SEOUL, KOREA 2016 WINTER Day One- Airport mishaps, Guesthouse check-in, Myeong Dong and Jamsil Lotte Mart

Myeong dong at night!

Exchange a bit of money at the airport
You'll definitely get higher exchange rates in the airport than in your home country.
I would recommend exchanging enough for the bus journey and food for the day, so about ￦100,000? (about £68), then you can head to the best money exchange place in Seoul later.

Get your SIM card/wifi egg at the airport

Korean SIMs are not that cheap, despite being the country who rolled out 4G connection with huge enthusiasm. A 30 day SIM card from Olleh cost about ￦71,500 and the wifi router rental is ￦5,500 per day. If you're travelling with someone I really recommend the router rental unless you're planning on going separate directions.

I actually had a slip-up with the SIM card because it didn't work on my mum's iphone 4 and by the time we realised, we were already on the airport limousine out of there. So make sure the SIM card works before leaving the airport! We had to go to myeong-dong KT building to ask for a refund, which we'll get at the airport when we fly back and it was just a huge hassle.

Also you probably won't get a better deal with the SIM card from someone who can speak English outside of the airport, so I highly recommend just getting it from the Olleh counter on the first floor.

How to get out of the airport- aka how to get to Yeoksam

Google maps was fairly useless when it came to this and we were too lazy to go to the informations counter, so we walked out of the airport with no plan and only the address of the guesthouse in our warmest winter coats. Seoul in winter is NO JOKE, I thought London was cold but this was hypothermia levels.

I don't think you need to leave from Exit 11, there were a lot of ticket boots with staff along the bus area. Do have your location on hand and ready to show the ticket staff, they'll sort you out with a ticket pretty quickly and tell you which bus stand to go to. The ticket was about ￦15,000 each which is seriously cheap compared to a taxi, which would have set us back about £60+. The bus drivers were also super nice and helped us with our luggage.

Yeoksam was the next to last stop and it took us about an hour to get there. I think it took us longer to figure out how to get out of the airport?! Also Citymapper is the best English travel app for Korea hands-down.

Guest house check-in

Just FYI, the best free wifi spots is probably Free T-Wifi Zone: connect to it then go on your browser to https://tfreewifi.com and login with Facebook. I had to go on the website every time I connected but it was super reliable. I got off the bus and headed to Starbucks with my mum because after the bus journey, I wanted to throw up. It's not that the bus ride was terrible or anything, my body is just weak to motion sickness. Starbucks in Seoul has this delicious special brown rice soup with crackers that is so calming and delicious and I can't stop myself eating it.

ignore my embarrassing snapchat captions

I stole some wifi and figured out how to walk to the guesthouse from Starbucks thanks to Citymapper and it was only about 6 minutes. It was a 6 minutes pushing two huge suitcases uphill though, so it was a good workout. This is probably the reason why everyone in Korea is so fit- everything is either uphill or up 3 flights of stairs.

The guesthouse check-in was pretty basic. I should have taken a photo of my room before we started unpacking everything but it's too late now. I'll add a photo after I move out. **Future Trina please insert photo here** The facilities are clean and less than a minute from the clinic (more on that later) so I was pretty happy. We dropped our stuff off and headed out towards Myeong-Dong.

Myeong-Dong: Skincare and makeup heaven
Winter nights come really quickly in Seoul. By the time we headed out, it was already dark and we were super hungry. From Yeoksam it was about 40+ minutes by subway to Myeong-Dong so by the time we arrived, we were ready to eat a small child. Thanks to the existence of 全州中央會館, we didn't become cannibals. Actually we just stumbled across the restaurant and went in but later we realised that we ate here when I was 16 and it was a famous spot for bibimbap. I feel like this experience set the tone for the rest of our travels.

Of course we devoured the starters first

Samgyetang- This is an entire chicken and yes I ate it all

I also ate all of this. Sometimes I wonder if my mum is happy to have a daughter who eats like 2 sons

Actually this guy was right next to the alley where the restaurant is, so if you can't find it you can look out for him

We didn't go to the best money exchange in Myeong Dong today, but we went to the 2nd floor of some random skincare shop with pretty decent rates. I'll post more about it when we actually go ^^

This squid stall was so popular

Street food in Myeong-Dong is cheap and delicious which is pretty much all I want from my food. My mum was in heaven.


Guys I seriously appreciate the way Koreans feel the need to add cheese to everything. I understand, I love cheese as well in spite of being very lactose-intolerant. Research has shown that cheese is as addictive as hard drugs so I hope my gut can be more understanding of why I can't give it up.

I mean ffs look at this beauty

BEAUTIFUL

For the guys who don't wear makeup and don't want to start a 10-step skincare regimen, I guess you can just eat all of the food while your girlfriend buys 2000 face masks that will expire before she uses them.

Since food was the theme of our first day, we decided to head to Lotte Mart for delicious snacks.

Sneakpeek at the underground mall in Jamsil station- super cute fashion for reasonable prices

Lotte Mart- Jamsil station

It's huge but in a good way

Probably the most ridiculous hypermarket I've been to, including Costco and Walmart. It was actually kind of hard to find from the station, but basically if you see a huge escalator, take it all the way up and Lotte Mart is on your right past the restaurants. Approximately 20,000 people in the supermarket figured out how to get there so I have faith that people can find it in the end.

The first few steps in and it was like I was back in Myeong Dong- so many skincare and makeup stands. There were actually a few makeup brands I didn't see in M-D so it was cool to check it out.

Lotte Mart is probably better than Lotte World- plentiful samples, cheap and delicious snacks and thousands of attractions (all of them are food). I also struck gold:

HONEY BUTTER

HONEY BUTTER

The red sign says that it's a hot buy #1 and DAMN STRAIGHT, anything that's flavoured with honey butter is delicious and needs to get in my belly. I limited myself to 1 pack because I am a honey butter fiend. Thank you Mystic Messenger for introducing me to honey buddha chips.

Are you guys okay?

While I was eating my way through the store, I heard a lot of Singaporean/Malaysian accents which made me feel like I was home again. I turned around and BAM, the trolley is full of food and the kids are carrying more snacks. Like I understand Korean snacks are cheap and delicious but Singapore isn't suffering from a severe snack shortage so is there a need to stock up like we're going to live in a bunker for 10 years?!

I mean look at this:

There are actual packing stations with cardboard boxes and tape so you can box up all your shin cup ramens.

And so many people are using them omg

I'm not judging, I'm just confused. What do people do with so many snacks? Please tell me your secret.

A family who snacks together stays together

6 SINGAPOREAN STUDENTS WHO HAVE ENOUGH SNACKS UNTIL RETIREMENT

Truthfully, I'm just super jealous that I can't bring a box of honey butter chips back to London. Time to move back to Asia~

Day 2 coming soon ^^