//...strike!...\\

Thursday, December 28, 2006

the last day in korea had arrived, and we are waiting eagerly for the flight home...

<< hadn't been able to login into blogger yesterday,i shouldnt be here blogging as i started work yesterday in another department at the company my mum work at, but yesterday one of her colleague, whom me and my bro also know her, just passed away suddenly on the way to work... she's just only 38 for god's sake.... i'll never have the chance to work in the same company again... i'll eat lunch with my mom's colleagues but never have the chance to ever go for lunch with her... office politics are just so scary, even speculations on how she died flew around in the department i worked at, yet i shall be deaf and ignore them, knowing that no matter how hurted yesterday was, life must still carry on.......

hence i've decided to delicate this post in memory of my mom's friend, as well as my friend, Eunice Ong.. though it may not seem to be a glorious tribute or what, but i shall brave through the grave sorrowness that filled the air and complete my korean trip blog....

rest in peace, Eunice, you shall be missed for so much things....>>

it was crazy packing up inside the hilton hotel, and i hadnt had enough sleep as i've watched the episodeIV of star wars... breakfast at hilton hotel was quite ok, though not really world class or what... there was a last minute shopping at a so-called local production shop and a herb selling shop, i cant remember what herb, but it's still the same pattern: sealed up and fluent mandarin-speaking koreans... this convinced the majority of the teens that the places are "tourist-slaughterhouse" =_=

at the airport we bade our farewell to the tour guide and the assistant.. believe it or not i saw him back in singapore when my friend is using friendster! his friend was posing beside the assistant! wow how small the world can be?

back in the flight home, we somehow started a pillow fight as the guys r sitting the row behind the girls... lolz that was quite hilarious though.. when i got bored i whipped out my bro's PSP and started playing, typical joey a 9yo boy kept wanting to snatch it from me and play, in the process muttering stuffs like, "wow u sucked, but u won!" i swore i could have whack the living hell out of him if he's older... wonder how he was brought up... nvm...

at changi 2 kan jiong parents were rushing home, i didnt get any contacts from the teens neither do i bade them farewell too... sigh

anyway for future reference, going overseas in a tour group is more suitable for you if you are
1) lazy to plan your trip
2) more interested in booking high class hotels for sleeping
3) very interested in eating their restaurant-style meals instead of those small shops along the streets
4) more interested in sceneries than shopping
5) those who doesnt like staying at a certain tourist destination for too long
6) impatient to book the tickets
7) interested in trying out adventurous stuffs (like the jet boad and ATV in jeju, something you cannot do for a free-and-easy tour)

vice versa for those who wants to go on a free-and-easy, my guts is that free-and-easy is only suitable for those who REALLY wants to shop from day to night, otherwise tour groups will help you settle almost everything, except the time allocated for shopping...

yea i know the conclusion is abit dead, cant helped it i damn tired from working for just 50bucks a day and realising the fact that life ends so easily is a very scary thought...

//Brandon struck at 7:23 PM\\

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

the last full day in korea had finally arrived.. the least enjoyable day, it's either sight-seeing or buying stuffs, with lots of conspiracy theories flying here and there..

manx, day6 couldnt had be more boring,all i could remember is that we visited a ginseng shop and a gem factory.. funny thing is, the salespeople there speak Chinese! adding to the point that the whole shop was sealed and covered from the eyes of the public! as in, u cant look in from outside.. wads the secretive about, manz? then the teens group came up with the conspiracy theory... blahblahblah i dont know who to believe.. not that i care except that i heard my mum spent over US$2000 on ginseng itself!! WTH!! US$2000+!!! someone pls do cpr on me thx... but its nt confirmed, so i have to hope the currency is wrong XD if its in won it's only S$3.40 hahaha...

ugh the ginseng look like some spinal cord system or something... BIO STUDENTS tell me wad it look like... but when i got a closer look at it i saw a strand of hair XD oh ya and i got warned by the salesperson there when i took this photo... whats the fuss about?

the shop name...

oh OH yes i forgot about the kimchi making and the hambok wearing... basically just teach u how to make a kimchi... eh cant be bothered to type out the details of this event.. i didnt take home to try though, maybe its world class? haha...

there! our tour guide translating korean to chinese...

then it's time for hambok wearing! just wearing costumes of ancient korean officials, like.... i dont know, maybe the da chang jing will give u a clue of what is it...

kawaii!! no lah hahaha...

still got one more... but i'm nt uploading xP

the gem factory... nono that ahjumah is not part of it... also another sealed up shop and chinese-speaking koreans, and more conspiracy theories (-_-) i cant wait for lunch...

