Quiet Confidence: Korea Day 1

Apologies that it has been taking me so long to update on my trip to Korea… there are so many photos (from 3 cameras) I don’t know where to start! Anyways, here goes…. (warning: extremely long post and we are only at Day 1!!)

My family have been talking about having a holiday together for a long time and finally it has come to pass as we embarked on a holiday to Korea!

My mum looks super cool with her CA t-shirt and matching pink luggage yah! You rock Mum!

She looks cooler than us, with an attitude too! =D

On flight Korean Air, not too impressed cos there were no individual TV screens and the stewardess were kinda fierce! I’m serious!

Find the stewardess uniform kinda funny too! They had this pointed scarf around their necks and a “chop-stick-like” clip on their hair.

I’m so afraid their “chopstick” will poke me! Hhaha!

We reached Incheon Airport around 6:30am in the morning and was shocked to find out that our tour guide had not arrived yet!

Well we had breakfast and then gathered to meet the tour guide, Michael.

He was apologetic but was also witty about it, saying we all looked like we were going to kill him and looked like he was our enemy! Through the course of the trip, we would appreciate his humour more and more cos it really made the trip so fun!

Early in the morning, and we were off to Kim Chi School!

There are actually 200 kinds of kim chi, not just the usual cabbage one we are all familiar with. Kimchi can be made from abalone and ginseng too!

Ginseng milk, yums!

Listening attentively…

to our Kim Chi teacher… but actually nothing to do…

We just had to rub the chili into the cabbage and wrap it up~

Joe torturing his Kim Chi!

Adriel’s masterpiece while ours looked like…

Photo oppt time!

First meal in Korea: Ginseng chicken soup!

I found it quite bland but the rest liked it! We could pour in more Ginseng wine into our soup if we wanted.

Then off to Gimpo Airport for our flight to Jeju! Guess who I saw at the airport?

Can you see him?!

It’s Lee Min Ho!

And who else did I see? The guy in the middle – Kim Hyun Joong!

First stop at Jeju – Jeju Folklore & Natural History Museum.

Jeju is famous for its oranges… I also know this cos I watched the drama “My Girl” and the main lead sold oranges she picked on Jeju!

Jeju kids and their handmade toys

Everyone listening attentively to the tour guide! Btw, in the old days, a typical house in Jeju has a thatched roof held in place by ropes of straw to protect against the wind.

Being an island, the residents of Jeju depend on the sea for their livelihood.

Jeju is also well-known for its “hai niu” – female divers who dive without any diving equipment to catch fish, seaweed, octopus, maybe even abalone. According to my tour guide, a lot of them are widows whose husbands lost their lives at sea and they had to learn to do this for survival.

I took this photo cos of the English text… read it and tell me if you understand what it means?

Another thing unique in Jeju is the little baskets the babies are placed in. The mothers will use their feet to push the basket forward and backward, keeping their hands free to do other work.

Jeju is apparently an island made out of a volcano and there are lots of rocks all around. Btw, there are 3 things that Jeju is known to have a lot of – rocks, wind and women! Read more about that here!

Rocks, rocks and more rocks! And because they have so many rocks, they crave them into this statue called ‘Grandfather Stone’ or dolhareubang. They are there to remind them of the hardships their descendents have suffered.

Apparently, if you rub the nose of the statue, you will give birth to sons! Hmm…

Some other fun shots… posing with/as hai niu!

Next stop: Dragon Head Rock – a lava formation that looks like a dragon head

That’s the Dragon Head! Does it look like a dragon to you?!!?

Couple shots up next… what we will be doing very very often over the course of the trip!

The ladies with all the pails are hai niu!

They are cleaning up the seafood they have caught.

Adriel managed to charm a photo out of one of them!

I think their job is not easy….

Here we are enjoying some snacks, then checking into our hotel and proceeding for DINNER!

Seafood steamboat!! Yums!! I loved it though the rest din! I am quite into shell fish.. that’s why I have Pu Tien Bee Hoon (not the restaurant, from food court lah!) at least once a week! I love it! Oh man… I just realised that means I eat cockles every week! =(

It was a tiring day and yet after dinner, we still went to walk around.. they have this shopping street called Tapdong Street but we were quite hesitant to buy stuff cos we heard things at Seoul would be cheaper…