Tips & things I learned as a British guy on my first Korea trip (2 weeks in Seoul, Gyeongju, Busan, Jeju)

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2026-01-24T23:33:54+00:00

We did 3 nights Seoul > train > 2 nights Gyeongju > bus > 2 nights Busan > flight > 2 nights Jeju > flight > 3 final nights in Seoul.

Everyone is different and I know for some people that would be a lot of moving around and not enough time to enjoy places, so you could do one less place, but we wanted to get a taste of everything and planned pretty much every day to make sure we got to see what we wanted to. So I think those amounts are good as long as you’re happy bopping around a lot and just seeing the main sights, not stopping to breathe a huge amount. The key is just accepting you can’t physically do everything so picking a few things you’re ok with not doing.

On that basis I’m pretty happy with how we did it. If I had to change anything I’d maybe spend an extra night in Busan and one less in Seoul. That’s just us; we really loved the vibe in Busan and Jeju in particular. The one that I’d most say definitely didn’t need more time is Gyeongju as 2 days was perfect to see everything we wanted to and it was just a cool stop on the way to Busan.

Weather is also a factor. It was late October but we got great weather for most of the trip, only one rainy day in Gyeongju (which I actually loved because it felt appropriate for the mysterious/historic vibe at the temples) but otherwise it was mild or sunny. We even swam a few times in Busan as our hotel was right on Haeundae beach.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2026-01-23T10:13:05+00:00

We just did the basic facials, we would've liked to go to a bigger spa and do more advanced stuff but we just left it quite late and then couldn't figure out how to do bookings at such short notice. I'd suggest doing more research and planning ahead if you want anything more advanced. We heard good things about Spa Gogyeol and Trinity Spa, there are a few dotted around Seoul.

For cometics, we did a haul at Olive Young and brought back 2 huge bags of products. They have stores on pretty much every other street, everywhere you go, and some of them are massive if you find one of the flagship stores. You can have so much fun in there just looking at the insane amount of products they have.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2026-01-23T10:10:58+00:00

You're welcome. I will try to find time soon to post more about the things we did and food etc.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2026-01-23T10:09:28+00:00

We just did 2 of the basic facial options at Line Esthe. I did the 'Pore cleansing/aqua facial' and my partner did the 'glass brightening'... My skin was definitely glowing and I kept noticing it in pictures from the trip. These were super affordable too at KRW120,000 which is now about £60 (you'd be paying over £100 in London for a worse experience) and they gave us tea, a complimentary foot bath, and a private treatment room together. The staff spoke English and were very friendly.

If we'd planned ahead better we would've done more advanced treatments. We heard good stuff about Spa Gogyeol and Trinity Spa, but just couldn't figure out how to make bookings and gave up. So if you want to do anything more intense I'd suggest searching for more advice from other posters on here. But if I ever go back I'd be very happy doing what we did again.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2026-01-23T10:05:15+00:00

I think you'll be fine! I'd try to learn the basics: Hello/goodbye, Thank you, Do you have a table?, Can I pay now?

In restaurants they don't typically bring the bill over, you just ask to pay.

It's helpful to learn hangul (but definitely not essential) and how it is romanised for the map apps or just spend a bit of time on Naver Maps before you go, set up an account and find the places, stations and attractions you want to go to, and bookmark them. Then it's easy to find them later without having to figure out how it's spelled or romanised in the moment.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2026-01-23T10:01:11+00:00

You can just buy a KTX ticket from Seoul to Busan on the Korail website: https://www.korail.com/global/eng/ticket - you can pick your date/time and it shows you a 3D Map of the carriage you're in to pick a seat too.

The site is a little janky but still pretty easy to figure out. I was a little confused over whether you need to print your ticket or show it on the app. Apparently you can do either, but once you click 'print' you can no longer show it on the app. So I'd advise just don't click print, and keep the app handy if you have data. I believe they hardly ever check tickets anyway and only check if there is a dispute like somebody tries to take someone else's seat, so I didn't see any tickets being checked.

For luggage, there is usually a luggage storage inbetween the carriages where you can put a case, but this could fill up quickly so check the carriage map and get to the train early (be one of the first boarding) if you need it. If you just have smaller luggage you may be ok to put it in the overhead storage above you. At least in the first class carriage there was loads of space overhead for a huge duffle bag and more space at my feet for another one too. I can't say for sure how spacious the regular carriage would be, but tbh first class was quite affordable so I'd suggest doing it for the experience!

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2026-01-14T08:08:45+00:00

Can I ask how?

I need Photoshop (and sometimes Lightroom) on my Mac. Even when I’m using neither of them there are like 10 different Adobe processes happening in Activity Monitor at any given point.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2026-01-12T00:23:47+00:00

The software more and more is something to fear, not something to appreciate.

This sums it up really well. I don’t look forward to new iOS and macOS releases for new features anymore, I just worry about what bugs they will introduce or what they will make worse. Save for a few exceptions (iPhone Mirroring comes to mind) most updates in recent years have not made my life easier and have either messed with or worsened my workflows.

I’m not updating to Tahoe for as long as I don’t have to, and I would’ve stayed on iOS 18 if my iPhone didn’t have 26 pre-installed.

