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Trip to Seoul, South Korea in Nov 2019


Boringchap
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Greetings!  Blessed Christmas to all, and hope the New Year 2020 would be an even better one for everybody. In this thread, let me share some videos that I made from a family trip to Seoul, South Korea in November 2019.  We had decided to stay in Seoul for more than a week.  Using Seoul as our base, we would take our time to visit tourist sites, leisurely. 

For our flight to Seoul, I redeemed SQ miles and managed to get SQ Business Class tickets, Singapore to Seoul.  Good fun.  SQ operates their new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner for our Singapore-Seoul flight.  The video below shows you some footage from the SilverKris lounge at Terminal 3.  I read that SQ will be upgrading this lounge soon, so this may be the last time I am using this lounge.  

SQ Flight - Boeing 787-10.  Flight review from Singapore to Seoul Incheon on SQ.  It was a pretty good flight!  We got into Seoul at about 10PM and had arranged for a pick-up from Seoul Incheon to our hotel in Myeongdong.  It was a rather long ride, about 1 hour.

 

 

 

Edited by Boringchap
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We stayed at Metro Hotel, Myeongdong.  We took 2 types of rooms, the Standard Room and the Shopper's Room.  Here is a video showing you both rooms.

https://youtu.be/AjCzr434EAY

Booking directly with the hotel also gave us free breakfast, which was adequate for our needs.  This video shows you a bit of the breakfast, at the end.

https://youtu.be/Sxk3ZHj87YA

[Question for moderators - how do I embed YouTube videos?]

Edited by Boringchap
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During our trip, we did everything free and easy (DIY), with the exception of one day where we joined a Klook tour that would bring us to Garden of Morning Calm, Nami Island as well as the Gangchon Railway.

The assembly point for the tour was outside McDonald's at Myeongdong station exit 4, at 0745hrs on the morning of the tour.  As we were staying in the Myeongdong area, we did a recce the day before to ensure that we could find the assembly point, as the tour would leave without us. 

This video shows you the assembly point on the day itself - there were plenty of people that morning, not just for our tour, but for other tours too.

It was quite chaotic.  Fortunately, our tour guide for the day, a lady, had set up a whatsapp group and was giving good instructions.  However, some of the tour group members either didn't have whatsapp, or didn't leave their mobile numbers when booking, so she had to hunt for them. 

The bus was full (more than 40 pax) and it was really a first-come-first-served type of seating. 

The first stop was Garden of Morning Calm, and it took about 40 minutes of driving to get there.  When we arrived and got off the bus, it was really cold!  Yes, take note that the temperature in Seoul can get very cold indeed.  The Garden was very nice, even though this was winter season.   We were given about an hour to explore the gardens on our own, which was sufficient if you walked around the gardens fairly quickly. Check out the video below. After this stop, we went for lunch, which you can see what we ate at 4:38 onwards of the video below.

After lunch, it was time to go to Nami Island.  We had to take a ferry to the island, and even though it was winter season, there were still quite a lot of people.  As we queued to board the ferry, there was a huge board advocating Nami Island to be 'bridge-free'.  Apparently there was some proposal to build a bridge linking the island to mainland but this idea has met with plenty of opposition.  Anyway, the island was nice.  Had to walk to the end of it, to get to the famous row of trees.  Take many photos!  We weren't given a lot of time to walk around as the tour guide wanted us to be back quite quickly, as we had to proceed to our final stop of the Gangchon Railbicycle.  Good that the tour group members got back to the coach on time and nobody had to wait for late stragglers.

Our final stop was the Gangchon Rail Park bike.  This was touted as an eco-attraction, featuring self-riding bicycle cars on the railway track which travel on converted rail tracks.  The route was supposed to be scenic, but it almost turned out to be quite a disaster for us as you can see in the video below.

The outing started well, and all the railbikes were travelling smoothly.  The wind was quite chilly, but we were having loads of fun, pedalling along, and it wasn't tiring at all because most of the route was downhill.  About 15 minutes into the ride, the bikes in front of us all came to a stop.  There was a staff on the track asking us to stop.  And very soon all the bikes behind us were made to stop.

We were out in the cold for about 30 minutes, not knowing what happened.  Finally, some staff told us that there was an obstruction ahead and we had to get off and WALK ON FOOT to some road for our coaches to pick us.  LIke, SERIOUSLY?  Yes, very serious.  Thankfully all of us could walk to a nearby exit to the Highway and had to wait for our respective coaches to pick us up.  What an experience!  

 

 

 

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For the rest of the thread, I'll just post up videos that I made for this trip, not in any particular order.  I"m still processing some of the videos (in fact didn't have time to do all).  It is my hobby so when I am free and bored, I edit videos. 

7-ELEVEN directly connected to Metro Hotel

There are many convenience stores like 7-Eleven in Seoul.  There is a small 7-Eleven directly connected to the Metro Hotel, which was very useful, if you needed supplies like more water, cup noodles, snacks and even coffee from the coffee machine.  This video shows me getting coffee early in the morning before the breakfast opened. 

Seoul Metro

The Seoul Metro network is very extensive and easy to use.  Buy a T-Money card (from a machine) and you can load it with some Korean Won and use it at the metro. Single trip tickets cost more, so a T-money card makes more sense. The trains were very large and long. We used the metro extensively.  Video below gives you a glimpse of some metro rides we took.

https://youtu.be/dmJDmApriDE

 

 

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We aren't really fans of Korean BBQ, but we did manage to have a meal at this place called Wangbijib (not sure if I spelt it correctly).  They have a few outlets, in Myeongdong itself they have at least 2.

