The Suite Life of Korea and Singapore

I know, it’s been awhile. If you remember it was at the beginning of March that we finished our tour of Japan. We ended in Osaka because we found an overnight cruise that took us to Busan, Korea and were interested in a non-flight method of transit between countries. After spending a few days in Busan we headed to Seoul, and did a tour that included the DMZ. Over the last several years we had been saving points and miles and were able to book a business class flight from Seoul to Chennai (India) on Singapore Airlines, which of course had a layover in Singapore. For just a few extra points we made it a stopover and spent a few days exploring the city.

South Korea

Cruising across the Sea

We booked the Panstar ferry from Osaka to Busan which left at 5pm and arrived at noon the following day. Since we had to check out by about 11am we slowly made our way to the ferry terminal using the trains and found snacks at a 7-Eleven. We walked along a park a bit but it was very windy, and finally checked in. The terminal was nothing too fancy and eventually we were bussed to the ship and made it to our room. We had booked a Junior suite that did have access to an additional lounge that supposedly had Wifi but it wasn’t that great. The room was nicer than expected, it was larger than most rooms we had in Japan.

We explored the ship a bit and then relaxed until dinner. It was a buffet with some things I recognized but many that must have been Korean foods we hadn’t seen before. The food was pretty good but the seating required you to sit at 8 person tables with strangers and people were leaving seats between so it was hard to find 2 seats together.

That evening they had a singing competition they kept advertising saying there were “many gifts” for those that participated. The nice things as it was televised to our room so we could watch in comfort. To open they had one guy on a guitar play a bit of “Sweet Child of Mine” which was surprisingly good. Not only was the singing in Korean but so were the interviews of contestants so we are quite glad we didn’t attempt to participate, although I am curious what the many gifts entailed.

We slept pretty well until 5am when we left the sheltering of the Japanese Islands and the waves became significantly more rolling. After breakfast we relaxed in the room until checkout. We turned in the keys and went upstairs to watch the views coming into the harbor. Then we went back down to stand in line waiting to exit the boat.

The passenger terminal in Busan is way bigger, like a small airport, and they even had something like a jet bridge directly from the boat. Customs went pretty fast and we only had a few blocks on raised walkways above the roads to get to our hotel by the train station. We dropped our bags as it was still too early to check in and went to explore.

Navigating Hills of Busan

We got lunch at a local burger chain, Lotteria, I got the bulgogi burger that was very tasty. We headed towards parks near the top of the hill but got a little lost in the residential areas and found ourselves in a dead end once. Google doesn’t work as well in Korea so it couldn’t give walking directions, but as long as we could keep going up we knew we’d get to the park eventually.

Most of the front doors to these homes were so decorative, it was fun seeing how different each one was.

We found a wilderness park with not much for trail markings but on the map looked like it connected to the park we were trying to get to. Unfortunately there was a fence, but eventually we found a road with a sign telling us where to go.

We took a little break overlooking the city before continuing up to a Korean War Memorial.

It was such a peaceful place, and surrounded by a small pond that looked like it is a fountain in warmer months. I admired the steps they had in front of the memorial that had ramps integrated into the stairs.

We walked down the hill towards Democracy Park and the torch close up.

The park is in honor of those who fought for democracy during occupation by the Japanese until the end of the second world war.

We found a much easier way down and made it back to our hotel in no time, well, after many, many steps.

For dinner we went to a pizza restaurant that was very busy, which is a good sign meaning locals enjoy eating here. We didn’t even know until we ordered that our food and drinks would arrive by robot!

We split fettuccine alfredo and a pizza with chestnuts and sweet potatoes.

We booked our train for Seoul and headed back to the hotel for bed. The next day we decided to take a rest day and relax after all those steps from the day before!

