If I'm honest, as my 18th birthday was approaching, everyone was more excited about me turning 18 than I was... I was actually scared to turn 18. Why? Well, I knew everyone was attempting to get me drunk on my 18th - don't get me wrong, I don't hate drinking, I'm just not fond of it. Plus, due to my best friend's 21st birthday with him consecutively downing 21 straight shots of vodka, you would understand why I was so worried...

Fortunately, I didn't get drunk, and I barely had a sip of alcohol on my birthday which was pretty good for my sake. I spent the beginning of the day with my best friend, Ying. From shopping for snacks at H-Mart, New Malden to getting ready for the dinner together. My dinner overall was a smart-casual occasion. My dinner party had been organised at a Korean restaurant called Han, located in New Malden. The organisation of my birthday was left to my cousin, Tracey as we both decided to organise each other's birthdays.

I really liked the atmosphere provided at Han, as the layout of the restaurant and décor was very suited to the formal occasion which was accompanied by a bar as well as an option of karaoke services as well. I appreciated the variety of choices on the menu, which will be further discussed in the rest of my blog post, but for now you can have a look at the venue and menu here:

https://hankaraoke.wordpress.com/

I decided that I wanted to limit the amount of people to my 18th birthday party so I decided on only inviting close friends and family to my event. But the people at the event made the atmosphere great! It was difficult to have an opportunity to talk to everyone, but I'm glad everyone got on so well although it may have been awkward for some at first - This was due to some of them not knowing anyone but me attending the event... Opps.

I think my favourite dish on the menu would have the BBQ set. The payment of our dishes were organised by tables, so each table would pay for they bought within the table. For our table, we felt that although the BBQ set was great, we had to order more for the 5 of us to eat as there wasn't enough. The BBQ set was £19.50. We selected "C" as our favourite of the four. Set C includes galbisal (seasoned and marinated beef ribs), beef bulgogi (sliced and marinated beef), dak bulgogi (sliced and marinated chicken) and samyeopsal (sliced pork belly with spicy sauce). Bulgogi is a popular choice of meat included in Korean BBQ and one of my all time favourites.

However, we did opt upon some starter dishes as well. Between our table, we shared some of our starters although people from the other tables also took some of our food now and again. Rude. Just joking aha. My starter of choice was the "ojingeo tuigim" which is deep fried squid covered in breadcrumbs. Whilst my friend opted upon a vegetarian starter, dubu tuigim salad which is deep fried tofu on vegetable salad. Another friend of mine, chose the "yangnyum chicken" which is deep fried chicken with seasoned soya sauce.

Besides the food, the atmosphere was great, everyone was talking about discussing about interesting topics, and I can say my messages through the night were incredibly insightful. I can solidly say some of the messages sent that night were not even from me... But reading the conversations made my night, I'm really thankful for the 100+ Facebook wall posts for my birthday - I probably looked antisocial throughout the night aha.

To end the night, I was gifted with a Millie's Cookie, personalised as a substitute birthday cake - since I'm not a big fan of cakes, my cousin decided upon gifting me a cookie instead. Everyone's attempt to distract me as the birthday cookie was being brought to me from behind, honestly it was too obvious and everyone wasn't very subtle about it, but it was still great.



Anyways, I would like to thank everyone for making my 18th birthday amazing, although some people couldn't attend, and I couldn't invite everyone, I'm grateful for all the wishes.

That's it for now, but look forward to my upcoming birthday posts for this month - I have a lot of birthday posts to be catching up although I've only accomplished two so far...

PS: Photo credits to Ying and Tracey as I brought my DSLR camera but forgot the memory card... Well done me...