BB rice again! except that both my parents managed to eat it the right way this time XD quite nice actually, but i still prefered the one at crystal jade express, wisma atria (did i spell correctly??)...

i think we went to the cheong wa dae, equivalent to the White House of south korea, nothing much there as i've said earlier.. the president's working area is located there cuz of one reason

the mountain behind it.. susposedly it has got something to do with dragons again but oh well, show me a bone and i'll believe there's dragons in the past...

somehow we ventured into a palace, change of plan different palace from the itinerary.. dont know what palace though.. just go in there and took lots of photos

this the main entrance of the gate.. the name? donhwamun

u know the da chang jing show? it's based on historical records, and this is the rank that she got back then in the palace, which is nt bad for a woman..

throne of the king, not frozen throne -_- brrr cooollldddd lammmmmeeee...

manx, i dont know what happened but somehow the resolutions got smaller, dont know what buttons i pressed :S wasted many good shots manz...

and so we left...

there were susposed to be a cruise down the Han river but something happened and it was called off.. i groaned when i heard a performance was chosen as a replacement, it'd better be good... thus we went shopping at a street...

who would have thought this kind of vegetables would be found growing under trees along the streets of korea! too bad the resolution is small...

looked cool to me, just that we had to wait for one hour for the show to start -_-

there! our tour guide acting cute... she's damn funny lah, telling us all the funny stuffs in korea...

my mom n my bro.. enough said

the nanta show is really damn nice! the performers are super talented, using culinary tools to make fantastic music, even joining in the crowd as part of their performances.. for example, the starting part is some sort of a ppt slide show, telling us that that day is the birthday of the head chef, and we were to sing a birthday song... the crowd really did!! something like this wont happen in singapore... the show also encourages us to shout and cheer for them anytime during the show, and the crowd really did!! something like this wont happen in singapore lolx... the female peformer looks abit like jasmine tye though... nope no photos thesman, sorry hahaha...

the day ended with us checking in to hilton hotel, with a casino beside it ($_$) too bad i'm under 19... anyway me and my bro walked to the nandaemun market for shopping, plannin to walk until around midnite... tried looking for seaweeds but the price was super ex! trying to cheat us eh? not so easy... my bro bought a korean national soccer team tshirt, not jersey, tshirt for juz 8000 won :S before we leave we saw some familiar faces... oh the girls in the tour group also ventured to nandaemun! lolx...

//Brandon struck at 1:05 PM\\

Sunday, December 24, 2006

dumb me, the dongdaemun shopping trip was only at day5 not day3 haha... no wonder i thought how come i bought my jeans so early into the trip... anyway this post is all sceneries, since the south korean land is 70% mountainous.. this day is the day of travelling, as up to 6hours will be spent on bus -_-

as we left the ski resort i tried taking down some photos of the mountains we went past.. later we are going to go up one of them! now that i cant seem to upload 5 at one go, oh well one by one then..

note how the climate changes when we advance... no more snow!

ok then we reached a spot where we can take a cable car up to the mountain, where we completed the journey on foot to the top..

wow snow... nt really expecting to see it again...

did i say that the whole route up the top is frozen? literally... we have to grab guiding ropes to prevent us from falling, and to slip uncontrollably down the mountain..

the pile of rock there is the topmost part of the mountain, and there's a trail of guiding ropes up towards there.. a pity that no one wanted to go up there :S

