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sarea
Read part one here.
Tue, April 9
After returning the rental car, Jade picked us up to head to Oo-kook, an AYCE Korean BBQ place that was a favorite of all of us the last time we were all in LA. It was still good, and this time they even did most of the cooking for us, but it was unclear if that was a new thing and was the reason they set a certain required tip% amount, or if it was because it wasn’t super busy. Also, neither my nor Jade’s appetite was the same as the last time we went, so we didn’t order nearly as much as we had previously, which made the AYCE aspect seem less worth it. In retrospect, I think I prefer a place like Quarters in terms of service and how they do things (the food is probably about the same). I like Quarters’ more modern feel, and the fact that younger people work there and circle around cooking all your food, so all you have to do is eat and converse with your friends. Of course, they make that latter thing harder than it needs to be, as the absolute WORST thing about Quarters, which makes me not want to go back, is how horribly LOUD it is. Not only are the acoustics bad to begin with, but they also blast loud music. Why. Just why.
We had extra time and nothing to do, so we headed to our next escape room at Hatch Escapes, home to "Lab Rats," possibly one of the most recommended and universally acclaimed escape rooms I’d ever heard of. It was first recommended to me and Jade by Nick, the guy in the Bay Area who’d created his own escape room company and who’s done like hundreds, if not thousands, of escape rooms all the over the world. He said the first 75% of Lab Rats was the most creative, perfect thing ever, but the last 25% disappointed after that. Steven had heard of it but hadn’t had the chance to do it himself (I think when we heard that was when we were most tempted to ask him to join us. Honestly I don’t know why we connected so hard with him, or what it was about him that led two generally cautious people – myself and Adelagia – to trust him so much that we’d even consider asking him to hang out with us knowing ALMOST NOTHING ABOUT HIM lol). So we got to Hatch, and we knew we were early. They had a nice little waiting area, and we were like, oh good, we can wait out the hour or whatever quite happily here. And that was what we were doing, until one of the staff members (apparently a designer working on their next room) came wandering in, and we apparently scared the crap out of him. Then he sat with us and nervously talked to us for awhile, despite the fact that we were not seeking any kind of attention or asking for anything at all – every single person who saw us there got all weird about it, like defensive almost, like those people in Alaska whenever Adelagia and I showed up for a reservation early. It’s so baffling. Just ignore us, especially when we are ACKNOWLEDGING that we are in the wrong and are early, and are willing to sit there quietly until our actual appointment time arrives. And yet every one of them behaved as though we were demanding to be served IMMEDIATELY, and were rude and weird to have gotten there early. Why do you have a cute waiting area with games and everything if you aren’t okay with people WAITING THERE????????? Anyway, we learned more about that guy who rambled on at us than we probably knew about Steven, and yet you know what we did not learn? His name. And also had zero desire to ask him to hang out and do escape rooms with us.
The weirdness bled over to our gamemaster, who I did not particularly care for. She was also defensive about our being there early and being unprepared for that – at that point we really did not know what else to say, other than reiterate we had been, and still were, okay with waiting. But they all just seemed to ignore our saying that. The escape room itself was... okay? I mean, we were lab rats trying to escape, which was a cute premise and nice design, but I didn’t particularly find the puzzles super awesome or anything. There was also a point where we were supposed to find a chain to pull on, and I thought I knew where that was and went to it. I pulled on it, and the prerecorded voice of the guy running our experiment went, "Ahh! Stop pulling on that chain!" And since part of the story was that the guy who was the scientist running the experiment was working against us, I thought I was actually on the RIGHT track, because I was doing something he didn’t want. So I did it again, and the prerecorded message came again. Finally on my third try the gamemaster was like, "Please don’t pull on that." Oops. OK seriously, I thought it was part of the game – if you don’t want people to pull on it, then change either the clue or the request not to pull on it so that they aren’t both using the word "chain," which could indicate, given the story, that the person might actually be doing the right thing.
I also didn’t care for their hint system. Basically, the gamemaster is with you every step of the way, nudging you along every time you get stuck, whether or not you want the help. The coolest part of the experience, I thought, was when Adelagia was strapped to like, a dentist’s chair, and Jade and I were ushered into another room. Adelagia had a screen she could type into, and could see but not hear us, while we could hear but not see her. We were given a passcode on a screen, and we had to use charades to successfully convey the code for her to type ("dead hose"). It occurs to me that I could have also spelled out the letters on my palm or something.
After escaping successfully (I guess we did need all those hints from the gamemaster :P), we went to Sul & Beans, because I had enjoyed the cheese toast there so much the last time when I went with J. But I might’ve been too full, or it wasn’t the same or something, because while it was still good, it wasn’t as amazing as I remembered. Adelagia got their bottled strawberry milk, which looks really yummy, but it may or may not have made her sick, so now I’m less interested in trying it lol. We stopped by a new(?) K-pop store that sold a bunch of overpriced merchandise (every item was like $20), and staff followed us around like we were thieves in the making. I suppose if you run a K-pop store your primary audience is teenage girls who have no money, are obsessed, and thus prone to thievery. But we are grownass women who don’t appreciate that kind of treatment, so we left pretty quickly. (In retrospect I realize now that at that point I had already started warming up to BTS, because seeing all their merchandise everywhere didn’t spark outrage and resentment in me the way it used to. But I also wasn’t particularly interested, because the only things I considered buying were GOT7 related.)
Our next escape room was "Secret Mission" at LA Mazerooms. We were once again early, but our gamemaster Will, while he did not seem to love his job, was more gracious about it. And once again, if he couldn’t have accommodated us, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE. When we arrive early places, we do not expect to be served right away!! JUST BELIEVE US. Anyway, we were given disposable mustaches to wear for our mission, which was to infiltrate a Russian spy’s apartment and reveal his true identity (obviously). It was a fairly easy room, but fun despite that. I learned from a previous escape room experience and shot a gun at a safe in the final room, and it worked! Hurrah! Also there was a toaster that printed things. Where can I get a toaster like that?
