonal or limited edition merchandises can be a little hard to find here since this place is almost like a staple location, or what I would call another Pavilion mall but with different level of standards. However, we can take a look at their counter and their menu.

They had a special menu right at the centre of the counter, just like ours and would probably be the standard around the world.

Here's their menu. I'm not a frequent Starbucks-goer but maybe you can tell me what's different or what's more special over here.

There is also another sitting section right beside the cashier but when I saw the crowd and realized where the noises came from, I just turned around and left the store. It's not my preference to be stuck in a cafe with crazy noises.

SMTOWN Coex Artium

SMTOWN entrance can be found near the Starbucks store (but I genuinely don't remember the distance between them).

Now, I'm not a big fan of any public figures here but I managed to take a lot of photos for those of you who do not have the opportunity to visit (yet). I hope this can help you to satisfy your curiosity a little. My travelling partner is a big fan so we went there but she didn't feel like visiting the other floors. So, we only went to the second floor for the souvenir/merchandise shop.

**Cut me some slacks if I get things wrong

Remember to line up first! You will be greeted by lots of visuals from your favourite artists and/or newer release of merchandises.

There are like so many things around here, I can't even brain 😂

It can get pretty overwhelming, especially with the crowd.

You can even find slumber items oh gosh 😳

Earrings are available too!

Here are the pricings.

More merch here:

These are photo mags, I think? :o

You can also find tons of phone cases here.

Btw, majority cases here are for iPhone 6 or 7.

This is their Pantone section:

You can also play around with these wooden stamps.

You've also got this animated concept merch.

(at this point you should realize I really have no knowledge with SM)

On the other hand, they have other souvenir items here too.

Of course, the price tag may be a bit higher than other places.

Cute pins and washi tapes are absolutely available.

They got more stuff but I didn't really look closely.

Then you have the ones that are very Korea-oriented souvenir items.

Stationaries are also available here!

Wew, not sure how but you can also get Instax here.

Power bank and speakers? No problem too 😂

So that's pretty much how my experiences in COEX mall was like, in general. It isn't a lot since there was a timing issue but I hope you'll have a better time than I do when you're visiting!

That's all for this post!

Do check out my other posts!

You may find them helpful :D

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