I would say Backpackers Inside is worth the buck because they provide daily breakfast, free luggage storage for up to a week and air-conditioned rooms.

They have two buildings - one of which is the HQ with the breakfast place, lounge, check-in counter and rooms and the other building (which is a short but ulu walk away) is just rooms. We have five of us so we chose the 4 Bed Family Ensuite room and requested for an additional foldable bed. It's a pretty basic room with 2 double decker beds, one washing machine, one computer cum tv, microwave, fridge, stove and a toilet. Everything you need squeezed into a tiny room! It's pretty squeezy for the five of us but good enough because we're travelling on a budget. There's also washing powder, softener and an iron at the small corridor before you reach your room.




Glad that there's a washing machine in the room because we really needed that for our 16 days trip!! Clothes take ages to dry though so I recommend using their dryer which is chargeable and located at their HQ building.

We checked in, settled down and showered before heading out for lunch at our favourite place for Rapokki, Kimchi Omu Rice and Gimbap!

Super loveee the Rapokki at Gimgane!

(Located at Hye Hwa station exit 4. Walk down the street and you will see Artbox, Paris Baguette and CGV on your right hand side. Gimgane is located at the end of the street, on your left hand side.)

Then we went off to meet our Korean friends at Dunkin' Donuts before heading over to Garosu.

By this time, we were all trying extremely hard to focus and keep up with our Korean friends. We have been travelling for almost 12 hours and have only slept for about 3 hours max. Sleepy max.

But still, we requested for them to bring us to Garosu! And I'm glad we made it there.




Garosu, or rather Garosu-gil (tree-lined streets), is a really pretty place where you can spot young and nicely dressed Koreans everywhere. It's kind of like the shops we have in our Haji Lane - little exclusive small shops that sells quirky and unique items. There are loads of open studios, cafés, restaurants, bars and fashion shops lining the streets of Garosu to keep you entertained. What I like about Garosu is that all of the shops put a lot of efforts in designing their shops so there's plenty of small nick nacks inside each shop, which forms up the identity of the cafe/shop.










In contrast, we look out of place there with our t-shirt, shorts and jet-lagged faces hahaha. Given a chance, I would have dressed up a bit before heading there T.T

We walked around a bit and settled down in a random cafe to hide from the sun.

Random: Summer in Korea was terrible. The sun's rays are so strong that we have to hide under the umbrella's shade while we shop and even then, we can still get sunburnt.




We bought some cupcakes from Gentle Lady Cupcake back to the cafe we were at to try. It's so good to go out in a group because we can all take turns to try the different cupcakes and not get fat (I assume). Tastes really good! We then play a game to guess which flavour each one of us likes best which entertained us for like 15 minutes hahaa. Super lame, I know!

Group picture!

After that, we walk around and found a place for dinner where they serve the most delicious Samgyeopsal (grilled pork belly bbq) I have ever tried in Seoul. The meat slices are so thick and juicy when barbequed plus the place gave us quite a selection of side dishes from potato salad and kimchis to basics like letture and garlic. And I forgot to check out the restuarant name dammit.

We played drinking games (every korean's favourite) while eating and drank like 6 glasses of Soju bomb (soju + Cass beer). I ended up vomitting everything I ate there on the way back. The most heart-breaking part is knowing that I vomitted all the tasty pork belly out :(

With that, we ended our first day in Korea with 3 of us drunk and sent back to our hostel by our Korean friends. Epic start of the trip.

-face palm-

I would say Backpackers Inside is worth the buck because they provide daily breakfast, free luggage storage for up to a week and air-conditioned rooms.

They have two buildings - one of which is the HQ with the breakfast place, lounge, check-in counter and rooms and the other building (which is a short but ulu walk away) is just rooms. We have five of us so we chose the 4 Bed Family Ensuite room and requested for an additional foldable bed. It's a pretty basic room with 2 double decker beds, one washing machine, one computer cum tv, microwave, fridge, stove and a toilet. Everything you need squeezed into a tiny room! It's pretty squeezy for the five of us but good enough because we're travelling on a budget. There's also washing powder, softener and an iron at the small corridor before you reach your room.




Glad that there's a washing machine in the room because we really needed that for our 16 days trip!! Clothes take ages to dry though so I recommend using their dryer which is chargeable and located at their HQ building.

We checked in, settled down and showered before heading out for lunch at our favourite place for Rapokki, Kimchi Omu Rice and Gimbap!

Super loveee the Rapokki at Gimgane!

(Located at Hye Hwa station exit 4. Walk down the street and you will see Artbox, Paris Baguette and CGV on your right hand side. Gimgane is located at the end of the street, on your left hand side.)

Then we went off to meet our Korean friends at Dunkin' Donuts before heading over to Garosu.

By this time, we were all trying extremely hard to focus and keep up with our Korean friends. We have been travelling for almost 12 hours and have only slept for about 3 hours max. Sleepy max.

But still, we requested for them to bring us to Garosu! And I'm glad we made it there.




Garosu, or rather Garosu-gil (tree-lined streets), is a really pretty place where you can spot young and nicely dressed Koreans everywhere. It's kind of like the shops we have in our Haji Lane - little exclusive small shops that sells quirky and unique items. There are loads of open studios, cafés, restaurants, bars and fashion shops lining the streets of Garosu to keep you entertained. What I like about Garosu is that all of the shops put a lot of efforts in designing their shops so there's plenty of small nick nacks inside each shop, which forms up the identity of the cafe/shop.










In contrast, we look out of place there with our t-shirt, shorts and jet-lagged faces hahaha. Given a chance, I would have dressed up a bit before heading there T.T

We walked around a bit and settled down in a random cafe to hide from the sun.

Random: Summer in Korea was terrible. The sun's rays are so strong that we have to hide under the umbrella's shade while we shop and even then, we can still get sunburnt.




We bought some cupcakes from Gentle Lady Cupcake back to the cafe we were at to try. It's so good to go out in a group because we can all take turns to try the different cupcakes and not get fat (I assume). Tastes really good! We then play a game to guess which flavour each one of us likes best which entertained us for like 15 minutes hahaa. Super lame, I know!

Group picture!

After that, we walk around and found a place for dinner where they serve the most delicious Samgyeopsal (grilled pork belly bbq) I have ever tried in Seoul. The meat slices are so thick and juicy when barbequed plus the place gave us quite a selection of side dishes from potato salad and kimchis to basics like letture and garlic. And I forgot to check out the restuarant name dammit.

We played drinking games (every korean's favourite) while eating and drank like 6 glasses of Soju bomb (soju + Cass beer). I ended up vomitting everything I ate there on the way back. The most heart-breaking part is knowing that I vomitted all the tasty pork belly out :(

With that, we ended our first day in Korea with 3 of us drunk and sent back to our hostel by our Korean friends. Epic start of the trip.

-face palm-