Immediately afterward we did "Lunar Mission," which actually turned out to be a really fun room. At the start we were split up into different rooms, and we had to regroup in order to continue together; I don’t know why but those types of scenarios always take us a really long time (or so it seems). And yet I really like them for the teamwork aspect! Anyway, there was a part where we had to use like, a magnetic claw machine type thing to put some rods into their proper places; the very first rod Adelagia and I manipulated fell to the back, where the magnet claw could not reach. Penti: "............." We decided to go on, and luckily it turned out that we only needed to successfully do one rod. WHEW. (Afterward, Will told us that when he did the room with his team, they somehow managed to lose ALL the rods and their gamemaster actually had to step in and retrieve them.) I felt like all the puzzles were challenging but accessible, which is the best sweet spot for escape room games. But at the end, we were running out of time, and we had one thing left to do in order to power the escape pods or whatever. We had three cables that needed to be slotted into three different sockets, of a panel of maybe eight or so? Because we had no time to try and figure out the puzzle, I said to Jade, "let’s just plug these in wherever" and I stuck two wires into two holes while she did the final one. The panel lit up (or whatever it was that happened to show we were successful), and while that seemed odd and a let down (what an easy "puzzle"!), we were also in too much of a hurry to question it. After escaping with a minute to spare, we asked Will about it, and it turned out that the cables did have to be placed in three specific spots, and we JUST SO HAPPENED to pick all three correctly. WTF that is so crazy. Why can’t we ever be that lucky with the lottery????
Dinner was at Daebudo (known to us as Jaebudo, which is also what it’s listed as in some searches… wtf?), which was the Korean seafood grill place I mentioned earlier. It was amazeballs. Finally something that lived up to its hype! We could have gotten a set meal for like $32/person, or because there were three of us, we were eligible to do the AYCE option, which cost $46/person. We decided to splurge and just do the AYCE, which was only $14 more but included more variety and was, of course, AYCE! This price was a STEAL, considering they had so many types of fresh seafood on offer, including live abalone. Live abalone is SO EXPENSIVE! The food was sooooooooo good, and so fresh, and we had a really great time. It was horrible, of course, watching all the abalone writhe in agony (or so it seemed) on the grill, but they were delicious. :/ The AYCE also comes with a bunch of things that you’re not really allowed to refuse, presumably to try and curb your appetite, but you also aren’t forced to eat it all, so I wish they would allow you to not get some of it. The ceviche type appetizer thing they served, didn’t need that – especially considering it was a huge portion. Didn’t need their pajeon, which was not good, nor the two bowls of bay scallops. Also, didn’t need the ramyun! I didn’t mind having it at the time, but it turned out that after the seafood part was over, they brought a big pot of thick noodles in a kind of dashi stock that was pretty delicious. I wish they could have brought that earlier; I would have happily eaten it along with the seafood and not had to waste so much other food! I don’t know if this is an etiquette thing, though, like if we were to ask whether they'd bring out those noodles early would they be like, "Are you crazy? That's not the right time to eat those noodles!" The other side item I would happily have again was the corn. I wanted more at the time, but with all the other food there was no way I could have stuffed it down. Every time they added new seafood to the grill (like scallops or shrimp or abalone – we got six abalone total), they also added a pile of clams. SO MANY CLAMS OMG. We were given gloves to wear but that didn’t prevent me from burning my lip on a clam shell. At the start of the grilling they had stuffed a foil-wrapped potato and sweet potato into the grate, which we forgot about until near the end of the meal. When we realized we still had potatoes to eat, Jade let out an "Oh God" that was so full of despair it was hilarious. They let us take those home. I wonder if, since all the side things are things you’re probably not allowed to not have, and yet aren’t forced to finish, if you’d be allowed to take those home if you wanted to. If I lived in LA, and it was allowed, I would definitely have taken those noodles. It still hurts me to think of how much we didn’t eat and they probably had to throw away. :(( Anyway, I don’t know how this place stays in business. We are already planning to go back, like, multiple times haha. I hope it’s still in business for a long time, and that their price doesn’t hike up too much... even though we don’t know how they can operate charging that price for AYCE seafood. When I showed my mom the pictures and told her about the experience, she desperately wanted to go, and initially thought that it must cost at least $100/pp. As for service, it was quite outstanding. We were initially served by a girl in her 20s who was friendly and answered all my questions, but at some point her shift must’ve ended, because we were then served by an ahjussi who reminded me of Tae Inho. According to our receipt at the end, he might’ve been the manager of the place, which explained why he was so good at encouraging us to eat and bringing us food and all that.
A pile of seafood, including live abalone on the left. I spared you guys a gif version of this scene, so you don’t have to see the poor abalone writhing.
This is the noodle soup served at the end, that I wish they’d brought earlier.
I wish we had gone there earlier in the trip so that we could have gone again, pushing aside some other thing (Borneo, for instance, though I suppose we couldn’t have known it was gonna suck til we actually went). Next time, though, I anticipate we’re going to go multiple times when we’re in LA, LOL.
