Extreme Masters Seoul had two tournament days for Warcraft III, with invites to four world-class players - namely Sky, Moon, Grubby and Lyn. The event was being held at the KINTEX in Seoul on the 15th and 16th of November. It's been a successful event thanks to the hardworking ESL staff and their Korean partners, the sponsors, the players and of course the fans that came to watch! Special thanks to Baschi who chose to include Warcraft III at this EM stop!! Seems Warcraft III is not forgotten at all by ESL.

It's gonna be a 3 page blog since I didn't have time the last 2 days to write some and there's much to talk about. The last 2 days was a series of jet lag, and during our waking moments in the hotel, Grubby is usually occupying the laptop to study replays and so on. His job is more important than mine, so he has the priority over the laptop :p. During the tournament, I didn't have time to do any blogging either as I was busy taking pictures. I also needed to stay next to Grubby to attend to his needs (maybe water and so on because players have little time in between matches to go search for such needs), and discuss a little on maps, strategy usage and match related stuffs in between matches. Alright, let's get going now! xD

13th Nov - The Flight
Let's start from the beginning. Grubby and I left our house at 5 plus in the morning on the 13th of November to catch the bus and then the train to Amsterdam airport. Our flight was at 8.45am and we reached there 1 1/2 hours in advance. We went to eat at Burger King quickly because we even like it more than most airplane food. We were given two boarding passes because we were having a transfer in Munich. Instead of looking at the boarding pass to Munich, we checked out the boarding pass from Munich to Seoul and saw that we had to be at gate H28 for boarding.

After we reached gate H which is like really far away... we realised there's only gate H 1-7. Confused, we checked the boarding pass again and were surprised that we made a stupid mistake! We were looking at the wrong boarding pass! Time was running out, and the gate we had to be was at B7, which is very very far away. We ran all the way.. and had to go through the security check point for the third time. On the way, I even heard our names being called over the microphone. The woman on the intercom announced that we are delaying the flight, and if we don't proceed to the gate immediately, they will proceed to off-load our luggage! Luckily at that point we were only 1 min away from B7. Finally we made it! Phew... despite the weather being cold, we were sweating in our sweaters because of the long run.. hehe..

The flight wasn't full. Grubby and I occupied 4 seats each in the middle aisles. And we were able to sleep lying down horizontally during the flight which was such a luxury! It's even better than 1st class!! :D:D

13th Nov - Upon Arrival + Hotel
In winters, Seoul is 8 hours ahead of the CET time. We arrived in Seoul at 6 plus in the morning on the 14th Nov. We took the airport bus which costs 6,500 WON (3.6 Euros) per person, and the ride to our hotel is only 30 mins, so we reached the hotel at around 8am. MYM booked us in a nice 5 stars hotel, which is the same hotel as the ESL staffs. It's Mayfield hotel but our first impression with the hotel wasn't that nice. They seemed like sharks when they told us we have to pay 93,700 Korean WON for early check-in, because the official check-in time is at 2pm.

Firstly, once we arrived, we went to the reception to check in and they said we needed to wait for 15-20 mins because the maid has to clean the room first. We said of course it's ok.. so we waited. After 20 minutes they told us the room is ready.. and we have to pay 93,700 WON for early check in. That's equal to about 53 Euros. We didn't go for it because usually when we stayed at other hotels, they let us have the room early if they have available rooms anyway.. with no extra charge at all. Wouldn't really be worth it for us. We preferred to go out and eat somewhere. So we just deposited our lugguage with them and took a shuttle to the nearest busy area for food and afterwards to go to a PC cafe so Grubby could do some practising. We were starving after such a long flight! Mayfield hotel is located very inconveniently for us. There are no restaurants or PC cafe's within walking distance, and the nearest is about 5 mins drive away.. so we always had to rely on the shuttle bus that comes either every 30 mins or every 1 hour, or take a taxi. The hotel breakfast is not included with the room, and it costs 26,000 WON (14.6 Euros) per person even though the food variety is quite limited.

In our bathroom was another proof of the hotel's healthy love of commerce:

A small packet of bath salt costs 10,000 WON (5.6 Euros). It's a 5 star hotel with expensive rooms so you would expect them to provide such stuffs for free. Nothing is for free in the hotel room, except for a very small bottle of mineral water (even a tiny tin of nuts in the room is heavily over-priced). So we had to go carry back big bottles of mineral water we bought from convenience stores, because Korea's tap water is not drinkable water.

From all our experiences so far we noticed that usually nice and acceptable hotels in Seoul are no more than 70,000 ~ 100,000 WON (40 - 56 Euros) per night. Mayfield's standard room cost more than 200 Euros per night! That's really expensive for Korea's standard, but yet the rooms look very normal and standard... comparable to the very normal hotels we have been in. It shouldn't be ranked as a 5 star hotel in our opinion, maybe 3.5 stars or 4 stars at the most. I wouldn't recommend this hotel to anyone who wants value for money. Firstly, it's very out of the way at the east of Seoul, and 1 1/2 hours drive to Gangnam which is more or less the city center of Seoul, and there's nowhere you can go on foot from the hotel, not even a subway station. Secondly, there are many other hotels/service apartments in the city center that cost around 50 Euros per night, which has the same room standard. I can talk more, but this two reasons being the most important to us, I will leave it at that :p.

HumanStarVille (at Yeoksam) is a nice service apartment that we stayed in quite a few times before and I would recommend it to anyone going to Seoul for business trip or leisure. It is located in the city, you can walk to a subway station, and also many to restaurants, shops and PC cafes. If you are a non-member, it's 100,000 WON per night (56 Euros), not that bad. The rooms are very clean, big LCD TV, nice service, and you'd also have your own small kitchen for cooking if you wanna make some of your own food. In this hotel there's a gym for guests and also a convenience store right there at the ground floor so you get to buy water, snacks and food.

(Continues next page..)