Hello! This is Ailsa writing and this post will be our first post about Travelling! Some of you maybe know that recently i went to South Korea for a holiday. This is my second time been to Korea but actually my first time as a backpacker because my parents usually just go with a travel. This is actually a pre-post hahaha yes i will write my travel stories including directions and so on and divided it to many parts since i spent 10 days in Busan and Seoul so please wait for it!
I'm really excited to share my backpacker experiences to you guys. So, first of all what should we prepare to begin the journey? Well, you need to prepare your mental especially if it's your first time in that country because you will face many new things and probably you would taken aback by it.
That's important but what else? Of course it's Visa. It's actually not a secret anymore that it's not easy to apply Visa to South Korea. There are many articles i found that the Embassy didn't accept their application because so many things. Well they won't tell us what's wrong with our application tho so that's probably most people's concern about applying Visa to South Korea. Thankfully, mine and my parents' Visa process came out smoothly (eventho i'm pretty worried because my father is an entrepreneur) but maybe it was because MERS thingy that they just passed everyone that will go to Korea for holiday. My tips for you: please prepare every and each documents thoroughly, don't miss even one documents, prepare other documents too that you think it's necessary eventhough they didn't ask for it, take some research about others experience about applying S.Korea's Visa, and visit their website at http://idn.mofa.go.kr/worldlanguage/asia/idn/main/index.jsp for information about documents needed.
Tickets check, Visa check, everything is check, but don't you think you miss something? Where should we go if we visit S.Korea? What attractions they have? What transportation should we choose? Well, i'm sure this is our concern whenever we went to new country. Then what you need is Itinerary! I like my holiday planned so itinerary is really important for me. Take some research about what you should visit and you will find so many places to go to! Itinerary is one of documents that you can give to the Embassy too with your Visa's application because it can ensure them that you just came to S.Korea for holiday and no other intention. Because this is my second time to S.Korea and my parents' first time, they just entrusting the itinerary to me hahaha. I compared my itinerary with travel's itinerary and i'm glad that we went by backpacker this time because there are so many places i want to go for shopping! *insert puppy eyes*.
At first we planned to go to Jeju Island not Busan but after took some research, Jeju didn't really have public transportation so it will be more exhausting, time consuming, and more costly if we go backpacker. So, we decided to go to Busan because i really love Busan lol. No, that's not my intention tho. Busan is just as beautiful as Jeju and so many places to go and many foods to try. I will post about Busan really soon so make sure you don't miss it. I thinks it's already include every information you need especially about the subway routes and exits, i hope my itinerary is helpful for you guys^^
You can download my itinerary here!
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| Sneakpeek! |
Subway? Why should we use subway? Isn't it tiring? Well, we're backpacker anyway and i really love their subway very very much. In my opinion, subway is a really convenient public transportation in S.Korea. It's fast, it has fixed interval per train, comfortable, can reach so many area easily, and so many that i cannot write all of it. To use subway or what they called in Korean "Jihacheol" (read: Jihacol), they have this card called T-Money that you can use for subway, bus, taxi, even buying things at convenient store. You can buy T-Money at some convenient store such as GS25, 7-Eleven, CU, Mini Story, and so on. T-Money has many different design, at some K-pop related shop you can easily find T-Money with K-idols design! Go to this site to know more about other benefits about T-Money! You may find subway in Korea pretty confusing because they have so many exits that leads you to different places. So, yes you need to do some research first what exits you should take to go to certain places. But dont worry tho, they also have English translation for every stop and every exit for foreigners! I also include subway's exits in my itinerary so it should be useful^^
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| Find this logo on the convenient store *) |
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| Newest design |
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| My T-Money from last year's summer school |
Accomodation will be the most important if you went travelling isn't it? Me and my parents didn't make a fuss about staying at 5 star hotel or blablabla so we settled in an apartment that we booked through AirBnB application for our accomodation in Seoul and Agoda for our hostel in Busan. It was a great experiences using these application because it's really easy to use and really help us so much! I didn't took pictures of the apartment because so many reasons, but i should say that the host is really really nice and helpful they even upgrade our room to a bigger one! Our apartment is located in Hongdae area (I love Hongdae so bad), one of those nice and great streets in S.Korea, and just 1 minute walking from subway's exit so it was really really convenient. We got a really great deal for this one, just around $50 per night! In Busan, we were staying at Hansung Motel just 5 minutes walking from Busan Station. We also got the same great deal for this one too and the place is actually great for backpacker's wallet /wink. We don't regret using these applications<3
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| AirBnB app preview |
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| Agoda app preview |
This will be the end of the pre-post, please wait for the exciting storytelling about my backpacker trip to S.Korea! To conclude this post, i will give some tips for you guys before going to S.Korea:
- Check the weather, this will help you to choose what clothes, medicines, and other things to bring.
- Check multiple times for the Visa's documents!
- Understand your Itinerary well.
- Download some useful app when you're in S.Korea such as Jihacheol for subway route, Naver Maps for directions, Google Translate (lol), and Eatgo for finding where to eat. As for maps, you can use Google Maps too eventhough it's not as accurate as Naver Maps and for Eatgo.... it's in Korean so it's up to you if you want to download it or not ehehe i couldn't really find an useful app to find restaurant there, i'm sorry:(
- They usually have big discount event especially in summer so don't forget to check http://www.koreagrandsale.co.kr/en/ and print out the voucher! Well i'm sure most of you girls come to Korea for shopping lol.
- If you a fans of Kpop, you can also visit the entertainment building. Don't forget to search for directions to your favorite entertainment! Also if you want to "stalk" your bias group.... well check their schedule and twitter to update about them lol
- Learn a bit Korean, Korean language is actually not that hard to learn if you can read the Hangul which is not that difficult at least it will help you to read directions in Subway! Also some words like Restroom and how to order food. (You can easily find learning website in Google about Hangul!)
Please don't hesitate to leave some comments if you have questions about South Korea in the comment box! I will try my best to answer your questions. See you in the next post!
Download link
*)sources www.google.com
Wow ... your experience was very useful for me. Thank you for sharing your vacation experience and knowledge about holidays. latalianavillas.com
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