Somehow the fun wasn’t over, as we then had an appointment with the LA chapter of Fox in a Box to try rooms they had that wasn’t available in the OC. We weren’t expecting any of the gamemasters to be like Steven, and for once our expectations were met. The room we’d booked, "Dracula," was one we’d decided to do spontaneously iirc, and damn our unending thirst forblood escape rooms, because it was not a good experience from beginning to end. Things didn’t work, there was a string puzzle thing that was confusing, the gamemaster accidentally opened something he wasn’t supposed to and we had to ignore it, and there was a goddamn MIRROR ELEMENT, where we had to kill Dracula’s asshole lieutenants as they slumbered in their shitty coffins. The weariness I felt at doing all this was really the backstory come to life, where I’d been a vampire hunter for decades and was ready to hang up my stake and retire to the countryside far away from dank dungeons and inevitably creepy music, and where I could look forward to the sunrise without being expected to use it to slay some undead creature of the night. After this experience I suggested we refrain from doing these two things in the future: 1) late-night escape rooms; and 2) anything vampire themed, because they ALWAYS have a mirror element. Oh, also, for the first time ever, we ended up breaking something in the room. >.> There was an emblem that needed to be stuck onto Dracula’s coffin, and it was a magnet, but somehow it wasn’t on securely, so it ended up dropping to the floor and cracked in two. It wasn’t our fault the magnet was so weak, but I still felt super bad, as we’d never been Those People before. :/
Wed, April 10
Our morning escape room was 60Out’s "Amityville." Despite the fact that it was fairly easy, I actually rather liked it, even if we will apparently NEVER learn to do things like lie on a bed after reading in a dead girl’s diary that xxx happened at night after her parents had gone to bed. My brain just does not do those leaps of logic. Anyway, we finished in 35 minutes, which might be a personal record for Penti. One thing I liked at the end, just for the novelty, was that one of us had to sacrifice ourselves in order to save the others. Adelagia gave herself up to the demon wardrobe (thanks!), while Jade and I had to leave her behind in order to escape. Of course, the wardrobe was another exit, and we met her outside, haha. It was a cool element though.
Lunch was at Kobawoo House, which I remembered had delicious haemul pajeon and okay bossam. I remembered wrong, both of those things were super delicious! But their pajeon is ridiculously expensive -- $20! Whaaaaat. It’s usually ~$13? I mean, sure, theirs is better than most places, but I don't know that I'd say it's almost twice better. Do they use some kind of seafood in there I can’t detect in order to justify that price? Also, this time we were there on a weekday, so they had lunch specials. We ordered the bossam lunch special and jaengban guksoo lunch special, thinking they’d be smaller portions. Well they were HUGE and despite Adelagia’s best efforts at drawing forth her reindeer dog powers, we could not finish everything. It was so tragic to leave that expensive, delicious pajeon unfinished, but we had no choice – we weren’t going to have time to eat leftovers, and even if we did, it was a warm day and we wouldn’t be able to refrigerate anything in time. I did not care for the jaengban guksoo at all, though Adelagia and Jade liked it. It was beautiful; I think I just do not like cold noodles. This is also why I don’t like naengmyeon. I used to like Japanese soba noodles when I was a child, but I suspect that I wouldn’t like them now. Noodles should be in hot soup, and the soup should be AS HOT AS POSSIBLE, PREFERABLY BOILING. :))))))
Oh delicious pajeon, why are you so expensive here? You're just full of pa!
This is the jaengban guksoo. Isn’t it beautiful? I wish it had tasted (to me) as good as it looked.
We rolled Adelagia back to 60Out, where we did our next room, "Houdini." This was one of those where you start each individually handcuffed to various things or locked in cells, and then you have to get each other out in order to start solving the rest of the puzzles. Even though there was really nothing wrong with the room (other than one slanty platform on which I kept having to go up and down, which was aggravating to my injured ankle, and was scary because I kept fearing I’d hurt it again somehow), and in fact it had some fun stuff, I didn’t care for it in general. It's so hard to explain what makes a room "fun" for me, because I can't seem to really pinpoint any particular reasons. At some point Adelagia was trapped in a water tank and had to "draw" symbols with her fingers for us, which we used to manipulate a giant ball that had the symbols on them, in order to input the correct "code" that would let her out. Toward the end, we were supposed to pull these levers that spelled out the word HOUDINI, but for some reason our brains could not make that simple leap and instead kept trying to spell out the letters that were coming up next, rather than the letters that were lighting up one by one. Dur. Finally, at the end we got to experience one really cool element that I have always wanted to experience in an escape room, which was a wall closing in on us! Gasp! Adelagia and I have small hands, and we could feel that up these pipes were keys, and we kept trying futilely to get them. I did it repeatedly even though I KNEW INTELLECTUALLY that this could NOT be the way the puzzle was solved. How many people could even fit their hands into the pipes as far as we could??? The answer was to release the wire thing in the middle, which would make the key elements drop. SIGH. Anyway, despite our ineptitude, we managed to escape with 38 seconds left.
After all this hard work we rewarded ourselves with ice cream from Holy Roly. I got the strawberry graham one, and I customized it to include honey and cinnamon toast crunch cereal, no Teddy Grahams (past trauma), and ... I forget what else. Anyway, it was yummy, but too large... some other people came in later and ordered a "small," which is apparently the child version, which was the perfect size and cost like half the amount. -.- Also, there was only one girl working there and she had to do so many orders, and since each one takes time, people were waiting around a long time. They really need to improve their staffing situation. I went to the restroom, which on our last Penti trip Adelagia and Jade had described as being Dexter’s killing room, with neverending running water and a drain in the middle of the floor. I didn’t go in that time, but this time I did, and all I have to say is, if murders took place there, they cleaned up after themselves impressively. There was no running water, and even the drain was covered/plugged. (Or maybe neither of those things ever existed, and Adelagia and Jade are just CRAZY.)
MORE ESCAPE ROOMS. We went back to Fox in a Box, and Gamemaster Tom (or at least I think that was his name) took us through "Prison Break." Adelagia and I started out in one cell while Jade was in another, and as per the usual with these scenarios, it took us awhile to reunite. It’s always annoying when we overlook simple things, such as using the spoon Jade had used on something to also unscrew the screws of our bars. SIGH. It was a fairly fun room, and we escaped in time, though I felt like we should have gotten a lot more stuff on our own, it wasn't as hard as the number of hints we used would indicate.
