Detail Direction to JYP, Cube and SM Building..

During my trip to Seoul I had the time to visit the 3 main competitors in the music industry in Korea. Its none other than SM Entertainment, Cube and JYP. I didnt get the chance to go to YG Building as the building is quite far and takes alot of time to go there :)

So here's a guide which I think might be very useful to those who would like to go there someday...

Here is a guide to go to SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, CUBE entertainment / CUBE cafe

1. Go to Cheongdam Station. Exit through exit 9 (Cheongdam Community Center)
2. When you walk out you can see a flower shop (there’s a 꽃 — flower sign). Walk straight until you saw the church on your right.
3. Keep walking until you find a junction with a Citibank across you.

Citibank

There’s two choice from here, go straight to SM Entertainment or to JYP Entertainment + CUBE Cafe

To SM Entertainment

1. When you see the Citibank sign, walk across the street
2. Keep walking straight until you pass Cheongdam Elementary School bus stop there will be Ferragamo Shop on your right
3. Walk a bit more and there’s SM Ent building (yellow building) on the right

S.M Entertainment (under renovation)

When I visited there, seems S.M Entertainment building was under renovation.. It was covered with a huge board with Super Junior-M and SNSD gigantic picture.

Back part

To JYP Building
Ok lets take it back from the Citibank junction....
1. Cross the citibank junction and walk straight.
2. Turn right on the first junction you see.
3. Keep walking, you'll see a Post office building (during my time of visit it was still under construction). Keep walking until you see a Dunkin Donuts sign! the JYP Building is in front of the Dunkin Donuts shop.

JYP Entertainment

When I arrived at the building I saw a few trainees ( I assume, as they were dressed almost hip hop + casual but ready to do a few dance moves in the dance studio) just coming into the building. It was impossible for others outsiders to enter as you need a password/key to enter the front door.


To Cube Building..
1. From the JYP Building all you need is to just walk a few more steps and then you'll see the building not far from JYP Building... No wonder some of the JYP trainees are groomed and debute under Cube.. they are neighbors anyway... I bet some of them probably date each other lol... 

CUBE Studio Cafe

CUBE Studio Cafe consists of two floors (or more I think..), first floor is cafe, toilet for public and a small office room. The upper floors are practice studio for CUBE artists — restricted for public :/ There was a glass door with a stair leading upstairs, but it was locked with password.
In my opinion CUBE cafe was a really nice place; warm (it felt good during wintertime :3) and cozy with brown-black dominant color and wooden interior. It had a looootttt complete merchandises of CUBE artists like lightsticks, photocard, photobook, slogan, etc. There were handprints and sign of each idols on the floor too. I took photo of all of them and then admiring the signed albums and merchandises displayed inside glass shelves.
Here are the pics..

The back part.. alley to the toilet, small office, and stair to CUBE studio

2YOON Harvest Moon display

B2ST polaroid

B2ST members’ hand print & sign

4minute & G.NA hand prints & sign

BTOB & Roh Jihoon hand prints & signs

As it is a cafe, they sell drinks and cakes beside official merchandises. The price of the drinks I think was quite reasonable, around 3,000-5,500won. There was free wi-fi too :3
When you order drinks, they will gave you a small trinket (when I visited I got B2ST) to pick up drinks…. which beeped and rang when your order are ready. I quickly went back to pick up desk, sat and drank my green tea latte while resting, enjoying the songs, music videos shown at the TV screen, and the atmosphere.

B2ST pick-up card

Here's a full map to help you with your Journey.... Which came very useful for my journey...

