Costco Adventure

A neighbor of mine (she has an adorable little puppy named Leonidas who loves foreigners in particular) asked a few weeks back if anyone of the foreigners in our little city had a Costco membership, since she was craving a shopping trip there. I was the first and only person to respond, and I said I’d gotten a membership in the States before coming and they assured me it had international reciprocity. So after a couple of weeks of planning, we found a time we were both available for the trip to Youngdeungpo-gu Office Station (about 45 minutes away on the subway after the 20 minute bus trip). Our journey was on Friday, April 16.

Recall that I don’t have great supplies in the backpack department yet, as I mentioned in the Palbongsan post, but I took my little wimpy backpack and some extremely durable cloth shopping bags from Lotte Mart for carrying back our purchases. My neighbor also brought a large, sturdy backpack and another reusable shopping bag. I think we left somewhere around 6 p.m. We bid each other goodnight six hours later (if not more)…

Getting to Costco was pretty easy, following the directions we had been given by a fellow Siheung-er. We did have a couple of snack stops on the way (to get some hydration before starting), but it didn’t make a huge delay. My membership card did work, and we were unleashed on the bank-breaking, bulk-portioned, spending extravaganza that is Costco. There wasn’t an easy way back to the top floor (where we began), so when I decided to get enormous containers of vitamin C, Herbal Essence shampoo and conditioner, there really was no option to change my mind.

Trouble truly began on the food floor though. After glimpsing a box of 42 rolls of Fruit by the Foot, we simultaneously wanted some, but not the whole box, so from there on out, we decided to split portions of most of the items when we got back to Siheung. This was great for other items that would go bad before we could finish the items individually, like sour cream, industrial-sized Colby jack cheese, and multi-packs of cream cheese and string cheese. That’s right; dairy products either can’t be bought in normal Korean supermarkets, of they’re enormously expensive. There were so many things we wanted to buy but simply didn’t have the room (or cash, as we soon found out).

We also split things like Riesen chocolates, Jelly Belly jelly beans, and balsamic vinaigrette. Sadly, the animal crackers had to be put back, and there wasn’t room for the dill pickles. I also got a massive container of basil (cheaper than a container that would have been a micro fraction of the size if I had bought it at Lotte Mart), canned chicken for tacos/etc., and we both bought fresh-baked cookies from the Costco bakery. It was amazing. One thing we missed was the best pizza (U.S.-style) in Korea. Somehow we walked past the food court, and the exit lady wouldn’t let us take our cart back in after we’d checked out.

Stopping on a set of well-lit stone steps outside the door to add up the totals, we had a little bit of sticker shock. The receipt had come out to about $250!! Some things are worth a little extra money, but we’d better eat that cheese (etc.) before it goes bad! It took a little while to add it all up, especially since the receipt and items were all in Korean. Translations proved interesting, sort of like playing Mad Gab. The bags ended up being heavier than we had anticipated, and it was HARD WORK getting them back to the subway station.

As it turned out, we had left Costco in the wrong direction, which didn’t help matters. We got to a subway station eventually (limping along, with one bag of the several balanced between us, Korean-style), but it wasn’t even on the same line as we had come on! We took it a few stations and after accidentally missing our connecting station due to talking and being tired, we changed our plans and got off at a place where we thought a bus route would go from that station directly to Siheung. As we heaved the dead weight of Costco items up the scores of stairs and emerged from the exit, we discovered that the bus stop my friend had remembered was suddenly under construction! We walked there anyway, hoping the bus would still come by (and we did see one from the right line going in the other direction).

When we neared the would-be stop, an older Korean man in a suit followed us from the crosswalk to the corner, approached us, made light conversation, and tried to tell us in choppy English that the bus in question hadn’t ever come by here. He would help us though, he said, and take us back home if we wanted. Neither my friend nor I had a good feeling about this AT ALL, so we thanked the man with a mumble and hobbled back to the subway carrying our bags along with us as fast as we could, not stopping to look back. He didn’t smell drunk, but he was just creepy, and we *knew* the bus came that way. Who knows… Now we were covered in mud too from the messy construction site.

Getting back on the subway again, we finally decided to do things right and just take the subway on the route we knew to the bus we knew and just listen for the station. I have no idea how many stairs we must have climbed that day, but it was horrendous. We stopped so many times to switch hands with the weights as our hands turned numb and raw from the mesh straps. She took the “lion’s share” of the weight, bless her! There’s probably a lesson about moderation to be had… But my friend showed me a trick for getting a guaranteed seat on a bus at Bucheon station and we SAT all the way back to Siheung. It was glorious!

After going our separate ways back at the apartment for a few minutes to gather our wits, we met in my place (since I had just cleaned it and had room to spread things out), and we divided our spoils. Oh, those cookies were so good, as was the cheese! I sort of pigged out that night, but as we had reminded each other at several times during the evening, we were getting such a good workout, we could eat about anything we wanted calorie-wise. About 12:30, we finally said goodnight and got some much needed rest. I think we were both sore the next day, and we’ll probably shop in more moderation next time, but I’m sure there will be a return trip soon enough. What an adventure…!