WTH is THAT?! bigfoot in korea?! XD no la it's just anohter adventurous korean auntie climbing up... when i looked back i wonder where were my parents.. turned out that they climbed down again -.-" c'mon when will be the next time we will be back here in mt.seorak? perhaps no more.. i decided to climb up, hoping someone can follow suit and the rest of the teens could come up with me.. i took this photo

and realised the rest were making their way down -_- okok whatever so i had to lanlan make my way down in order not to be left behind.. in the process i took this photo accidentally..

oh well, close up shot of snow, or ice, or frozen tracks :S and one last photo beofre i leave mt.seorak for gd, my return depends on the future of earth 50 years from now..

when we reached the ground level, we were directed to a Shinhungsa Temple, where an iconic Buddha of Peace, erected to pray for everlasting peace and union of the two korean nations.. my my, what a giant!

manx, taking a photo of it in my handphone literally blessed it from harm's way (but i dropped it twice after returning >.< )

i took some more photos of the mountains before i leave, but i guess mountain pics dont appeal to others as much as to me, juz one more nice one...

ok done! back to the bus i really forgot what happened next, i just remembered watching banquet, u know the zhang ziyi movie whose ending dont make any sense to me.. fast forward to dongdaemun, u know why i realised it is at day5? cos of this photo

lolx if u say go dota in singapore, it means go lan shop and play the game... but in seoul, it means go dongdaemun! hahaha...

nothing interesting inside, except one aquarium shop.. guess what they sell..?

FISH PACKS!! LITERALLY! this is where creativity goes overboard, selling pet fishes in packets, like some refill pack of detergent? goodness me... they also sell some perculiar stuffs like this

puffer fish! hahaha...

then dinner is already mentioned in day3, so no point repeating...

the trip is fast coming to an end! and it's a gloomy x'mas eve

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

//Brandon struck at 1:51 PM\\

Thursday, December 21, 2006

day4... the day of ski-ing... the day that started out with the most excitment but ended in the heaviest disappointment...

we were susposed to wear our ski attire the first thing in the morning before we went for our breakfast.. the breakfast was a buffet at phoenix park ski resort, the place where we spent 2 nights there.. to cut the long story short we took a gondola, which looks exactly like the cable cars in singapore, up to mount blanc, the region where the ski resort is located in and a haven for ski-ing in seoul. up at the mountain the scenery was just simply breath-taking! once again i marvelled at the works of mother nature.. alas nvr bring my phone up, so used the digi cam...

manx no photos on the snow fight we had on top of the ski ground. Most of us experienced snow for the first time and downgraded ourselves to 5year old kids. in fact, the 2 eldest kids, my bro n jiehan, formed an alliance to attack the rest of us -_- anw we kept targetting the 2 sisters, zhimin and zhihui, but some snow were damn hard! they were literally ice-cubes! we also even attack the tour guide, whom threatened not to teach us skiing later XD manx it was so fun!

later in the gondola back to the skiing ground i missed out on the teenagers' car and ended up in a cabin full of ahjumahs instead *sigh* began clearing the snow in my ski jacket when an ahjumah, whom is jiehan's mom, coomented to my mum that she has a beautiful son (>_<") erm ok thx? haha no offence but i prefered to be called handsome xP but i dont really like how i look though.. neither do my mum, who kept calling me short (FYI i'm 177cm tall) whatever manx...

ok WARINING no more photos for the day already, as the story up next doesnt need any pictures...

and so our ski-ing lesson started after loaning the equipments from the store. there's the blades and 2 ski sticks.. blahblahblah and it's my turn to try to ski down the slope, sigh i fell off balance the moment i started, and *whack* a snowball hit my back, lol it was the tour guide... learning ski-ing was tough, especially for someone with a poor sense of balance like me.. i fell numerous times, but the funny thing is, remember the assistant? he's there to take photo of us, so whenever i fell down while sliding from the slope, he would help me up and then... take a photo of me -_- once he passed me his ski board and asked me to pose beside it, as if i'm a pro snowboarder.. i bought the pic and it's in my house, of me with the snowboard, close to showing a WTF face hahaha...

