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

Friday, December 15, 2006

whew, finally touched down from the plane at 11.20+pm and reached home after midnight... just completed a 6days 5 nights tour in Jeju and Seoul as well as detour to other places of interest. i bought along my dopod s300 phone with a 1.3megapixel lens, hoping i can get great shots of korea using only the phone. the result? quite acceptable i think. Snapped over 100+ photos during the trip but i still missed out alot of great shots... really wish i can finish this aftermath journal...

took alot of photos at day 1, so maybe splittin a few parts though...

imagine my disappointment when i realised the airline we are taking, Korean Air, is really dead boring and so... i dont know what to say, try infering after i finished describing... it was going to be a overnight flight and heavens werent exactly kind to me. turbulence occured so often, i almost peed in my pants *no lah* but some were damn scary. listening to music halfway then the whole plane went up and nauseating down i was like WTF gimme some peace manz peace PEACEEE.... after 2 short hours in the flight of turbulence i looked something like this

there was this big screen right in front of me * i was at the window seat with a nice view of the wing =_= * that just wont go off when i was sleeping. adding a hard uncomfortable seat and a sucker behind me who put his legs on my chair, i couldnt sleep at all. *sigh* my bro also tooka photo of himself. Strangely people say we looked like twins, so it's either i look older or he look younger *we even sounded the same on the phone damnit haha*

bobian lanlan also cannot sleep, so observe the surrounding. saw 1 good-looking girl sitting in front of my dad who was seated across my bro from the walkway, who then is sitting beside me, who was at the window seat with a nice view of wing. go figure! anyway, i go (0_0) WAH wish u are in my tour group hahaha *i sense a high heel shoe flying towards me* actually i noticed her at the departure gates and didnt really expecting her to be the same flight and seated so near me hahaha.... but the funniest thing occured when i looked down. her white sling bag, which is underneath her seat, is really seriously underneath my dad's shoes! LOLX!!

finally supper was served. got 2 choices: western and korean. so i chosen korean and i was given this

luckily i know how to eat this dish, in short BB rice in Korea. just squeeze bbq sauce all over the rice, mix it with the veggies and tada

UGH!! that was my reaction when i saw what my parents did. they poured the miso soup together with the rice n veggies. i didnt dare to take down the photo hahaha *i sense.... 2 metal chopsticks stabbing me now* anyway the original size of the photos are small cos i didnt know it was at the lowest resolution settings when i took the photos =_= took me quite a while to realise though, wasted many nice shots...

aha it's breaking dawn and the plane was above the clouds, the sunrise is exceptionally beautiful manz...

"am i looking at the sea?" No! the plane is above the clouds! yet another beautiful photo but spoilt by the thruster of the damn plane =_= when we landed i almost rofl when she realised her bag was dirtied XD

finally we reached the incheon international airport and met up the guide. OMG i thought for once she from China 'cos of her mandarin but she really is a Korean! cant detect any korean tone in her mandarin and speaks better chinese than some of the kids in the tour group XD

haha i think the catuses are fake

AHHH she IS in my tour group! and apparently she with her mom n bro n cousins *i knew about it later* and they formed a 9-person group. i looked around and saw a mom with 2 kids in our group, plus the 4 in my family a total of 16 pple in the tour. Cool!

korean macs are different from s'pore such that they clear their own rubbish. and it's not really that straightforward either

the box on the extreme left is for throwing the paper containers the next one is for throwing leftover FOOD and the third for leftover DRINKS. i kept wondering, are they going to recycle the leftovers or what for a specialisation of such disposal of waste?

anyway, the first destination is to jeju, so a transit had to be made at a nearby airport. the time of flight is at the afternoon, so we went for some sight-seeing and lunch before going to jeju. First stop: a park near incheon airport. the view are quite nice actually, with jogging tracks too! so different from those in s'pore... they filled the park with many cultural sculptures that depicted their beliefs and ideas in the country

still havent really interact with the rest of the group but 2 particularly kids stood out, literally. Noisy is the key word, and their English are damn americanised, even their mom too. the boy speaks of a rough and sometimes rude accent, while the girl a typical cheeky tone of a 12 year old. the 9 person group made up of 5 teenagers 1 kid and 3 adults. among the teenagers 3 gers 2 guys, and they are made up of 3 families. Or so it seems! explanation at later post. then we had lunch at the airport terminal and off we go to jeju!
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jeju is an island formed from volcanic eruptions thousands of years ago, forcing huge amount of rocks to surface from the sea, forming a rocky island as a result. precisely that it is formed in the middle of nowhere in the ocean, winds are super super strong, enough to blow the balance out of you... of cos, landing from the flight is extremely precarious and scary, the whole plane was jerking left right upside down before it landed safely *duh* the programme for the day was just mere sight seeing, so okloh just went along with it...

