jonboy73

http://www.ongofood.com/taste-tour/ Korean Night Dining Tour (6pm-10pm) on Friday 14th.

KARFA is booked, I have emailed and await a reply.

Tour on the 15th: Combined tour/3rd Tunnel & Panmunjom, confirmed by email for me and KARFA

Hilton was £462 for 3 nights, book direrct with Hilton for HH points, or Via Quidco/Expedia for 8% Cashback (no HH points if booked with Expedia etc)

I don't know if you can get HH points if you book via BA, 5% cashback via quidco if you can might be the best of both worlds.

T8191

Thanks for the plug ^

I'm honestly not holding out a begging bowl - it's just nice to get an extra pin on The Map, but please don't let that stop you!! And, hopefully, an interesting TR from CreativeBill (and the rest of you) at the end of it!

If Cpl Arnhem gets taken to the BMZ, I wonder what the NKs will make of it?

KARFA

Hi

Sorry I have been silent on the Seoul thread since Sunday. Realised that I have a lot of work to get through over the next few weeks before going. It is not helped by the fact that I am already out of the office a fair bit during early December (hearing in Munich with previously arranged two day break after in Vienna). In addition one of my colleagues is about to go on maternity leave in just over a week, and in a department of 3 that may have an impact!

1) Who is going
Absolutely going. Mentioned it to a few friends but wasn’t able to persuade them (unlike the very impressive +5 that qwest01 is bringing). I am in Leeds, but I decided to drive down to LHR rather than connect from LBA or MAN. Planning to drive down after work on Wednesday and stay near Hemel Hempstead, and do the last bit on Thursday morning. I am aiming to get to check-in by about 10am.

2) Who has access to what lounge and who need to get invited?
Thanks to jonboy73 would kindly offered to guest me in to the CCR very early on in this – I immediately said yes, I haven’t been in the CCR or GF ever. However, since so many have joined on since then I will be a gent and allow jonboy73 to offer this to someone else if he wants (hopefully not). Perhaps we will all slum it in the GC lounge instead. Would be funny if another FT’er started a thread on the Thursday morning to complain about how GC had become a zoo and how there seemed to be a particularly raucous group trying to drink all the champagne.

3) What activities are planned to do together?
Apart from the food/drink tour on Friday evening and the DMZ tour on Saturday (both now confirmed for me) I haven’t looked at booking anything. So nothing planned for Friday (might be needed for recovery time after the party flight!) or Sunday. Some of the palaces look good for a wander on Sunday perhaps, but nothing fixed. I will spend some time this weekend having a look to see what I can find.

There has been talk of a Gangnam style parody video. Surely there's potential here for a competion between us 2nd weekenders and the 1st weekenders to see who can do the best one?

5) any celebrations like anniversaries, etc in the group?
None for me I’m afraid.

6) What hotels, why?
So I am in the Millenium Seoul Hilton. Seemed fairly central to me, reasonable price, good reviews on tripadvisor, and chance to get some more hhonors points. Am a gold member as well so I’ll get some benefits there.

Also, in case you are booking using quidco or topcashback, bear in mind that you will not get any hhonors points or any benefits from your status. I only found out this on Sunday, but had booked direct on the Hilton website so am ok. However, I am sure this is common knowledge with everyone else.

7) transportation to/from
Some information if you are staying at the Millenium Seoul Hilton is that there does appear to be a shuttle bus to ICN

http://www3.hilton.com/en/hotels/sou...ons/index.html

It isn’t free and I think the price is 15,000 won each way. Not sure I am personally tempted to use it over the train as the train seems faster and cheaper, but it may be useful to others staying there.

By the way, the link on post 8 which says it is broken (copied from one of my posts on the main Seoul thread should be:

"http://asiaenglish.visitkorea.or.kr/ena/GK/GK_EN_2_2_4.jsp"

Thanks for the tip on the tag for hand luggage when flying out of ICN. I’ll probably have my camera and lenses in there so it will be over 10kg.

Thanks to mgo72 for this, and I’ll pm my thanks to BotB who seemed to be updating the main thread hourly during the weekend.

mgo72

Updated till here, but still need to clean a lot of stuff there.

mgo72

Contacted some people by PM in order to get some more updates.

