Day 1 in Busan, South Korea

Date: 27 Aug 2011
Google Temperature – 22*c– 31*c
Personal Temp/Outfit – Like Singapore, slightly windier. T-shirt, jeans and slippers.

First mention – Thanks girls for sending me off. I ALMOST wanted to cry.
ALMOST. :P

Moving on….

Flying off to Busan can be quite a tiring affair. Just saying. For us, we took Cathay Pacific Air Ticket that will send us to Hong Kong first before transiting to Busan via DragonAir.

Rough cost of air tickets (two-way) - $1100

*Tip – You can secretly keep the blankets/pillows given to you when you’re on the flight and use it as pillow during your hostel stay like what my roomie did. If you are not given one, you can always request them from the air stewardess. ;)

We reached Gimhae Airport at roughly 6.50a.m (+KMT) and were immediately greeted by two Korean men and 2 Korean women holding out DONG-A sign card.
Turns out they are our buddies!

Chatting with them is fine. They do understand English and speak English for most parts. Just make sure you try to simplify your sentences when you speak to them.

Reached DONG-A HANLIM DORMITORY and saw this view.

Hostel on a hill top!


Here’s how the room looks like from the entrance.


My side of the bed


Our study tables

Attached to the room is a bathroom as well. Convenient! But don’t expect much. The size of the bathroom is rather small. Two persons in it and there’s not much space to move around.
Needless to say, showering is no-bath tub fantasy. You just stand and shower.

Time to move around and get some things done.


Maps courtesy of our buddies.


This is the shuttle bus timing and off we hop on to grab some lunch…


And here’s our handsome/pretty buddies :)
(From left to right) Min Seok ssi, Kwang Hoon ssi, Yoon Joo ssi and Jun Hwa ssi.

We entered into one of those street side café/eatery for our very FIRST meal in South Korea!
It’s great except that everything is in….

HANGUL (-_-)




So we just leave it to the experts to order. Haha~

FIRST meal in KOREA! *squeals*


Kimbab


Ramyun


Ramyun + Tobeokki = ??

After lunch, we left to do some shopping here and there. Great news for all, DAISO (the $2 Japan shop in SG) is located quite near to the dormitory. It’s just probably a 5-10 minutes’ walk down the hideously long flight of stairs.


ALMOST everything you need can be brought there at 1,000-3,000 won. So if you lacked anything, just buy it from there.
But sadly, Daiso does not sell bed sheets and pillows. So we head to LOTTE MART to buy some.

WARNING – Bed sheets are expensive in Korea. Roughly $80+ for a whole bed sheet set excluding pillow and bolsters. So if you feel the pinch, BRING your bed sheet stuffs from SG.


The things that we brought.
In South Korea, they believe in saving the environment in whatever ways they can. And one such method is to charge you 20WON every time you request a plastic bag to put your shopping goods in.
So we do what Korean do, packed them in boxes instead. It’s offered at a corner for FREE!




So do it like the aunties! You can never go wrong with that ;)

We returned back to HANLIM DORM at roughly 3pm+. But it strangely felt like 6-7pm for us. We head to the basement where the Internet Café is located, to do course registration.
It failed because the modules aren’t out yet.

Anyway, we felt bad that our buddies have busied themselves with us – bringing us around,. Carrying our luggages, teaching us the transportation system, carry our shopping items.

In fact, Kwang Hoon ssi was so tired (he said he did not sleep at all last night), that he fall asleep while using the computer at the Internet Café.
LOL.


I think he stayed in that position for at least five minutes?
Everyone took turns to take a picture of him. =X

Afterwards, we said BYEs to our buddies and reached back our rooms. We cleaned the place till 5+ and rot in the room for the entire day because we brought the wrong electric adapter and we lacked a lan cable wire for Internet connection.

So here’s another WARNING – Do NOT believe in UNIVERSAL ADAPTER when you come to DONG A. Their electric plugs only accept ROUND-SHAPED adapters. So if yours is a SQUARE SHAPED adapter, no matter how universal it is, its USELESS. And do bring a lan cable wire for Internet if you do not wish to rot at your dorm with nothing to do.

For dinner, we head to the basement again for cafeteria food. You need to bring your student ID card for your meals in the cafeteria.

BREAKFAST and LUNCH are offered during WEEKDAYS while BREAKFAST, LUNCH AND DINNER are offered during WEEKENDS.

The dorm would make these annoyingly loud announcements about 10 minutes beforehand. If you open your dorm windows, you basically have a morning wakeup call from them.

BREAKFAST – 7.10AM – 8.30AM
LUNCH – 12.30PM – 1.30PM
DINNER – 6.30PM – 7.30PM

Meals in the cafeteria are so-so, worse if you dislike Korean food.
It’s served somewhat like a jail-style manner, food presentation is also like a jail-styled manner and you disposed your leftover like a jail-style manner.
LOL.

But I forgot to take pictures of it. Shall do it next time! :)

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