Lazymom Travels To Busan Korea - Preparations For The Trip

Anyoung haseyo!

20 days ago, I was in Busan with @davidke20 for our long overdue anniversary trip. I booked the tickets one year before the trip because Air Asia had a promotion. I had a year to renew my passport but only got it done 1 month before the trip. And I booked our accommodations around the same time I got my passport done. I used Agoda.com for our accommodations as I have a few ringgit of rewards in there.

Booking accommodations was tricky because I had to know which part of Busan I wanted us to stay in. Our flight was to arrive at 8.30am (7.30am KL time) on Friday 25th May at Gimhae International Airport. I decided to book a decent place not too far from the airport in order to leave our luggage behind, go hunt for breakfast and out sightseeing. I decided to stay 3 nights in Sasang district because there is a LRT connecting Gimhae International Airport to Sasang Metro Station.

I chose a place 4 minutes walk from Sasang Station. Sasang Station is one of the connecting stations in Busan. It's huge because it connects to both the LRT line and to the Metro lines. I relied on the above map a lot because it shows the places of interests. From Sasang, I decided a few places we could visit for the first 3 days in Busan, mainly the city and nature attractions. I'm not a shopping fan so there would be no shopping mall in my itinerary at all. No souvenirs shopping either. It was just going to be eat, sleep and sightsee.

Then, I decided to book the following 3 nights in a bed & breakfast hostel near to the famous Gwangali Beach. Because it takes too long a travel time to visit places of interests near the beach area from Sasang district and the hostel has darn good reviews. Indeed, Bexco Hostel did not disappoint.

For our last night in Busan, I decided we should move back to a hotel much nearer to the airport because our flight out the next day was 10.30am and I didn't want us to rush. I picked Airtel Busan, but the hotel we stayed upon arrival was a lot better in terms of location. There is no self check in nor early check in available by Air Asia from Busan to KL, which we only found out the night we left KL when we tried to check in online.

How I chose where to stay highly dependent on 2 things : ease of transport & availability of food. So I had to research about the places to eat as well and I rely on trip advisor a lot on places to eat. Here's one I found about eating places in Sasang which gave me a good feel about the accommodation I picked in that district.

https://www.tripadvisor.com.my/ShowUserReviews-g297884-d6715568-r304798103-Yugane_Dakgalbi_Sasang-Busan.html

Will review on the food in my later blogs. I have hundreds of photos from our trip and will be revealing them blog by blog 😎

Since we've never gone to Korea before, 2 weeks before the trip I started researching intensively by googling, reading travel blogs, checking out official travel websites and talking to people to have gone to Busan. I had 7 days to plan. A friend gave me an idea to simply search for "7 days itinerary in Busan" literally in Pinterest. Several results appeared and I pored over each one of them. Towards the final week before we depart, I was still trying to put together the best itinerary and stayed up till midnight the last 3 days before the actual day. On the eve of our departure date, I realised I hadn't even packed my luggage. So much for being organised heh.

Thanks to Korea Tourism Organisation Malaysia and thanks to a travel blogger who highlighted it, I got 2 free T-card (like Touch & Go) preloaded with KRW 5000 each, 2 additional KRW 5000 whole day Metro passes and other discount vouchers for food, shopping and attractions. I got them because of their survey promotion. It's still on until 2019. The travel passes were the best. They even advised me to download the necessary mobile applications I may need in Busan such as Kakao Metro and Korean translator app. The BUTI app was quite useful but we relied mainly on Google map and Google Translator. Otherwise, hand signs work too.

Strongly recommend anyone who wants to travel to Korea to first visit the Korea Tourism Organisation Malaysia located on the ground floor of Menara Hap Seng.

One last thing I did was to exchange some Korean Won. To know how much we'd be spending on food, transportation and entrances fees, I did a rough calculation and came up with RM 2000. I used MaxMoney services and got KRW 543,000.00 +/-. You can order your foreign currencies online without queuing at the counter and I have my currencies delivered to my doorstep*!

*Doorstep delivery only because I have a representative from Max Money in my BNI Quantum business group. That's the perk of being in a business group

In case I'd be missing home, I packed some 'comfort beverages'. Meal replacement shakes in case we're in a rush and have no time to eat breakfast or too lazy to eat out at night. Ah Huat and Aik Cheong coffee did come in handy in Busan, I tell you. I am glad knowing that Korean food has spicy dishes otherwise, I would have had packed chili padi. Also packed some medications like painkiller, Chi Kit Teck Aun pills and Clarinase in case I catch a cold that would ultimately spoil my trip.

I packed minimal. Light clothing, disposable panties, 1 jacket, a pair of snickers and a pair of walking shoes. The weather in Busan was spring going into summer. The temperature were 25 degrees celcius high and 10 degrees celcius low. I took 5 pieces of Peppermint Avenue kaftans with me because they're super light and no ironing required.

So...

• Flight - checked.
• Passport renewed - checked.
• Accommodations booked- checked.
• Itinerary for 7 days planned & logged into google calendar - checked.
• Travel essentials - checked.
• Luggage packed - checked.
• Currency exchange - checked.
• KLIA transfer - checked.
• Kids packed and ready to send to parent's house - checked.

The eve of departure - 24th May, 2018

After checking in our luggages, we chilled out at McDonald's KLIA2. Enjoyed the warm banana scone and latte while I watched the movie Train To Busan.

Next #lazymom 7 Days Busan Itinerary post:

• Lazymom Travels To Busan Korea-7 Days Itinerary:Day 1

#lazymom travels

"upvote, resteem & follow"
Together, we Steem on.
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@francesaw/apa-khabar-steemit-community
I'm a member of Steem Malaysia - TeamMalaysia on the Steem Blockchain
FB Page : https://web.facebook.com/groups/Steem.Malaysia/

Team Malaysia