We were heading to South Korea to experience the thrills of the Korean Grand Prix 2011 but before that we had a whole lot of Seoul to explore and a couple of tours to check out along the way. The team consisted of myself, Chris (@theaussienomad) and John (@JohnONolan) and we were tweeting on the hashtag #T5Korea as the trip was organised by Travelllll.com along side Expedia.

The dreaded ten hour flight from Amsterdam included watching two films. One was “Bridesmaids”  much to the disgust of Chris, but had been recommended by a few people (yes mostly female). I had a pretty sleepless night, John O’Nolan spent most of the flight nodding off and snuggling up to The Aussie Nomad. We landed in South Korea pretty dazed and confused. After eventually working out the Korean cash machines and grabbing a quick drink from the 7-11 shop we headed to the train station.

Three lines, two changes and one missed metro stop later we finally made it to Bucheon where we pulled out the printed Google map with the hotel location and set about wandering the streets to find it.

Forty minutes later and after struggling to locate the New Prince hotel we opted to ask for directions, luckily one shop printed new directions for us as it turned out the hotel wasn’t anywhere near where we were searching.
After wandering aimlessly looking for a hotel and a ten hour flight the first thing you want to do is to have a hot shower… unfortunately for me this wasn’t happening. I stood naked in my room’s bath tub whilst holding the shower head dribbling cold water over me. I also avoided using the seemingly used toothpaste and hairbrushes that were complete with strands of hair and decided to watch a little bit of Tomb Raider on my room’s huge widescreen tv before meeting up with the other guys for dinner.

We decided to check out a Korean restaurant that we had wandered past earlier on whilst attempting to find our hotel. There were no handy photos on the menu to point at so we had to play the guessing game, randomly selecting choices from the menu and working our the correct term for beer. Fortunately we selected a good choice as the waitress added chicken, pasta, vegetables and spicy sauce to the hot plate in the centre of our table. Traveling to a country where there is a big language barrier is often quite daunting especially when traveling solo but on this occasion being in the company of two others it just seemed like a challenge and a fun experience.

The spicy chicken dish was surprisingly good and was washed down with a couple of Korean Cass beers. Cold seaweed soup was delivered to us next much to John’s confusion as he couldn’t work out if it was for washing his hands or for eating.

Satisfied with our attempts to sample Korean cuisine we wandered the streets to find a beer or two. The area was a mass of flashing coloured neon signs and we attempted to decode what they actually meant, which ones were bars? Which ones were karaoke?  Which ones were  gentleman’s bars? – asked John. Finally we found the quietest bar in the whole of Seoul where we drank a few draft beers. At 3000 won a beer (500ml) it was pretty good value for us travellers based in London. It had been a hectic day and we were all like zombies so we took a early night at 10 o’clock and set our alarms for a depressing 6:00am rise to change hotels.

Our flights for the trip were provided by KLM who provided a great experience and very cheerful air hostesses.

Our tour activities were provided by AJU Tours who were also insightful and very professional. Expedia also have a range of South Korean hotels.