South Korea 2017 - MS Hotel Haeundae

So, I decided to stay for a night at Haeundae Beach. Why not since I was already in Busan, right? Found a hotel via Agoda that seemed pretty near to the beach so on my last night in Busan, I transferred hotel to the beach. Sounds good but in reality, it was really tiring to move from one place to another.

Took a cab from Busan station to Haeundae beach. It wasn't very expensive, maybe about  ₩18000 for a 20 minutes ride.

on the way to Haeundae~

Keep a lookout for the hotel signage when reaching Haeundae SEA Life. It would be at the opposite direction. The cab will make a u-turn and stop somewhere below that building. The hotel lobby is at the 7th floor, so need to take the elevator up.

MS Hotel shares the same building with NURI Hotel

It was rather early when I reached at about 1040am. Enquired from the staff if I could check-in early and coincidentally, one room was available albeit a smaller room and it was still undergoing cleaning services. Waited for about 15 minutes and was given the key to the room.

view from lobby

hotel lobby

to the room

double room with seaview

wardrobe, tv, kettle, washroom

ooh, the mini fridge is in here

maxim coffee is provided, good

bathroom, ok

I liked it that they provided slippers to the bathroom as well as room slippers. The power socket were rather loose though. Hard to charge the devices if they keep falling off. Also love it that they provided facial wash in sachets form. Beats anything that says body and face wash.

facial wash

view from room

beach area (view from room)

At night, there will be people lighting up fireworks by the beach. So romantic hor? Wonder if Sentosa beach-goers do that too?

There is a 7-Eleven downstairs so it was rather convenient. Which is good because it is not the norm in South Korea for singles to be out dining alone, especially girls.

hotel signage

night view

plenty of western restaurants nearby 

During the daytime, we went out and explored Gamcheon Village. Watch out for the blog in the next post!

Meanwhile, breakfast was instant noodles from the convenience store downstairs. They got ramen eggs as well so that'll do as the side dish for the noodles. So full!

breakfast from convenience store

South Korea 2017 - Busan 1 Oct to 4 Oct (4 days 3 nights) | Jagalchi Market

For the first 2 nights, I stayed close to Busan KTX station at Almond Hotel. Spent $133.36 for 2 nights for a Business Room with no breakfast. The hotel was just a short 5 minutes walk from the KTX station. There's a stretch of pojangmacha (food tents) by the roadside outside of the hotel during the night time but I didn't try.

Business Room

fancy a bathtub next to the bed?

One noticeable thing about Almond Hotel business room is that the bathtub is right smack in the middle of the room. Like a studio. Luckily, there's still some privacy in the bathroom.

bathtub in the room

The room has mosquito during the night and no wonder there's an insect spray can in the room. But not sure why they placed it next to the kettle!

bathroom

One of the places that we visited while in Busan, was the Jagalchi Market. To get there, simply take the train to Jagalchi. The market is just a few minutes walk from the station.

fruit stalls on the way to Jagalchi

fish cake shop

salted fish

Plenty of things to see when we were walking towards the market entrance. Sellers hawking their wares from fruits to salted fish. If you are interested in fish cakes, there is a shop that sells it and having soupy fish oden was pretty good on a chilly morning.

oden snacks before lunch

towards the market

One will be greeted by tanks after tanks of fresh live seafood. Crabs, lobsters, eels, fishes, you name it, they have it.

huge hugs crabs and lobsters

seafood shop cum restaurant

While we were enjoying the lively atmosphere of the market, we were also looking out for our lunch/brunch venue. Many shops have signages that claimed visits from TV stations. How to choose?!

We enquired with the seller and it seemed that they are not keen to cook seafood purchased from other shops (understandably). Only if they are not selling that particular seafood, then they might cook it for you to eat at their shop provided you also order other things from them. Most of the independent shops (without restaurant) sells the seafood for you to take home.

octopus

flat fish, oysters

We saw some huge ass seahum (cockles)! Amazing. The seaworms look intimidating though. Don't know how to eat these things.

sea worm and seahum (cockles)

Eventually, we settled for lunch at Chungmu Hoetjip 충무횟집, a restaurant in Jagalchi Market. We had seafood pancake, grilled clams, grilled rockfish and eel, marinated raw crabs and a small bottle of plum wine.

Chungmu Hoetjip

delicious seafood

The rockfish was really delicious. Loved the marinated crabs but I preferred the one at Ganjang Gaejang alley. The side dishes were plenty and just love the overall dining experience. We spent about $60 per pax for this meal.

South Korea 2017 - Busan 1 Oct | Train to Busan

Getting from Seoul to Busan is fairly simple and fuss free. Korail website (http://www.letskorail.com/) is foreigner friendly and somewhat easy to use. I took a flexible two-day pass as I'll be doing a roundtrip from Seoul to Busan. The cost was about ₩102,000 (~USD96) and you're free to use it twice. A normal class KTX ticket costs ₩53,900 per adult, so you'll save about ₩5800 (~USD5.50) with the pass. If you're taking the First Class ticket, then all you need is just to top-up the difference. A first class ticket costs about ₩75,500. Just to experience the difference, I had a first class ticket from Seoul to Busan and a normal class ticket when travelling back to Seoul from Busan.

One tip is to reserve your tickets early, especially during the holidays/peak periods. The trip had 'accidentally' coincided with Chuseok and tickets were moving fast and hence, the available timings were limited. Remember to print out the Korail Pass and the tickets.

