korea day one

Dear diary,

i went to korea for 10 days! i don't know how i'm gonna tell you all the details without without being too lengthy but o well, let's give it a shot!

These are the 7 korea trip members, introducing from left: wei ling, carine, me, sze yang, lydia, dong sheng, zhong ing.

and oh, i forgot to mention diary but yours truly is the "organizer" of this trip. hehe didn't think i did too too bad for my first time! 

and honestly not that i did much either. searched for plane tickets, chose the place we stayed at, looked up interesting places in seoul. i didn't even plan the schedule so every night before we head to bed we just kind of have this "so where should we go tomorrow?" discussion.

A quick search on the internet shows that japan airlines are expensive so i booked us korean airlines. the return tickets costed about 36000yen which would be around rm1300? 

lunch in plane. no set meals to choose from as MAS would offer but no complains there! didnt expect to get a meal for a 2 hours ride.

booking the plane tickets was one of the most tedious process. only credit cards are accepted for the payment plus you must present the credit card at the check-in counter.

wouldnt be so complicated if my credit card didnt limit students on how much they can spend per month. the fact that i cant use a third party credit card didn't really help either

 i got so paranoid that we all wouldnt be able to go korea because i would forget to bring my visa card along that i ended up checking my purse every few hours!

 must be phobia from the time i went back malaysia during spring holidays. i only realised i didn't have my IC and driving license with me when i was in the train on the way to airport ==

riding the bus to "kyungnam wedding hall" stop (where our inn is supposed to be at) was one of the most exciting ride i ever had in my life.

the bus driver doesnt really announce the name of the stops (we got too spoilt from japan's immaculate service that provides a digital signboard flashing the name of the stop, the next stop etc) so it was a ride we had no idea when to get off.

we could only estimate from the length of time it's supposed to take to reach hongdae area (40 minutes).

in the end we took our chance and followed an ang moh at getting off the bus.

"look! that ang moh's getting off here"

"then this must be the right stop!"

on what basis i have no idea... but we did got off at the right stop. phew...

a short walk and...

the place we are to stay for the next 9 nights: mr kim's friends guesthouse. nice place, pleasant staff! would have definitely sucked if we had to spend all 10 days at some lousy place.

I booked us all 7 in the same 8-bed dormitory room. a decision that i'm glad i made. it was a lot easier to bond this way.

i find the staff's reply so hilarious that i couldn't stop laughing. or maybe it was me who started the 'informal-ness' with the (*^-^*) face?

anyway upon our arrival, they attempted to charge us the original rate 20000won (rm53) until i mentioned about the 10% discount.

our 1st meal in korea: the famous grilled meat!

by the time we arrived at the inn it was already around 6pm so we decided to just explore the area our inn's located in: hongdae, one of seoul's most lively area!

shopping~ 

oh diary, this is one of the things i love korea so much about! it was around 11pm already but all the shops are still OPEN and the whole atmosphere is still ever so lively! i just can't stand the japanese closing their shops at 8pm.

it was in front of a shop. it looked so cute and we couldnt decide whether it was real or not. attempted the old-fashioned way: look at its body to see if its moving up and down from breathing.

it did

but it was a doll in the end

how the times have changed..