August 29, 2012
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Trip to Yeoju (Korea Day 10)
Having decided to head to Premium Outlet but finding the bus tours departing at specific times, returning specific times and only running on weekends/public holidays, we found the public transport way of reaching there. We went back to Express Bus Terminal at Gangnam where we took the intercity bus to Seorak. For 4,900won, we booked a one hour ten minutes ride to the Yeoju departing 11am, reaching Yeoju just slightly after 12pm. Young couple (teenage kids actually) in front of us seemed to be headed the same way. From here, we were supposed to cross the road and take 51-11 or 51-13 but since there was a long line of queue for taxi, we took that instead. Don’t know how it operates but the taxi fare here goes up very very quickly (the meter increases by 100won every two seconds). We took the cab as we knew it was nearby (thanks to iPad maps) but costs us 10,000won for what would have cost a third of that in Seoul or Jeju or Seoraksan for the same distance.
Anyway, we managed to get there in 10mins and started our journey through Premium Outlet, spending our afternoon there. There was filming also (guy tries to stop people from taking photos/videos). The cafetaria had bulgogi which wife liked a lot – very sweet beef. By the time she finished and I was going to order my food, the queue had grown very very long, so decided to skip and come back later. We almost always order one portion first, and see where that brings us before ordering again, as one meal generally is enough for both due to more frequent eats.
5.35pm we reached the bus terminal and saw that despite two buses running, the frequency was half an hour (and we just missed the 5.30 bus). Took cab and it also costs 11,000won. Very weird fares indeed. However that goes us back to intercity bus terminal and we narrowly got the 6pm bus heading back! Yay!
The couple that was sitting in front of us earlier (on our way to Yeoju), was sitting in our seats. The bus was relatively empty so we just took another seat. Kinda recognized them from their hair and dressing.
Back in Seoul and got hit by traffic jam, but fortunately it was just half a km away from bus terminal. Another wonderfully red sunset that one doesn’t get in Singapore. Still miffed over the failed S100 camera. Wife was tired so we didn’t go to Coex to shop for seaweed even though it was this part of town. Instead, we head back home and the downstairs Japanese ramen that had long queue the evening before. Wonderful chashu noodles that chef happily fried with hand-held flame burner with the kind of Ajisen Ramen bone-boiled soup, that costs only 7,500won – no wonder it was popular.
Home for more music+lighted sleep. Wife had bit of problems sleeping. The warnings for typhoon Bolevan was coming in and we saw the devastation on Jeju island over internet news. No DMZ tour for us, school was closed for a day the next day. Still no rain yet but could see very fast moving clouds already. It was very windy on the way back and we commented on several negative demonstrations of umbrella usages.