Because we had time and were offered a discount, we also did "Tesla." Actually I had solved their lobby riddle: "When you have me, you want to share me. If you share me, you don’t have me. What am I?" which was supposed to give you a discount on your next booking. But it was some paltry amount, like 5-10% or something like that. Whereas the discount to do another room the same day you’re already there is more like a 30% discount! Anyway… I did not care for Tesla. It was a very difficult room for us, maybe because my brain just doesn’t logic that way. Jade fared better with leaps of logic, while Adelagia and I were hampered by our damn education. They didn’t use the established, commonly known "rules" for things like FOIL when doing math, or how the X-axis is supposed to be horizontal while the Y-axis in vertical. So we were asking for hints basically every time the hint light was on. >< Also, I don’t begrudge Tom passing the time talking to his colleague, but the door/walls were very thin, and we could hear them the entire time, which was distracting. -.- Also, it then led him to not really know where we were when we asked for hints. *Steven* would have paid attention to Penti the entire time. We escaped, but it didn’t really feel earned, lol.
Dinner was another Korean AYCE restaurant, this time shabu shabu at Shabuya. Yes, shabu shabu is Japanese, but this place is Korean, just go with it. I love it because there’s lots of different veggies and seafood and meat, everyone has their own individual pots and can get their preferred type of soup, and it’s just sooooo delicious. I somehow neglected to take pics here, but it’s fine because if you really want to see some, you can just refer back to my last LA trip post!
Maybe next time I just need to do Oo-kook, Shabuya and Daebudo. Hahahaha. All AYCE Korean restaurants. Adelagia and I happened to be sitting facing a TV that was showing things like a K-pop trivia quiz, so even though we were extremely terrible at it (despite how into K-pop we are, we actually only know like half a dozen groups, and I might be exaggerating), it was kinda fun. Also the restaurant played music we liked and recognized, haha. According to Adelagia, Jade and I liked meats #3 and #4 off the menu, but I saw from my last LA trip writeup that at that time we liked #1 and #2. Who really knows? They slice the meat so thinly it’s generally the same tenderness, and it’s all beef, so… Also, none of the servers ever seem to really know which plate of meat is which, so it’s possible we weren’t even given the right answers, lol. Anyway, due to our reduced appetites we ate far less than when Jade and I went, or so it felt.
After dinner we had another late-night escape room, uh oh. It was at PANIQ ROOM, and was another one I was really anticipating, because a few years ago, when we first got into escape rooms, we had done their "Bunker" room and I remember really liking it, even though we came NOWHERE CLOSE to escaping. This time we were doing "Insane Asylum." I didn’t realize how far escape rooms had come until we did this room and it felt very "old school." They still used the walkie-talkie system, which few rooms seem to do anymore (they seem to all have mics/cameras now), and just… it’s hard to explain, but even the puzzles felt aged. Maybe it was as Adelagia says, that it was all very low-tech. We still had to call for hints a lot, which was annoying, but also to be expected because it was the hour in which our brains no longer wanted to do puzzles and wanted instead to sleeeeeeeep. According to our very young gamemaster (seriously he looked like he was 14), they’d redone so much of Bunker since we did it that it might feel like a whole new game. That, plus the fact that it’s been so long there’s no way we could remember specific puzzles anyway, and the fact that they often offer their rooms on Groupon, made us think it wouldn't be a bad idea to do it again someday.
Thu, April 11
Already time to leave! :( We did a ton of escape rooms (20 for me and Jade, if I counted correctly!), but it still seemed to pass by so quickly. Perhaps we will have a chance to return when GOT7 finally announces their new world tour dates. (Update: I will get to return, but not Penti.)
Adelagia and I cleaned up our Airbnb as best we could – well, we tidied and threw out the trash. I suggested she place the trash on top of the Tesla, to which she replied, "No! He’ll charge us!" And I retorted that when you have a list of rules that long, anything that’s not on it is fair game! Haha. Jade came to pick us up, and we first took Adelagia to the airport because her flight was an hour+ earlier than mine (but she would get home hours earlier since her flight was direct). Jade suggested I check in my bag so I didn’t have to worry about it later, which I did. Then she and I took off for Porto’s. We had been debating whether we should go to Porto’s, In N Out again, or both, but I wasn’t that hungry and we didn’t have as much time as we’d expected, so I suggested we just go to Porto’s and munch on some stuff in the car on the way back to the airport. As usual, Porto’s was PACKED. It’s this bakery/café where there’s no sitdown service, you just order at the counter, but it’s well managed so the line goes quickly. People walk out with huge bags of boxes filled with baked goods. It’s popular because the food is pretty good, and it’s surprisingly inexpensive. Last time I went with J., and I got a ton of stuff for like $7. This time I spent twice that, and probably got twice the amount of stuff, too. I had forgotten that I didn’t care for their chicken croquettes very much, so I ended up getting those again, plus the regular potato balls (that are filled with meat), chicken empanadas, a guava pastry of some kind, a couple of meat pies and those raspberry kiss cookies I like. I asked the guy serving me if there was anything he thought I shouldn’t miss, and he thought about it, then said, "Our cookies are the best." And he gave me a chocolate chip cookie and didn’t charge me for it, which was nice. The cookie was good, but I’ve had better. So next time I’ll have to ask again if there’s anything they recommend, because there’s SO MUCH STUFF they offer that I need help narrowing it down!
Cookies and other stuff were in another box. I consolidated before getting on the plane. On the savory items, my order of preference would be: potato ball, meat pie, empanada, chicken croquette. But if they made empanadas with the filling from the potato balls, that would be my number one.
Oh and...
