Day 4 Taipei Seoul Trip

Last morning in Taipei before we fly to Seoul. Luckily Videl recovered already.

Had a quick breakfast in our hotel and then to Guo Guang Bus Terminal.

125NT for a adult ticket and 65NT for child ticket

At Guo Guang Bus Terminal waiting to board the coach.

At Taoyuan International Airport. 

Full winter gear all ready for Seoul's weather.

Brunch at the Airport

Taking Korean Air to Seoul.  Around $400 per pax. It's so ex to fly direct from Sg to Seoul, around $900 per pax. It's cheaper to fly from Sg to Taipei and from Taipei to Seoul. Got to enjoy 2 countries at a price of 1.

In the plane.

Leg space is good

Complimentary earphone

Our lunch. Beef Set. Not very fantastic.

Chicken set. Not very nice as well.

In Incheon Airport. Waiting to collect our luggage.

Inside Incheon Airport. It was ranked 3rd in World's Best Airports last year and 2nd in 2010.

Counter to buy Airport Limousine Ticekts. It's just outside the airport and beside the bus stop.

14K Won ($16) for adult and 10k Won ($11) for child

No. 6001 to Dongdaemun and to our hotel
We missed the earlier bus and had to wait for 30 mins for the next bus. 

The weather is super duper cold. -1 degree. Not used to such cold weather. Our ear and nose are like dropping and our face are like cracking. Ha. Well I might be exaggerating but it's really very cold.

Have to put on mask cause it's really very cold

Inside the limousine bus.

Reached our designation. The Eastgate Tower Hotel and Euljiro Co-op Residence stop. The bus stopped at the doorstep of Euljiro Co-op while we need to walk around 5mins to Eastgate. 

The Eastgate hotel is located on the 18th-20th floors of the Cerestar Mall and offers a panoramic view of the city. It is also surrounded by 4 famous large shopping malls in Dongdaemun namely Hello aPM, Good Morning City, Doota, Miglore. It's also located within 5mins from Exit 14 of  Dongdaemun History & Culture Park Station.

View from our hotel. Can even see Namsan Tower.

Our room.

It's equipped with Stove and washing machine cum dryer.

Dinner at 1 of the BBQ restaurant along the way from the Train station (Exit 14) to our hotel. Most of the aunties can speak chinese in those restaurants. 1 of our best meals in Seoul.

BBQ Beef and Pork.. At the lest corner, it's kimchi. Nicest kimchi for this trip.

BBQ Beef wrap with lettuce and kimchi

Banchan (side dishes)

Seafood Toufu Soap

Bibimbap

Dongdaemun is a shopping area that do not sleep. As mentioned above, our hotel is surrounded by large shopping malls. They opened around 10am and closed around 5am. We were so excited and happy initially. We thought that we can shop here every night after visiting places around Seoul. But 1 visit is enough. Not sure if it's because they are lacking of sleep and thus looked so unfriendly and unhappy or it's because of their nature.

It seems that they marked up the price when they know that we are tourist. Some dun even bothered to reduce the price while some actually asked us to counter propose the price. There are 3 extreme that we encountered. 1 of them keep pushing the calculator to us to counter propose the price and we were quite polite to turn it down. She was very persistent and keep insisting that we key in the price. When we did not want to do it, she just walked away. For another encounter, I tried to reduce the price by half (haha) and she just turned and walked away as well. The last one was also another arsehole. At first we thought the jeans cost 19k won (we thought we got a gd deal) and in the end it's actually 90k won. We had checked the price from some shops and the average is around 25k won but she marked up the price to 90k won.

We were quite disappointed. Weather is cold and the sales staff are so unfriendly. It's really a 180 degrees change between Taipei and Seoul. Really hope that this is just a single episode of bad encounter. Sigh.

This is one friendly shop. Maybe we bought things from her and so she's friendly.