It feels so good to be traveling international again! I missed all the rituals traveling entails like buying things for the trip, packing clothes while having the nagging fear that you might exceed your luggage allocation, and waiting for your flight in the airport 🫰 

This trip was originally planned for November, however due to the intense schedules and the very elusive booking of visa appointment, no joke it felt as if I'm trying to buy a KPOP concert ticket, it was that intense, we decided to move it to March with hopes that we'll see cherry blossoms 🌸 (SPOILER ALERT: we didn't see a single cherry blossom hahaha). Also originally it was supposed to be me and my college bestie, Zai, only but good thing we were able to persuade our friend, Trizia to come along!

Fast forward to March 12 where we all arrived in the airport at 7 p.m. for a 1:55 a.m. flight- yup, I kid you not we were THAT early in the airport due to the recent horror stories with the Philippine Immigration. To give a quick background, there were a couple of horror stories about travellers getting off-loaded from their flights due to how looong the interrogation of immigration officers to every Filipino traveller heading out of the country. I mean, yeah it's understandable that they are just doing their job to stop human trafficking however is it even rational to ask for a copy of the traveller's yearbook? Like, really? Luckily we did not experience any hiccups, leaving us with a lot of time for dinner and doing whatever it is below 👇

Upon landing in Korea at 7:00 a.m. Korea time (yep they are 1 hour advance) we were immediately greeted with the icy cold weather. I was sort of expecting it to be as cold as Tokyo in Feb with at least 9° Celsius and I actually loved that weather, but ooooh boy Seoul welcomed us with a chilling -2° Celsius hug! 

Before we leave the airport we claimed our booked wifi device via Klook at the SK telecom booth in between exit 9 & 10 at the arrivals area. FYI, it's not enough that you have booked your device online, they require that you present a credit card just in case you damaged, lost, or unknowingly took the wifi device with you back home, they can charge you using the credit card details.

We took a train going to our hotel, and I think we spent only around 4,000 to 5,000 Korean Won compared to getting an airport bus which would have cost 10,000 upwards per person. But before boarding on a train to Seoul station, we first got our own T-Money Card via a Vending machine. The T-Money Card costs around 4,000 won, then once you have purchased it you can start topping up the value so you can use it to pay for train and bus rides- I'm not quite sure if it's as powerful as the Japan's Suica or Pasmo cards where you can use it to pay for almost everything 🤷🏻‍♀️

Our hotel, Hotel First Stay, is near Seoul's City Hall around 300m away from the subway station, and was surprisingly near Myeongdong (I actually realized this on our last day haha). 

Since our hotel only allow guests to check-in at 4:00 p.m. and we arrived in the hotel at 11:00 a.m. we decided to eat something and wander around the area.

Aside from the mall, we weren't able to explore the surrounding places since we were all dead tired running on only 2-3 hours of sleep 😴💤 

I guess that's it 🤣 Days 2, 3, and 4 in separate blog posts🫰