Jocelyn & Lennart's Free & Easy Trip to Seoul, Korea 01/11/13 - 06/11/13 : Day 2, an unexpected twist part 2......

First I got to apologise for not continuing with the posts, too much been happening lately, first Jocelyn got sick, fever for a week. Checked for dengue, luckily it turned out negative.

 Then Jocelyn's Aunt passed away(my condolences to her Uncle and Cousins) we attended the wake and helped out whichever way we could.

Finally got the energy and time to continue with the blogging this weekend. To recap, our planned trip to Everland got postponed due to the wet weather, we made some adjustments to our itinerary, that's the advantage of travelling free and easy, you're able to 'mix and match' and play by the ear or in our case bad weather.
Personally I prefer free and easy rather than planned tour packages. F&E(Free and Easy for short) gives us the flexibility of time and we can choose where we want to go, when to rest, when to eat, what to eat, what to play, what to do and see etc. Till date we have gone to Korea, Taiwan(Taipei)on free and easy, booked our own Air Tickets & Hotels, planned our own travelling route, our own itinerary. We intend to travel to Japan and Europe for free and easy in the future, so stay tune for it! =)
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Anyway, in my last post after we bought the umbrella from 7-11, we walked to the Metro and took the train to Dongdaemun to do some shopping/window shopping at their indoor shopping malls since it's such a wet day. We walked to Myeondong Station Entrance 8, took out our T-Money, such convenience!

Walked to the train platform and took Line 4 bound for Dongdaemun. don't worry Myeongdong is not an interchange station, there is only 1 Line.

Their train carriages are pretty spacious, the common folks there are rather quiet on-board trains, no loud laughter or loud shouting. They are kinda courteous people, even when talking to each other they speak to each other softly in the trains.

Myeongdong to Dongdaemun is only 3 stops away, Myeongdong ---> Chungmuro ---> Dongdaemun History & Culture Park ---> Dongdaemun

We exited Dongdaemun and walked around the streets with our umbrella deciding which shopping mall to go to. Basically the shops there mostly sell the same things, clothings for guys and girls, shoes, socks, ladies accessories. Lots of ladies clothings, accessories and shoes, you can bargain with them at the shopping malls unlike Singapore, the prices are not fixed. Jocelyn got herself some new ear rings and hairband, she bargained them to a really low price.

Personally I feel that Sinchon Woman's Street items sells cheaper and the goods on sale there are more or less the same as Dongdaemun. I will talk more about Sinchon Woman's Street in our next post.

You can get really hungry easily in cold weather, it's already lunch and we decided to settle lunch by having a quick bite at their roadside carts. Makes you feel like their locals eating by the street stalls.

Getting bored, we decided to go explore Chungmuro as we chance upon some pet shops while on the Airport Limousine Bus to Sejong Hotel on our first day. We decided to check it out!

Took Line 4 from Dongdaemun Train Station and alighted at Chungmuro Train Station, got out from exit 8, walked along the main road till we got to the stretch of Shops selling pets stuffs, pet dogs, pet cats, etc etc.

 "How much is that doggie at the window? Woof! Woof!" haha very cute right these puppies, makes you want to buy them straight away and bring them back to a warm loving home.

We walked into a pet shop and decided to check out their beds for dogs, leashes and doggie clothes. Got Baileys a new bed from, a new T-shirt and leash! The thing about shopping in Korea is that they give you freebies, the shop owner gave Baileys a new squeaky bone toy haha.

 The rain is on and off, sometimes heavy sometimes very light, my loafers got all drenched from walking in the rain, decided to get a new pair of sneakers if we happen to see one. Something waterproof to shield my feet from the cold rain. If you realised while travelling in Seoul Train Stations, they have shops inside, some are after the gantries, some are before the gantries. Sometimes these shops have some clearance, special sale ongoing and they will shout to get your attention! haha, they got mine real good, 20,000Won for a pair of sneakers! Wow! so cheap! best of all, its all cushy inside, no hard corners or edges and keeps my poor cold and wet feet warm! Tried on size 9 which is their biggest and it fits! Haha!
A side note, for sales like this sometimes they don't have bigger sizes, tried finding for size 10 but they don't have.

Decided to head back to hotel now to offload our buys and rest for awhile before going to Nanta theatre for the show at 5.00pm.

Their operations hours are as below for Myeongdong Nanta theatre;
Monday-Friday, Holidays : 5PM, 8PM
Saturday-Sunday : 2PM, 5PM, 8PM
We got Sejong's Hotel Concierge to call and book the tickets for us in the morning before we headed out to Dongdaemun, 2 type of seats available, 50,000won for the upper level seats and 40,000won for the lower level seats, got them to bookt the upper level seats and paid the Concierge staffs on the spot with cash. They gave us a booking number which they wrote down for us. Only need to use the number to redeem our tickets later at the theatre.