 

Also had a meal at Mom's Touch, which I am told has come to Singapore.  This is a fast food chain known for its fried chicken.  We tried both the fried chicken and burger.  Frankly, the burger was good, the fried chicken was so-so to me, but that's because I don't really care for fried chicken maybe. 

 

Isaac Toast and coffee was also quite famous, based on all the blogs and reviews we had read. So we had to take the opportunity to try Isaac toast.  Along the way, in Myeongdong, we also tried the Oreo Churrios. You can see that towards the end of the video below.

 

We ate at least thrice at these casual Korean eatery called Pomato, which is about 500M from our hotel.  We took a long time to find it, because it doesn't really have an english name.  Consider it like a Korean casual eatery - customers appear to be all locals.  Their menu had English, so it made it easy for us to order. Prices were very reasonable,  by Korean standards.  On the flip side, we tried Two-Two Fried Chicken one night and it was quite bad and expensive!!!

 

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Yoogane Chicken Galbi - another relatively famous chain store we tried.  Read on the internet and blogs that this place was not bad, so we decided to give it a try.  They would cook the food for you, and after that you can eat.  But frankly speaking, it wasn't a favorite of mine, since after a while the taste got repetitive.  It is essentially a one-dish meal, which can get boring. (i.e. lacking variety)

 

Osulloc is an upmarket macha cafe, specialising in everything green tea.  Whether you like this cafe would crucially depend on whether you like green tea.  I do quite like macha flavoured foods, so I found the green tea latte and cake to be nice.  Not exactly the cheapest. 

 

The day after, I was thinking of having more Green Tea latte, but didn't want to pay the Osulloc prices, then I realised this take-away cafe just outside the Metro Hotel, Myeongdong, had Green Tea latte for 2,500krw.  Decided to give it a try, and the taste wasn't bad.  Since it was so much cheaper, I enjoyed it very much lol.

 

We had McDonald's in Seoul, and tried the 1955 Burger.  It was good.  The 1955 burger has some history behind it - a recreation of McDonald's original burger from 1955.

We chanced upon a Shake Shack while walking around the streets of Seoul, so we decided to break for lunch.  Shake Shack has such long queues in Singapore (Jewel). Burger and fries were good.  I would eat it again. 

Seoul is really the land of coffee joints. Starbucks was everywhere.  Sometimes, you could even see 2 or 3 Starbucks along the same street.  So we had to at least have some coffee from one. LOL.

 

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The good thing with staying near Myeongdong, is that you can go to Myeongdong every day.  The food carts come out every night, regardless of weekday or weekend.  And the atmosphere is quite interesting. 

Just outside Myeongdong station was reportedly the largest Uniqlo shop in Korea.  There was some ongoing sale, and we bought quite a bit of stuff from there, and also took advantage of the immediate tax refund system (bring your passport with you).  The street buskers were cool too.

 

I also randomly walked along Myeongdong to enjoy the atmosphere, and take some videos of the street food.  Check out the flaming lobster and flaming eel.  I didn't try any but I noticed that their business was pretty good.

 

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7 hours ago, Boringchap said:

Yoogane Chicken Galbi - another relatively famous chain store we tried.  Read on the internet and blogs that this place was not bad, so we decided to give it a try.  They would cook the food for you, and after that you can eat.  But frankly speaking, it wasn't a favorite of mine, since after a while the taste got repetitive.  It is essentially a one-dish meal, which can get boring. (i.e. lacking variety)

 

Just now check google map about Yoogane as been to the branch in Tampines. The staff will also cook for diners. But quality not so good imho. There are 5 outlets in Singapore if you want to try to see the difference.

 

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On 1/4/2020 at 5:52 PM, Heartlander said:

Just now check google map about Yoogane as been to the branch in Tampines. The staff will also cook for diners. But quality not so good imho. There are 5 outlets in Singapore if you want to try to see the difference.

 

Yes, my wife told me that it had come to Singapore.  Well, after trying it in Seoul, I don't think I'll try it again in Singapore.  There is so much good food in Singapore anyway. 

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(edited)

We took a day trip to Suwon, a city about 30km south of Seoul, to see their City Walls (also called HwaSeong).  THis was a UNESCO world heritage site and very well reviewed on the internet.  See this wikipedia entry for more information - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwaseong_Fortress Getting there was quite easy.  We took the metro, and it took about an hour to get to Suwon station, from Seoul central.  From the station, we found Exit 4 which led us to the tourism office, and I got directions on how to take a bus to HwaSeong. In short, we took a bus (11 or 13) to the Paladun Gate. See the video below to find out more.

 

Before we started the climb up the CIty Walls (which would take a couple of hours), we had some food at the Lotteria fast food.  Here is a video.

 FInally, we set off for the climb.  It was a beautiful day to walk the City Walls.  From the Paladun gate, we climbed up to the highest point.  This part of the walk was the hardest as it was uphill for about 20 minutes.  But the steps were well-cut, and just take your time to climb up.  I wasn't very fit so I stopped many times, to take photos and videos too.  Once you got to the top, we walked one around, and it took us almost 2 hours.  The total distance of the wall was almost 6km.

After completing the walk, we arrived again at the Paladun gate, and this time we took a taxi back to Suwon station.  To get back to Seoul, we decided to try Ko-Rail instead of the metro.  I bought the tickets from a manned counter.  The train ride back took 30 minutes (i.e. half the time of the metro ride) and cost 2,700krw.  Here is the video.

 

Overall, it was a very fun outing to Suwon, and easy to do.  Recommended. 

 

Edited by Boringchap
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