Route Recommendations :
1. Right is Right!
South Korea's traffic is left-hand drive. For those coming from right-hand drive countries always do remember to ride on the right-hand side... i.e. Right is right! Same thing applies when crossing the road, take note that traffic is approaching from left! Sounds confusing, it actually isn't, just take while to get use to it.
Generally, the road conditions of the highways and main roads in South Korea are in excellent conditions with few pot-holes. Most towns have well planned dedicated cycling lanes or shared lanes. But cycling on highways is a no-no.
Local motorists, especially the taxi-drivers, are an impatient lot and unless a zebra-crossing is signalised, most don't bother to stop to let pedestrians or cyclist pass. In fact at un-signalised crossings we had to slowly edge our way out to stop oncoming traffic in order to cross.
Do watch out for the delivery motorcycles in the larger towns, most of these are huge bikes and they ride across zebra-crossing and onto pavements, disregarding the safety of pedestrians!
2. Bringing Bikes Onto Korean Trains & Airport Limousine Buses.
Full-sized bicycles are allowed onto the first and last coach of Korean trains on weekends or public holidays. Folding bikes are allowed onto the trains at any time and there was no neccesity to bag our bikes while on board. The fare for Busan's Metro is 1,300KRW for travel on a single line and 1,500KRW for multiple lines, there are no extra charges for bicycles.
A convenient way to get to the airport from the city is by the airport limousine buses. The fare for the airport limousine bus from Busan to Busan's Gimhae International Airport (한국공항공사) is 6,000KRW per pax inclusive of bicycles. Do take note of the location of the nearest bus stop and the bus schedule (which is posted at the bus stop) the day prior. Click here for more information on the limousine bus and the route bus stops. The bus hold has limited space, so some of the luggage may have to be carried up into the bus itself.
3. Bringing Bikes Onto Planes
Air Asia charges for checked in bicycles under sport equipment. If using light bike bags, 20kg should be adequate for the bike and the bag. However do weigh your bike together with the bag and book for slightly higher loads as the penalty for over-weight luggage can be quite high. We were all using light casing (Dimpa Bags with Impraboards) and booked 20kg for the going flight. For the return flight we booked 25kg as we were using a second Dimpa bag to hold our shopping stuff. For hard-case bags, double check the total weight and allow for more, generally 25kg should be adequate unless you are stuffing a lot of cloths into the bike bag. The airline allow two small bags (click here fo the allowable dimensions) both should not weigh more than 7kg; they are quite strict on this policy, so to follow it closely.
For Air Asia, book your tickets early for cheaper fares, and take advantage of the multi-city option as it allows cheaper luggage and sports equipment charges. Web check-in for Air Asia it's fourteen days.
One last tip, simple but important. Ensure that you DO NOT carry your tool kits or any long/sharp metal objects in your hand luggage. Put your tool kit into your checked-in bike bags. I often seen friends forgetting about this, only to have their tools confiscated at the security checkpoints.
4. Weather
Day 15°C | Night 5°C (Rain in the afternoon)
Even though it was early spring, the weather was surprisingly quite cold. During colder days we had on wind breakers, inner thermals, face masks and beanie caps.
5. Places of Interest
Cherry Blossoms places we missed (with the nearest Metro stations indicated) :
Cherry Blossom locations website:
6. Food
- Brunch at Choi's Restaurant (최가네분식) (GPS: 35.12130, 129.11148) (a 24-hour restaurant serving localized style food, catering mostly to taxi drivers)
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7. Accommodations
Address: 1203-6 Choryang-dong, Dong-gu, Busan, South Korea.
Tel: +82 51-442-1248
Email: bsmt8899@daum.net
Room Rates: 50,000KRW per night for deluxe rooms (inclusive of 10,000KRW surcharge)
8. Communicating with Each Other
When travelling in a group it's important to be able to communicate with each other, especially if one got lost.
At the Busan's Gimhae International Airport pre-paid sim cards can be obtained from a couple of stalls at level 1. It's good to get the sim-cards at the airport stalls as there are staff there to help the unfamiliar (or non-techies) set up the sim cards for one's phones.
It advise that the cards can be bought on line and be picked up near Gate 5 of the 1st Floor Arrival Hall.
Sim cards can also be obtained from larger outlets of the 24-hours convenience stores like 7-11, CU and GS25. See this link for more details.
If not opting to get the data package, at some spots on the islands free open wifi is available, just use your phone to search for these.
Save up each others local phone numbers once that is done. Create a chat group so that general communications can be broadcast, eg. where and when to meet to start the day.
9. Communicating with Locals
For the uninitiated cycling in foreign lands can be a daunting experience, especially when one can only speak a smattering of the local language or if there is no common language to speak to each other (like English). Most Koreans can hardly speak English, and learning some basic phrases will be helpful. When speaking to Koreans in English, they may initially seem stand-offish but after a while they did warm up to us.
This could be partly overcome by using translation apps like Google Translate. Do install this app into your phone and before you leave on your tour do some basic translation as it will be saved onto a list of recent translations. We also had a list of destinations, accomodations, etc. with their Korean names just in case we had to show the locals.
Look out for the tourist information booths at airports, railway stations or bus stations, the guides manning the booths speak very good English and do give good tips on where to visit, directions, train and bus schedule. It's good too to have these guides write the intended destinations in Korean so that one can show to other locals in order to get our bearings right.
10. Navigation
Unless he or she is very familiar with the locals routes, the tour leader should carry a GPS units. It will also be good if another member of the team carry another GPS unit should the leader's one go faulty. We had pre-loaded the South Korean Map together with GPS coordinates of our destinations. These units are useful, but do study the proposed route made by the unit as sometimes these are longer loop around; OR sometimes there are parallel narrow lanes that can be used and these lanes can sometimes turn out to be more interesting.
Alternatively, download the MAPS.ME app together with the relevant country maps. This app can be used offline.
Surprisingly, in many parts of the country, Google Maps don't seem to work well for cycling or even walking - it seem to only propose routes that goes onto buses or trains! Do let me know if this feature has been upgraded.
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PRELUDE
