Graduation Budget Trip 2017 {17 days of Korea + Japan } ❤️

- August 07, 2017

Hi lovelies,

It has been so long since my last post! I guess its just inertia or a lack of motivation that i have yet to blog about this trip.
I hold this trip really close to my heart as it is my first trip overseas with only one classmate coupled with the fact it is the first time i been away from home for such a long period of time ( 17 days to be exact). To say the least, it was hell of a epic fun - filled trip.

Content List ( will be broken up into many posts

Airline / Flight / Lodging
Seoul / Daegu / Gwangju / Busan
Fukuoka /Oita - Beppu / Miyazaki / Kagoshima
Fukuoka to Incheon
Incheon to Singapore

Flight to Seoul / Airbnb Lodging

As you probably noticed, we were both students on a tight budget. So we went with the cheapest flight that was available. We came down to China Eastern which provided us with 46kg of baggage but we had to transit in Shanghai. These were my flight details for reference.

So the day came and we went to the airport to board the flight. It was at the end of the terminal (literally the last gate ) we had to walk so far away.We were assigned seats different from what i had chosen during online check in. We were given the worse seats ever cause our seats were misaligned with the front row meaning our screens were slanted at some angle. But we asked the flight attendants if we could change to the last row as the last few rows were empty and he readily agreed :) we had the entire row to ourselves.

Airline Food.To be honest, I don't even remember what they served/ what i ate. Was watching
《微微一笑很倾城》 the movie edition and my friend who wanted to catch up on sleep debt ended up watching the entire movie with me. She went on to watch the entire drama serial during our trip. My opinion? The drama serial is much better than the movie.


Arrived at Pudong! As you may know, transiting at Pudong stills requires you to go through super strict security checks and screening. Knowledge of Mandarin is kinda required cos staff at the airport are not on the friendly side. My 3 hour stopover turned out to be barely enough as we barely got through security screenings and looking for the other gate and the flight time came.

Please note that the Shanghai - Incheon route only serves beef inflight. There is legit no other alternative =.= Please request for another meal ahead of time if you are traveling on this route. I was so hungry when i reached Seoul , i only had salad on board :(

We are in Seoul!! Seeing this arrival gate reminds me of so much as i have seen so many pictures of it while stalking my idols/actresses return to Koreaㅠㅠ

We decided to take the KTX to HapJeong station( our lodging). Directions are clear and the way to the station is rather straightforward. From the airport to Hapjeong costed 4900won using the Tmoney card.

We had to change at Seoul station. We had to walk for abit whille dragging our baggage (15min walk) to get to Hongdae first then to Hapjeong. Downloading the subway map app beforehand helps!

Spotted at Hongik Station~ One thing about Korean subways is that they always have lifts( you may have to walk a little further but thats always a life saver when you are lugging heavy baggage around)

One stop to Hapjeong.

My first meal in Korea ( eaten at 1AM KST) after settling down. The lodging was 3mins away from the subway and i used Naver Maps to navigate as Google Maps totally failed on me. I subscribed to M1 Data Passport for 10GB data ( my local data renewed during the middle of the trip so i thought it was pretty worth) My friend had the Singtel 1Gb for $20 plan but M1 data passport was what i had to live with) The connection was good and fuss free, i got connection to data even before alighting from the aircraft.

Room for two was okay but not enough to open luggage at all. We had to do it in the living room.The facilities were nice and warm in winter~! We booked the room through AirBnB and i think the reason this lodging was cheap as it was on the 4th floor ( it was hell for me on the first day but on my 17th day , i was so well trained lol) Do keep that in mind while picking your accommodation. Our average cost for accommodation per day came up to $25 per person. I would say that is rather affordable for Japan + Korea. A better detailed breakdown would be included in my future posts.This particular Seoul Airbnb costed SGD38 per night.