! iqra
Hello! It's me, Iqra, again! Long time... no see... (Oops...)
Last time I left off, I had just spent my first few days in Korea. Well, we shall move on to the next major chapter of this trip... the visa run.
What is a visa run?
At first, I was initially freaked out when my recruiter told me I was doing this. But then I did some research and realized that it's quite a common thing to do. So, a visa run is when you fly to another country to process your visa, and then fly back when it's done. Usually this takes about 3 days. Mine took exactly 3. So what I was set to do was fly to Japan on September 1st, go to the Korean embassy there, hand them my materials (passport, passport photos, and the amount of money needed), and then pick them up on the 3rd.
And so, my mom and flew to Fukuoka, Japan! As someone who always wanted to go to Japan, I was super stoked. But of course, not everything is like in reality. The hotel was essentially in the middle of... nowhere. Except for the embassy, of course. And so, without knowing how to use the subway or the bus, I felt a little trapped. The next thing was that my laptop wasn't supported in the Japanese outlets. Japan uses the same type of plugs as America - the rectangular two pronged plugs. But my laptop is three pronged! So I couldn't look up anything I wanted to (such as how to use the subway). After my mom's prodding, we decided to look a few things up on my phone and just... wing it. And so that's what we did. At first I looked up where the fun things in Fukuoka were, and google told me Hakata, so that's where we told the taxi to go. I remembered some Japanese, so that was definitely nice, because no one in Japan speaks English at all. At least, no one in Fukuoka does. Or none of the people that I ran into.
In Hakata it definitely becomes more city-like and urban. There was a Grand Hyatt, which is where I told the taxi to go to, since I assumed there would be some staff that spoke English - and correct I was! We asked a few questions and then went on our way to the indoor mall-outlet thingy, and gosh, it was so pretty!
It was filled with shops and places to eat, and had a man-made river running throughout the enter thing, and every few steps there would be fountains and other pretty sights! There was a giant Muji store I really, really wanted to raid, but... we didn't. My mom was very uninterested in pens and stationary, so I didn't go. Next time I go to Japan, I'm going to buy everything. I love Muji pens. I don't write with anything else (yes, I am that bougie). We did quite a bit of shopping. Unfortunately, we didn't buy any souvenirs, which now that I think about it, we should have. But! Towards the end of the night, they played a water show. In the picture on the left, they dimmed all the lights and covered the windows with tapestries and projected a J-Pop band, EXILE's, performance onto it and the fountains in the water did lots of cool things, all with pretty lights to top it off. That was definitely cool to watch, and was a great way to end the night before we headed back to our hotel. Oh, and of course, we picked up like a bajillion bottles of the Biore UV Watery Essence sunscreen (or whatever it's called), since it's such a cult classic. Wear your sunscreen, kids.
We came across a purikura booth, which I immediately dragged my mom towards. If you don't know what purikura is, I highly suggest google image searching it. It's a photo booth where you take pictures, which are then editted to look more cartoon-y, and then you head into a different booth where you get to edit the pictures! It's a lot of fun. If you ever see one, do it. Purikura booths are fantastic. There was also an arcade, where I subsequently lost about $5 trying to get a pikachu pillow pet on the claw machine. These games are rigged, I swear. But the catch of the night was a giant enclosed booth of Luigi's Mansion. Yeah. If you ever played the game as a kid, you'd know that it freaking rocks. It was one of the first GameCube games my brother and I ever got, and we loved it. So when I saw the gigantic booth for it, I nearly screamed. You head inside the booth and there are vaccuum guns that you hold and you have to suck up the ghosts, and it moves and everything. I kept telling my mom that I had to take a picture of it for my brother, since we'd play that together so often. Unfortunately, I didn't. But just know that it was there, and I'm going to go back one day and play that game.
We also discovered that my mom loves Japanese food. Prior to our trip, the only Japanese food she'd had had was sushi and ramen. Granted, this is also what most American people have had. But she had a great foodie time in Japan. The first day we got steak strips with rice, hash browns, miso soup, salad, and three different sauces. I have to admit, that was probably one of the best steaks I've ever had. At first when the waiter came, we argued about whether we wanted the steak well done or medium well. Eventually, the mother won, and we got it well done, but wow, it was so perfectly cooked. We were both amazed. Another day, I introduced my mom to Okonomiyaki - Japanese pancakes. They're savory pancakes, but be careful if you're Muslim, as a lot of time they're made with pork. The okonomiyaki we ordered (left picture) was made with shrimp.
If you haven't noticed, my mom doesn't care about my food pictures, and will dig in before I've taken it. Rude.
Aside from this, and general wandering, we didn't do much in Japan. The trip was only three days - and not even three full days. We visited a few shrines, which were definitely cool, but ultimately, not enough time to really explore. We did figure out the subway though, which is good.
