Seoul Trip 2017 Day 1 (18/12/2016)

In order to save money for my holidays this December, I took China Eastern Airlines for both my Japan and Seoul trip, earning 6miles when I booked through Expedia using my UOB privi card. When I checked Seoul ticket prices on SQ (direct flight), it was already $1.4k per pax, and China Eastern Airlines was only $750, so it was almost half price. We decided we could afford the time to transit,  just like our June trip to UK, saving bucks by spending more time traveling.  

Coincidentally, I transited at Shanghai for both my trips, so I was already quite familiar with the procedures and the airport. The transit time is not as bad as my Okinawa trip as P was with me this time and we only waited for 2-3 hours before waiting to board again. However, I felt a bit sick once I thought of the plane ride (quite a deja vu feeling as the two trips were just 2 weeks part) as I was down with diarrhoea once I landed in Okinawa. I tried to get rid of this thoughts on the 5 hour flight to Shanghai but the very bad turbulences did not help.

P was excited once we reached Shanghai as its exactly where he wanted to be. There's a Starbucks at our transit area and they've launched some limited edition stuff over there for X'mas. Our trip had not started proper and we had already spent hundreds of dollars on his Starbucks collection. Sigh... I did not feel happy and we had a little argument, but we did not want to spoil our holidays so we reconcile pretty fast.

We reached Seoul past noon and went looking for the recommended way to get to our hotel. I looked at the videos the hotel had created and sent to us prior to the trip (quite high tech and good customer service) and decided that taking the Airport Rail to Seoul Station and then a taxi right to the doorstep of the hotel should be the safest way, it cost the same as the Limousine bus but we do not need to find our way from the bus stop to the hotel with our luggages. 

Found the Travel Centre right after the arrival area

The trip cost us 15k won per pax (less than 20SGD)

Found our way to the Airport Express station and the train was waiting

The AREX tickets with clear instructions

Actually the piece of paper was not needed as the driver was waving at us right after we exited the AREX train area. He was able to ask us some simple questions in English, but we were quite shocked when we got to the carpark exit and the cabbie was shouting away to the lady communicating with him at the gantry, just like how people scream at each other in Korean dramas. It's not really his fault as the lady did not let us out of the carpark and he was trying to explain that he's the pickup service cabbie. Anyway, I must admit that I went to Seoul with some prejudice as Eric had told us that unlike the polite Japanese, the Koreans are rude like their PRC neighbours. At the end of the trip, Japan is still our preferred country of travel but Seoul and Koreans are not that bad and the cabbie was the only shouting Korean we've really met during the trip.

Our hotel was really near to Seoul Station as its quite centralized and located at Myeong Dong area, I think we only sat in the cab for about ten minutes and the driver made a few turns before we reached our hotel. The short trip really benefit the driver as we paid a flat rate for the cab bundled with AREX so I guess he's really lucky we're so near.

Like what I read from reviews, the reception staff at Shin Shin Hotel were really friendly and spoke good English. Many reviewers mentioned that the hotel room is small but we felt that it was quite okay and cosy, not sure whether its because we're having a premium twin room. Anyway, its our 'home' for the next 7 nights, the entire duration of the trip.

Our room was located at another building from the reception and only 3 rooms on each level

A very open bathing area and we enjoyed soaking in the tub (alone)

Our beds, we moved the beds together after the first two nights

This working area was soon littered with stuff during our trip

Large wardrobe at the entrance of the room and we left our luggages there

I loved the location of our hotel. The staff were helpful and friendly. Only complaint that I had was that soundproofing was not that good so I woke up from people checking into the next room one morning. For some of the mornings, the chambermaid moved some chairs during housekeeping upstairs and woke me too. I sleep easily most of the time so it's pretty unusual for me to wake up from the noise, feeling frustrated.

Seoul Trip 18th December 2016 to 25th December 2016 (All about our Pre-Wedding Shoot)

I'm not sure why I lost the passion to blog much in 2016, I have not finished my blog post for the Hakusan Ultramarathon as of now but I promised myself to complete the blog as it was really a memorable race for me.

Anyway, this is my first blog about my wedding. Ah, I'm finally getting married! It's a lot of preparation on top of my new home which is in the midst of renovation right now. I've done so much stuff that are really blog-worthy but did not have the patience or time to blog about those. Hope I'll get back on track someday!

