July 2/3
We went to eat cold noodles with Minwoo’s parent. I ordered a spicy cold noodle and boy was it good. Apparently cold noodle originated from North Korea. I thought that North Koreans eat cold noodles because they had no heat … but I don’t know the real reason. After lunch, we headed to Myeong Dong (shopping district , mix of brands and boutique shops!) From 4pm-9pm, we spent our whole time there shopping. The guys headed home while the girls went to Dongdamen (another shopping district) to go for another round of shopping. It was 12:30am and the subway was closed. We took a taxi home. The first taxi said he charges 70,000 won ($70) to get back to our hotel but that was outrageous so we just rage ran out. The second taxi, was running by meter and we ended up paying only 7,000 won ($7)! The first taxi was ripping us off because we were tourist and before we said where we lived, he knew the hotel.
July 3 was our last day in Seoul. Cherie, Danielle and I woke up early to go to Hongdae (Hongkik Station) to buy glasses. Cherie and I wanted to buy glasses so we were browsing around and in the end, we both picked there big, plastic glasses. I like them a lot. My face doesn’t really fit many glasses b/c my eyes are big so wearing small size glasses makes my eyes look distorted. I didn’t have enough money so we had to subway to Myeongdong to exchange and then return back to Hongdae to pick up my glasses. We just shopped around Hongdae after we picked up the glasses. When dinner rolled around, we went back home to find the guys and then we headed to Myeongdong for dinner… The Japanese restaurant that we wanted to go to was closed so we ended up going to this Korean bar which was a restaurant as well but had a bar on the other side. After dinner, we subway to Sicheong to eat spicy rice cake! apparently they have the best spicy rice cake but the store that we wanted to go to was closed (bad luck!). Yan, Matt and I was last to leave Myeong Dong. We thought Jack and Danielle were still walking around or eating shaved ice but they were with Minwoo.. Yan, Matt and I had a whole pot of spicy rice cake for ourself. While the others went to E-mart, we ate spicy rice cake. We then headed home to pack and chill for the flight the next day. Many of us barely slept, attempting to pull an all nighter! I periodically took naps and the longest one was 1 hour. Minwoo’s mom came by at 5am to walk us to the Airport shuttle bus.
July 1
2 more days until we all depart! This trip has flown by. The girls are planning to go crazy-shopping the next 2 days. Clothing in Korea is not that cheap. I mean, a shirt is only 10 dollars but compared to Canada, the quality is not that good…. I think that Hong Kong clothing has the best quality. Anyhoo, I like korean style. Matt and Yan did not feel well so they stayed at the hotel. While the rest of us went to Insadong, a creative and tourist district. We walked around and went to buy hand made earrings and such. After we headed back to Dongdadum ; Good morning city mall to shop. At night, we went to spa. Basically, Koreans like to go to the spa to chill. I went to the sauna room, both the low and medium temperature and boy was it roasting. I slept for a few hours at the spa while the others watched this “myth buster” like Korean channel.
June 30
We woke up at around 1:30pm and left at 2pm! I think it was because we stayed up until 3am or so. I woke up at 5am to say good bye to Lori. We went to Hongkik University station; a shopping district. We walked around, mostly window shopping but went to this Gallery with very trendy house/school supplies. It started pouring rain so we stayed there for an hour or so. When the rain lessened, the guys went to multi-room while the girls went shopping. Around 6pm, we headed to this BBQ place where Minwoo’s parent were. It was really good meat. After that, we went to Dongdamun station, Maxtyle mall.
June 29
Today was a relatively chill day. The girls woke up to get their hair done. Cherie, Danielle and I went to get our hairs permed. I was always debating whether to curl my hair because I always have this illusion that permed hairstyles make you look much older. I finally decided to get my hair permed and in the end, it looks pretty nice. It defintely makes me look more mature but it does not make me look like I’m 30. After our salon trip, we headed to Bukchon Wanderings, a tradtional area where we got to see how Koreans lived in the early 1930’s or so. It was smaller than I expected. After that, we went to this place where the girls got to try on traditional korean dresses (Hanbok). I didn’t look very much Korean, I looked more Tibetian…(according to the guys). We got treated to dinner by Minwoo’s parents at the Hiltons hotel; Orangerie. It was a buffet style meal ! Very good :D! Today is Lori’s last day in Seoul and tomorrow she will be heading to Taipei while the rest of us spend 3 more days in Seoul until we depart.
June 28 - Caribbean Bay!
