about us In alphabetical order, Hsuwen, 170696 Jo, 131296 Wanlin, 181096 Yuyan, 300496 This blog is a documentation of 4 girls' 10-day vacay in Korea, for now hehe. Naturally, when you give 4 girls a camera, please do expect to see our 4 faces (possibly) everywhere on this blog ☺☺☺ tagboard exits Jo Archives May 2015 June 2015 Credits basecodes ©Glamouresque.	Saturday, May 23, 2015 KOREA Trippin' Day 2: Haeundae Beach & N Seoul Tower [21 Apr] Annyeong~ Day 2! ★ Haeundae Beach Continuing with our escapades in Busan, we woke up bright and early to head to Haeundae beach. [Morning view at the beach pretty incredible woop] [Ever photo ready] [Got our shades on] [Epic jump shots! Think we got judged haha] Overall Experience and Thoughts: A great start to our morning at this lovely beach! We spent a much longer time than expected here, as we took lots of photos and jump shots cause of the good lighting. Love the view on the beach! How to get there: Haeundae Station, Exit 5. Walk straight about 300m to the beach. (Cr: Naver Maps) ★ Dalmaji-gil Road [Tea break at this atas looking cafe called Chelsea] [View from the balcony] [Their dressing table in the toilet?!] [Hsu and Jo making full use of the mirrors in the toilet hehe] [Chillax time with some coffee!] [Attempt at taking a tumblr-worthy photo] Overall Experience and Thoughts: Before leaving for Korea, we actually did some research and found that Dalmaji Hill is a popular tourist attraction in Busan to see cherry blossoms. However, much to our disappointment, most of the cherry blossoms had withered cuz of the relatively warmer temperatures *cues sad music*. Our taxi driver told us that in korea, cherry blossoms are usually in full bloom during the first 2 weeks of April. Guess we came a little too late sobbles :(  Nevertheless, we were really glad to have stopped by at Chelsea cafe (along Dalmaji-gil Road), as we got a really good view of the scenery from the balcony seats. Can you imagine how much prettier it would have been if there were cherry blossoms? Since we were the only customers, we had the whole place to ourselves. Seats were so comfy and it was so chill and peaceful that we almost fell asleep ^^ How to get there: We took a taxi from Haeundae Beach, which took about 10 minutes. Cost: W3,700 Directions taken from http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=264120: 1. From Busan Station, take city bus No. 139 or 140 / city experss bus (jwaseok bus) No. 239 or 240 and get off at Mido Apt. Then walk 10-15 min along the sign (totally takes 1 hour).  2. In front of exit 1 of Haeundae station (Busan Subway Line 2), take city bus No. 100 and get of at Yeongnam Apt. Then walk 10-15 min along the sign (totally takes 50 min). Interesting story #1: After Dalmaji Hill, we headed back to Busan Station to catch our KTX train back to Seoul! On our way there, we had an unexpected adventure haahahahhaha. So we were supposed to go back to Haeundae Station to grab our hand-carry luggages from the lockers there as we'd already checked out from our apartment. So we hailed a cab from somewhere along Dalmaji Hill and told the driver we wanted to go to Haeundae station aka metro. But he kept insisting that there was no such thing around Haeundae, so Jo switched from saying "metro" to  "station" in korean and then I think (I cannot rly rmb) he was enlightened. So we thought all was well, until he started driving into an area that looked like a military camp cuz it had like those barriers and security outposts and then we were all like ?!?!?!? Then the uncle said "this is the station this one this one" and pointed to some deserted building where not a single soul could be spotted (that building ended up to be the Haundae KTX station instead). In the end we just decided to alight there cause the longer we spent arguing with him, the meter the more the meter kept jumping lol (we paid an extra W200 for the 1 min we spent telling him this isn't the station we were referring to lol). But we think that cuz the driver was ~relatively~ old, he had no knowledge of the metro and his definition of station was literally the railway station those kind. Thankfully for us there was another cab in front and that driver knew what we were referring to so yay we hopped onto the cab thinking we would successfully make it to Haeundae station. But guess what! the driver brought us to Jongsan station instead lolol but we didn't realise and just alighted. So, with us mistaking Jongsan as Haeundae beach, we walked down the street, wanting to pop by a Daiso store which we'd walked past otw to the beach earlier. As we walked, we realised that this placed look different and none of the buildings looked familiar to us. . . And as we walked past a mrt exit, dun dun dun dun..... we realised... WRONG STATION hahahhahha we were at the end of Line 2 on the busan metro FOL so poor us had to take the subway up to Haunedae before we FINALLY reached. HAHAHA so hopefully ya'll are lucky enough to get a driver who really knows