South Korea Journal — Day 2–17.8.17
We had a good night’s sleep. In the morning we were still stunned that we finally had arrived in South Korea.
Our morning began with rain, and we had to find a place where we could buy bus transport cards (T-Money).
I explored the web for some information about places that we could buy a travel card from and discovered that every convenience store sells one and you also can charge it there (cash only). I have looked up “convenience store near me” (great google search feature). Coincidentally our building had a “CU” — a local convenience stores’ chain, located on the first floor.
At the store, I bought a raincoat, water bottle, and a transportation card. We returned to our room to get ready for our check out and then took the free airport shuttle back to the Incheon airport, in order to catch a bus to Seoul.
Once at the airport, we looked for the correct platform, therefore went inside and asked for directions.
After one trip on the elevator, we had arrived at the bus platform.
We didn’t wait long and got on the bus to Seoul.
It was about an hour long ride. The view from the windows just took my breath away.
Once we safely arrived at our bus stop we needed to figure out how to get to our next Airbnb. Sadly, we had neither a local sim card nor pocket wifi.
Our Airbnb host sent us pictures with directions from a specific metro exit, so we searched for that exit. After a few more minutes of roaming around with our luggage, we arrived at our building in Seoul!
I was in awe.
When we got to our floor there was a passcode to enter to that floor, my friend read our host’s instructions again and found the passcode, afterward we needed another passcode for our apartment.
It actually made me feel pretty safe, just because there was also a passcode to the floor.
Our apartment was a little one-room studio, with a small kitchenette and huge windows with an overview of the neighboring buildings.
It was smaller than our room in Incheon.
For a second I was quite shocked because I could not anticipate it to be so small, I was sure there were 2 rooms with 2 beds, or at least that what I wanted to see in the pictures of our host’s page.
We checked which amenities we actually had and whether something was missing. We were missing toilet paper and felt it might be rude to notify our host about it.
After a brief meeting with our lovely host, we decided to go outside and get to know our neighborhood. We knew that our apartment was really close to the Cheonggyecheon (청계천) stream, as we walked out we saw a very small stand selling drip coffee, so we decided to get our first ever coffee in Seoul.
I figured later that Korean like their coffee bitter, as no matter how many spoons of sugar I put inside it kept being bitter.
It was a warm August day, we found the stream and walked close by and somehow found ourselves in the middle of the largest street with stores selling different tools for gardening, home and what not.
I didn’t know why, but I had a sudden anxiety attack, for a few minutes I felt very dizzy as if were to faint at any moment, sadly had to ask my friend to return to our room as I couldn’t handle walking anymore.
Once we were back, I felt worse and didn’t know what to do.
I was so dizzy and couldn’t catch a breath.
I was glad that I took Valerian drops with me and had put some drops in my water. I longed for its rapid effect.
A few hours later, we went out again and found ourselves surrounded by skyscrapers and numerous companies’ buildings.
I craved to eat at a local Korean place, but it was hard to find a place that served vegetarian dishes. That’s how we ended up in a western restaurant that served pizza and pasta.
The food was actually great, it was expensive but I had to eat something.
I was happy for a mere second and then my anxiety enveloped me again, and I started to lose breath.
I felt better once we exited the restaurant and began roaming around again.
On the way, we entered a convenience store and bought a banana milk drink, which I always wanted to try, and we also stopped at a store that sold cosmetics and bought few face masks.
Once at the apartment, I took a shower and few additional Valerian drops, put a face mask on and tried to relax.
