We reached Seoul at around 7am and realized that we had no idea of what to do next upon arrival. This was unbecoming of me but if you knew how busy I was those few days before the trip, you'll understand.
So back to our arrival. Neither of us did our research on how to get to the apartment and the airport wifi stopped working beyond the immigration checkpoint. Damn! Thinking that we needed google maps the most, we decided to get our sim cards for internet access.
Evergreen Sim Card: 35,000 won for 1GB, 55,000 for 2GB - nano sim cards
We also bought T-money card because we knew we were going to need it.
3,000 for the card, 5,000 for recharge.
Top-up here is called recharge yah. And each trip on the bus/train costs 1,000-1,300 (!!!)
We asked the lady at the information counter on how to get to jegi-dong and she told us to take bus 6002 at gate 5.
Getting to our hostel was such a nightmare. We were fatigued and sleepy from the movie marathon throughout the overnight flight. We crashed in the Bus and next thing I knew, we were already in Jegi-dong. I wish I didn’t have to wake up to the living nightmare that was, getting to our accommodation.
Jegi-dong welcomed us unexpectedly unpleasantly. With its prime location just a bus ride away from Hanyang University and minutes away from the famous Dongdaemun market, we were expecting a bustling neighbourhood. Boy were we wrong.
Upon alighting from the bus, were overwhelmed by our surroundings. We were in the middle of a market. That was pretty hard to take in. The air was thick with the smell of fish and an eclectic selection of herbs and weird-looking things all over, and never have I seen so many old women flocked in a place like I did in jegi-dong. I was like fml are we in north korea or something??? Totally did NOT look like the Korea that I had in mind.
As if those minutes of realisation wasn’t bad enough, our Korean sim card couldn’t work when we needed it most! If you've never been to Korea, take note: it takes a few hours for the manual sim card activation to take place.
Luckily, I spotted a familiar sighting, "angel-in-us" café, which I've seen in Lotte World Mall Jakarta, was just around the corner. Thank goodness we had our apartment's address in Korean and so the kind baristas there directed us to the place. It was apparently easy, if not for our Korean illiteracy.
Entering the room was another shocker - the floor was dusty and the bed was bare, lacking sheets and pillow, let alone a blanket. But I was too tired to attend to my woes and immediately crashed.
After what seemed like 8h sleep, I woke up 2h later and decided to make the day productive. We went to Hanyang so we know how to get there and not get lost the next day for the opening ceremony.
Awed by the numerous numbers of convenience store in campus. Went to cu and had fried chicken and ice cream. YEY
It was a good day after all :')
No comments