Finally i am back in Malaysia

Hi all...안녕하세요 여러분...
As you all might have read in the tittle post. I am back in Malaysia... Ive finished my 10 days trip to Korea. Well technically i am currently not in Malaysia but i am on a flight to Narita, Japan for work... I know i know what you guys might think, am i online while on a flight?!! Not of course. I am writing offline and saving it and later publishing this post once i am on the ground haha.
Well anyway thats not what i want to write about right now. I really enjoyed my 10 days trip to korea. Some of you guys who are closely following the news channel CNN, BBC, Astro Awani etc, you guys must have notice the news of regarding the probability of war between the North and South Korea and also the US. Well not to worry, its not as it seems on the news. Its hard for me to explain the real situation in south korea but to sum it up you might want to check out on youtube a video by simon and martina (eatyourkimchee crew) you can search their video on north korea. They explain it clearly there plus its from someone you have stayed 5 yrs in south korea so you get what i mean...
What i really enjoyed about my 2nd trip to korea is that i get to know allot of korean people this time around... I believe that when you are travelling abroad, you will learn alot about the country's beautiful culture just by getting to know the people.. Korea is a nation that is very welcoming towards tourist and people from abroad.. Thy are always willing to help when they see tourist scatching heir heads for directions. I remember one time when we arrived at a subway exit in Euljiro station. We were on our way to our hotel but we were confused by he map direction so i asked a lady who was on her way back from work. She seemed not familiar with the place but still she spent some time studying the map that i got and lead us to the correct direction. Thanks to the lady we got to our hotel safely.. Another incident that i remenber was that when we were on our way to the Gimpo airport by subway. We were stuck at a station while we were trying to figure out the correct direction an old guy who dressed nicely in a black coat asked us if he could help us. He can speak english quite well..he looked like he was on a business trip. After telling him that we were going to Gimpo airport, he told us to follow him because he was going the same way as we were. We were really blessed to have met these helpfull koreans during our trip.
Not all korean can speak english but eventhough some can speak english they are willing to help all they can. I remember one time when i was at he seoul station looking for the right platform to board a train to busan. I was confused with what was written in the ticket. A korean girl who looks like a college student help me figure out the correct platform number. Although she cant speak english but with her help i was able to find the correct platform.
Before i went for this 10 days trip to korea i met a korean penpal online. I call him 오빠 eventhough he was only a few months older than me. I wanted to call him oppa because i thought it would be cute and he let me call him oppa since technically he is older. Well anyway we have been contacting each other and he had help me alot though out my journey in korea. He recommends me alot of the famous places to visit in korea and also the delicious foods too. He even help me improve my hangul :). I thanked him alot for it. 감사합니다 장혁 오빠.  :)
Koreans are very warm welcoming and helpfull. If you go to korea someday i would recommend to mix and mingle with the people to be able to experience and learn their culture :)
Learn the language, communicate with their people then you will be able to learn their culture and collect valueble memories and experiences :)

Must visit places in jeju

Hi all...as i have promised i'll write about my jeju trip. I went to jeju on the 10th of april until 13th of april. Although i had 2 days to roam around i dont think it was enough. If you want to visit the whole island, you would probably need around 4 days. 1 day for north side, 1 day west side, and the other two days for both east and west. I fly to jeju via t'way airlines. All the flights to jeju use boeing 737 or bigger flights regardless of what airlines you choose.
Places that I went to....

*Seogsan Ilchulbong Peak
This place is a MUST GO place in jeju and i meant it with capital letters haha. I rented a taxi for a day for my trip to go places at jeju. It is much cheaper this way. It seems like the whole taxi communitty have agreed the fee for a day tour trip would cost around 120,000￦. I tried to haggle but the taxi driver ajusshi said its the best price he can give. He was very attentive of us aswell. Everytime there are nice views aroud he would ask us if we would like him to stop for us to take pictures. He also helped us buy entrance tickets and guide us until we are at the main entrance of our stops. Very nice he was. Most of the taxi driver in jeju can only speak very little english so it would help if you know basics hangul for them to understand what you actually wanted to say.
Seongsan ilchulbong is probably one of a few beautiful one of a kind scenery i have ever seen in this wold. It is a very beautiful place. Regardles of whether you go on weekends or weekdays the place will be packed with people. It took us about one hour to go up ilchulbong and half an hour to go down. The entrance fee is 3,000￦  per person. It is quite cheap compare to other entrance fee places im about to write about. If you plan to go to seongsan ilchulbong make sure you wear the right shoes and right attire as the top of ilchulbong will be quite windy.

