The journey to the center of Seoul took about 1 hour. Not so scenic along the way. Well, not yet. Maybe in spring or autumn it will be better. Once arrived at Seoul Station, we head straight to the subway. We need to check in to the hotel the soonest in order to follow my itinerary. Seoul station reminded me of our KL Central. Pretty similar in term of the size and the bustling. We saw a lot of military service guys crowding a big LCD TV. It is baseball season. Baseball should be the 2nd popular sport after football in Korea. Thanks to the ample signboard, we managed to get ourselves subway to the Myeongdong since the hotel name is Myeongdong Hotel. Well, I was wrong. Once arrived at the station, I checked on the map, yet to found anything that indicates our hotel. I asked direction to the info booth guy, but he also not sure of the place. I then noticed a malay girl. should be obvious since she was wearing a tudung. I asked my wife to stay there and have a chat a bit with her while I look for the Hotel. Her name is Siti and she was on her last day in Seoul. She's been there twice already driven by the obsession to the Korean celebs. My search was to no avail. Lucky us, Siti offered to look for the hotel. Just outside of the subway station, we met a group of fan. High schooler maybe. I'm not sure on what is their agenda by hanging out there and handing passerby with momento of their fav celeb. However, those girls are friendly and they went all the way looking for it from their phone Internet. But found nothing. We returned to Siti's hotel which was around 50 meters from the subway and asked the hotel guy.
Finally we found it. But it was all the way on the opposite direction to that hotel. Sigh. Meaning that we need to walk further across the Myeongdong district with large luggages at hand. It was Saturday, meaning that we need to navigate across hundreds of people. On the positive side, at least we get to know the place we're going later. The hotel was quite easy to find. It was pointed by the tourist guide located within the Myeongdong district. These guys usually walking in pair and wearing a full red attire will offer help to any lost or looking-like-lost tourist. Furthermore, they can speak english better. Once we confirms the hotel, we bid farewell to Siti and exchanged contact info. After unpacked, we rested a bit. The room was way on the 5th floor, while the pantry, Internet room and lobby are on 1st floor. No elevator. It's hard for my wife since she is 2 months pregnant. I very much tried not to strain her, but what to do..
We went to check on the Cheoyanggi Stream first. It was well renovated for tourism purposes. The stream length is about 1 km. There is a wall marked with history on past kings. Some speaker with annoying sound which turned to be their traditional instrument. And at the end of the stream is a monument that looks like a snail. A big colorful snail. We crossed over the huge junction next to the snail and bought us tickets for Night bus tour. While waiting for the bus, we head over to snap couple of pictures in front of the Admiral's statue and got ourselves a hot choco. Starve starts to kick-in. Afterall, we only had roti cecah rendang ayam before went out. Cold weather do cause tummy to hungry faster. My wife called home and asked if we can have fries on the nearest KFC. She remembered when she was in UK, they had fries at McD. It is halal since they use separate oil to cook. So, i ordered a fries, coleslaw and a hot tea. That kept us kenyang a bit. The bus tour is a snore. Literally snore. I slept 3/4 of the tour. So did my wife. We were obviously tired and we didn't sign-up the tour just to see bridges on Han River. I slept after the 3rd bridge. Hahaha.. The bus stopped just next to the snail and we walked back to the hotel. It is just a 5-10 minutes walking from there.
Time to sleep.
TBC.
No comments:
Post a Comment