Sunday, July 2, 2017

Seoul 2017 Day 1 Part 1: Airport Express + Air Bnb at Hongdae

Getting to Seoul is super easy with the airport express train!

All you need is a t-money card which you can buy at
1) The convenience stores you see immediately after exiting the gates into the terminal
2) Vending machines that dispense t-money cards at the entrance of the all-stop train station

Rmb that you are buying a card with NO value, so you do have to top it up first (but got english option so no worries!)

The moment we exited the gates there was a lot of signs indicating how to get to the airport express. Just follow the signs and you will get there in no time.



The difference between the two trains is simply
1) Express train only has one stop. Seoul station. Takes supposedly 43 min
2) All Stop Train has multiple stops. Takes about 1 hour (we tested it twice, more or less one hour la)

So we headed for the all stop train.... since we wanted to stop at hongik university!






Super clearly labelled in English. Yesh



Didn't try the express train but the all-stop train is frequented by other passengers who are not necessarily travelling to the airport, so sometimes hard to get seats and had to kiap our bags with us (no designated area to leave the bag at one corner).

One other thing, there is an info counter at the arrival hall itself which looks like this.


So if you need maps all these just take la.
I grabbed the seoul summer sale package here. There are a lot of things in here I don't need (like... spending 100k won at XX brand for ONE SHEET MASK? oh please) but I did use it for a 5000 won discount at olive young after spending 60k won.




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Our AirBnb was awesome. A W E S O M E.
If you have not tried AirBnb, use my link here to sign up. You get $50 off for your first booking! (I mean free money, take lah! My airbnb really showed that they gave me a $50 discount)

Just so you know, I stayed here at Hongdae, and our host Jason was amazing. Since he knows English very well it was a breeze to communicate with him. The airbnb had very clear labels for remotes, pocket wifi, two t-money cards, towels and soap, even beer and juice and water. More amazingly, there was so much space! I think 4 people can easily sleep and live here :D Some of the airbnb I was looking at really super small -_-

But the best part? The ground floor of this building leads you straight out to the hongdae shopping area, while basement two brings you into the mrt itself! I only had to carry our luggages up/down 10 steps. Phew! Such a relief for two ladies.

So I highly recommend you to stay here! We were even allowed to leave our baggage there on the last day until 2.30pm, which was really nice of him coz we supposed to check out at 12pm.

I forgot to take photos of the airbnb but it was TRUE to the photos on the listing :>