*Jeju folks village
This place os famous for the old dynasty folk drama which i forgot the name already. But i do remember the hero is Jin jee hee (Did i spell it correctly?). If you like the drama and korean folks village then you must go here. The entrance fee is about 8,000￦. For me it is quite pricey considering the content inside of the village is not much. But still i enjoy the view. It took me about 20min taxi ride fron seongsan ilchulbong to the folks village. In the village you will find old korean folks houses with many tools that they used during the time. There are also a few small cow barns and horse barn where you can take pictures with the animals. We didnt spend alot of time there as we were running out of time and there are still many places to go.

*Jeju mini land
Our next stop was jeju mini land. The entrance fee is 9,000￦ per person. Inside you will find many of worlds famous landmark buildings in miniature size. There are the famous eiffle tower, london bridge, the white house, taj mahal, san fransisco bridge and many more. Also there is a small mirror maze museum inside. During the time of our visit the place seems to be unoccupied and less visitor plus it seemed that the place was not really well mantain and taken care of so for me the 9,000￦ fee was a bit too much. But i like the mirror maze they have there. It was bigger than the mirror maze at the eyetrick museum in seoul.

*Eco land
This was our last place of visit for the day. The entrance fee is 11,000￦ per person. It was probably best to visit thos place during spring and summer time because you can see the sakura blooming during spring. You need to catch the train ride to visit around the park. Its a beautiful place. At one stop you will be able to see a beautiful windmill. This place is famous for many of korean cf was done here and also if you are a fan of the variety show running man you will remember during cha tae hyun and shin see kyung episode where yoo jae suk and others had to collect dirt using their feet..well it was at thos place.. The eco land... Along the train ride you will get to meet a few species of animals at the park. One that caught my attention was a white deer.. It was very beautiful.

*Maze land
Another place that i would like to suggest you uys to go in jeju is Maze land. The entrance fee is about 8,000 ￦ if im not mistaken. It is one of the many places in jeju that the running man went to. It has 2 huge maze park. Each maze park has the easy way out and the hard way out. There is an observatory where you can have a good view pf the park. I also notice a few staff that they have assigned on the park to make sure that no one got lost around the park. For running man fans this is a must visit site in jeju. Definately must go :).

Hello from Busan

안녕하세요 여러분...hi all..
Im writting this while waiting for my train from Busan station to Seoul station... I have been in Busan since the 13h of april.
So for those of you guys who would like to go on a trip to Busan later on sit tight and sit back all give you a few pointers on how to go to Busan and what to visit.

To Busan by train (KTX bullet train)
You can either go to Busan by flight or by ktx train. I prefer via train because it is a great experience and it is much more cheaper. It cost me about 110,000￦  to and fro. And it takes about 3 hrs from Seoul station. While on the way from Seoul to Busan it will stop at a few others stops and it will annouce the stops in korean, chinese, japanese and english. So no need to worry if you dont understand korean. It also has a few monitors in each car and it announces there too. For 1st class seat it will cost you about 180,000￦ to and fro.

How to Board the train
After you have purchase the train ticket you will have these infos from your ticket.
*time depart n arrive.
*car no.
*seat no.
*train no.
But you wont have the track/platform no. on it. Fist your need to figure out the platform no. to know where to board the train. You can get the platform no from LED departure boards all around the station. The number will show up within 1 hr before departure time. After you find out your track number you can board the train at the platform. When you arrive at the platform you can find your car number on the train and on the platform and then you can board your train there. :)
I went to Busan straight after i arrived from Jeju. You might want to buy your tickets a few days before you depart because it is fast selling. I bought mine 3 days before my departure date and i got on the 2nd last car. Huhu.
What to see in Busan?
Ok thats all for now... I will tell you more about my jeju trip when i got the time.