If you want to know an update of what happened with my ankle, it’s still not fully recovered. I think it’s gonna take months to feel normal again. But after returning from LA is when it looked the worst, because all the bruising had come out. I had been very curious to know where the bruising was going to show up, because I wasn’t sure exactly where/how I had twisted my ankle to begin with. It was all toward the back, apparently, and the sides... basically I did a real number on it. How is anyone’s guess... but it does explain why I could not find any comfortable position for it when I was trying to ice it. :/
I have a pic of the bruising...
But I’ll leave some spoiler space...
In case seeing bodily injury...
Isn’t your cup of tea...
All right well...
If you’re still here...
Prepare yourself...
Or else you better click away now...
There’s no turning back...
Here it is:
Gross right?
Tue, April 9
After returning the rental car, Jade picked us up to head to Oo-kook, an AYCE Korean BBQ place that was a favorite of all of us the last time we were all in LA. It was still good, and this time they even did most of the cooking for us, but it was unclear if that was a new thing and was the reason they set a certain required tip% amount, or if it was because it wasn’t super busy. Also, neither my nor Jade’s appetite was the same as the last time we went, so we didn’t order nearly as much as we had previously, which made the AYCE aspect seem less worth it. In retrospect, I think I prefer a place like Quarters in terms of service and how they do things (the food is probably about the same). I like Quarters’ more modern feel, and the fact that younger people work there and circle around cooking all your food, so all you have to do is eat and converse with your friends. Of course, they make that latter thing harder than it needs to be, as the absolute WORST thing about Quarters, which makes me not want to go back, is how horribly LOUD it is. Not only are the acoustics bad to begin with, but they also blast loud music. Why. Just why.
We had extra time and nothing to do, so we headed to our next escape room at Hatch Escapes, home to "Lab Rats," possibly one of the most recommended and universally acclaimed escape rooms I’d ever heard of. It was first recommended to me and Jade by Nick, the guy in the Bay Area who’d created his own escape room company and who’s done like hundreds, if not thousands, of escape rooms all the over the world. He said the first 75% of Lab Rats was the most creative, perfect thing ever, but the last 25% disappointed after that. Steven had heard of it but hadn’t had the chance to do it himself (I think when we heard that was when we were most tempted to ask him to join us. Honestly I don’t know why we connected so hard with him, or what it was about him that led two generally cautious people – myself and Adelagia – to trust him so much that we’d even consider asking him to hang out with us knowing ALMOST NOTHING ABOUT HIM lol). So we got to Hatch, and we knew we were early. They had a nice little waiting area, and we were like, oh good, we can wait out the hour or whatever quite happily here. And that was what we were doing, until one of the staff members (apparently a designer working on their next room) came wandering in, and we apparently scared the crap out of him. Then he sat with us and nervously talked to us for awhile, despite the fact that we were not seeking any kind of attention or asking for anything at all – every single person who saw us there got all weird about it, like defensive almost, like those people in Alaska whenever Adelagia and I showed up for a reservation early. It’s so baffling. Just ignore us, especially when we are ACKNOWLEDGING that we are in the wrong and are early, and are willing to sit there quietly until our actual appointment time arrives. And yet every one of them behaved as though we were demanding to be served IMMEDIATELY, and were rude and weird to have gotten there early. Why do you have a cute waiting area with games and everything if you aren’t okay with people WAITING THERE????????? Anyway, we learned more about that guy who rambled on at us than we probably knew about Steven, and yet you know what we did not learn? His name. And also had zero desire to ask him to hang out and do escape rooms with us.
The weirdness bled over to our gamemaster, who I did not particularly care for. She was also defensive about our being there early and being unprepared for that – at that point we really did not know what else to say, other than reiterate we had been, and still were, okay with waiting. But they all just seemed to ignore our saying that. The escape room itself was... okay? I mean, we were lab rats trying to escape, which was a cute premise and nice design, but I didn’t particularly find the puzzles super awesome or anything. There was also a point where we were supposed to find a chain to pull on, and I thought I knew where that was and went to it. I pulled on it, and the prerecorded voice of the guy running our experiment went, "Ahh! Stop pulling on that chain!" And since part of the story was that the guy who was the scientist running the experiment was working against us, I thought I was actually on the RIGHT track, because I was doing something he didn’t want. So I did it again, and the prerecorded message came again. Finally on my third try the gamemaster was like, "Please don’t pull on that." Oops. OK seriously, I thought it was part of the game – if you don’t want people to pull on it, then change either the clue or the request not to pull on it so that they aren’t both using the word "chain," which could indicate, given the story, that the person might actually be doing the right thing.
I also didn’t care for their hint system. Basically, the gamemaster is with you every step of the way, nudging you along every time you get stuck, whether or not you want the help. The coolest part of the experience, I thought, was when Adelagia was strapped to like, a dentist’s chair, and Jade and I were ushered into another room. Adelagia had a screen she could type into, and could see but not hear us, while we could hear but not see her. We were given a passcode on a screen, and we had to use charades to successfully convey the code for her to type ("dead hose"). It occurs to me that I could have also spelled out the letters on my palm or something.
After escaping successfully (I guess we did need all those hints from the gamemaster :P), we went to Sul & Beans, because I had enjoyed the cheese toast there so much the last time when I went with J. But I might’ve been too full, or it wasn’t the same or something, because while it was still good, it wasn’t as amazing as I remembered. Adelagia got their bottled strawberry milk, which looks really yummy, but it may or may not have made her sick, so now I’m less interested in trying it lol. We stopped by a new(?) K-pop store that sold a bunch of overpriced merchandise (every item was like $20), and staff followed us around like we were thieves in the making. I suppose if you run a K-pop store your primary audience is teenage girls who have no money, are obsessed, and thus prone to thievery. But we are grownass women who don’t appreciate that kind of treatment, so we left pretty quickly. (In retrospect I realize now that at that point I had already started warming up to BTS, because seeing all their merchandise everywhere didn’t spark outrage and resentment in me the way it used to. But I also wasn’t particularly interested, because the only things I considered buying were GOT7 related.)