first stop in jeju: mysterious road

lol nono that caveboy is not the main attraction. the road is mysterious cos stationary cars without brakes on will auto roll up the upward sloping road. but i thought i saw other phenomenons like this at other countries, but oh well... the whole road is packed with tourists, so no good shot.. i only came across this boy behind a building nearby when i was returnin to the bus. i guess it was a myth that a spirit caveboy is 'responsible' for pullin and pushing vechicles up the slopes XD

where did i go next? oh ya we then went down to Mt.Hallansan. that was the worst part of the journey of that day, cos everyone were jetlagged and the road is damn damn curvy, even my dad is carsick. for the record his driving experience is even old than me (0_0) after a tedious journey we finally landed in mt.hallansan.

there! that's our tour guide, but couldnt see the face properly, she's korean and married with a son. her story is damn hilarious, will be said in later post. anyway, the statue on her right is the guardian god of the island, forgot its name though...

i swear on my backside, the time difference btwn the previous photo and this is only 3minutes or so. the fog settled in damn fast and eerily in some sense...

yup we are 1100m above sea level...

and the day havent end yet! (yeah i decided must finish day1 in 1 post)

we went down the winding road (again!)haha really pity those who were already carsick XD anyway the next destination is a green tea museum. basically shows all the equipments koreans used in their 5000years of history... problem is the place is so anti-tourist! all the descriptions are in korean, i dont even know what the heck they are talking about =_= so didnt take any picture then... the tour guide said that the ice creams are nice...

manx... if i were to choose just one thing to remember from the trip, this has to be it...! a must try for everyone who can go to jeju...

things took a rather unexpected twist, there was susposed to be a fast boat ride in the sea on the 2nd day of the trip, but had to be pushed forward to the next activity after the green tea museum, cos the forecast of the sea conditions the next day werent favourable for it... i thought the whole thing was gonna be damn scary! the guide's description of the fast boat sounded as though the boat is REALLY going to TURN literally UPSIDE DOWN while travelling at high speed! becos everyone was taking the fast boat i didnt bring my fone down to take any pictures... when i got into the boat i wanted to sit in the middle row, but was 'forced' to sit at the back row. Bad move! and a huge disappointment too... True the boat was going at a damn fast speed, but it didnt do an UPSIDE DOWN trick, instead it merely spinned itself in a circle while lifting itself up the air, something like a car doing a drift on a road, except that now it did a 'drift' on the sea surface... As for the bad move *sigh* sittin at the back row AND the corner seat resulted in me being the WETTEST, yes WETTEST of all the passengers *sigh* what a way to kick off the korean trip...

*sigh* no choice, went to a place called Jusangjieolri seashore Daepo Coast Rock for scery viewing, while being drenched like a dunno-what... manx but seriously the coast view was damn majestic! tried capturing the view with my fone...

a camel in korea?! no it's just a rock haha...

if you are a fan of the show princess hour, you would surely notice a place called Teddy BEar Museum, yep it's flimed in jeju and i went there after the scenery. it's a beautiful place, where teddy bears rulz and quite comical... some of the more intereesting photos...

official logo of the museum

wah haha vv cute la

collaspe of berlin wall, teddy-bear style

terra-coat teddy bears!

snow white bear and the seven bear-warf

bear-na lisa! cousin of mona

this pic does look familiar, but i cant remember having teddy-bears as gods....

a Thinking Bear, wondering what's for dinner XD

(O_O) now this is really cool

2 bears! one's cute, one's not... go figure!

anyone needs a comfort from two Santa Bears? Free of charge, just sit in....

manx, the museum sure is cute! bought a souvenir for natty and went off for dinner... sure hungry we are, the cold weather somehow forced me to burn off more easily and i need more food, as well as tripling my frequency to toilets, serious i swear on my backside...

this was the first dinner in jeju, i remember it's sardine with lots of veggies inside the wok. stragen enough everyone's appetite was damn lousy! while i was famished, the rest hardly touched their food. at the end of dinner some of the aunties looked at our all-cleared table and looked back at their half-cleared counterparts, and commented, "wow u all sure do enjoy ur dinner!" (-_-") errr ok thanks? WTH you all dont like your food and say we enjoy our food, wad does it susposed to mean?! to make things worse, my mom proclaimed to the rest of the tables that she LOVED kimchi!! the problem is, not one of them like kimchi at all!! manx =_=

finally we checked in into jeju hanwha spa resort. spa? it sounded good, but that will happen on the next day...

//Brandon struck at 5:07 PM\\