Korea trip diaries: Arriving and first day

Long time no see! I am so sorry for not updating while I was in korea but my crappy tablet crashed all the time and it was difficult to write with it so I decided to write everything afterwards. And thus, named my blog post series as Korea trip diaries :P

I'm posting only now, two days after my trip because first I was so so tired on monday when I arrived back to Finland and yesterday I was having travel sickness symptoms afterwards :/

Travelling to Korea

My luggage was quite heavy when I was departuring from Finland but I had like maaany souvenirs with me. Everything went fine in Helsinki airport and flight was on time. 

Now, I really really dislike long flights mainly because of my travel sickness. I got new medicines so I was half afraid what would happen. But I had to get them since the old ones didn't work for me anymore. I felt fine up until two last hours (where we experienced 20 minutes of turbulence somewhere around china's airspace). And afterwards discovered that one of the medicines actually caused me to feel worse.

When we landed and I got out of the plane and headed towards immigration I was like nope, this is not true. Queue for immigration was looooooooooooooong like seriously! Whenever I have arrived Korea, I've gotten through immigration within 15 minutes. Now I had to wait an hour because there was people from three other flights lining up in there.

Eventually I got through and got my luggage quickly and then I headed straight to airport railroad. This is kind of task if you're a first timer in Korea but basically you first have to notice that you're in wrong floor so look for escalator or elevator to go down. Then just follow the signs. I first had to load my T-money, which is kind of equivalent to finnish "matkakortti." Machine to load my card was located just next to subway gates so no problem in there. (you can also load t-money in most of convenience stores which you can find from airport too). To those of you who are arriving Korea and Seoul for the first time, if you're spending one week only then 35000won is enough for t-money. To those of you who are staying two weeks I advice you to load at least 45000won. That way you don't have to keep looking your card sum everytime you pass through subway gates or bus doors and you don't have to worry loading t-money for awhile. Just a note; I use subway alot so those sums are based on my experience.

I had a very big luggage with me so it was quite an achievement to arrive my destination which was Hyehwa (혜화) in subway line 4 (light blue line). First coming from airport I had to change one time in Seoul station but it was pretty easy because it's a big station with lots of escalators.

I didn't know that exit 1 had escalators so I headed to exit 2 which was the exit I was going to use when heading to my hostel... but like korea's style is, it had veeeery long stairs. So I was struggling with my luggage when suddenly one korean girl just grabs my luggage and helps me carry it to the top. Again, I'm amazed how koreans are so helpful and friendly!

I don't know why some people had complained in hostel reviews that it's hard to find because I found it pretty easily. It was like 7-minute walk away from subway station, Hyehwa look really interesting place with many shops and restaurants. Definetly liked the area! Just to say; even though this was my fourth time in Korea, I have never been in Hyehwa.

To be honest I wasn't that happy with my hostel (Bong House hostel). Anniina recommended it to me so that's why I decided to stay in there but I have been in better hostels with same amount of money. Well, at least location was great and hostel staff nice. I reserved single room which was the size of a shoebox but I didn't spend alot of time in my hostel so it was fine for me. The only thing that really disturbed me was that two out of their three bathrooms didn't have any locks! They told everyone staying in hostel that if door is closed you cannot enter but still one time when I was doing my skincare routine and evening stuff before going to bed an accident happened; I was just changing my clothes when one chinese old lady just rushes to bathroom, didn't care I was in there... just stared at me couple seconds and proceeded to toilet stall... it was soooo awkward and I was definetly not happy with that accident.... for the rest of my stay I happily changed my clothes in my smaller than small room.

First day

So after checking in to my hostel I waited like two hours before my boyfriend sended a message he finally arrived to Seoul and he was waiting me near my hostel. So I met him after being apart a year. Obviously I was happy to see him :P we went to Sinsa to one restaurant my bf had searched that was apparently famous for it's tonkasu (it's basically a pork cutlet dish). But just before arriving travel sickness hit me. I don't know why it hits me afterwards these days >_< but I was sooooo sorry to my bf who bought me a dinner and I couldn't even eat but just a little. I was apologizing to him even in the evening. I seriously felt so bad for him that he travelled to Seoul to meet me and I wasn't feeling very good.

After Sinsa, we headed to Changdeokgung palace which is one of the oldest in Korea. I haven't ever visited there so it was new experience for me~ I just loved the scenery and what is more perfect than seeing it with bf while walking through beautiful alleyways.

After walking there awhile we decided to go to Bukchon hanok village which was in walking distance from Changdeokgung.

We were first kind of lost but found our way eventually. From exiting Changdeokgung, turn right and from first intersection turn right again and start heading up towards the hill. You will find Bukchon there.

This was my first time in Bukchon also (yeah, everybody usually visits there when they come to Korea first time lol) and I enjoyed it. Even though I didn't enjoy climbing up lol. We browsed through alleys and one point stopped to buy smoothies (banana smoothie is yummy). But there even though I was clearly with my bf and he even ordered two smoothies the sales person was like "hello what can I get you" to me... *sigh* But we just enjoyed the day like that, walking through streets and enjoying each other's company. But I advise not to go to Bukchon on weekend, because there was seriously too many people! It was even hard to take photos because people kept passing by in front of camera. At least we got some photos together with my bf :P

You can access to Changdeokgung and Bukchon from subway line 3, Anguk station.

After Bukchon my bf asked if I want to go back to hostel or continue to visit Hangang park. I said I want to continue the day even though my legs were already hurting so bad and I wasn't feeling good. But it was first time I was seeing my bf for a really long time so of course I want to spend more time with him~ in the end I didn't even feel my legs hurt that much :P

So we visited Hangang river park next. Just walked around there and enjoyed the evening. We stayed until they started light show in the bridge and then left. I said my bf goodbye in Chungmuro station and continued to Hyehwa alone. Sorry I don't remember which station we got off to go to Hangang :,D But basically you can access there from like four stations~

I got back to my hostel like 9pm? Can't be sure because I was so out of it lol. Anniina visited my hostel that evening to get her rye bread :P which she asked me to bring to her lol. We had to go to sleep pretty soon because on Sunday we went to Block B concert which I will tell you in my next post~

That's it for this post. I was hesitating if I should include my concert experience in this post but in the end decided that then this post would be overly long so until next time~ (going to post in few days again).