Please post here some details of what is ongoing.

mgo72

flyme2theriver :


I fly on UA and free on the evening of the 15th and free 16-18th for meet ups. I am staying at Intercontinental COEX I'm a Star Alliance Gold, so lounge meet-ups shouldn't be a problem.

Christickler

Whilst I am flying into Seoul on the 13th, and back to LHR on the 17th December - I am actually heading straight to HKG, so will not even venture landside at ICN. This means I will not be able to partake in any festivities planned.

Happy to meet up in the LHR lounges though, should a meet up be organised....

Not sure what state I will be in the ICN lounge or flight back, so probably wise for me to steer well clear of everybody. An all day sunday session in HKG followed by a flight departing at HKG at 1am is not a good combination for me.

Cheers,

Christickler

T8191

All those who declared the FT Bag-Tags as rather large and faintly tacky may now regret not having any!

Happy to be luridly tagged, when other FTers are around.

Sweet Willie

A group of us FTers had a Seoul Do about 5 yrs ago: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...do-2007-a.html

One of the highlights was the Noryangjin Fish Market:

We then headed to the fish market for lunch. This place is not as big as Tokyo’s but with a great benefit, you can buy your own seafood and then proceed to the second floor where there are restaurants who will prepare your newly purchase seafood for you. Talk about fresh. Our group decided on a big seafood share project, we purchased common crabs, king crab, scallops, prawns, oysters, and octopus. We then regrouped and walked up to the second floor to choose our restaurant, the restaurant we choose was called Pusan First but my Korean bud mentioned that anyone probably wouldn’t know that and you should ask for Pusan Ilbunjee. This place was one of the restaurants that faced the open market.
The raw oysters and live octopus were served first, oysters were just ok and I think that is because they had been pre-shucked. Live octopus was good but not as good as first night (don’t know why). The scallops were grilled and were the sweetest scallops I’ve ever had, simply amazing. The two kinds of crab were steamed, again amazing stuff, sweet as can be. The restaurant serves beer and soju (YES!) as well as sides to go with the meal. They charged us 10,000 won per head to prepare the meal. A bargain we all thought.

KARFA

The Noryangjin Fish Market sounds good. I would be up for that, perhaps on the Friday or the Sunday (if it is open on Sundays?).

I noticed on the main Seoul thread that this weekends' group are heading out for a Korean BBQ meal on their Saturday night to Bonga, see here for details:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/19802769-post955.html

Does anyone from our group fancy doing the same? Either Saturday or Sunday would work for me. Although I am DMZ'ing on Saturday, I am due back in Seoul by 6pm so could still do a meal at 8pm.

mgo72

Yes I am In. The more I see, the better ;-)

Arbeiter2

Count me in. I can do either Saturday or Sunday.

KARFA

So, lets say Saturday evening for Bonga. Shall we say 8.00pm? So far I have:

me
mgo72
Arbeiter2

Anyone else want to join? Others who are around are

thedreamliner
travellertales+1
qwest01+5
jonboy73

Christickler is flying to ICN on the 13th but heading straight to HKG. I'll leave it until late tomorrow to allow time for numbers to be finalised, then I'll book it for Saturday.

I haven't got anything specifically planned for Friday daytime or all day Sunday - although SUnday may be a slow day due to the excesses of the night before.

So, on Thursday I'll probably be getting to T5 at around 9-10am. jonboy73 is kindly guesting me in to the CCR when he arrives from NCL at 11am. Until then I will be in the South Galleries Club lounge if people want to meet up there. I will have the yellow flyertalk tag on my rucksack!

jonboy73

Happy to join in any and all group stuff. I am just hanging out in Seoul until my flight to Manila on the 17th.

I think i am booked onto the DMZ tour. pretty sure i got a confirmation email.
I may be booked onto the Food tour also, can't remember getting a confirmation email about that one.
BBQ sounds good to me.

CreativeBill

The fish market is open 24/7. Get your guide from your Ongo food tour on Friday to explain what to ask for and which restaurant to go to.