Seoul Station

departure gate

One thing to note is that the train ticket does not contain the information of which platform your train is at. The platform info will be displayed at the black electronic board about 20 minutes before departure time.

There are restaurants if you'd like to grab a quick bite but the Lotte fast food is forever full. No worries, inside the departure gate, there are small kiosks that sells bento/sandwiches. So you may grab some food just before boarding the train.

inside the departure gate - food kiosks

The train usually will arrive about 15 minutes earlier prior to your boarding time, so there was no rush. Do be mindful that the train will depart on time.

train platform

that's my ride

The First Class seats are pretty spacious and for single traveller, there are single seats too.

First Class cabin

Since I'd bought lunch, might as well enjoy the meal. 먹자! Bento seemed most appropriate for a two and half hour long train ride. I liked that my window seat came with a charging dock to plug in your USB connected devices. Power socket and free wifi are available too, so you could do work on your laptop, if you'd like.

bento/dosirak

Bought my brunch from Hotto Motto kiosk and that'll be a Japanese lunch box. Priced at ₩7500 and it has lots of rice, meats, egg and pickles. Came with a small container of miso soup too! Too bad it's not hot food but still yummy. The bento came with chopsticks, a small cup of water, serviette and wet hand wipe too.

ほっともっと

It is essential to bring your own food (if you'd be hungry) as the train vending machines will only contain bottled water/drinks and some light snacks such as peanuts/chocolates.

The journey was smooth and it turned out that most passengers in the first class cabin are all young parents with small child/children.

window seat

mountain and fields

The toilet is near the first class cabins and quite similar to airline toilets. And no, there isn't any zombies in the train....thankfully.

thank you for the safe ride

For the return trip, I was in normal cabin and the main difference would be the space between the seats. Would you be willing to pay more for added comfort?

In the next episode, let's go see the accommodation in Busan! Till then, stay tuned.

South Korea 2017 - Seoul 30 Sep | Namdaemun Market 남대문시장

Day 1 in Seoul, and I was starving. Took longer than expected to find Park Hill Hotel. Ugh. Once checked-in, hurried to Namdaemun Market which was just a few minutes walk away from the hotel. Grabbed a map from the Tourist Information counter in the market and located the Fish Alley. The place sure was crowded even if it was already 230 pm. There are some popular ones but decided to skip the queue and went into one shop that's fairly empty, not knowing what to expect. Think the shop name is Uri Sikdang.

signboard

₩8000 lunch 갈치조림

Had trouble ordering from the younger male staff so they got the older lady to converse in Mandarin. Didn't know the price so anyhow agreed to what she was recommending. Water tumbler is usually already at the table so took a cup. Thirsty.

The place was a tad dingy but that did not deter me from having my spicy fish stew! Was worried when the ahjumma brought a plate which consist of 3 small banchans (side dishes) which was covered by plastic cling wrap. To open or not to open. Didn't know if this was chargeable or not. Plus, paiseh to ask. Was even more worried when the main dish came with another steaming hot tofu stew. But she said, "Service." which meant complimentary. WoOohOO! Thanking the lunch gods.

hairtail fish spicy stew

The hairtail fish was kinda mushy but enjoyable. There were bones to pick as well. Surprisingly, the tofu stew was excellent! Tofu was soft and soup was spicy yet so endearing to slurp it all up. Rice was nicely cooked and best eaten with the stew sauce. So yummy! I threw caution to the wind and took the plastic wrap off the banchans. Oooh, the brinjal and fishcake were good! Loved that they gave a box of seaweed to eat with the rice. So good. Hunger, satiated.

When night fell, it was street food for dinner. Chose a grilled chicken skewer that's as long as the length of my forearm (not that I have long forearms anyway), and fish cake skewers. Total spent of about ₩3000.

Namdaemun street food vendor

닭꼬치 grilled chicken skewer

어묵 fish cake skewer

The street stall had a chair so I asked the ahjussi if I could sit there. Dine-in concept, haaha! He didn't mind but it was rather awkward as he was waiting for me to finish eating. Finished the skewers and requested for a cup of soup which he complied but it was tongue burning hot. Awkward x 2, because now I had to finish off the piping hot soup and he had to wait a bit longer for this tourist customer to go away. Funny, now I think about it.

Read some blogs that mentioned about Namdaemun Market being an early riser and ends late? Not quite true. Was there at about 9pm and most shops were closed. Visited on a Sunday morning at about 8am, and not many were opened as well.

Namdaemun Market on a weekend morning

Hyojason King Dumpling

prepping in the morning

Did a solo run in the market in the morning because would be travelling to Busan later in the day to meet up with the rest of the group.

am not ready for coffee yet

Was looking around the market for breakfast before doing shopping and ended up at a stall that had those displays right at the front. Decided on beef ribs soup. Breakfast at this shop called Myungsin.

enticed by this

menu

early in the morning

갈비탕 breakfast - ₩8000

The beef ribs soup tasted of pepper and very light. Loved the side dishes served here especially the marinated spicy squid and the pickled radish. Used the seasoned laver to wrap up the rice with a bit of kimchi in it and I was in heaven!

flavour bomb

comfortingly good

Did some shopping and bought windbreakers for dad and bro, and a light coat for mum to wear for Taiwan trip. Probably overcharged but never mind, maybe next time will learn on how to bargain.

for family