What inspired me to get back to blogging is this Seoul trip, it is my first trip to Korea and we decided quite sometime back to do our pre-wedding shoot during the trip. We had wanted to visit Korea in 2015 but decided to shelf the idea as we both loved Japan so much that we did another winter trip to Hokkaido. We would have loved to do our pre-wedding shoot in Japan but after viewing the photos and considering the current trend, Korea pre-wedding shoot appeal to us more in terms of the backdrop, props, makeup, hairstyling and basically the whole package. After we finally confirmed our wedding reception venue around September, I started researching about our pre-wedding shoot by reading blogs, forums and sending enquiries.

Short-listing the coordinating company and studio...

(Ido Wedding and OneThreeOneFour)
I thought Ido wedding had quite a lot of good reviews and thus that was the first 'studio' (strictly speaking, they are more like a middle man between us and the Korean studios) we contacted but the Korean lady we met up to discuss appeared quite aloof (not sure if its lost in translation?) and the price was simply too steep. Initially I thought that it will be safer to contact a company based in Singapore to help us look for a studio as we did not know how to communicate with the Korean studios but I realised they are really charging a premium price. Both Ido Wedding and OneThreeOneFour quoted us almost 4k as the main requirement for our shoot is to capture snow scenes (we really love snow!) and they had offered to bring out us out of Seoul area to Gang-won province or a ski resort to capture heavy snowfall. We felt that 4K just for pre-wedding photo shoot was really too steep so we decided to consider other ways to do it.

(Hello Muse and Mr K Korea Wedding)
The next few options were explored and I believe they were companies with interpreters who can help us coordinate between the Korea studios, that's a really good options as we can contact the Korean studios without speaking the language, plus the price is cheaper too. I contacted the lady from Mr K Korea Wedding through wechat and honestly she was really nice, she suggested taking photos at Nami Island while the person who replied me from Hello Muse suggested Dosan Park. However, they kept emphasizing that snowfall cannot be predicted so there was a risk of traveling all the way there with no snow or only a very thin layer of snow on the ground. December is still early winter and we decided that we couldnt afford to risk it, the effects will be quite different if its just a thin layer of snow on the ground, so going to a ski resort is preferred. (I should be very glad we did not risk it as Seoul is seriously not as cold as Hokkaido since we arrived, more like early spring weather, therefore no snow at Nami Island at all even though the lady thought that mid-December should be good enough)

Another coordinator that I randomly found on facebook replied me:
您好。。。
一半左右的studio都可以在冬天拍街道景,只要有遇到下雪天,就可以拍到,但~何時下雪並非人為可以控制喔。這部份您必須碰運氣...再來就是~零下的天氣穿婚紗在戶外拍攝,新娘會非常辛苦,臉凍傷的機會高,最算沒凍傷,可能會因太冷臉僵硬到笑不出來。 您再評估看看喔。
Kohit Wedding!!
I forgot where I chanced upon good reviews of Kohit Wedding (I contacted almost every sources I can find to ask about taking photo in the snow) but I felt really lucky I found them. They are not as well known as some other established companies as I found out later that they are mainly ran by a couple plus two other part timers so its considered a small budding company. I kept googling winter pre-wedding photos and only two Korean studios had the images of what we had in mind (Roi Studio and Sum Studio), I was really happy when these two studios were in their list of studios available and was pleasantly surprised when they quoted a much cheaper price (about 3.6K SGD) than others. On top of that, they were able to include both outdoor and indoor shoots for us at that price, so it was indeed much cheaper than what others had quoted. The package is very good as we can choose 30 pictures for the album instead of the normal 20 pages, plus the blown up framed photo that will be sent to us through EMS courier. They also thrown in freebies like a behind-the-scene video, I realised that it was taken by David from Kohit during the shoot but the quality is not too bad from the YouTube videos uploaded. Most importantly.. since its free, why not?  I was glad that the my search for the studio was finally over when I made the booking with Kohit somewhere in Oct and paid 20% to them through PayPal. The only disadvantage was that the PayPal fees of 4% was eventually included but now that the shoot was over, I still feel that its all worth the price and effort.

Its 5am now in Seoul, so time to sleep and I will update more about our trip later on...