3/28/2014
11:58

After a mostly sleepless night which is how it is every time I travel, I got up to go by 6 AM and finished all my last minute packing.  Grabbed some breakfast at 7-Eleven and was off to the airport by 9:00.  I took the MRT to Taipei Main and HSR to Taoyuan Airport.  But from Taoyuan HSR station you have to bus to airport for NT$30.  (No Student Discounts/HSR: NT$175).    I arrived at the airport and after much confusion, realized that check-in time for my airline was not until 10:50.  Also, remember to pay attention to which terminal yo go to since the first stop on the bus was actually terminal two not terminal one.  After a successful check-in and passing through security I enrolled in the e-Gate program so I can easily pass through Taiwan immigration when I come back.  All it requires is you to scan your ARC card and finger print.  Do this only if you have time since I spent about 15-20 mins in line to enroll.  After walking towards my gate I cam across the “Green Relaxation Zone” where they have massage chairs a nice calming music.  (Between Gate C8-C9, you must get a free token from the book store between C7-C8).    I indulged in a 15 or so minute massage while playing some wonderful classical music on my headphones.

18:35

I have already touched down and am on the bus towards Seoul Station.  I walked around apparently looking confused since so many people wanted to help me.  I took the 6015 bus which is big and thankfully not packed.  However you are required to wear a seat belt haha.  Also, there is a Jamba Juice in the airport on the first floor by entrance but I  did not get any.

So, yesterday I didn’t finish writing since I was so tired.  Getting from Seoul Station to my hotel was hilarious.  First, my bag was so large I could not slide it through the gated walkway onto the metro and some random Korean guy helped me carry it over the gate haha.  Then, I could only partly remember the name of the station I was suppose to get off of and despite their being wifi  everywhere, it is completely useless if you do not have a Korean phone number to register your free wifi account, plus to get a sim card you must be in Korea for at least 3 days haha.  So I got off of the stop which I thought was right and walked along the main road for a while because “it felt right.”  Most of the time I had trouble finding escalators or elevators so I carried my luggage up one too many flights of stairs.  After at least a half hour of wandering, I decided to try to pull it up on the GPS on my phone.  Now this was a whole separate issue I knew about before coming.  So for some reason I cannot get off-line maps for Korea like I do for Taiwan.  So I pulled up the map (I luckily already saved the location of my hostel in my favorites) and the hostel shows up except it shows up as a dot on the map, with no streets or directions.  So I put the phone in compass mode and simply walked towards the dot and in 15-25 minutes I found the place luckily.  (I definitely used up a lot of Karma points on that.)

So after settling in I asked the (really nice) front desk guy what to eat this hour (21:00) and the response was just too funny.  He said most of the food places aren’t open just places to drink.  He suggest I go to McDonald’s or Burger King.  Sadly, he was right in the sense of most of the places were Chicken/Beer places or bars which were plentiful I might add.  I ashamedly settled for Burger King but I did come across some chicken kabob stand on the way back so I also had a few of those.