And so, proper working visa in hand, we headed back to Korea! We landed in Incheon at 9PM, and thus we took off to Seoul to stay there for the weekend. We stayed in a guesthouse in Itaewon, and from there we explored. Some shopping was done (correction: a lot of shopping was done, specifically jewelry, by my mom - I got to get a cool watch), and then we ran off to see the other parts. My coworker recommended to go to Gwanghwamun to see the palace, so we did! It was very beautiful. Unfortunately, all those pictures are on my mom's phone, so I don't have any of those to share. But there are plenty of boys and girls walking around in hanbok and other traditional wear.
Later, we went to Namsan Tower, which is a famous tower in Myeongdong - a lot of couples and tourists come to this area. We made the big mistake of not finding where the shuttle cab was and hiked up the entire hill from Myeongdong station to the cable car. Unless steep hills and walking for 15 minutes straight up an inclined hill don't bother you, don't do it. My thighs hurt just remembering the experience. Regardless, we got there, and the tickets were about 8,000 won (~$8) for the cable car. It goes through the mountain, and so you get to see the skyline of Seoul. Then, at the base of the tower, there are shops and restaurants you can look up. They also have the famous lock fences - for those who don't know what that is, a lock fence is a wire fence where couples buy locks for. You and your significant other write a little message one your locks, and then you lock your locks together. After doing that, you place your lock on the fence, and supposedly, your relationship will be as strong as the locks locked together. It's entirely commercial, but a cute story is cute, I suppose. To go up the tower is an extra 20,000 won. There, they take your picture on a green screen, which you can get projected onto the Namsan Tower. My mom and I actually liked our pictures, so we got it. But yes! Up the tower it's mainly gazing out at the city and admiring the pretty lights.
Aside from that, the Namsan Tower was a little underwhelming. The lines were too long for such a short amount of time spent there. Regardless, we had our fun and went back to the guesthouse. The next day, we got up and went back to Gwanghwamun to explore more! We had only seen the outside of the palace, but this time we got to walk inside. And before that, we got an excellent American style breakfast, especially since we were in Itaewon (also called "American in Seoul" because of the amount of foreigners).
The rest of the time we simply just wandered around, did some shopping, and explored what there was in Seoul. Finally, after a long and exhausting weekend, we went back to my new home in Suwon, in which I got my mother lost for two hours and we eventually hailed a taxi to drop us off vaguely near where we lived. Here's a quick tip for traveling: as soon as you get to the place you're staying at, whether it be your home or a hotel, mark it on a map like Google Maps (or KakaoMap or Naver Maps if you're in Korea) so that, in case of a language barrier, or if you just don't know the address, you can show a taxi driver the map. Or you can just walk in the direction of the starred location.
The next day of course, was a Monday, which meant my job - the whole reason why I am even here, in Korea, was about to start! But that's for another blog post. I'll see you all later, hopefully!
Iqra, over and out.
visa run, days leading up to the job
Hello! It's me, Iqra, again! Long time... no see... (Oops...)
Last time I left off, I had just spent my first few days in Korea. Well, we shall move on to the next major chapter of this trip... the visa run.
What is a visa run?
At first, I was initially freaked out when my recruiter told me I was doing this. But then I did some research and realized that it's quite a common thing to do. So, a visa run is when you fly to another country to process your visa, and then fly back when it's done. Usually this takes about 3 days. Mine took exactly 3. So what I was set to do was fly to Japan on September 1st, go to the Korean embassy there, hand them my materials (passport, passport photos, and the amount of money needed), and then pick them up on the 3rd.
And so, my mom and flew to Fukuoka, Japan! As someone who always wanted to go to Japan, I was super stoked. But of course, not everything is like in reality. The hotel was essentially in the middle of... nowhere. Except for the embassy, of course. And so, without knowing how to use the subway or the bus, I felt a little trapped. The next thing was that my laptop wasn't supported in the Japanese outlets. Japan uses the same type of plugs as America - the rectangular two pronged plugs. But my laptop is three pronged! So I couldn't look up anything I wanted to (such as how to use the subway). After my mom's prodding, we decided to look a few things up on my phone and just... wing it. And so that's what we did. At first I looked up where the fun things in Fukuoka were, and google told me Hakata, so that's where we told the taxi to go. I remembered some Japanese, so that was definitely nice, because no one in Japan speaks English at all. At least, no one in Fukuoka does. Or none of the people that I ran into.
 |
| Hakata City in Fukuoka |
It was filled with shops and places to eat, and had a man-made river running throughout the enter thing, and every few steps there would be fountains and other pretty sights! There was a giant Muji store I really, really wanted to raid, but... we didn't. My mom was very uninterested in pens and stationary, so I didn't go. Next time I go to Japan, I'm going to buy everything. I love Muji pens. I don't write with anything else (yes, I am that bougie). We did quite a bit of shopping. Unfortunately, we didn't buy any souvenirs, which now that I think about it, we should have. But! Towards the end of the night, they played a water show. In the picture on the left, they dimmed all the lights and covered the windows with tapestries and projected a J-Pop band, EXILE's, performance onto it and the fountains in the water did lots of cool things, all with pretty lights to top it off. That was definitely cool to watch, and was a great way to end the night before we headed back to our hotel. Oh, and of course, we picked up like a bajillion bottles of the Biore UV Watery Essence sunscreen (or whatever it's called), since it's such a cult classic. Wear your sunscreen, kids.
