For those who are visiting any time soon, I have some tips that I'd like to share with you. Please understand that these tips are just based on my experience the 1 week I was there. Do feel free to share if you have any extra tips =)
In a nutshell:
1. Bring layered clothes and a winter coat, preferably with a hoodie.
2. The current style I've been seeing in Seoul: black coats, black boots, thick scarf.
3. Wear comfortable shoes with good grip on the soles.
4. Transportation suggestions: Subway, Seoul City Tour bus, Taxi
5. Shopping area: Myeongdong (local and overseas brands), Insadong (traditional Korean stuff - good for souvenirs), Itaewon (lots of foreigners)
6. Have a game plan when visiting cosmetic shops. Current skincare trend in Korea: anything with snail (bb cream to masks)
7. Try to bargain
8. Eat carbon pill before eating anything unusual
9. Wear lots of moisturizer and lotions
10. Hotel suggestions - Jeju and Seoul
11. If you have to choose between Everland and Lotte World in the winter, choose the latter.
So here we go.....
1. During my visit to Seoul, my friends (both Koreans) mentioned that this winter is going to be coldest winter in Korea and it is going to get colder by the day. In fact, it usually didn't snow early in December but during my first day in Seoul (3rd December), it snowed. Out of the 6 days I spent, about the 3-4 days were snowing. Oh btw.. Seoul is way colder than Jeju since it's more on the north in case you're wondering.
With that, prepare to bring clothing that can be layered and a winter coat. Try to get a winter coat that has a hoodie attached to it, it'll be useful when you're braving yourself through snowfall without umbrellas. Oh yeah! You can bring umbrellas if you like though I managed to survive without one.. I kinda like the snow falling on my head and coat and just brushing them off before entering shops/restaurants (it's my first time experiencing snowfall so I guess that kinda explains? hehe). Oh and bring/buy gloves! It's so cold that my hands can't take it =(
2. People in Seoul I heard from my friends dress really nicely, especially in the winter time. Their staples are mostly long (below the knee or knee length) dark-colored (mostly black) coats paired with black boots (any kind of black boots, from knee length to the ones that hit just at the ankle) followed with thick scarf.
3. Wear comfortable shoes with good grip on the soles. The roads were kinda slippery due to the snow and definitely avoid patches of frozen water. I've wanted to get a black military style boots but didn't find the right one until the last day so I was stuck with running shoes throughout the trip and didn't even bother to buy boots (With the weather in where I stay, I might as well just forget about boots). I had a nice pair of flats brought from home but the road was slippery due to the snow (in fact, I slipped once...)
4. Transportations. Okay, from the Incheon Airport you can basically take a subway called Korail. They have the express one that goes straight to Seoul Station and the non-express one that you can take if you're taking a plane from Gimpo Airport or you need to stop at other stops before Seoul Station.
For transportation in Jeju, I mostly either walk or take a taxi. The hotel staff was super nice to actually arrange a private taxi tour for us, which cost less than joining a bus tour. We travelled in a group of 4. The charge for the whole day was 150,000won.
For transportation in Seoul:
- I spent a day using Seoul City Tour Bus which is around 15,000 won per person. It's a good way to look around the city. I took the downtown tour, which you can hop-on hop-off (bus comes every 30 mins) at each of the stops. There's also night tours which isn't hop-on hop-off. I didn't take this tour due to time constraint but if you want to see the night view, you can try this. Apparently if you take this tour, you don't need to take the cable car when you visit Namsan Tower as the bus will take you up.
- For taxi in Seoul, it is pretty affordable in general. Also, since I travelled in a group of 4, it cost about the same as taking the subway together. You can ask the hotel staff to write the place you are going in Korean and pass it to the taxi driver to avoid confusion. Some of the taxi drivers are also super friendly to foreigners though they don't really speak English.
- Subway in Seoul is pretty convenient too. The ticketing booth has a few languages you can choose to purchase your ticket. It's a good way to travel around the city =)
5. For shopping areas:
- Myeongdong is a really great place to shop when you're in Seoul. It is basically an outdoor area filled with lots and lots of shops both international (Zara, H&M, Forever21, etc) and local brands (Etude House etc). I'll just say that one of my hobbies is to shop for clothes and makeup/skincare products, so I visited Myeongdong 3x and got my stuff mostly from there. Visit it on Friday evenings since there are sellers along the street selling anything from kpop stuff, street food to fashion stuff (I'm not sure if you can see this on the weekend evenings as well) and the place is more lively and crowded. There's Lotte Department Store in this area and they're now having winter sales.
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| Winter in Myeongdong (2012) |
- Itaewon is the area where you'll see lots of foreigners hang out. Some mentioned that there's actually more foreign language signs (english for example) than hangul signs itself in this area.
- Other place you might want to check is Hongdae, Gangnam (visit CoEx mall) and Dongdaemun (fashion hub)
6. This tip is mainly for those who'd like to try out the cosmetics/skincare brands from Korea. I basically got almost all my stuff at Myeongdong and there's more than 1 shop for each brand, take for example Nature Republic and Etude House. My tips are:
- Buy all your stuffs at 1 shop so you'll receive a very generous amount of samples.
- It's better if you come in knowing what you want to get, especially if English is your only way of communication. For some reason I went to a lot of shops where the staffs can only speak korean and chinese and/or japanese =( so it's pretty tough. Another reason is because you do not want to spend too much money on stuff that you might regret getting later on.
- As mentioned above, the current trend in skincare is snail/escargot. Not sure why but I got a snail bb cream and snail masks. Let me try them out and let you all know =)
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| Snail BB Cream from The Face Shop |
7. Try to bargain. Basically you can bargain at Insadong as I mentioned above. At Myeongdong, there's a place called Migliore where you can get Korean clothing and bargain for it. They'll usually give you lower price if you pay in cash. I'm not sure whether I got cheated here but I got my clothes around 35,000 won each while I checked in Forever21 that you can get tops around 25,000 won =(
8. My dad and my siblings all came back home sick because apparently they had food poisoning from a seafood we ate at Myeongdong. This is a hard lesson learnt. Basically, if you think that this food is too weird but you want to try it, eat carbon pills like Norit. Food poisoning can resurface within 48 hours just an fyi.
9. The weather is really really dry especially because it's winter. I was only there for a week and my legs were super dry up to a point that it was so itchy. As such, do moisture yourself well when you're there.
10. If you'd like to stay at some 5-star hotels, I'd recommend checking out Lotte in Jeju (it's near the tourist attractions) and Lotte in Seoul (it's near Myeongdong). I didn't stay at both place but based on location, Lotte has best location.
11. Okay last tip. During my trip there, I was suggested to go to Lotte World instead of Everland because due to the weather, rides may be closed. Since Lotte World is mostly indoor, you'll get to experience more rides there. Plus, you won't get cold. Visit earlier in the day so it's less crowded though they have special price tickets if you enter after 4 or after 7 =)
Okay I know this is a long post but I hope it can help you guys out =) I was really glad that I had the trip because I cross a thing from my wish list: seeing and experiencing snowfall =)
Anyway let me know if you'd like me to expand on any of the points above. You can also check out websites like Eat Your Kimchi or Visit Korea. I personally do not like going on tours so my family and I planned everything from scratch with the help from travel agent to suggest us some hotels and planes. Also, we altered our schedule to match the weather forecast =)
Hope this helps and see you in the next posts =)
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