Korea Day 1- Day 2

So here are the pictures for our Korea trip. But because it’s over a thousand pictures, I can only do a day by day post. We’ll start off with day 1, with Cai and I taking a night flight over to Incheon Airport by Asiana Airlines. If possible, don’t fly Asiana. It isn’t that fantastic and the bibimbab gave me an immense gastric the first time I had it.

A note on the tour group before I go on. Our tour group had 28 people, which is ALOT of people. Before the trip I was quite upset about it because I thought big tour groups were too noisy and unmanageable and they tend to slow things down a little. What made it worse was the fact that there seemed tobe alot of old people. And I mean old. True enough out of 28 of us, only 6 of us were below 30 years old. THe main group of people were the oldies who were about 60 years old and above.

We had this huge generation gap on the first day. But as the days past, we warmed up to each other and we began to interact with each other alot more. In fact the old ones are quite funny and they were rather nice. They seemed really eager to talk to us and I guess they weren’t that bad to talk to either.

Looking back, I really miss them alot. The old ones especially. They can be so noisy, yet so adorable and interesting to listen to. I love my tour group.
I also have a wonderful Tour Guide, Jacky, who’s a Korean but a third generation chinese. He could speak really good Mandarin and he was young and fun to be with. He was awesome, alot better than the tour guide I had in Taiwan last year, and the taiwan tour guide was already very good!

This is me and my sisters before we flew.
Waiting in anticipation
I bought a pair of geese for baby. They were supposed to be symbolic of our first vacation together , and we’ll take them on our travels. Unfortunately my half was soiled and I gave it a bath, but forgot to take her back. She’s left in Lotte World Hotel, this very fine and exquisite 6 Star hotel in Seoul.
The bibimbab on the airplane. Bibimbab is a traditional korean dish that comprises of an assortment of cold vegetables as you can see in the bowl. Rice is mixed into the bowl of cold veg together with the hot pepper sesame sauce and you’re supposed to mix it all up. I love it so much I’m going to look for bibimbab in Singapore.

We arrived at Incheon Airport at Day 2 at 6 30 am in the morning and had our breakfast before we continued on the tour with our tour group .
At Paris Croissant where we have our breakfast, we were given this timer, that will buzz to tell us that our coffee is ready to be collected at the counter. How cool is that!

Our delectable croissant

The roads of Korea
They have many residential apartments like what you see in the pictures above. About 90 percent of housing in Korea is non-government or non public. They are owned by large corporations like Samsung, LG, and Hyundai, and a 5 room flat apartment in Singapore will cost about 2 million over there in Seoul. Thank God for cheap public housing in Singapore!

Random sights on the way. We were travelling to Gyeongju for this day.
Stopping by for a toilet break. At this time about 9 am in the morning, the temperature is about 16 degrees celcius. Pretty cold for me.
We went into a mini mart and were looking at the tidbits they have in there, and came across these little bottles of drinks with ginseng in them. I bought one and decided to try it.
It tasted good, and we were instantly refreshed! Before that we or I was grouchy and tired from the lack of sleep on the airplane. And this woke us up big time!
Our lunch at Gyeongju. We had Korean style steamboat with the kimchi broth. It tasted good. The above show an assortment of kimchi/ appetisers.

First stop at Gyeongju is the area of Cheomaseongdae, where the oldest astronomical observatory was built. The picture above shows the place where the previous emperors were buried.
The observatory.


Next stop we went to Bulgukska temple, and it’s a representative relic of Gyeongju. Many of such temples have been rebuilt in the later centuries because those that were built were destroyed by wars that occured throughout Korea’s history. This one we have here stands at about 1500 years old.
The entrance of the temple had 4 large statues like these surrounding the area. They were known to guard the temple and ward it of evil spirits and demons. They torture these demons under their feet as you would see in the following picture.



Bulguksa Dabotap
Three storied stone pagoda.

Love the interiors of the temple. The palaces that we visit later on also had the same design in the ceiling, with Buddhist influence.
Love the spaciousnesss of the temple.

We went to Bomun lake which had this huge windmill which made good bacground for the scenery.

Next we went to a Wine tunnel that makes persimmon wine.

The wine tunnel used to be a train tunnel but they converted it to a wine tunnel where they store wine. There’s no aircon in there and it’s naturally cool at about 16 - 17 degrees celcius, which is the best temperature to keep and age the wine.



I had alot of persimmon wine in there ! But didn’t get any back because I was not too sure of the customs. Turned out it would have been fine.Darn. Haha..It was not bad… tasted abit sweet but still not as good as choya.




For dinner we had Korean BBQ .It was like in Singapore except the bbq tray tilts to a side where the oil will be drained off to the side. I didn’t quite like the dinner because it was mainly pork and I didn’t like pork. (More on that later) Korean dishes had a lot of Pork and so I had to fill my tummy up with more rice and vegetables.

We went back to the hotel room thereafter and instead of resting or watching TV or bathing, we went out to walk in the night air looking for correct adaptors but couldn’t find any. So we came back for cocktails in the bar with the sound of the saxophone playing in the background.



The next day, we woke up extremely early at about 6 am to use the gym. We were very amazed at the fitness centre in the hotel because the treadmills had TV screens on them! And they have the coolest gym equipment you can ever imagine, it makes the gyms in Singapore cry in shame. We were pretty disciplined I must say, waking up sooo early in the morning to burn off the fats. heh.

Alright enough for today. Day 3 tomorrow!

~ by starlala on May 15, 2008.