We came across a purikura booth, which I immediately dragged my mom towards. If you don't know what purikura is, I highly suggest google image searching it. It's a photo booth where you take pictures, which are then editted to look more cartoon-y, and then you head into a different booth where you get to edit the pictures! It's a lot of fun. If you ever see one, do it. Purikura booths are fantastic. There was also an arcade, where I subsequently lost about $5 trying to get a pikachu pillow pet on the claw machine. These games are rigged, I swear. But the catch of the night was a giant enclosed booth of Luigi's Mansion. Yeah. If you ever played the game as a kid, you'd know that it freaking rocks. It was one of the first GameCube games my brother and I ever got, and we loved it. So when I saw the gigantic booth for it, I nearly screamed. You head inside the booth and there are vaccuum guns that you hold and you have to suck up the ghosts, and it moves and everything. I kept telling my mom that I had to take a picture of it for my brother, since we'd play that together so often. Unfortunately, I didn't. But just know that it was there, and I'm going to go back one day and play that game.
If you haven't noticed, my mom doesn't care about my food pictures, and will dig in before I've taken it. Rude.
Aside from this, and general wandering, we didn't do much in Japan. The trip was only three days - and not even three full days. We visited a few shrines, which were definitely cool, but ultimately, not enough time to really explore. We did figure out the subway though, which is good.
And so, proper working visa in hand, we headed back to Korea! We landed in Incheon at 9PM, and thus we took off to Seoul to stay there for the weekend. We stayed in a guesthouse in Itaewon, and from there we explored. Some shopping was done (correction: a lot of shopping was done, specifically jewelry, by my mom - I got to get a cool watch), and then we ran off to see the other parts. My coworker recommended to go to Gwanghwamun to see the palace, so we did! It was very beautiful. Unfortunately, all those pictures are on my mom's phone, so I don't have any of those to share. But there are plenty of boys and girls walking around in hanbok and other traditional wear.
Later, we went to Namsan Tower, which is a famous tower in Myeongdong - a lot of couples and tourists come to this area. We made the big mistake of not finding where the shuttle cab was and hiked up the entire hill from Myeongdong station to the cable car. Unless steep hills and walking for 15 minutes straight up an inclined hill don't bother you, don't do it. My thighs hurt just remembering the experience. Regardless, we got there, and the tickets were about 8,000 won (~$8) for the cable car. It goes through the mountain, and so you get to see the skyline of Seoul. Then, at the base of the tower, there are shops and restaurants you can look up. They also have the famous lock fences - for those who don't know what that is, a lock fence is a wire fence where couples buy locks for. You and your significant other write a little message one your locks, and then you lock your locks together. After doing that, you place your lock on the fence, and supposedly, your relationship will be as strong as the locks locked together. It's entirely commercial, but a cute story is cute, I suppose. To go up the tower is an extra 20,000 won. There, they take your picture on a green screen, which you can get projected onto the Namsan Tower. My mom and I actually liked our pictures, so we got it. But yes! Up the tower it's mainly gazing out at the city and admiring the pretty lights.
Aside from that, the Namsan Tower was a little underwhelming. The lines were too long for such a short amount of time spent there. Regardless, we had our fun and went back to the guesthouse. The next day, we got up and went back to Gwanghwamun to explore more! We had only seen the outside of the palace, but this time we got to walk inside. And before that, we got an excellent American style breakfast, especially since we were in Itaewon (also called "American in Seoul" because of the amount of foreigners).
The rest of the time we simply just wandered around, did some shopping, and explored what there was in Seoul. Finally, after a long and exhausting weekend, we went back to my new home in Suwon, in which I got my mother lost for two hours and we eventually hailed a taxi to drop us off vaguely near where we lived. Here's a quick tip for traveling: as soon as you get to the place you're staying at, whether it be your home or a hotel, mark it on a map like Google Maps (or KakaoMap or Naver Maps if you're in Korea) so that, in case of a language barrier, or if you just don't know the address, you can show a taxi driver the map. Or you can just walk in the direction of the starred location.
The next day of course, was a Monday, which meant my job - the whole reason why I am even here, in Korea, was about to start! But that's for another blog post. I'll see you all later, hopefully!
Iqra, over and out.
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