I was off on my first holiday since going to Europe in 2019 (Thanks COVID!).

I decided to head to Seoul in South Korea and Taipei in Taiwan, spending a week in each.

Sydney

I had to overnight in Sydney for my flight to Seoul… well, I didn’t really have to, but there was absolutely no way that I was going to get the first flight from Melbourne to Sydney on the morning of a long haul flight!

I used the airport shuttle bus service to get to and from my hotel. For the price it was a pretty good service.

For the overnight I stayed at the Novotel Sydney International Airport. It was a decent hotel but if you don’t have a car you won’t be going anywhere. Room was huge, and the food at the restaurant was very good and the dinner serving was huge!

Seoul

Seoul was still cool when I arrived with temperatures down in the teens most days. Certainly not short sleeve shirt weather.

Incheon airport is quite a way out of the city but luckily there’s a very good express train service to get you to Seoul Station call A’REX. There’s also a non-express service if you want a cheaper but longer duration option.

The A’REX is a reserved seating train. When you buy the ticket from the vending machine (note you can’t used your T-Money card to buy a ticket!) you’ll be assigned a seat, and it looks like they do try to separate people out so you’ll be able to store your luggage. The trip takes ~43 minutes and drops you right next to Seoul Station.

My first hotel, Novotel Suites Ambassador Seoul Yongsan was a couple of stops from Seoul Station on the Seoul metro, but it only took a couple of minutes to get there but once I got there it dawned on me the area was in a bit of a re-develoment wasteland and I was disappointed with myself. But given it was a quick train ride back into the city I came to terms with it, and the area in the east of the station was pretty good.

The hotel itself was perfectly fine. My room was quite large with a small kitchenette and washing machine as I’d booked into the longer stay section rather than the hotel section.

My second hotel. Four Points by Sheraton Josun, Seoul Station was right next to Seoul Station and was in a far better location for a tourist to stay in.

Taking the tour to the DMZ was interesting and well worth it.

I did like the food and beer options that I managed to find. I especially liked the small craft breweries that I drank at.

Taipei

There was an earthquake the week before I arrived and I was lucky that I wasn’t impacted.

Like Seoul there’s a train to and from the airport to the centre of the city, but unlike Seoul there’s no reserved seating, so it can become a bit of a free for all. On the trip from the airport to the city I managed to get a seat, however on the return trip I had to stand the whole way. The trip takes about 38 minutes. Oh, and the ticket machines only takes small denomination notes, so travelers beware!

The weather was in stark contrast to Seoul with the temperatures in the high 20s and low 30s while I was there. It rained occasionally but not too much.

I made a late change to my hotel in Taipei as I’d worked out the one I had originally booked was not ideal location-wise, and I’m glad I did. The Palais de Chine was a great hotel. It was in a perfect location, just across from Taipei Main Station and the airport train, and I had a beautiful and well appointed room.

Like Seoul, the food options that I found were good and varied. And the local beers that I drank were pretty good also.

Flights

I had four flights with Qantas and two with China Airlines.

As the Qantas flight to Seoul departed from Sydney I decided to fly from Melbourne to Sydney the afternoon before so I wouldn’t be rushing and stressing.

Melbourne to Sydney

After getting to Melbourne Airport I headed to the domestic Qantas Club and boy has it changed since I last used it. I found it much more amenable than the old Qantas Club setup. The only disappointment would have been the food options, which were quite limited.

My flight from Melbourne to Sydney was on a newish 737. However, I did note that a lot of the inflight entertainment screens weren’t working (mine included!), but luckily this plane had free wifi so I was able to doomscroll reddit for the duration of the flight.

Sydney to Seoul

The Qantas lounge was a bit of a crazy place mid morning with lots of flights departing. It was just sheer luck that I spotted a couple getting up from a small table near the windows which I was able to grab before anyone else. Much like the lounge in Melbourne the food options weren’t crash hot.

For the Sydney to Seoul flight we were on an A330. My request for a seat upgrade had luckily been accepted so I was in business class for the flight.

My heart sank though when I tried to use the inflight entertainment with my screen seeming to have a fault that manifested itself as if someone was always pressing the screen. I spoke with the cabin attendant who did a soft restart of the screen but that failed to fix the issue, however a hard restart did fix the problem so I could watch some movies and tv shows.

The food and wine experience was quite good.

Seoul to Taipei & Taipei to Seoul

I flew China Airlines to and from Taipei.

I flew on the same plane for both flights, an A330, around 18 years old, and it showed its age!