We spent the whole day at Caribbean Bay which is a huge water park. It was really hot and sunny when we got there so we expected a good day! I can’t get use of the tiles because I find them quite disgusting…and intolerable. We went to the wave pool which is a giant pool which a huge wave pushes people towards the land. Imagine a huge wave crashing towards you. We went on several slides, 1 or 2 because the line up were huge. We waited 2 hours for one slide. All of us got sun burns except Cherie, she hid herself under her life-vest. My shoulders are burning red at the moment (unfortunately, it hurts to shower!). I should have put on sunscreen but I didn’t know I would get a sunburn. When we got back to the apartment, the girls and Minwoo went to get piercings. I got an extra piercing on my right ear. I wanted to get a helix but I didn’t trust the method that the piercing place had. They used the earring you were going to buy, sharpen it and then poke it through your lope. I didn’t find it that painful but afterwards I had a bit of a burning sensation. We shopped around the area that we went the first day; similar to apm mall.
June 27 - Heading to Seoul!
Our flight was scheduled at 1pm but apparently we were suppose to be on a 10:45am flight because our flight time changed but we found that out at 10am! Unfortunately we had to take the 4:30pm flight. We went to the airport early but couldn’t check in. Some of us stayed behind and watched the luggages while the other went to eat/internet Cafe for 3 hours. I watched Glee, Lori watched Oceans 11, Danielle and Jack watched Chuck. I bought Paris Baguette’s frozen yogurt ice cream (yummy!). The flight from Jeju to Seoul only took an hour. We got our luggages, met with Min Woo’s mom and hurried to the hotel to drop off our luggages. We were in a hurry to go to dinner because there were reservations for this very traditional Korean place. When we got there, we had a billion of side dishes, some soup, and seaweed rice. I was stuffed. During our meal, there were 6 different performances of traditional Korean dancing and drum playing. I got to admit, I was kind of bored but it was amusing at some points. It was definitely a great experience. I forgot to mention that Meenah, Helen and Andy joined us! After dinner, we shopped at apm; a department mall. The stuff in Korea is not exceptionally cheap , compared to China it is quite expensive.
June 26
Lori, Jack and Danielle were heading to breakfast when they noticed that they didn’t have meal tickets but instead they had 30% off spa tickets! Only Jack and Lori went to breakfast while the rest of us starved (jk!). We managed through snacks and drinks. First thing we did was go to the Circus. The acrobats were mostly Chinese people and very young. The youngest I am guessing from their appearance is 8 years old. They were amazing though. Flexible as a rubber band (bad comparison!) There was this one performance that a person was riding on a motor cycle around a metal ball. It reminded me of the Simpson’s where Homer had to do try to drive the motorcycle to the point where he was hanging upside down. It was so cool because in the end there was 7 people swirling around in the metal ball.
Mini Land Park
This park is a miniature of famous architecture in the world, such as the White House, Sphinx, Great Wall, etc. It was cute and all but not fantastic.
Lunch
We had lunch where we had a lot of side dishes and some spicy pork. Koreans really love side dishes. I can probably just last a meal with rice and side dishes and no main dishes.
Maze
We went to a cheaper maze that costed only $2 dollars to enter. The maze was not hard because it was a smaller maze than the one we were suppose to go to. At the end of the maze, you got to ring the bell to signify that you finished. There was cheating since you can go up to a tower and see which way to go (cough Yan and Min!)
Queens house
This is a jewellery exhibit. I am not that interested in jewellery. There were display of fake crystal necklaces and royal jewellery like the one that Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana wore.
Multi-theme park
Queens house was part of the multi-theme park but this park was not what I expected. I thought it was similar to PNE but …. it was not. There was a two bug galleries, Asian Art, ghetto pet zoo and mirror place.
Mystery road
This road is so awesome. Basically it’s a road that looks flat with a downwards slope but when you put your car into neutral , you start rolling downhill but it seems that you are downhill. We were so mind-blown from this because the road didn’t look like it was downhill at all but we were actually rolling downhill. We repeated this experiment numerous time but still was baffled by what we saw.
Shit-Pig dinner
This title seems like a turn off but shit-pig is a delicacy in Jeju. Shit-Pig is a type of black pig that is fed manure. I was kind of effy about eating this because Matthew explained to us that the pork of the pig had black hair on it… When we got to the restaurant and ordered everything , the pork did not have hair and looked like any ordinary slab of pork meat ! The shit-pig meat was really good. I prefer this instead of the normal pork. This meat was more tender and juicy!
