Jocelyn & Lennart's Free & Easy Trip to Seoul, Korea 01/11/13 - 06/11/13 : Day 4, Highlight of the Tour! Whole day Trip to Everland! How to go to Everland and leave thereafter

Day 4 of our Seoul Tour, we're going to Everland! Weather is fine, no rain!

We woke up around 7.30am to get ready and had our breakfast at the nearby Paris Baguette Cafe near our hotel. Set off before 9am because we will be taking their public transport today and Everland is at the outskirts of Seoul so it may take abit of travelling time to get there. Below are the directions for those intending to take their public bus transport system to Everland Theme Park.

1)   Take Subway to Gangnam Station Line 2

2)   Walk to Exit 10, go up the stairs and walk straight till you see Giordano Shop, the bus station is just right after Giordano.

3)   Take the Express Bus there, Bus No. 5002, One Way Fare of 2,100 won, can be paid using T-money

Takes about 1 and a half hour to get to Everland from the Seoul City Area.

4)   Bus will bring you to the Everland Shuttle bus Terminal, announcement will be made in different languages, English, Mandarin, Japanese and Korean.

5)    Get off the bus and transfer to the free Everland Shuttle Buses which will take you another 5-10mins to get to the gates of Everland.

*Intervals of the shuttle buses are quite frequent of 10-15mins.

6)   Walk to the tickets booths at the gates, queue up, show the brochure discount coupon for foreigners, prepare your passports as proof, 2 tickets set us back at about 48000 won, could not remember the exact amount =X.

*Coupon is valid up to 4 Pax, if you have more pax going you can pick up the brochures at your hotels lobby or get it from the Tourist Help Centres. However on coupon it states that the discount applies also with a valid foreign passport.

7) Off you go in, they have guide maps stands at the front of the gates  for different languages

Advisable to start leaving around 6pm, the travel back from the outskirts to the city area can take you up to 2hours

Leaving Everland(Approximately 1Hour 55mins to get back to Myeongdong, I find this fastest although you have to switch lines a couple of times)

1)   Take the Shuttle bus, the same bus stop that you drop off when you arrived to get back to the Bus Terminal.

2)   You can either take the bus 5002 back to Gangnam or you cross an overhead bridge to take the LRT to Giheung Station. Get off the station and walk to Giheung Subway Station, there are signages to guide you just follow the arrows.

3)   Take the subway from Giheung(Bundang Line) to Wangsimni Station where you can transfer to Line 2 to Dongdaemun History Culture Park Station and Transfer to Line 4 to go back to either Dongdaemun or Myeongdong.

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 : Day 1, Part 2 continuation...

Before I continue on our Day 2 in Seoul, Korea.

Recap back on Day 1, we checked into Sejong Hotel at Myeongdong.

Went for dinner at Oppadak Restaurant, had Baked Crispy Chicken.

Actually before we went for dinner, under the recommendation by Jocelyn's friend and ex-colleague, we went to an Optical Shop to make a new pair of glasses each. The shop was located in Myeongdong, the best thing was it's along the same stretch where Oppadak is located, it's just a few shops away.

Jocelyn's friend is a really nice lady, she gave us a map which she got and used in her last trip to Korea, in the map she indicated a few places of interest which we may want to go take a look, the restaurants which serve tasty food as well as the Optical shop. We used that map to navigate ourselves for the first few days in Myeongdong.

Armed with the map from Jocelyn's friend we found Look Optical(name of the shop) without much problems.

It is advisable to bring along an existing pair of glasses which you already own and get them to scan and replicate the similar degree of lenses for you.
The optician does not speak English nor Mandarin, however there's a salesgirl who can speak Mandarin and basic English, she would be able to translate back and forth the information from the Optician.

After scanning your existing lenses, they will show you a menu of different types of lenses suitable for your current degree. Ranging from the lower range of 40,000won to the higher ranges of 80,000won and above.

Depending on your existing degree, the optician will recommend the type of lense for you as the higher degrees one as explained by the salesgirl tend to be thicker, the better and higher range of lenses can be sanded thinner so that your glasses won't look so thick and heavy but of course the choice is all up to you.
They will not hardsell to you to choose the higher ended ones, that's the best part they are not pushy at all.

In the end I chose the 80,000won lense and Jocelyn chose the 40,000won lense, she has lower degree of myopia thus the lower range of lenses is sufficient as it would not be thick for her degree. I chose the 80,000won lense, firstly because my degree of myopia is higher, secondly it also has added properties like UV protection, anti-glare properties and it's thin.

After choosing the lense you can walk around the shop, look, see and free to try all the frames. The spectacles frames range from 20,000won to the more expensive 100,000won and above.

After walking around testing and trying different frames, we finally got the frames we liked, paid up, got a receipt and was told that the spectacles would be ready 30mins later for collection, we can return to collect it before 9.30pm local time. We got back our existing spectacles after the optician took down the power of our degrees.

My pair costs roughly about SGD$130.00+ and hers about SGD$80.00+

What better timing! We walked over to Oppadak to have our dinner and returned to collect it after dinner!

After collection, we walked around and did some window shopping for abit before heading back to our Hotel, before going up to the room we went to the Concierge and asked for directions to go to Everland. They handed us a brochure and roughly explained the various ways to get there and within the brochure there's a discount coupon for foreigners.
I will elaborate in details later on how to get there.

Being dead beat tired from the 6hour long flight, we headed up to our room
and turned in early, unaware of the twist of event tomorrow morning.......

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