ouch!! 1 damn hard fall to the side of my thigh, close to my hip.. for a moment i couldnt get up, cos the impact to the side was too great momentarily, den you know what? my mom came walking to my side and... scolded me! WTF?! i fall down u scold me for fuck? but of cos i have already got used to it, after all i grew up being scolded for falling down and stuffs like that.. problem is, she scolded me for not falling down on my butt! HOW IN THE HELL CAN I CONTROL HOW I FALL? i was gliding at high speed and suddenly my ski blade came off and i tumbled, CAN I APPLY BRAKES ON MYSELF WTF?! i didnt explode on her, even though she just tried once and den sort of twisted her knee and she gave up.. then a familiar rountine appeared, i kept climbing up the slope, putting on my blades, glide down, fall down and the cycle continues... i remembered i fell hard 4 times, 2 times on either hips and i was close to paralysis :S on my seventh attempt to glide off the slope, my bro looked at me and said,

"haix.... when u glide off pls look at the front and stop thinking of falling down (CMI kid, you r just so hopeless)..." i can infer from his tone

"MOM! i bringing the rest of the teenagers to the intermediate arena!"

"you... stay here and learn first..."

????????????

sigh, i had already expected it, since young i'm always left behind by my cousins, furthermore on that day itself? i could only see helplessly as they gathered their equipments and trotted to the intermediate arena.. i was so filled with anger at that point, which worsened when vannasa, the 11year old kid, came by to help mecos i'm having trouble wearing the blades.. WTF?! even a 11YEAR OLD girl, whom i only knew for like 4 days, even bothered to lend me a helping hand, and my very own BRO whom i have known for almost 18 yrs juz walked away with the rest?! this just only fuelled my perserverance level, and unfortunately my parents saw NOTHING WRONG with my bro leaving me behind.. at that moment i was lamenting, why the hell am i in this kind of family? when i get scolded for falling down and left behind? blame on myself for being a slow learner *sigh*

after a few more tries i finally grasped the technique of ski-ing, and only fall if i'm close to a hell of a collision with another ski-er... thinking back i shouldnt have gone to the intermediate arena, as if i'm despo to hang out with the teens...

initially there was plans to continue skiing at night, and i initially agreed despite the paralyzing pain at both sides of the hips, but all it needed was just an incident to change my mind... each of us required 1000won to lock up our equipment, problem is we needed coins, so i was handed the task to change the notes to coins at a nearby machine.. when i slotted in the second note, nothing came out.. WTF?! turns out the note was stuck, i started looking around for help, but in a foreign country where its people dont speak english to u even though u made it clear u are not a korean, what else can i do? i went back and told my bro.. his answer?

"irresponsible.."

WTF?!?!?! what do u want me to do?! instead of arguing, i chose the best solution: keeping quiet.. if i were to blow up on him i guess it will be an awkward tour from then on... but wtf must he say tt? it's only 1000won, or S$1.70!! after lunch i decided to return my equipment and rest my sore thighs, feeling damn sick about today's event...

i tried sleeping, but i couldnt, i kept thinking about alot of stuffs, the past, the present... AS EXPECTED when he returned from skiing the rest decided not to ski at night, he acted as if nothing has happened... but of course, he's not the one who is at the receiving end :S whatever u fake asshole...

dinner wasnt too great, cos it was vegetable steamboat, bland and much less strong than the previous dinner,plus the sick events during the day my appetite wasnt that good.. my mood was grumpy, and i blamed it on my thighs to them, while deep down a huge resentment and fury was boiling...

after dinner still too early for bedtime, so decided to go to a nearby mall to shop.. there's a place for playing pool! haha i didnt expect it at all.. but there's a catch: 2000won for 10mins, 1 hour 120000won, which liteally translate to... S$19+ per hour!! WTF!! but then the ambience is good la, no hooligans around shouting CB! KNN! those kind of crap.... managed to win 2 games but lost the last game in a very unlucky manner..

