SUMMER PART I KOREA

It's been a long day without you, my friend
And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again
We've come a long way from where we began
Oh, I'll tell you all about it when I see you again
When I see you again

Korea

I would split the korea trip into two parts, namely Seoul and Busan. I would talk about it in chronological order.

It's been an amazing trip overseas with Reynold limpin and Zuhair as they make a trip even more exciting with their different personalities. Reynold is the one suggesting the plans and ensuring that we carry it out on time. Zuhair was the guy who would follow through and ensure we don't get lost in Korea (like we did on the first day). Limpin was our photographer as he took more than 500 photos but don't want to upload any on Facebook. While me, I just add happiness to this group of crazy people.

We met at the airport and hung around. We discovered that Changi Airport actually serves free beer to anyone that is transiting in Singapore. We watched the arsenal match until we boarded the plane. Oh yea food here is freakishly expensive. We bought a curry puff the size of your palm at around 2 dollars. And we saw a slice of pizza going at 7 bucks. What's wrong with the airport prices. To my surprise, China Eastern Airlines catered food on board. Though it was trashy microwavable rice and some meat, I was eating anything they could give as I was starving. So us being geniuses, didn't exchange any Chinese Yuan to spend in China on our transit. Thus, we just stood there like idiots while I watched some MTV show with Zuhair which he stored on his phone.

Meet the abang

Finally we reached Korea and spent a good time searching for the train station. The train was hidden in a secluded section of the airport. Luckily, the staff had a good command of english and we were able to easily purchase T-link card and were on our way to the hotel soon enough. We met Reynold at the train station nearest to our hotel and proceeded to checking in.

A little old in the modern city of Seoul

That was the original plan but the owner wasn't at the desk at the time. So we decided to fuck it and started walking around the place. The hotel we stayed at was surrounded by many shops that generally specialise in workshop tools. We have to work a further distance to reach other amenities such as 7-eleven or eateries. After a casual round around the neighbourhood, we went back to the hotel and discovered that the owner was still not there. And thus, began the phone calling for an eternity.

2 hours of waiting and counting

After checking in, we proceeded to walk to Myeondong for some dinner. The atmosphere there was great as it was like a nice hang out spot for teenagers and young adults. It was sort of like walking down bugis street as it was lined with cafe. We settled for a store and ordered kimchibokkeumbap which was sort of like fried rice with chicken, seafood with rice cakes dropped into the mix. It was heaven on earth.

It tasted as delicious as it looked and we decided to be geniuses and walked towards the N tower as suggested by our hotel owner.

"Just a casual 30 minutes walk from our hotel!"

After 2 hours of slugging our bodies up the mountain, the view was fantastic.

Shag face in front of a beautiful cityscape

That was not the top of the hill though as we still need to climb an additional hour or so to reach the top which was the N tower. The 2km trek was literally 2km of us climbing vertically up. When we reached the top we realised that there were cable car going down from it was then we decided we are taking the cable car down no matter what.

Evening view

Night view

The night was still young so we decided to have some supper. But most stalls are closed by now so we went to buy some instant noodle and topokki (rice cake) from a convenience store. Despite the sucky start to the trip, I was looking forward to the next day as we were heading to..

Everland, a magical world of adventures and excitement where dreams come true

That's what they said on the entrance so I am just quoting them. It was a long train ride there as we transfer a few lines but we made our way there safe and sound.

When we went into the theme park the first thing we did was to psycho Reynold to take this crazy wooden roller coaster ride. Apparently it drops you for 45m in a space of 3 seconds. As we were making our way up the the coaster, Reynold face was already turning white and he was shaking. This was because he had a fear of heights and we wanted him to conquer it. Or that was the reason we gave him to get him to join us on this crazy ride.

After the ride, we proceeded to the zoo to see some animals.

I fell asleep during the bus ride as it was too stuffy in the bus that was touring us around the compound. The fun part about Everland was that it has these skylifts which allow us to transport us from one part of the park to the other. It was quite fun until we decided to start jerking and cause the lift to shake violently.

We were supposed to catch some pretty girls behind us but our heads blocked it

We then proceeded to have lunch at KFC and went on full motor rides after rides in the afternoon and visited more animals as it was raining momentarily.

Until we decided to take the tornado. The tornado was a ride that rotated you 360 degrees in all manners. After the ride I KOed while zuhair and limpin complained of headache. Reynold chickened out of the ride and was laughing at us. When i woke up I went to the toilet and puked. After that I was fine and i discovered the guys were playing some darts and shooting at balloons.

It was soon night fall and we decided to play bumper cars. It was amazing as we initially wanted to aim a guy in a white hoodie. But there were some free space left and he proceeded to play. Instead, there was a group of elderly people playing next. So we decided that the person who bangs the car with the highest combined age will win. It was damn fun as their reflexes weren't as fast as us as we hit them with our cars multiple times. The night view was nice as can be seen below.

Flower boy in korea

Bukhansan National Park

In my opinion this was the most torturous part of the trip for me, but the most enriching one too. I discovered that I could overcome my limits and it was all in the mind. Today I learnt that I was not travelling with just friends, they were my brothers who would take care of me.

Let's just say the national park isn't exactly a normal park. It didn't have any normal road path after 1km into the mountain. Yes, that's right this national park is a mountain. It has a peak of 836m. And it was frequented by the locals living close to that area. The path was just filled with rocks and in some instances, you had to use all four limbs in order to get up the road.

This was halfway up the mountain and I was already very tired

Some traditional housing that wasn't torn down

Matrep detected?

 After climbing for a further 3 hours, we finally reached our pit stop. Yes, it was a gate that was around 500 meters up the mountain.

I came, I conquered.

After that was just a long climb down the mountain as we decided to take a different path down. It was quite tough as the sand made it very slippery and we took a few tumbles on the way down. But we made it alive for some lunch. It was a tricky part as the shop owner couldn't speak english and we could not speak korean. So we had a hard time ordering lunch and ended up in ordering some ox tail soup. Reynold decided to impart us some knowledge from the locals and mixed up some drinks for us.

The ratio is 1:1:1 and it tastes heavenly

We took a bus ride and crashed in the hotel room. After our nap we proceeded to the ehwa university district. No no, we weren't there for the girls, we were there purely as tourists and we wanted to experience what a university town is like in Korea. It was magnificent as it was filled with tourists from all around mixed in with korean students. The streets were lined with shops selling beauty products, clothes and some even offering "massage". We tried to go to Gangnam for a late dinner but most stores were already closed so we had to make our way back to our hotel district and eat instant noodles for dinner. 

It was a great time in Seoul overall and I was looking forward to going Busan the next day.

BUSAN