S. Korea | Day 1 (대한민국)

It all started as a joke after I saw a photo of LINE Friends Pop-Up Store somewhere on Instagram and immediately LINE-d my girls and said something like "look at this cutie! (giant Brown statue in the middle of the store), why can't they have it here in KL? Let's save up and fly to Seoul for this! Lol"

It was literally a joke, I didn't know it was going to come true. As much as it hurts to see my friends buying EXO merch and going to cup sleeve event every month and cafe hopping every week, I keep telling myself, "calm down Tqa.. You got better plans in your mind". So that's how I kept telling myself for the next 20 months.

I was having dinner at the Mamak with my dad and brother when my friend texted me about Airasia promo going on 9 months prior our actual date for a really cheap price, and I just refused to passed that up.

Our ticket: RM650 (return ticket) to Busan inc. 20kg luggage and insurance. Some people asked me, "why Busan?" and my answer is, why not?

"Why did I bring this stupid boots?!"

Still.. nervous me.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Our flight was so early. My dad managed to finished his assignments early and drove me and my friend Ayu (in blue cardigan) to the airport at 10PM to catch our 1AM flight. Yup, it was really early but I think it was a great timing because we would arrive in Busan at 8AM early in the morning to catch the express bus to Incheon where our Airbnb located. And at the airport I met my other friends Ashley and Adam who flew to Incheon 2 days later. He was there to send us off.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Filled the Customs Declaration form on the spot because we were so bored.

Done but still can't sleep. It was half past 2 in the morning.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

1. 10PM - Depart from home to KLIA2
2. 12AM - Boarding (our flight was half an hour early)
3. 9AM - Arrive in Busan an hour late because of the weather and a few turbulence occurred 
4. 5.30PM - Boarding the express bus to Incheon
5. 9PM - Arrive in Incheon
6. *give or take a few minutes*
7. 11PM - safely arrived at our airbnb

5PM bus? keep reading.

I was so tired and I don't know if it was jet-lag or something but I got the symptoms and super not-in-mood to snap any photos after we landed in Gimhae International Airport in Busan. My head was spinning, dizzy, sleepy and emotionally unstable I felt like stabbing anyone who makes me edgy especially that lady at the immigration counter. If only I could shove my boots down her throat for taking too long to stamped my passport.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

We spent like an hour at this spot because there's high speed WiFi

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I googled so many blogs about how to get around to Incheon or Seoul from Busan but none of them was helping even one bit, I was so close to killing someone. It was so cold, windy and hungry and the fact that I kept reading unhelpful articles thinking it would lead me to something but it wasn't, made me walked back inside and try to look for Tourist Information Counter. Thank God I found one near limousine rental and done! So to anyone who wants to go to Incheon or Seoul from Gimhae Airport, Busan, here's how:

1. Get yourself a T-Money at the 7/11 next to Dunkin Donuts (KRW2,700 each)
2. Here's an info for you: you pay 10% cheaper using T-Money than using cash/one way ticket
3. Walk to Gimhae Light Rail Transit across the airport
4. Go to Daejeo Station
5. From Daejeo Station, transit to Line 3 and go to Yeonsan Station
6. From Yeonsan Station, exit to the Bus Terminal and take an express bus to Incheon or Seoul (ticket fares range from KRW24,100 - KRW36,000 at any counter)

Best part is, we missed our bus at 3.50PM, with a help of a random female passenger at the platform by talking to the staff at the counter, we only received 30% of our money back and have to buy another tickets to Incheon and the 5.25PM is the earliest and most expensive one because it's an honor class bus (oh my God..). We arrived in Incheon Bus Terminal around 9.20PM and reached Juan-Dong where we rented a studio apartment there almost midnight.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Homey Studio Apartment just for us!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

We got lost in Juan tried to find our apartment building and just our luck, we asked a random man who was waiting for someone at the Juan Station for a direction and he was (super super!) kind enough to show us the way using google map all the way in front of our doorstep like.. What? He even help us with the luggage and waited for us to settle down so he knew we are fine and safe. I can't believe people like him still exist! He can't even speak English for God sake we communicate using body language and broken Korean (umpama ayam dengan itik). The struggle with the luggage was real. The hills was no joke but it was worth it. Hope my directions would be helpful to anyone who is clueless as we were before.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Here's a tip: do not be shy to ask around. Yeah not everyone here can speak or understand English but at least give it a try, just show them your address, it could be a little help. In our case, so much help. Will post about our accommodation really soon. Love, T.

﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏‬﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏
Listening to:

Infinite (인피니트) - The Eye‬

‪ 00:00 ────⊙───────── 02:47‬
‪ ↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺‬
﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏‬﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