from my view i had 3 balls left, while jiehan only need to hit in the black, so of cos i had to finish the table, cos the black is at the top right pocket... i slotted one down the bottom right, *BLAM* and i shift my attention to a purple on the centre right pocket... just nice for a slice to the last ball before the black.. i whacked *BLAM* the purple did enter the centre pocket, but my white got sliced instead to the top left pocket! ARGH i lost!! my goodness... this comedy incurred a a whole lot of laughters... which is the only memorable stuff for the day...

sigh

//Brandon struck at 11:57 AM\\

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

ok did i forgot to mention in the previous posting that it was going to be the last night we spend in jeju?

woke up darn early to catch the morning flight, but not without any last min sight-seeing. for example, we headed down to Yongduam Rock

uh it was still dark, so quite hard to see any meaningful stuffs down there, but anyway we did make our way down to the rocky shores on foot and look at some of the most amazing rock formations sculptured yet by Mother Nature's very own hands. there used to be one particular rock which looked like a dragon but after years of erosion, what's left now is uh.... ???

UGH! in case u r wondering wth is this, it's their abalone porridge, accompanied with the usual few appetisers (not so for most of us but not me XD)

*oh sheeeeeet i just realised i had no photos for the next few days! ok only a few =( neither do the digi cam too....*

so we left jeju and returned to seoul, not much things happened cos i was knocked out during the whole flight! i literally slept through the whole thing cos didnt really sleep well for the whole phase at jeju... at seoul we met up with the assistant, a student waiting for entry to uni and hence attached to us as the tour's photographer. his job is really quite sai kang in s'poreans' standards.. so the teens tried interacting with him so that not to make him feel left out. korean guys are fine, but sometimes i think they get too physical for my liking. i mean, it's ok if he just pat shoulders and stuffs like that, but when it travels further down to my *uh* butt? ya butt... i dont know, maybe it's their culture or what...

uh anyway we are susposed to spend 4+ hours in lotte world, an indoor and outdoor amusement park.. eh cold weather + roller coaster anyone?

1) a super fast roller coaster which zoom from the start to the end with no braking or whatsoever
2) a rotating wheel connected perpendicularly to a metallic hand that swings you like a pendulum up to 60m high!
3) french revolution: a high speed indoor roller coaster that goes up down left right until u lose your sense of balance...
4) bumper car!

there one more i didnt dare to take is the gyro drop, basically bringing you 70m up and droppping you, free fall... yucks! i would only go if you point a gun to my head... another one, the bungee drop... i didnt take, but my bro took it

eh walau quite high can? i dont dare to try it loh... my mum hold the digi cam and den took some photos inside the park, which includes ice-skating!

actually not much photos loh *sigh* nothing worth displaying here...

finally we can go shopping! it's nearby, a place called Dongdaemun, but shopping in korea in this timing is well, not suitable for us.... their stuffs are all winter clothing! and quite expensive also :S only their jeans are acceptable, bought one for 37000won, which translated into sing 50+ bucks... haha the bargaining process also quite funny la, we literally communicated through a calculator! he show me it's original 45k, after his discount it's 38k... after selecting what i wan to buy, i decided to press 3,6,0,0,0 on his calculator and gave him a thumb-up.. he stared at the calculator, frowned for a while, and decided 37k =_=

time for dinner! it was korean ginseng chicken, which uses a 90day old chicken, stuff it with rice and ginseng and some other herbs, and steam it for long hours. they also served ginseng wine, which... well, let's just say the alcohol level is quite low, i cant taste any of it... maybe cos after trying the rum of 43% level, i'm much immune to weaker ones...

next day we gonna spend the whole day ski-ing! u shld have seen how excited i'm in the ski resort

uh ok the tissue paper wasnt susposed to be there... the night view of the ski ground was fantastic!

manx, cant wait to feel the first snow i ever touched... oh ya and i finally saw what is a tatami room

basically just take out the beds and spread them on the ground and sleep.. furthermore the ground has undersoil heating!

manx, so exciting! or so it seems....

//Brandon struck at 11:20 AM\\