cptwhite,
You are right. To pry open the bottom cover, its necessary to try the surroundings beneath the laptop to locate the area of "weakness".
I managed to change the SSD and the ribbons are quite easy to loosen. If you guys need help, drop me a pm. Basically, you just need to lift the white clip holding down the ribbons going over the SSD. Lift it like lifting a poker card. Something along the same lines.
At the same time, I replaced the original 8 gig ram with 16 gig kingstons. Its the low voltage ones. KVR16LS11/8k. Shouldnt be hard to get. I'm from Singapore and I got it off Sim Lim Square (Singapore's IT mall). My 15a's model number is SVF15N18PGS, if its useful for anyone to know.
Happy modding.
PS: thanks guys for posting up the instructions. It made a big difference!