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