My second trip to Korea.a longer trip

안녕하세요 여로분. Hi all.
It has been awhile since my last post. I want you all to know that i am currently in Seoul for a loonggg vacation trip to relax my mind and all from work and stuff and also to relive my experince in Korea..
I love korea.everything about it,the people,the culture, the food, the music, the language...just everyhing.. That is why i decided to go and visit korea again and this time i am going all out. For 10 days i will try my best to go to every places that i can and hopefully i will be able to share everything with all the readers.

The flight journey
My friends and i take off from kuala lumpur to seoul via air asia x flight. It was a pleasant flight. At first i was seating at the 40ish row in the flight but the girl passanger next to me asked if i could change seats with her mother who was alone at 30ish row. I said sure.I was glad to help, i could imagine her concern towards her mother who was probably around 50 of age. So i agreed to change. My new seat was nice too considering it was an isle seat and it was near to the wash room. We toom off at 9am malaysia time and arrive at incheon around 4pm malaysian time.the temperature in Incheon was around 12 degree celcius according to flight captain.

Our transportation?
Like last year we decided to go with the cheapest mode of public transportation we could find. Seoul has probably the best subway sistem in the whole world in my opinion. Owh well ive only have seen london and malaysia's subway system. And based on my observations seoul subway beats both! I love it. Its easy to find your way around seoul because of the excellent subway system. No need to worry im sure once you've tried you will learn everythinv very quickly.
From Incheon we decided to stop at Gimpo airport to double check and confirm our flight to Jeju island. Once we've checked we went to check into our hotel at Myeongdong. We stayed at Kimchee Myeongdon Guesthouse which was situated very near to Euljiro-3-ga subway station. We had trouble finding the guesthouse at first but luckly I asked a lady who seemed to be going back from her workplace. She was nice enough to help take her time to view the map and finding the location of the hotel for us. The hotel was actually straight from the subway exit but we had crossed the wrong road.huhu..once im able to use my laptop i will upload a detail map for all you readers out there.

Kimchee Myeogdong Guesthouse
The guesthouse is on the 2nd floor of the building so once we got there we had to carry our luggage upstairs. But it was all ok for me. Before i went for this trip i already prepared myself physically and mentally..at the guesthouse door, the staff named Derek greeted us. He was so nice and pleasant. I book the hostel via Agoda.com so i got discounts and point from agoda..yippie!..Derek check us in and he helped us carry our luggage to the 3rd flr where our rooms were. We stayed in a few hours to perform our solat/prayers and then we were off again for dinner...

Dinner...
The place were very alive at nights because there were many bars for korean to drink soju(local alcohol) to warm up their body. The tempreture were pretty cold too because it was raining when we got out. I think it was probably about 6-8 deg celcius.. We were looking for a local  식당 (restaurant) that serves seafood or fish but we were in no luck. It was hard to find a seafood restaurant there. But there was this restaurant that serves kimchee jigae (kimchee stew) and dwanjangjigae (soy stew) so we decided to go and try it our. The restaurant owner was very welcoming. They cant speak english but they try their best to accomodate us. I ordered us a kimchee jigae, dwanjangjigae, noodles, and rice. I told the restaurant owner to exclude meat in all our dishes and she seemed to know that we were muslims and we didnt eat meat. I asked the owner again if they had fish, the owner said to me that they do have it in their menu but it was all out of stock. It was understanable since it was like 10pm already.huhu.. After dinner we went for a walk arond the neighbourhood just to see around the place. Its really the 'downtown' of seoul. A really nice place to stay. You can find 24hrs store  at almost every corner of the street and coffee shops are everywhere.
We stayed at kimchee myeongdong for 3 days and 2 nights before we take a flight to jeju island. I will write about that next time when i feel like it :).
I will upload more photos once i got my laptop. Bye...
If you are planning on a trip to korea and looking for a place to tay i suggest kimchee guesthouse. They have many branch across seoul. Here is a link to their website http://www.kimcheeguesthouse.com

From Seoul to Jeju by Plane... Which Airlines?

When planing to go to Jeju Island from Seoul you basically have 2 choices. either you...

1. FLY to Jeju Island....quick, fast & less time consuming... or you go
2. By Train & Ferry... which can take up to 5-6 hours long journey...