Evening in Myeongdong Nanta Theatre and dinner to be continued in the next post..........

Jocelyn & Lennart's Free & Easy Trip to Seoul, Korea 01/11/13 - 06/11/13 : Day 2, an unexpected twist part 1......

Rise and shine! Good morning Korea! We set our alarms to wake up and prepare ourselves for the day ahead at Everland.

She put on her makeup and I browse through again of the brochure to make sure how we are going to get there. Felt abit stuffy decided to pull away the curtains and lift the window for some fresh air and took a nice picture of the Seoul City View.

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Such a nice view and we're feeling fresh! But I got a bit suspicious of the weather because it looked too foggy for my comfort, it's like there is a lot of moisture in the air or something.

We went down and true to my suspicions, it was raining! The rain is not very heavy unlike those we have in Singapore. 

Droplets were coming down steadily, our hearts sank and felt disappointed.

For your information, Everland is an outdoor theme park situated at the outskirts of Seoul thus to go there on a rainy weather could mean that some rides are closed due to the rain and also the temperature would drop drastically.
Luckily for us, we are here on free and easy, thus we decided to postpone our Everland adventure to the next day, at the same time monitoring how's the weather will be like for tomorrow.

We pushed forward our itinerary, we decided to go shopping at Dongdaemun this afternoon since the shops there are all located indoors in the malls, our lunch would be settled by the simple roadside stalls selling snacks. After which, Nanta Show in the evening at 5pm back in Myeongdong. That's roughly what we decided and we play by ear depending on the time left for the day.

The rain sure dampened our high spirits for a bit early in the morning. We walked in the drizzling cold rain to Paris Baguette Cafe just a few shops away from our hotel, next to Skypark III Hotel, for breakfast.

 Jocelyn had juice and me had my daily dose of coffee.
Their cups are cute, looks like a boy wearing a blue cap. =)

 I got myself a sausage bun, looks yummy with the sauces.

Jocelyn had chicken sandwich.
















The nice warm cosy place in the cafe and breakfast warmed our hearts for a bit bringing some comfort from the cold dampening rain outside. We walked to the 7-11 which is just right at the back behind the Paris Baguette Cafe and bought an umbrella to shield for the walk back to hotel as well as providing us with shelter for the rest of the day ahead...

Jocelyn & Lennart's Free & Easy Trip to Seoul, Korea 01/11/13 - 06/11/13 continued : Where to buy and how to top-up Korea's T-Money Card similar to Singapore's Ezlink Card

Ok now I will explain on where to buy the T-money Cards.

It is advisable that you purchase your cards 1 day before you plan to travel using Korea's public transport, buses, subway in their major metropolitan cities, like Seoul, Busan etc.

For us, we bought our cards on our first day, after taking our dinner nearby our Hotel, we went to a nearby GS25 mart, one of their convenient stores chain.

The T-money cards can be bought at most of their Convenient Stores, GS25, 7-11,Mini Stop, Buy The Way bearing the T-money Logo and their Ticket and Card Reloading Devices inside the subway stations.

The cards come at 2,500won each. The cards have no stored value in them and they have no expiry dates meaning you can still use them the next time you go back to Korea.

They can be topped up at their sales locations unless otherwise stated at certain locations where they don't have topping up machines.

Well we decided to be adventurous and try out their reload machines in their subways.

The words are all in Korean what do we do?! Haha

The machines instructions are in Korean, which I do not understand, however I roughly know the process by observing the person in front of me doing a reload.

It is quite similar to the machines at our MRT control stations which we use to top up our Ezlink Cards.

First you place the T-money card which you want to reload onto the card reader at the machine wait for it to read your card.

Another screen will prompt you to indicate the amount which you want to top up. 5,000won, 10,000won etc

Select the amount, and insert the notes required.

Now wait for the machine to prompt again indicating the new value in your card. We topped up 10,000won on our first day, it lasted us for 2 days with balance of about 5,000+won in our card, we travelled to Hongdae, Sinchon, up and down between Myeongdong, Dongdaemun, Chungmuro a couple of times.

Total we topped up 15,000won each card which lasted us 5 days and still have a balance of 2,900+won, that is inclusive of travelling to Everland and back to Myeongdong.

You can choose to refund the amount in the card at a fee of 500won which will be deducted from your balance in your card at their substations control centre.

There's a person from their subway control which will assist you in getting the refund. Or you can choose to keep the value in your card and use them again when you go back to Korea in the future as the cards have no expiry dates.

We hoped this information will be useful to those planning on going to Korea on free and easy trips and wished to take their subways and buses as a mean of moving around.

More information can be found at their official tourism website