The long awaited South Korea trip finally took place last month. It was a 10 days trip to Seoul & some other places in South Korea. The arrival at the well-known Incheon Airport marks the start of the fun!
Incheon Airport even provides bifocal specs for people with Presbyopia =)
Look at the luggages we've brought, I think I have enough to stay for a month!
I waited at the rest area with all the luggages while the girls go search for the ticketing counter for the bus.
Midas (Korean drama) was airing at the rest area. I remembered while taking the photo below, an amusing old man came to me and started speaking to me in korean. I shook my head & replied in english saying "I don't understand." He went on and on till finally the girls came back for me. I was thinking if he was telling me that I cannot take photos there.
Directory that shows only symbols, see if you can understand them all!
Waiting for our 6002 bus to our guest house.
The bus ticket
The bus ride was about 45mins and this is me here looking kinda tired after the flight (we took the 8am flight from Singapore).
We missed the stop to alight and we alighted 1 stop after. The price that we paid was dragging our heavy luggages for a good 20mins all the way to the guest house.
Brochures, flyers, maps: Information area.
The friendly boss that speaks fluent english, thank god.
My Single Room: Big & spacious + cheap but lacks ventilation.
The not so fantastic toilet with bright orange paint & a yellow light bulb, I don't like.
Not good for selcas due to poor lighting.
The junction that we cross everyday. 2 crossings side by side for pedestrians going opposite directions!
One of the inter-station underpass. It was quite a walk. On the way to celebrate the buddha's birthday!
Locals & tourist gathering by the road to watch the parade. It was something like Singapore's Chingay + Mid-Autumn Festival.
We waited till the sky turned dark before it finally commenced.
Vesak Day Parade
Chingay much? Except they use manual labour to push them!
The monk below looked disturbed by my powerful flash!
The Mascot for the event: "Lotus head girl"
After the parade we went back to Hongdae for dinner. I was anticipating dinner that night because it was my first proper meal in Seoul =) It was the most memorable one too, I'll tell you why later.
Some of the game stalls by the road
Youngsters & coffee houses were everywhere in that area.
This was the memorable dinner I had: tender pork slices, juicy octopus, vegetables and CHILLI. The 4 our us cannot take spicy food so we dug out a portion of the chilli paste before the korean lady starting cooking them and thought that it will be fine. BUT...
IT'S FRIGGING SPICY! It's yummy MAX but ULTRA SPICY!
It's really quite bad for me because I'm the weakest among the 4 when it comes to spicy food. How nice if they cook them in KETCHUP instead. Sweet & Sour pork + Octopus sounds better, no?
The restaurant owners were eyeballing us because we were constantly making "ahh-sstsstooh-sstsst-aah" sounds! I'm busy wiping sweat on my face & neck because that is what happen to me whenever the food is spicy. After a few rounds of ice water, the nice shop owner gave us a big packet of PEACH JUICE!! It was sweet & thick and I swear it was the best peach juice I've ever tasted!
Grace kept saying that she wanted to have something with rice and she order the next dish: non-spicy! It's something like fried rice with seaweed, tiny fish roes etc.
This dish is DAMN GOOD!! This was the final dish we had there.
We headed out into the cold weather to cool ourselves off. I told them my tongue was in pain after the spicy octopus dish. The feeling was like being scalded by boiling water, I swear!
Enjoying the night breeze in Hongdae after dinner.
Glass Coffee House.
A vintage shop.
Adobe Banner =) Creativity for Motion Graphics.
Steep steps leading to a Cafe.
I remember seeing this place on tv a few years back, the special KTV suites that are see-through! We can see whatever they are doing in there, singing & dancing. Some of them even went singing ALONE, extreme!
End of day 1
xxx