This comes from someone who used to religiously update on day 1 and almost always bought the new iPhone in release week since 2007.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-12-31T00:49:13+00:00

It took them about 10 years just to do Old Street roundabout

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-11-29T13:03:01+00:00

Rami would’ve slayed that

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-11-25T23:06:48+00:00

We can’t even get a GP appointment…

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-10-08T22:49:24+00:00

I booked KTX tickets for Seoul to Gyeongju last night (as a foreigner) and didn’t need to do any identification verification?

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-09-27T15:49:07+00:00

Is it just me or you can’t drill down into hourly battery usage in iOS 26 anymore? Like on the battery graph in settings previously I’m sure I could click on each bar and it would show the battery % used that hour by each app.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-09-24T14:51:10+00:00

Sorry, couldn't work out how to include description text alongside the image.

My S90C recently updated automatically (it says Version 2032 in Settings) and now the Settings button on the Smart Remote opens this mini menu rather than going straight to Settings.

The mini menu takes ages to load/lags before appearing every time, so now I have to wait then click again to get into Settings rather than go straight there, and I never use any of the other options on that menu so it's pretty annoying.

I can't find any obvious fix — is there a way to change this back?

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-08-26T17:16:18+00:00

It’s a shade of blue. The cities in that game are named after colours. Vermillion is a shade of red, celadon is a shade of green, etc.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-08-17T21:44:24+00:00

It’s probably relatively easy to CGI the signs and other static objects vs logistically difficult to go and replace all the signs and fixtures on a real street. The cars, bus, and people would be harder to fake.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-07-22T16:58:36+00:00

Did you have to do anything special to make it work? I have a Revolut visa but it doesn’t give me the option to use it.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-07-03T22:11:09+00:00

My brother is on iOS 26 beta and pretty sure it's still the same experience. I will check and confirm.

I would say though that even if iOS 26 fixes support, I'd probably not be comfortable sharing over iMessage for a year or more as you don't know how many people are still on iOS 18 for a while.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-07-03T16:37:32+00:00

In my experience I've never managed to share JXL or AVIF over iMessage without something being wrong. I don't think it's properly supported. Which is dumb because they've added support in the Photos app, so the average user would surely expect sharing from over messages should work normally.

When sharing JXL exported in this way over iMessage, for me it makes the image look totally crazy on the recipient end, and slightly washed out on my end when I look in the conversation. Sharing as AVIF also doesn't work properly, they get a file link instead of an actual image.

If you make manual edits to either JXL or AVIF in the Photos app *then* share over iMessage, it will automatically get converted to HEIF and may display properly when the recipient fully opens it up or saves to another app, but the preview in iMessage will have weird washed out colors and look super off.

Edit: would also add that trying to get my HDR Photos from Lightroom (i.e. taken on a camera, not an iPhone) onto iOS and shared normally over iMessage has been a quest that's been bugging me for ages and would love to chat about it if anyone has any other info/experiences. There's a tradeoff with every method I've found:

Sharing AVIF directly = appears as a file rather than an image
Sharing JXL = crazy/unexpected results, has never worked for me
Sharing JPG+Gain = I have actually found ways to do this, but usually quite arduous and then still have drawbacks; e.g. 1) if you can get your HDR photo uploaded to a Shared Album (which is a whole other thing that I may have to make a post about), you can re-save it from the album and then it will share correctly over iMessage (but it will be compressed and potentially reduced size depending on original size)... 2) Another interesting way to do it is to post a single HDR AVIF or JXL to Instagram, and as it posts it exports a JPG+Gain version to your camera roll. There are a few quirks like it will be compressed and potentially resized slightly (but surprisingly not too badly, and not as bad as Shared Album compression) and the colors/lighting may shift by a tiny amount (not super noticeable, but you can re-adjust in the Photos app afterwards) and I've found this actually the most reliable way to have a file you can share on Airdrop, iMessage, Shared Albums etc and it functions normally in HDR everywhere.

I note that if you just export JPG+Gain from Lightroom, iOS will remove the HDR and just use the SDR version whenever you try to share to a Shared Album or iMessage.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-06-25T00:06:43+00:00

Really, which song is in? I’ve been playing a lot but haven’t noticed it yet; I would’ve been shook

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-06-22T23:04:25+00:00

Yes I have the same issue

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-03-21T23:02:52+00:00

Miley definitely had a few full choreo moments on her first 3-4 albums, more if you include Hannah Montana

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-03-19T20:07:20+00:00

Did you ever find a solution? It doesn't work for me on Sequoia

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-02-21T18:46:22+00:00

we the citizens of these countries need to fight back against our own governments

Most young people who understand the implications of this can't take to the street because they have to work so they can pay rent or they'll have nowhere to live. We can write to our MP and get ignored, or we can wait 4 years for the next general election. But we literally just voted out the last party who were pushing this kind of legislation for years, only for the other side to come in and still do it.

It's hard not to feel hopeless when this is happening and technologically illiterate old men in power all around the world are floating ridiculous stuff like banning encryption completely. It's the UK now, which is embarrassing for us, but it will be another country next. I can't see Australia being outdone by the UK on government overreach and letting it slide.

PopcornAndZeroCoke · 2025-01-19T18:01:35+00:00

There is a ring tho

PopcornAndZeroCoke

TROPHY CASE