Seoul 2012 Chungmuro Residence

It was a 7 days trip to Seoul back in 24th June to 30th June 2012. Supposed to be a 8 people trip but due to unforeseen circumstances, there's only two left who made it for the trip on the day of departure. It become a kpop fangirls trip where we see lots of kpop idol throughout the  days trip such as Wonder girls, super junior, fx, SNSD TTS etc.

We booked our flights through AirAsia promo which costs us less then MYR700 for return ticket with luggage check in. It was a midnight flight to Seoul and both of us not having a good sleep on plane blaming seats weren't comfy (In fact, I think we were just too excited for the trip). This is the first time we travelled to somewhere far away from Malaysia with friends and the first time we went to the land our oppa born!  

Our first photo in Seoul! 

The first obstacle we faced in Seoul is about finding the train to town, A'rex. It took us sometime to realised sign "Airport Railroad" (as shown in picture)  means A'rex after wandering around the airport for half an hour. The ticket of A'rex to Seoul station can be bought from ticket machine easily and it cost us 3,700won per person.

Once we reached Seoul station, we bought T-money (something similar to Touch N Go) from convenient shop as we had to travel by MRT to reach our hostel in ChungMuro. Highly not recommend to travel by train to your hostel if your luggage is heavy. As there are plenty unavoidable staircases when you walk from A'rex to Seoul station.

Subway Seoul Station

From Seoul station, we took MRT to Chungmuro station where our hostel located at. The hostel we staying for our trip was Chungmuro Residence. We booked it from agoda for approximately MYR90 per person per night.  

Chungmuro ResidenceAddress:19-5 Chungmuro-5 ga,Jung-gu, Myeong-dong, Seoul, South Korea
How to get there by subway: Chumuro Station Exit 8, walk straight for 500m, and the hostel is located on the right. 

The instruction sound easy yet we still get lost when finding the hostel. It was renovating that time and the entrance to the hostel become insignificant.  This time it took us nearly an hour in finding the hostel.  A nice ahjussi who used to stay in Singapore last time directed us to a wrong way too. We finally found it thanks to the gentleman working at Motorcycle Shop who I believe he saw us pass by his shop twice. We actually passed by the hostel twice without realizing it. You should pass by row of pet shop on your way to the hostel but once you reach row of motorcycle shop, it means you overshoot. 

Since it is still early when we reached the hostel, the staff let us to keep our luggage first in the counter. He was helpful enough too in help us cancelled one of our room. While waiting for check in time, we had our brunch at restaurant nearby the hostel. It was sunday when we were there and most of the shop are not in business. We managed to find one cozy SamgyeTang (Ginseng Chicken Soup) restaurant straight down the valley from Chungmuro Residence.

This is definitely the best SamgyeTang I ever tried. I'm not a SamgyeTang lover last time and this totally changed my view towards Samgyetang. P.s. Samgyetang was the only words we knew from the menu as the menu is in Korean. We asked the ahjussi about others and he tried his best to explain it using his body language but we just failed in reading the body languages. haha Anyway we realised at the end the other dish he recommend is OkGyeTang. (Black Chicken Soup) No wonder he keep pointing his skin and other thing. 

 After lunch we checked in to our room finally. The room is lovely and clean and totally out of my expectation. It comes with personal bathroom and there was ahjumma who clean your room daily  We can connected to the Seoul public wifi easily from the room. One thing I love about Korea, you can find Wifi connection anywhere easily and their Internet connection is fast. We can keep in touch with those in Malaysia easily by fb and whatsapp.



The room has basically everything you need and can accomodate up to 4 person with one queen sizebed, one single bed and one floor bed at the top. They have a mini kitchen and you can do your laundry here too. Definitely a good stay. TV is also available but we hardly can understand what they are saying even though our oppa face is shown. haha Next up, we went out and heading to our first destination, Seoul Namsangol Hankok Village.