Our next escape room was "Secret Mission" at LA Mazerooms. We were once again early, but our gamemaster Will, while he did not seem to love his job, was more gracious about it. And once again, if he couldn’t have accommodated us, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE. When we arrive early places, we do not expect to be served right away!! JUST BELIEVE US. Anyway, we were given disposable mustaches to wear for our mission, which was to infiltrate a Russian spy’s apartment and reveal his true identity (obviously). It was a fairly easy room, but fun despite that. I learned from a previous escape room experience and shot a gun at a safe in the final room, and it worked! Hurrah! Also there was a toaster that printed things. Where can I get a toaster like that?
Immediately afterward we did "Lunar Mission," which actually turned out to be a really fun room. At the start we were split up into different rooms, and we had to regroup in order to continue together; I don’t know why but those types of scenarios always take us a really long time (or so it seems). And yet I really like them for the teamwork aspect! Anyway, there was a part where we had to use like, a magnetic claw machine type thing to put some rods into their proper places; the very first rod Adelagia and I manipulated fell to the back, where the magnet claw could not reach. Penti: "............." We decided to go on, and luckily it turned out that we only needed to successfully do one rod. WHEW. (Afterward, Will told us that when he did the room with his team, they somehow managed to lose ALL the rods and their gamemaster actually had to step in and retrieve them.) I felt like all the puzzles were challenging but accessible, which is the best sweet spot for escape room games. But at the end, we were running out of time, and we had one thing left to do in order to power the escape pods or whatever. We had three cables that needed to be slotted into three different sockets, of a panel of maybe eight or so? Because we had no time to try and figure out the puzzle, I said to Jade, "let’s just plug these in wherever" and I stuck two wires into two holes while she did the final one. The panel lit up (or whatever it was that happened to show we were successful), and while that seemed odd and a let down (what an easy "puzzle"!), we were also in too much of a hurry to question it. After escaping with a minute to spare, we asked Will about it, and it turned out that the cables did have to be placed in three specific spots, and we JUST SO HAPPENED to pick all three correctly. WTF that is so crazy. Why can’t we ever be that lucky with the lottery????
Dinner was at Daebudo (known to us as Jaebudo, which is also what it’s listed as in some searches… wtf?), which was the Korean seafood grill place I mentioned earlier. It was amazeballs. Finally something that lived up to its hype! We could have gotten a set meal for like $32/person, or because there were three of us, we were eligible to do the AYCE option, which cost $46/person. We decided to splurge and just do the AYCE, which was only $14 more but included more variety and was, of course, AYCE! This price was a STEAL, considering they had so many types of fresh seafood on offer, including live abalone. Live abalone is SO EXPENSIVE! The food was sooooooooo good, and so fresh, and we had a really great time. It was horrible, of course, watching all the abalone writhe in agony (or so it seemed) on the grill, but they were delicious. :/ The AYCE also comes with a bunch of things that you’re not really allowed to refuse, presumably to try and curb your appetite, but you also aren’t forced to eat it all, so I wish they would allow you to not get some of it. The ceviche type appetizer thing they served, didn’t need that – especially considering it was a huge portion. Didn’t need their pajeon, which was not good, nor the two bowls of bay scallops. Also, didn’t need the ramyun! I didn’t mind having it at the time, but it turned out that after the seafood part was over, they brought a big pot of thick noodles in a kind of dashi stock that was pretty delicious. I wish they could have brought that earlier; I would have happily eaten it along with the seafood and not had to waste so much other food! I don’t know if this is an etiquette thing, though, like if we were to ask whether they'd bring out those noodles early would they be like, "Are you crazy? That's not the right time to eat those noodles!" The other side item I would happily have again was the corn. I wanted more at the time, but with all the other food there was no way I could have stuffed it down. Every time they added new seafood to the grill (like scallops or shrimp or abalone – we got six abalone total), they also added a pile of clams. SO MANY CLAMS OMG. We were given gloves to wear but that didn’t prevent me from burning my lip on a clam shell. At the start of the grilling they had stuffed a foil-wrapped potato and sweet potato into the grate, which we forgot about until near the end of the meal. When we realized we still had potatoes to eat, Jade let out an "Oh God" that was so full of despair it was hilarious. They let us take those home. I wonder if, since all the side things are things you’re probably not allowed to not have, and yet aren’t forced to finish, if you’d be allowed to take those home if you wanted to. If I lived in LA, and it was allowed, I would definitely have taken those noodles. It still hurts me to think of how much we didn’t eat and they probably had to throw away. :(( Anyway, I don’t know how this place stays in business. We are already planning to go back, like, multiple times haha. I hope it’s still in business for a long time, and that their price doesn’t hike up too much... even though we don’t know how they can operate charging that price for AYCE seafood. When I showed my mom the pictures and told her about the experience, she desperately wanted to go, and initially thought that it must cost at least $100/pp. As for service, it was quite outstanding. We were initially served by a girl in her 20s who was friendly and answered all my questions, but at some point her shift must’ve ended, because we were then served by an ahjussi who reminded me of Tae Inho. According to our receipt at the end, he might’ve been the manager of the place, which explained why he was so good at encouraging us to eat and bringing us food and all that.
A pile of seafood, including live abalone on the left. I spared you guys a gif version of this scene, so you don’t have to see the poor abalone writhing.
This is the noodle soup served at the end, that I wish they’d brought earlier.
I wish we had gone there earlier in the trip so that we could have gone again, pushing aside some other thing (Borneo, for instance, though I suppose we couldn’t have known it was gonna suck til we actually went). Next time, though, I anticipate we’re going to go multiple times when we’re in LA, LOL.