Seoul Train

Our train was around midday, and it was only a block from the hotel. We found donuts in the train station for a late breakfast and boarded our train. It is the high speed train and so it was only 2 hours to get to Seoul. We had a bit further of a walk, more like 20 minutes to get to our hotel. It was difficult to find restaurants since Google was less of a help and the one we found was closed for the night. Since we were tired and hungry we just went to a Quiznos nearby instead.

Little Glimpse of North Korea

The following morning we had to be up early for our tour of the DMZ. We had a bit of a walk but we had time to find a few snacks on our way for breakfast before meeting our tour guide and group on the bus at 7am. There were about 3-4 other buses left around the same time from this location. It was about an hour drive to get to the spot to buy our tickets for the DMZ.

While we waited for the ticket office to open our guide walked us around Imjingak park to a few monuments related to the Korean War, including this train that had been bombed by North Korea and a place you could purchase North Korean money. By about 10am the parking lot was absolutely full of buses but because we got there early we got tickets as one of the first buses to enter.

After going through a checkpoint where South Korean soldiers boarded our bus to check all our passports, we crossed what was known as the “cow bridge”. It was built by Chung Ju-Yung, the founder of Hyundai, to transport 1001 cows through the DMZ to North Korea as repayment for stealing a cow from his father’s farm to pay for a train ticket several decades earlier.

At the first location we took pictures by the DMZ sign and then were brought into a theater for a short movie about the DMZ’s history, about the 4 tunnels discovered, and the hope for reunification. These 4 tunnels were found in the 70s and 90s as North Korea were trying to tunnel under the DMZ for a supposed attack on Seoul. However, an engineer that had defected to South Korea had suggested putting pipes filled with water all over the DMZ so when an explosive goes off underground the water spray will indicate where tunnels are located. This 3rd tunnel was found by this method and they have since drilled an intersecting tunnel that we walked down an 11% grade to meet up with the tunnel dug by the North Koreans. There are 3 walls built to separate North and South Korea in this tunnel and at the first wall they have a clock of the days since the armistice agreement had been signed which ended the Korean War. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take any pictures.

Our next stop was the observatory where we could look through binoculars and were able to see some people walking around on the North Korean side, and able to see the skyscrapers of Seoul from the South side. The last spot in the DMZ was to visit the village on the South Korea side of the DMZ where we got a traditional lunch, where the pork and rice were especially delicious.

We had to exit the DMZ by 1pm as foreigners are only allowed 3 hours in the area (Koreans not living in the village can stay until sunset) and had about a 30 minute drive to a suspension bridge and a waterfall.

We started with a walk in the woods where they had many cute animal statues. The suspension bridge was very high over a river below, and I can only imagine how beautiful this would look in the fall! Or really anytime there were more leaves on the trees as it was still a bit early in the spring.

There was also a nice waterfall at the end. You could hike a lot farther but we didn’t have a ton of time before we had to head back to the bus.

It was an hour back to Seoul, and then we walked back to our hotel. We managed to get dinner at the place that was closed the night before and had some tasty wine and pasta.

Shrines and Palaces

The next morning we found a place that made breakfast sandwiches on toast, mine had a sauce with cabbage and it was so messy!

We walked to the Jongmyo Shrine and had to wait for a tour before we could get in. This shine is a royal resting place, containing spirit tablets for kings and their families. The spirit tablets looked like wooden blocks about a foot tall. There were paths in the shrine that were raised in the middle, and we were not allowed to walk on these as it is the path for the spirits.

Next we went to explore the Changgyeonggung palace. We entered through the gardens first and found a greenhouse.

The palace had many different buildings, some with very beautifully painted interiors. Since we didn’t get a tour I don’t have a ton extra to share beyond the stories the pictures tell.

That evening we walked to a nearby noodle restaurant called Xiao Bao that was very delicious. We had beef noodles and shared some steamed dumplings.

Singapore

We were excited to experience our first business class experience, but first we had to get to the airport! It is quite outside of Seoul on the port city of Incheon but we managed to find the limousine airport bus on the way to the train station which was a bit easier since we didn’t need to buy a metro pass for just one ride. We got there early hoping we’d get to experience the business class lounge to get a good breakfast.