After some research and consideration, I opt for the 1st choice.. because in terms of money/budget both method are not much different..both cost almost equal... but in terms of time, it makes a huge difference... if you fly to Jeju, it will only takes about 1 hour... And for me, Time Is Money sooo.. I opt for the 1st choice.. but if you would rather like to enjoy your journey just chill out and enjoy the ride then you probably want to opt for by train & ferry...


So if you want to fly from Seoul to Jeju Island, what should you know about??? which airlines is the best??? and which airport to take off??.. well look no further, I hope that what Im about to share will help you plan your journey to Jeju in advance....


Which airlines is the best??..cost less??
Well there are many airlines to choose from but what I will focus in this entry is from a backpackers' point of view (since Im a backpacker traveler my self). So when you're traveling backpacking, what you want to consider the most is you budget. You would want to take the most cost effective airlines.

Unlike malaysia, which only have like airasia & maswing, In Korea there are a few low-cost airlines you can choose from.

  There's Jeju Air, the very famous among backpackers! not because its the most low-cost among them all but because its easier to purchase flight tickets from the airlines if you plan to purchase them via online in advance. Also its easy to purchase the ticket online because it has an english website for foreigners to book their flights. And also another advantage is that you can purchase the tickets using your ATM Electronics VISA card or any debit card!!! yess!!!... Ive tried it and it works but I have to warn you make sure you use IE browser to purchase and when you key in your handphone number make sure its the correct format (with area code and everything!) for you to be able to get the safety code via your phone.

In case you were wondering what is an electronics visa debit card.

And then there's the Eastar Jet . Just like the Jeju air, eastar also provide an english translated website for its foreign customers. Compare to Jeju Air, I think this one is cheaper in price. but then again the price varies from time to time. And if you're lucky you can get up to RM100/pax to and fro!!!.. The only downside for eastar jet compare to Jeju air is that you can only purchase the tickets using your credit card.. no debit card allowed.

Other options include Jin Air & Air Busan.
I dont know much about Jin Air except that its a subsidiary of Korean Air also it doesn't comes with English language in its official website. Ive never try to book a flight from Jin Air so Im not sure if they accept Electronics Visa Debit card.
Air Busan is a subsidiary of Asiana Airlines, you may try to book air ticket to Jeju Island from this airline as well. Just like Eastar Jet, no worries of the language barrier and also the credit card payment. You can also choose your own preferred seat for free. Depart either from Seoul - Gimpo International Airport or Busan - Gimhae International Airport. But compare to Jeju Air and Eastar Jet, Air Busan ticket price cost abit more than the previous two.

 Soo, which one did I pick???... none of the above!!!.. yesss, i repeat.. none of the above because I decided to go with the cheapest of them alllll....

I book my flights a month in advance, so before I purchase it i checked from all the airlines and I found that T'way Air has the cheapest fee so I book with T'way. Unlike Jeju Air, T'way has no english translated website. So in order to purchase the ticket you should atleast know a few hangul words to get thru the purchasing process. T'way Air accept only credit cards and no debit card. Dont bother trying, ive tried unsuccessfully.


Tips:

1. Before booking online, some of the above airlines require to register as a member first. (With Jeju Air, you will only be able to enjoy the discount rate by registering yourself first). Registration is quite easy.
2. Flight to Jeju Island from Seoul city is depart from Gimpo International Airport, not Incheon International Airport. So, remember to inform your taxi driver which airport are you heading to if you want to fly to Jeju Island.
3. You can also check with bigger/more famous airlines like Korean Air & Asiana Airlines but the ticket fee is a bit pricey.

See, it is actually so easy to plan a trip to a country eventhough our language is different from them and it's definitely not a big deal as long as you got the heart and soul and also not forgetting to spend a lil bit of your time to plan a trip. Seriously, I managed to book a return ticket for my friends and I from Seoul to Jeju Island without any help from travel agent or even from my Korean friend.

In my next entry, Ill show you how to purchase the flight ticket online thru T'way Air website. :)