postscripting the life of an average singaporean guy

Monday, March 19, 2007

Korea Trip

*playing Starz In Their Eyes by Just Jack

So many things happened.Back from Korea, Chinese New Year Over. Some relatives smartly avoided giving me ang pows cos I was away for the first time during Chinese New Year. My Mum has gone back to America. Results for summer semester was released and I luckily passed both units. Semester 1 for 2007 begins. Second time the pig year has come knocking on my door...
#note: It took me a while to compose this post.

Arriving at Incheon Airport

Our First Stop, DaeJangGum Filming Location

First Meal, Dumplings steamboat. Had my taste of kimchi and found out later that my stomach cannot take kimchi unless is seafood kimchi cos vegetable kimchi has got so much air that it cause me to have stomach problems

We then check in at Ocean Castle Hotel where they have a Hot Springs over there. No pictures taken though. Too busy relaxing... Our dinner was Mushroom steamboat #note: also no picture. It was supposed to be seafood steamboat but due to it being the Lunar New Year 2nd day. The seafood was supposedly not fresh. It was not too bad though except there was no meat and also non buffet style.

On the second day at Korea we travel long and far (4 hours bus ride) towards our destination, Dragon Valley. Before that we had breakfast at the hotel which was American breakfast. Thankfully no kimchi.

For Lunch we had Squid steamboat! Buffet Style.

After lunch we checked into the hotel, and proceeded to gather our gear for our ski session.
The hotel room.

Master Bedroom

Tatami Room - There's some warm pipes running below the floor thus keeping the person sleeping on this tatami warm.

The living Room. I placed a tatami here so that I can watch TV while falling asleep.

Look at this toilet seat! It has auto wash functions to clean your arse! warm cool, spray, water.

keeping the ground smooth.

My sister!

My virgin ski!

This was really caught while I was skiing downwards....

Sister and Brother-In-Law

Dinner was extremely disappointing, it was some sort of fish steamboat which is apparently quite nutritious to koreans. We found out that this fish was hanged out in the open thru rain and shine. No pictures cos we forgot to take.

As dinner was a tad too disappointing, I went to buy fried chicken back at the hotel and look at the size!

On the third day morning, we had breakfast which consists of mainly american breakfast, cereals and some kimchi whichever you want buffet style. So much choices that it was the best breakfast I had in Korea.

We then took the cable car ride up to dragon peak to play with snow!

The hotel we were staying!

Cable Cars.

On the way up!

And Up!

And Up! Up! Up!

Pictures from the top!

My mum and myself.

Snow Throwing!

My Brother-In-Law

The way down!

For lunch we went to town to have fried cabbage chicken. My sister read up about this, apparently, the koreans would eat the pan fried cabbage and chicken first before adding rice in to fry to finish up the meal. After having steamboat for 4 consecutive non-breakfast meals, I'm really glad for a change!

Shopping after lunch

After lunch we proceeded to NamiNara Republic it's a very small island and was one of the highlights in the show, Winter Sonata.

Guess what is this?
Looks like roaches taste like Dried Prawns

For dinner we had the much talked about Ginseng Chicken. It was good except that the ginseng was abit too small and my sister later found out from the menu that what we had was the cheaper version.

We then proceeded to do some night shopping at DongDaeMon, which was essentially a place with lots of imitation products. After which we arrived at our hotel close to 10pm. Looks like my virgin casino trip has got to wait till the next day as we were too tired walking around the whole day.

On the fourth day morning, we had porridge for breakfast before heading to a ginseng place for tourist where my mum and sis bought quite an amount of ginseng. I secretly took some exotic ginseng pictures. After which we headed to learn how to make kimchi although I must say the way they teach might as well don't teach us. Tried on the traditional korean costumes as well.

Making Kimchi

My mother and me again!

Guess the male and female looking like-ginseng

Lunch was sulphur duck soup which was made popular in the show DaChangJin. It was not too bad.

And the side dishes that came along with it

After lunch we head towards Everland opened by Samsung. The tour guide told us that Samsung is korean's pride. During the economy crisis, Although they do not have the money to pay staff, they still hire and promised the staff that once the crisis is over, they will be paid. Also they did lots of charity work. Even though Samsung products are more expensive then LG's. Koreans will mainly still buy Samsung's products.

At Everland, we went to safari world first before heading to other attractions. It was also one my virgin visit to a "big" theme park. Although my mum assured me that US has got much more bigger ones.

Tour Group Picture

This is supposedly a mix-breed of lion and tiger.

All things Samsung in Korea, there's even Samsung Insurance.

We then had BBQ Black Pig for dinner, It was delicious and possibly the best meal I had in korea so far. The pig is black in colour and its meat is supposedly more tender which I concurred.

Delicious!

The restaurant.

After dinner, we check back into our hotel where some of the tour's people quickly formed a casino party and shared cabs to the casino. I played jackpot there and in total I lost 60000 won which was equivalent to $100 singapore dollars. My highest win was 20000 won though.

On our day of departure, we headed towards a taiwanese restaurant. Our tour guide says koreans usually cannot take too oily food and therefore rules out many countries delicacies. However the taiwanese restaurant that we are going is quite successful though. We had porridge and other small side dishes there.

We then headed to Myeondong just before lunch and went shopping around and eating street food.

For our lunch we settled for a korean restaurant and order a few korean dishes we did not get to taste and was seen in DaChangJin.

After which we proceed to NamDaeMon, where the things there are really really cheap. I bought a packet of seaweeds and 2 different kinds of cuttlefish. It was worth it. However, time was short on us, we did not get to shop longer and had to board our bus which will bring us back to Incheon airport. On the bus, the tour leader collected "tips" from us with this cool looking specs!

Although it was a short few days trip, I really love it, I wonder when will my next trip be.

Some other scenes from Korea.

The heater doubling up as a boiling point for the kettle

What does the mountain shape look like?

The girl that I came to korea for.

The girl I find so adorable in my tour group.

avec le prochain
jh out!~

p.s : Ghost Rider gets 2.6 out of 5 stars.
p.p.s : Hannibal Rising gets 2.8 out of 5 cannibals.
p.p.p.s : 300 gets 3.8 out of 5 Spartans.
p.p.p.p.s : The above blog should keep you readers satisfied for now. Do understand that school has begun for me and assignments are rushing in.
p.p.p.p.p.s : Happy Birthday/Anniversary to http://g0dspeed.blogspot.com/

Labels: Korea Pictures

Sometimes The Road Ahead Is Paved With Anything But Good Intentions @ 3:15 AM 0 comments

About

: Name: Peter; Location: Singapore

Not boring not exciting, not lazy not hardworking, not handsome not ugly, not short not thin, not a bad guy not quite mommy's boy either. Regular Singaporean guy who like most guys probably get several different colours of the same shirt, t-shirt, berms, jeans once they fall in love with a particular design. Been through the era of cassette tapes of walkmans to discmans(remember the anti-shock technology) as well as MiniDisc(coming out at a bad time) which obviously lost to the emergence of mp3s and the CD to LD which saw LD losing out to VCDs. Next came the DVDs which 0wned the vcds and try to act smart by having 2 groups, HD DVD and Blu Ray. 2 words BLU.RAY. Loves to reminisce the old days when A&W rootbear float was still around and KFC was still a restaurant complete with waiters serving you Kentucky Fried Chicken. The days where bus fares were 10 cents for students and pizza hut's lunch buffets. Moves/dances to the jumpy music of Ipod Ads and likes to laugh at the Hello I'm a Mac, Hello I'm a PC advertisements!

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