Once we boarded the plane we were given the option for a drink and chose our meal before we took off! The seat had the option to lay flat for sleeping but honestly it’s just nice to put your feet up while you are sitting down for so long!

They had a special menu just for this flight

It was a full 4 course meal, we opted for the beef filet which was amazing it tasted so good considering it was plane food. Throughout we could order whatever cocktails, wines, or other beverages. I did order port to go with dessert and I don’t think she was familiar with port because she poured it like a normal wine, Mr. Wander had to help me finish that one.

We arrived in Singapore and found the metro to get to our hotel. It was a really smart system because we could just use our contactless credit card to scan in and out and each trip was only $1-2. Our hotel was attached to the Funan mall which is one of the most unique malls, there were so many restaurants, one with water flowing through the tables, a flight simulator and a climbing wall in the middle! Our hotel was unique too as it had a large kitchen and laundry plus other co-working type spaces and one day they had a craft night where people did a paint by number. We found a nearby 7-eleven for dinner snacks and went to bed.

Seeing Green in the Jungle

The next morning we got some breakfast at a restaurant by the train station, but it wasn’t the best. We both got soft boiled eggs to go with our sandwich but I think they boil the egg – without the shell – in the water. So it was like a somewhat cooked egg soup…. Don’t worry I didn’t take a picture.We took the metro for about 45 minutes and walked to this park Mr. Wander had read about, as it had a treetop walk. We started working our way around and found several monkeys and eventually made it to the treetop walk.

Thankfully we got to the walk from the right direction because we didn’t realize until we were there that it was one-way. When we came down from the suspension bridges we realized we had already walked 5km and it was at least that much to get back to the train station. We didn’t realize how far it would be and didn’t bring enough snacks or water, plus we weren’t really used to the heat anymore having spent a month in places cool enough to snow. As nice as it was to see green everywhere, we were very ready to be back in some AC!

After the train ride we found some snacks and cool drinks then took a shower at the hotel. We ventured out to the coffee shop we’d been passing on the escalators in the mall and had a sandwich, pizza, some tater tots and some fancy cafe beverages.

We relaxed the rest of the afternoon and since we ate lunch so late we went to the grocery store in the mall to get a small dinner, and walked around the mall a bit.

The Iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel

Since we had time before our flight, we decided to walk to the most recognizable hotel in Singapore, the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.

It only took about 30 minutes to walk there, we saw several walking tours on our way. We got to cross this really cool spiral bridge to get to the hotel.

Unfortunately the top didn’t open until 11am and we had to check out at noon, the gardens weren’t open yet either so we went into the attached mall to the basement to catch the train back to our hotel. We cooled off a bit and showered before checking out. We got lunch back at that coffee shop, this time a pizza and a fancy waffle, and headed back to the airport.

When we got to the airport we checked in and went through passport control right away before we realized where the jewel was, on the other side of passport control! Whoops! We had both decided by this point that we needed to go back to Singapore and explore more, we barely scratched the surface! So, we headed to the lounge, although being the hub of Singapore airlines this was three times the size of any lounge we had been in before!

We hung out and worked on computers until our flight about 7pm. We had forgotten we hadn’t been through security yet which they had right before our gate. We got to enjoy another 4 course meal, this time we had the chicken and rice meal, on our way to country #8: India!

Learning

South Korea

• Hello: an nyeong ha seyo
• Thank you: gamsahabnida
• Goodbye: annyeonghi gaseyo
• Currency: Won, 10000Won ~ $7.5 USD

Singapore

• Language: 4 languages (English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil), but English being most common especially in tourist areas
• Currency: 1 Singapore Dollar ~ $.75 USD
• Similar to Japan, they have many rules on trains for courtesy of others, but they have cute mascots!