Day 1 out of 48 days [23rd June 2011]

Day 1, 23rd June 2011

Reached Incheon airport about 5pm after a 6 to 7 hours ride. It’s kind of funny because I expected some airport ambassadors to greet me in a certain way. Haha, like the one in taiwan, there was feilunhai standee.. But I can’t seem to find any to greet me =(

Well, after clearing customs, we went to the counter to collect the phone we reserved.

*NEW UPDATE*
If you are using smartphone (iphone/galaxy S or equivalent) you can actually purchase a prepaid sim card from some company.  I am not sure about where exactly, but you have to go to the really BIG stores of Olleh or T-world. There’s one in Gangnam. (Preferably bring a Korean friend with you if not there might be some kind of language barrier). I am not sure about the charges though. Got to check it out.

After that we had to take a lift down to the airport railway express train.

it was only 3,700W  (Price has been revised to 4,000W + in 2013)  for a train ride to hongik university! It was about an hour long and we had seats on the train where i started watching my secret garden on tab..

The walk from the airport railway express station at hongik to our hostel was rather long. i think it was at least a 10 mins walk with the difficult of us pushing our luggage.
The directions that were given to us is
(1) Using exit #2 if u have heavy luggage, it is an escalator.
(2) Use exit #1, there is a lift directly to the building.
Doesn’t it sound retarded? why can’t you use the lift if you have heavy luggage? anyway, the conclusion was there was this small flight of stairs probably about 15 steps before you reach the floor for the lift.. anyway, we did choice (2) and took the lift up.

We stayed in Soul Guesthouse, http://minbak.enterhost.co.kr  http://soulguesthouse.blogspot.com

as indicated in my pre-planning .  20,000W per person per night.
It is a 8-bed women-only dorm. It is actually just a room with high ceiling. 3 double-decked beds on the bottom and 2 beds on top. (you can’t stand up when you’re on top as you will hit your head)

Well, there were 4 other singaporeans in that dorm. They had already been in korea for about 3 or 4 weeks. After we settle down, on the top deck, we went out for dinner. Well, it was drizzling.

We settled down on this random shop for dinner. It was BBQ style and we were given aprons to wear. Ordered some meat. Did it in the korean way, wrapping up the meat with the veg and putting the whole thing into your mouth.

We ordered the cold noodles too which was really gross. It was un-chewable and I believe indigestable. I doubt I will ever in leng-mian again =/ the soup is like cold. It was pretty cool at first because it was soup-flavoured ice in the bowl which I was super amazed with.

(TIP: Do not eat naeng-myon at shops which does not only sell naeng-myon. It usually turns out to be highly dissatisfying. I have tasted very delicious naeng-myon at shops which only sells the dish..)

we wanted to follow every single koreans around us, and we ended up ordering this..

despite sharing one bottle, the 19.5% alcohol was enough to make us tired/dizzy.

walked around hongkik area but didn’t really have the mood to shop~ oh wells!