So I just got back from my Seoul trip and honestly, I miss it already. Besides the obvious reasons that Seoul is very safe, clean, foodie heaven….the best things that make me want to come back are the memories and friendships made/strengthened. My trip was from Oct 3-9, 2013. Basically, I arrived almost 9PM Korea time on Oct 3, it was a 3.5 hour flight from Manila. Took the usual Piso Fare Sale from Cebu Pacific thus enabling me to travel to Incheon for roughly PHP 6K. My friends and I planned this trip for almost a year and within that year we decided to book our trip with THIS IS KOREA. Its a travel agency that offers customized packages <travel where and when you want> since they offer your own private transportation, accommodation, food, and PHOTOGRAPHY services. We are a party of 11 people, imagine the chaos and problem of managing this big of the group. Thank God we booked with BB’s company: THIS IS KOREA. It was the best decision ever.
For the first time, we had pictures wherein we were all complete! Not only that, we had SUPERB photos, just check out some sample shots below and imagine all our photos of this quality. It is certainly money well spent! I even have a video recorded when I rode the T-express killer roller coaster of Everland! Imagine that! What a great wicked souvenir is that. Our tour guide BB is certainly the best there is!
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| Jump shots! |
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| Solo shots! |
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| Creative shots! |
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| Perfect lighting! haha |
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| AMAZING MEMORIES |
Another awesome factor I would like to point out is the great food options. Since we were being toured by a English proficient local, it was very easy to order food and to understand what it is. Being a foodie, it is very important for me to know what goes into the food that I am eating. So we ate at the best food places where locals eat and we even went to the well known fish market since I requested to. It really had the best tasting salmon I have tasted. I will be posting my Korea food adventure on another post. But I can confidently say, I feel like a real local based from all the places we ate at.
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| Best Spicy Cold Noodle Sashimi EVER! |
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| Best Spicy BBQ EVER! |
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| How to prepare your spicy cold noodle |
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| Our usual table setup = table full of food! |
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| Rice and spicy meat mixture = DELICIOUS! |
And yet another great factor was transportation. Since Seoul is very big and a lot of places to go to and given our big size of a group, moving from one venue to another was a major problem. So we are really thankful that with the van rented by BB, all 11 fit in one car and we control when we go/leave a venue. HOW AWESOME IS THAT. It was truly stress free.
All of the destinations we went to were preplanned ahead of time, we gave our “wish list” to the agency and they consulted us on what is the best way to organize them. But more than that, they are so customer centric that BB <our tour guide> even changed our schedule that day itself just to accomodate our sudden whims. We even had a video taken at the bridge shown at the Gentleman video. He made sure that our day <9AM – 9 PM> was maximized. This is really money well spent. Just to give you an idea, these were the places we went to:
Day 1: Haneul Park, lunch and shopping at Hongdae, Trick Eye Museum, N Seoul Tower, Teddy Bear Museum, Local Market
Day 2: Gyeongbokgung Palace, lunch and shopping at Insadong, basketball, BBQ dinner, shopping at Dongdaemun
Day 3: Nami Island, Cheonggyecheon stream, fast dinner at Dongdaemun, shopping at Myeongdong
Day 4: Gentleman Bridge video, Everland, Fish Market, Rainbow Fountain Show, Picnic Dinner
Al throughout we felt at ease with BB and treated him like a friend. He was a great tour guide but more especially a friend. He was easy to talk to and he kids around with us. This is very hard to find in a tour guide. I have met and booked with several agencies and none of them worked like BB. I really felt the sincerity and heart at what he does. AND THAT is very important.
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| With the amazing BB, the guy standing. |
There are so many other things that made my korea trip awesome but undeniably THIS IS KOREA made it EPIC. I highly recommend this agency for anyone planning a trip to korea, they are great and your money will be maximized. My whole group <and everyone else who booked with them> was beyond satisfied with this agency, a proof is they even ranked #1 in TripAdvisor! So for inquiries just refer on theirFacebook Page or send an email to their company directly. For my friends and I, we reached them via Facebook; communication with them is easy. They have different packages depending on your budget, group size, etc. Just check out their FB page.
Happy tripping!
