We departured from Surabaya, Indonesia at 8.30 am with Cathay Pacific and the flight took 5 hours to reach Hongkong for transit and then we took another 4 hours to reach Incheon. Literally, we arrived in Incheon around 9 pm and the immigration queue was incredibly full of people. So we managed to finish immigration things around 10 pm then we just hurry to go to KT Roaming Center near the arrival gate to pick up the local SIM Card for our 10 days stay in Korea. We got the best deal for the unlimited data SIM Card by KT Olleh at Klook for around $32 which valid for 10 days and we can actually tether with another device so my sister and I can share the wifi – the signal is always stable most of the times even in the subway !

After picking up the SIM Card, we just headed to AREX station ( express train ) which located at B1 to go to downtown of Seoul ( Seoul Station ) for only 43 minutes. Fyi, Incheon is actually quite far from Seoul, so we have to take either taxi, bus, or train to reach Seoul – and I think train is the best choice. To get the AREX ticket, we bought it from Klook as well so we just need to exchange the voucher to AREX card at the AREX information booth and then directly go to the station and wait for our train to come. Fyi, for AREX card you will be charged 500KRW but you can refund it at the refund machine at the station after reaching the destination.

We reached Seoul Station around 12 am. We thought that the subway to our hotel location is closed already so we decided to just take taxi anyway. We can easily find the taxi terminal in front of Seoul Station. From this part, I got seriously roller coaster feeling. Literally, the weather outside was around 4 degree, I wore thin denim jacket, and our taxi driver couldn’t speak English at all – that forced me to use my ‘super lack’ Korean skill to talk to him and showed him our hotel location through my phone. From the map, we should be arrived at the destination for around 10 minutes only – but since the driver couldn’t find the hotel so we had to go round and round for almost 30 minutes just to find our hotel ( and you know how expensive is the taxi’s cost in Korea ).

Reached at the hotel, we were warmly welcomed by the receptionist. We thought everything was alright before he smiled and said that actually there was major technical problem in the hotel so actually we had to move to another hotel because they currently couldn’t serve any guest and he said they will refund all the payment that we have purchased. Fyi, we’ve booked and paid for 10 days stay at this hotel and suddenly we had to move to another hotel – you must understand how I felt that time. But well, we couldn’t do much thing, anger couldn’t solve the problem anyway, so what we could do was just stay calm and keep searching at Agoda if there’s any hotel that we can book at the very last minute J. Thank God the hotel receptionist let us to stay for a night since it was too late outside and we got a miracle at that time. At the very last minute, we found a good hotel which located near Seoul Station and they’re available for our 9 days stay - with best deal of course ! ( you can also check vacation rentals in Seoul here )

DAY 2 : YEOUIDO – HONGDAE

We woke up in the morning with drained body because of previous night’s incident. However, we kept reminding ourselves that we had to survive since we still have 9 days to go, lol ! Long story short, we headed to nearest convenience store near the hotel, which is GS25 - to buy T-Money Card ( T-Money is a payment card that can be used for subway, bus, or any purchase at convenience store in Korea ). After that, we went back to Seoul Station by subway to check-in at the hotel and later after having lunch at local Korean restaurant around Seoul Station, we went to Yeouido to watch the cherry blossom.

How to get to Yeouido by subway : Go to Yeouido ( Line 5 – Purple Line ) then take Exit 3, walk towards National Assembly Building.

We took so many pictures there for around 2 hours before it started to rain and we decided to just go back to the subway station and met our Korean friend there. Since I still didn’t know a lot about Seoul, my friend and his sister took us to Hongdae to try Korean’s signature food, tteokpokki.

How to get to Hongdae by subway : Go to Hongik University Station ( Line 2 – Green Line ) then take Exit 9, turn left and you’ll find many stores from cosmetic stores to cafes.

My first series of #SpringinSeoul : Day 1 and 2 finished here, see you on my next #SpringinSeoul : Day 3 and 4 for more interesting journey !