Somehow the fun wasn’t over, as we then had an appointment with the LA chapter of Fox in a Box to try rooms they had that wasn’t available in the OC. We weren’t expecting any of the gamemasters to be like Steven, and for once our expectations were met. The room we’d booked, "Dracula," was one we’d decided to do spontaneously iirc, and damn our unending thirst for
Wed, April 10
Our morning escape room was 60Out’s "Amityville." Despite the fact that it was fairly easy, I actually rather liked it, even if we will apparently NEVER learn to do things like lie on a bed after reading in a dead girl’s diary that xxx happened at night after her parents had gone to bed. My brain just does not do those leaps of logic. Anyway, we finished in 35 minutes, which might be a personal record for Penti. One thing I liked at the end, just for the novelty, was that one of us had to sacrifice ourselves in order to save the others. Adelagia gave herself up to the demon wardrobe (thanks!), while Jade and I had to leave her behind in order to escape. Of course, the wardrobe was another exit, and we met her outside, haha. It was a cool element though.
Lunch was at Kobawoo House, which I remembered had delicious haemul pajeon and okay bossam. I remembered wrong, both of those things were super delicious! But their pajeon is ridiculously expensive -- $20! Whaaaaat. It’s usually ~$13? I mean, sure, theirs is better than most places, but I don't know that I'd say it's almost twice better. Do they use some kind of seafood in there I can’t detect in order to justify that price? Also, this time we were there on a weekday, so they had lunch specials. We ordered the bossam lunch special and jaengban guksoo lunch special, thinking they’d be smaller portions. Well they were HUGE and despite Adelagia’s best efforts at drawing forth her reindeer dog powers, we could not finish everything. It was so tragic to leave that expensive, delicious pajeon unfinished, but we had no choice – we weren’t going to have time to eat leftovers, and even if we did, it was a warm day and we wouldn’t be able to refrigerate anything in time. I did not care for the jaengban guksoo at all, though Adelagia and Jade liked it. It was beautiful; I think I just do not like cold noodles. This is also why I don’t like naengmyeon. I used to like Japanese soba noodles when I was a child, but I suspect that I wouldn’t like them now. Noodles should be in hot soup, and the soup should be AS HOT AS POSSIBLE, PREFERABLY BOILING. :))))))
Oh delicious pajeon, why are you so expensive here? You're just full of pa!
This is the jaengban guksoo. Isn’t it beautiful? I wish it had tasted (to me) as good as it looked.
We rolled Adelagia back to 60Out, where we did our next room, "Houdini." This was one of those where you start each individually handcuffed to various things or locked in cells, and then you have to get each other out in order to start solving the rest of the puzzles. Even though there was really nothing wrong with the room (other than one slanty platform on which I kept having to go up and down, which was aggravating to my injured ankle, and was scary because I kept fearing I’d hurt it again somehow), and in fact it had some fun stuff, I didn’t care for it in general. It's so hard to explain what makes a room "fun" for me, because I can't seem to really pinpoint any particular reasons. At some point Adelagia was trapped in a water tank and had to "draw" symbols with her fingers for us, which we used to manipulate a giant ball that had the symbols on them, in order to input the correct "code" that would let her out. Toward the end, we were supposed to pull these levers that spelled out the word HOUDINI, but for some reason our brains could not make that simple leap and instead kept trying to spell out the letters that were coming up next, rather than the letters that were lighting up one by one. Dur. Finally, at the end we got to experience one really cool element that I have always wanted to experience in an escape room, which was a wall closing in on us! Gasp! Adelagia and I have small hands, and we could feel that up these pipes were keys, and we kept trying futilely to get them. I did it repeatedly even though I KNEW INTELLECTUALLY that this could NOT be the way the puzzle was solved. How many people could even fit their hands into the pipes as far as we could??? The answer was to release the wire thing in the middle, which would make the key elements drop. SIGH. Anyway, despite our ineptitude, we managed to escape with 38 seconds left.
After all this hard work we rewarded ourselves with ice cream from Holy Roly. I got the strawberry graham one, and I customized it to include honey and cinnamon toast crunch cereal, no Teddy Grahams (past trauma), and ... I forget what else. Anyway, it was yummy, but too large... some other people came in later and ordered a "small," which is apparently the child version, which was the perfect size and cost like half the amount. -.- Also, there was only one girl working there and she had to do so many orders, and since each one takes time, people were waiting around a long time. They really need to improve their staffing situation. I went to the restroom, which on our last Penti trip Adelagia and Jade had described as being Dexter’s killing room, with neverending running water and a drain in the middle of the floor. I didn’t go in that time, but this time I did, and all I have to say is, if murders took place there, they cleaned up after themselves impressively. There was no running water, and even the drain was covered/plugged. (Or maybe neither of those things ever existed, and Adelagia and Jade are just CRAZY.)
MORE ESCAPE ROOMS. We went back to Fox in a Box, and Gamemaster Tom (or at least I think that was his name) took us through "Prison Break." Adelagia and I started out in one cell while Jade was in another, and as per the usual with these scenarios, it took us awhile to reunite. It’s always annoying when we overlook simple things, such as using the spoon Jade had used on something to also unscrew the screws of our bars. SIGH. It was a fairly fun room, and we escaped in time, though I felt like we should have gotten a lot more stuff on our own, it wasn't as hard as the number of hints we used would indicate.
Because we had time and were offered a discount, we also did "Tesla." Actually I had solved their lobby riddle: "When you have me, you want to share me. If you share me, you don’t have me. What am I?" which was supposed to give you a discount on your next booking. But it was some paltry amount, like 5-10% or something like that. Whereas the discount to do another room the same day you’re already there is more like a 30% discount! Anyway… I did not care for Tesla. It was a very difficult room for us, maybe because my brain just doesn’t logic that way. Jade fared better with leaps of logic, while Adelagia and I were hampered by our damn education. They didn’t use the established, commonly known "rules" for things like FOIL when doing math, or how the X-axis is supposed to be horizontal while the Y-axis in vertical. So we were asking for hints basically every time the hint light was on. >< Also, I don’t begrudge Tom passing the time talking to his colleague, but the door/walls were very thin, and we could hear them the entire time, which was distracting. -.- Also, it then led him to not really know where we were when we asked for hints. *Steven* would have paid attention to Penti the entire time. We escaped, but it didn’t really feel earned, lol.