The seat back screen was small, and I mean small! Maybe 5 or 6 diagonal inches. And the colour was completely washed out so was very hard to view. Not that there was much to look at anyway, so I just had the flight map up most of the flight.

The flights were packed, not a spare seat. The seats were comfortable, the food was good. Flights were on-time.

When boarding started for the Taipei to Seoul flight, the gate staff took pity on the middle aged aussie with grey hair and let me board with the business class and premium passengers even though I was flying economy. I was thankful to avoid the free for all that was about to follow (having been part of it while boarding the Seoul to Taipei flight), but also slightly annoyed that they thought I was older that I actually am! lol.

Seoul to Sydney

The new Oneworld lounge in Seoul was very nice, with great views over the airfield. It wasn’t too crowded so I was able to get a seat by the windows overlooking the apron to see what was happening.

They has a decent selection of alcohol from which I chose to have red wine.

What was disappointing was the quantity of food. What dishes were available were very nice, but it did seem like there just wasn’t enough to cater for the number of guests. I do believe that this lounge recently opened so maybe they were still getting a handle on the catering.

I was back on another A330 with another upgrade to business class.

And yet again, there were problems with the inflight entertainment. This time the volume just faded in and out every couple of seconds, so it was impossible to listen to. The cabin attendant did a soft restart followed by a hard restart, however neither of these restarts fixed the problem. Fortunately there was one free seat which I used for dinner and a movie before heading back to my original seat to sleep.

It does certainly look like Qantas have far too many issues with the inflight entertainment systems! Three from three so far!

The dinner and breakfast options were good.

Sydney to Melbourne

After landing at the Sydney international terminal and clearing immigration and customs I headed to the Qantas transfer area hoping to get on an earlier flight, but I was told there’d been a couple of cancellations that morning so there were no free seats so I had to stay on my original flight. Not a big problem, I just headed to the Qantas lounge, grabbed a window seat, had some food and tried not to nod off, and after a couple of hours or so I was heading back home.

This flight was uneventful. This plane offered free wi-fi and no in seat screens so you have to use your own device. I just read reddit and watched flightradar24.

And finally I was back home.

eSim

This was my first trip using only an eSim.

To say the journey was an adventure is an understatement.

I won’t name the provider I used but will say that the eSim I chose worked very well in Seoul & Taipei, no issues there even with the data being routed via Singapore.

Purchasing the eSim was the adventure, with a welcome surprise afterwards.

So, I purchase my eSim, money is taken from my card and I get all the details via e-mail. I install the eSim (but don’t activate it) with no problems. That was late in my evening so I headed to bed. When I woke up I see that my purchase has been refunded and the eSim cancelled… hmm… why? I reached out to their support and they had zero clue, it wasn’t until I posted on reddit that I got a support manager to help me out. Why it took a post on reddit to get decent support confounds me!

So, apparently, they were doing backend system work when I bought my eSim, and due to something they did they ended up cancelling the eSim and refunding me, so atleast I know what happened now.

I bit the bullet and repurchased and it sent through with no issues, got the e-mail with the eSim information, and was able to install the eSim (again, not activating it). I kept checking back to see if their backend again cancelled the eSim, but no, I had an eSim for my trip! Woohoo!

I activated the eSim in Sydney just before flying out so I could quickly purchase another eSim if I needed to, but it activated OK. When I landed in Seoul I turned on my phone and after a couple of minutes I had data. Excellent. Same for when I landed in Taipei.

Speed was pretty decent but I mostly just used it for maps while I was wandering around.

So, I get back home, use the rest of the data and once all the data is used I delete the eSim.

Then, about a month later I get another message saying that my second eSim had been cancelled, and I got another refund… so, I had 30GB of quite decent speed data in Seoul & Taipei for two weeks for a grand total of $0. Yep, zilch, zip, nada… how do these companies survive?

Will I use them again? Hell yeah, everybody loves free overseas data right!

Conclusion

I liked Seoul the longer I got into my stay. I guess it takes a couple of days to work out how a city works, but by the end I was getting around like a local.

Taipei was nice, a little like Hong Kong without the edge.

China Airlines, while the plane was old and had crap IFE, for a short flight it was ok, but I wouldn’t want to do a flight over 3 hours on this plane!

Qantas, where to start:

• The lounges are nice but let down by the food options.
• The planes are generally well looked after with updated and comfortable interiors, but what is up with all the faulty inflight entertainment systems?

I’d go back to Seoul to explore more of the city, I’d probably wait a while before I go back to Taipei.