June 25
We were suppose to go hiking today but the weather was really bad so we went to A Trick Art museum. This museum had paintings that looked 3D so we could touch it and it seemed that we were peeling the picture off, fishing or falling off a cliff. I think that pictures explain more than what I can so I will post pictures up later! We went to another korean place to eat lunch. Nothing special but a lot of side dishes with rice. After lunch, we went to this Lava Cave. The weather was so bad and even worse in the cave because it was so freaking cold. I was shivering inside so I barely go to see the lava lines that formed. All the Geography kids were analyzing the rocks (YAY for IB!). We decided to head to a PC place; so at the moment the guys are gaming, Lori is watching Secret Gardens, I’m not sure about Danielle, Cherie is bored and I’m writing this blog. Apparently tomorrow is going to be the start of Typhoon season so monsoon here we come.
Sorry for all the late updates but it’s really hard to write a blog when you have no access to internet.
June 23/June 24
Today is our last day in Busan. We ended our trip by going to the Sea Temple. It is the only temple in Busan by the sea, hence “Sea Temple”. This was the only trip planned for the whole day since we were going to be leaving for Jeju at 7pm by boat. The sea temple is a tourist site so there were a lot of small gifts and food to be bought but of course, we didn’t buy any. Tourist attraction sites are always rip offs. It was an excentionally nice day; not to sunny but a cool breeze throughout. We went near the cliffs where we just relaxed there for an hour or so. It reminded me when I was when I had solitary time at Keats Island in Grade 10. We walked around the temple a bit but none of us are really religious so we just observed. When we got near the exit, Matthew bought these pumpkin covered nougats. It was tough on the teeth but it melts in your mouth when you suck on it for a period of time. Danielle had to go get her check up at the Hospital since she had a bad stomach ache the day earlier. Min and Danielle went to that while the others went to PC to do their stuff. I had to go buy new contacts. It’s such a hassle to wear contacts or glasses. When it’s raining, your glasses gets wet and when your sleepy, you can’t sleep with your contacts !! When it approached 6pm, we had to pack all our bags at the apartment and go to the Harbour. The Busan Harbour is quite ghetto. The ship reminded me of Titantic where there were bunk beds connected to the wall and we were off to America. The ride took 10 hours so we just slept through that time. When we arrived at Jeju, it was already 7am. We met up with our driver for the next few days. This driver is enthuastic, skinny and funny. He managed to arrange 12 luggages in 1 van with EIGHT people inside (Very impressive). We went to the Hotel, checked in and 9am was the start of our day. OH! Also, our beddings are authentic Korean style.. we sleep on the floor :D! We went to eat breakfast since we were all fanished. We ate Kimbab! No one can ever get sick of that. After that we went to a forest to take pictures. The trees were apparently very famous there. Then we went to this small temple… I think to drink holy water. Jack got his scab near his ear accidently scratched D: !
We went to have lunch at this Korean place. I bought bread from Paris Baguette with Danielle while the others had Kimbab, Korean spicy rice cake and Gimbimbap! We headed to the “Chair” where the Secret Garden scene was casted. I didn’t watch up to that scene so it’s hard to say what happened but we sat at the “HOLY” chair where the two main characters kissed. Cherie and Lori were very very excited.
After walking for a bit, we went to Go Karting/ Horse back riding. Cherie and Danielle went for a 20? minute horse back riding trip while the rest of us went go-karting. Go-karting was hard because you had to use all your energy and muscles to turn the wheels. Also, when you were accelerating, the seats were moving up and down , up and down. I was so dizzy after wards but it satisified my dreams of wanting to be a Nascar racer.
We went to the Teddy Bear Museum. I wanted to go to this museum since grade 10; after Matt posted pictures from his trip in Jeju. I learned the history of the name “Teddy Bear” which was actually from Theodore Roosevelt! ;) The museum is basically teddy bears in different forms; dressed as the Beatles, statues, korean traditional wedding ( I will post pictures up later).
Next was the Horse show. I had no idea what the horse show as about because it was all in Korean. What I got from it was 2 countries ..( probably not) fighting against each other and one winning…..
Dinner was BBQ near a fish market. The driver was nice enough to help us buy loads of pork and drinks. It was really good!
Day 18 - June 22
When we woke up today, it was pouring rain outside! We opted for a chill day :D! We went to Gimbap Heaven. We ordered Spicy Rice cake and a lot of Gimbap! It was so spicy but yet so good! After that, we went to a Internet Cafe to just search for our University courses and the guys play video games. After that, we came home to chill!
Today was a very very chill and relaxed day.
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