his way around and DOUBLE CHECK THE LOCATION BEFORE ALIGHTING :) [On the KTX back to Seoul] Upon arrival at Seoul, we collected our luggages from Premium Travel Centre and proceeded to check into our Seoul Airbnb apartment. ★ N Seoul Tower [Be prepared to walk uphill although you don't actually have to climb this steep hill. You can just walk straight all the way on level ground to arrive at the Namsan Oreumi elevator boarding grounds. We didn't know and had to climb the steps down at the other end anyway.] [Boarding place of Namsan Oreumi elevator that will bring you up to the cable car station] [Cable car station] [Lesson 101: Take pictures of your tickets. You never know when it will come in handy. It actually worked for us when we accidentally lost it haha] [After reaching via the cable car, there are two routes - one to go downhill and one up to the N Seoul Tower. We went downwards to catch the sunset and to take photos with the cherry blossoms! Scenery, as usual is JJANG!] [Behind the scenes. Concentration level intense haha] [Pretty pretty~] [Really thankful to all the kind souls who helped us take group photos omg :') Koreans are lovely <3 ] [As we walked up several flight of stairs, we saw the first batch of locks hanging by the railings. Took some pictures and continued heading up for the real deal heh] Ta-dah! The love locks of N Seoul Tower! There were probably thousands of locks legit.  Locks are sold at the souvenir shops there, but they were quite expensive. Thankfully, we brought locks from Singapore. [Wan fighting her way through the thousands of locks to lock ours on hehe] [We wrote our wishes on our iPhone cases and locked them together with our locks (Green & Blue)] [Deposited our keys inside this red box] [Aww <3] [Sunset was really gorgggg] [But the wind was damn strong??] Since we couldn't take the cold any longer, we headed to the Observatory. There was a queue, but it moves quite fast. Before we knew it, we were on the lift that brought us all the way up to the Observatory in less than 30 seconds?!  [Writing postcards to be sent home. Postcards cost W2,000. Stamps cost W400.] [Mailing our postcards] [4,653.97km away from Singapore] Overall Experience and Thoughts: We chose the perfect timing to visit N Seoul Tower, as we managed to catch the sunset and admire the pretty night view of Seoul from the Observatory. The breathtaking scenery from the top of Namsan Mountain and the famous "locks of love" are probably the main reasons that make N Seoul Tower a popular tourist attraction. We were surrounded by many couples who were there to "lock" their love for each other, but for us, we were there to "lock" our friendship hehe. We bumped into quite a few Singaporeans there (easily distinguishable from their Singlish accent lol). But it's always cool to meet fellow Singaporeans abroad :) Interesting story #2: We bought the two way ticket for the cable car at Namsam tower. However, we actually lost the ticket for the return trip so we panicked for a while until Yan had a brainwave and went "eh guys!! we took a photo of the ticket right??? maybe we can show it to the person as proof that we actually bought the two-way ticket!!" and so we headed to the ticketing office and Jo showed the ticketing lady the photo of our ticket and spoke in korean, explaining that we lost our ticket etc hahahhaha in the end the ticketing lady accepted our explanation and told her colleagues at the boarding area that these 4 girls lost their ticket but we did buy it and so he let us board the cable car down yay!!! Lesson learnt: Be travel smart hahaha How to get there: Myeongdong Station (Line 4), Exit 4 Walk straight to Hoehyeon intersection. Turn left when you see Shinsegae Department Store across the road (number 3 on map). Walk straight uphill and you will soon see the boarding place of Namsan Oreumi elevator at the entrance of Namsan Tunnel 3 (near Hoehyeong 119 Safety Centre).  (Cr: Naver Maps) Take Namsan Oreumi elevator to cable car station, then take cable car to N Seoul Tower. Alternatively, you can choose to walk uphill. Admission fee: W6,000 for a single-trip ticket on the cable car W8,000 for a round-trip ticket on the cable car W9,000 for observatory tickets  Lunch: Bento on KTX  We bought these bento boxes on board the KTX from the push cart lady. Really yummy! Cost: W10,000 Dinner Since we stayed at N Seoul Tower till pretty late, we decided to buy food from Lotte Mart back to our apartment. [We got sushi!] [Our first dinner in Seoul! AT 12 MIDNIGHT LOL Ramyun with sausages and poached eggs, sushi and (really) spicy rice cake. Quite a spread eh? Think we had some sushi leftovers for breakfast the next day HAHA unhealthy max] We booked an Airbnb apartment, which is located near Seoul Station. We will do a review on the apartment on the last day so stay tuned!! And yup, that is all for our eventful Day 2~ :) Labels: Busan, Dalmaji-gil Road, Haeundae Beach, N Seoul Tower, Seoul
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