Dinner was another Korean AYCE restaurant, this time shabu shabu at Shabuya. Yes, shabu shabu is Japanese, but this place is Korean, just go with it. I love it because there’s lots of different veggies and seafood and meat, everyone has their own individual pots and can get their preferred type of soup, and it’s just sooooo delicious. I somehow neglected to take pics here, but it’s fine because if you really want to see some, you can just refer back to my last LA trip post!
Maybe next time I just need to do Oo-kook, Shabuya and Daebudo. Hahahaha. All AYCE Korean restaurants. Adelagia and I happened to be sitting facing a TV that was showing things like a K-pop trivia quiz, so even though we were extremely terrible at it (despite how into K-pop we are, we actually only know like half a dozen groups, and I might be exaggerating), it was kinda fun. Also the restaurant played music we liked and recognized, haha. According to Adelagia, Jade and I liked meats #3 and #4 off the menu, but I saw from my last LA trip writeup that at that time we liked #1 and #2. Who really knows? They slice the meat so thinly it’s generally the same tenderness, and it’s all beef, so… Also, none of the servers ever seem to really know which plate of meat is which, so it’s possible we weren’t even given the right answers, lol. Anyway, due to our reduced appetites we ate far less than when Jade and I went, or so it felt.
After dinner we had another late-night escape room, uh oh. It was at PANIQ ROOM, and was another one I was really anticipating, because a few years ago, when we first got into escape rooms, we had done their "Bunker" room and I remember really liking it, even though we came NOWHERE CLOSE to escaping. This time we were doing "Insane Asylum." I didn’t realize how far escape rooms had come until we did this room and it felt very "old school." They still used the walkie-talkie system, which few rooms seem to do anymore (they seem to all have mics/cameras now), and just… it’s hard to explain, but even the puzzles felt aged. Maybe it was as Adelagia says, that it was all very low-tech. We still had to call for hints a lot, which was annoying, but also to be expected because it was the hour in which our brains no longer wanted to do puzzles and wanted instead to sleeeeeeeep. According to our very young gamemaster (seriously he looked like he was 14), they’d redone so much of Bunker since we did it that it might feel like a whole new game. That, plus the fact that it’s been so long there’s no way we could remember specific puzzles anyway, and the fact that they often offer their rooms on Groupon, made us think it wouldn't be a bad idea to do it again someday.
Thu, April 11
Already time to leave! :( We did a ton of escape rooms (20 for me and Jade, if I counted correctly!), but it still seemed to pass by so quickly. Perhaps we will have a chance to return when GOT7 finally announces their new world tour dates. (Update: I will get to return, but not Penti.)
Adelagia and I cleaned up our Airbnb as best we could – well, we tidied and threw out the trash. I suggested she place the trash on top of the Tesla, to which she replied, "No! He’ll charge us!" And I retorted that when you have a list of rules that long, anything that’s not on it is fair game! Haha. Jade came to pick us up, and we first took Adelagia to the airport because her flight was an hour+ earlier than mine (but she would get home hours earlier since her flight was direct). Jade suggested I check in my bag so I didn’t have to worry about it later, which I did. Then she and I took off for Porto’s. We had been debating whether we should go to Porto’s, In N Out again, or both, but I wasn’t that hungry and we didn’t have as much time as we’d expected, so I suggested we just go to Porto’s and munch on some stuff in the car on the way back to the airport. As usual, Porto’s was PACKED. It’s this bakery/café where there’s no sitdown service, you just order at the counter, but it’s well managed so the line goes quickly. People walk out with huge bags of boxes filled with baked goods. It’s popular because the food is pretty good, and it’s surprisingly inexpensive. Last time I went with J., and I got a ton of stuff for like $7. This time I spent twice that, and probably got twice the amount of stuff, too. I had forgotten that I didn’t care for their chicken croquettes very much, so I ended up getting those again, plus the regular potato balls (that are filled with meat), chicken empanadas, a guava pastry of some kind, a couple of meat pies and those raspberry kiss cookies I like. I asked the guy serving me if there was anything he thought I shouldn’t miss, and he thought about it, then said, "Our cookies are the best." And he gave me a chocolate chip cookie and didn’t charge me for it, which was nice. The cookie was good, but I’ve had better. So next time I’ll have to ask again if there’s anything they recommend, because there’s SO MUCH STUFF they offer that I need help narrowing it down!
Cookies and other stuff were in another box. I consolidated before getting on the plane. On the savory items, my order of preference would be: potato ball, meat pie, empanada, chicken croquette. But if they made empanadas with the filling from the potato balls, that would be my number one.
Oh and...
If you want to know an update of what happened with my ankle, it’s still not fully recovered. I think it’s gonna take months to feel normal again. But after returning from LA is when it looked the worst, because all the bruising had come out. I had been very curious to know where the bruising was going to show up, because I wasn’t sure exactly where/how I had twisted my ankle to begin with. It was all toward the back, apparently, and the sides... basically I did a real number on it. How is anyone’s guess... but it does explain why I could not find any comfortable position for it when I was trying to ice it. :/
I have a pic of the bruising...
But I’ll leave some spoiler space...
In case seeing bodily injury...
Isn’t your cup of tea...
All right well...
If you’re still here...
Prepare yourself...
Or else you better click away now...
There’s no turning back...
Here it is:
Gross right?
