The Korea Trip
And finally.. i'm going to blog about my korea trip as promised. So stay tuned =) But it'll be in chronological order so bear with the boring format ya~
DAY 1 - JEJU ISLANDArrived at Jeju after 1 long flight to Korea and 1 short domestic flight to the island itself. You can imagine the energy level (or rather the lack of it) by the time we finally started our tour. The intermittent drizzles and cool winds didn't help. Little did I expect the next few days there to be of such weather as well.
Some sightseeing at Jeju. Hmm.. I think the scenery wasn't as pretty as what was expected. The highlight was the Teddy Bear Museum which exhibits so many cute teddy bears, from teeny weeny to gigantic ones.. we were going teddy bear-crazy by the end of it all hee..
The world's most expensive bear -- LV bear!
Teddy bears featured in "Princess Hours"
Hugging the gigantic bear :)DAY 2 - Daegu
First up was persimmon wine-tasting, the start of all my wine drinking in Korea. In fact, I've drank more alcohol in Korea than I ever did in my whole life in Sg haha. Well, I was told that my face turned red when I merely had 1 small glass. Apparently not a good drinker I guess.
Cheers!We went to a temple next, but guess most of us were more interested in the lovely colored maple leaves there than anything else =p Its really a pleasure to be able to experience the autumn scenery since autumn is supposed to be my favourite season (for someone who lives in a country with no seasons haha). But autumn is just so pretty la =p
Dinner was BBQ, which we all warmly welcomed, having eaten super healthy food (vegetables, kimchi, plain water, soup-based dishes) for the past meals. We ate the BBQ the Korean way, which was to wrap all the food, ie. the rice, BBQ meat, kimchi, sauce, etc into a big piece of lettuce and stuff it all into your mouth.. wasn't a glamorous way of eating, but definitely fun =)
Yummylicious!
DAY 3 - Daegu
We visited an apple garden in the morning and had fun picking apples from the apple trees. Was quite fascinated as I have never seen so many apple trees before. Nice! We had wine tasting (yes.. again), but this time apple wine and pomegranate wine. Had apple pancakes made from fresh apples to go with the wine too... really yummy. All of us also had a custom made wine bottle which we filled with apple wine ourselves =)
The girls with the apple trees
Apples for sale!
Apple pancakes & pomegranate wineAfter lunch, we had fun at this converted railway, where we were supposed to ride this "trishaw" thingy which had bikes at 2 ends of the "trishaw" down the railway track. A good workout for our legs while enjoying the breeze and scenery there.
Me with Veronica at the other endThe final stop was a coal museum, which wasn't exactly worth mentioning.. Almost all descriptions in the museum were in korean.. probably except the titles of the descriptions. Naturally we didn't understand a single bit. So off we went taking photos with the nice scenery outside the museum heh heh..
Beautiful autumnSpent the night at YongPyong Dragon Valley, the filming site of Winter Sonata, a beautiful ski palace in winter.. but since we went in autumn, my guess is it's not as beautiful haha. No skiing in our itinerary, no skyride as it was under renovation... but we managed to find exciting activities for ourselves.. went to the only slightly remote arcade to play on the dance machine.. (which i never passed.. boo!), while providing entertainment for the aunties and uncles of our tour group (our new friends haha)
Sipped some "shao jiu", similar to sake in Japan, to beat the freezing cold weather which was about 2 degrees C... it tasted almost like the medicinal alcohol used in hospitals.. yuck.. our curiosity got the better of us when we recalled our tour guide's "dare" / recommendation to try eating ice cream at the freezing cold 2 degrees C.. and so we did haha.. I bet that was one of the high-est night we had.. almost went crazy with all the cold-ness (internally cos of the ice cream & externally cos of the weather) haha..
Brr... (ps. see the temperature display at the back for evidence =p)DAY 4 - YONGIN EVERLAND
Finally a theme park up in our itinerary! It turned out to be a rather disppointing day as we didn't manage to sit on the highlight of the park -- the world's largest wooden roller coaster with a plunge of 77 degrees, no thanks to the stupid weather... and erm.. the blatant queue-cutting of the people there. Managed another ride instead.. although it would have been better if we were able to try the park highlight.. ah well.
DAY 5 - DECKSAN SPA CASTLE
This was the accomodation which i adore the most! The hotel room was almost like an apartment, complete with a little kitchen with stoves and all, a living room with sofa & TV, and 2 bedrooms, one with the typical hotel room decor & the other where you can sleep on tatami mats =D
Kitchen corner with living room at the backThe spa castle itself was pretty great too! Didn't try the hot springs as the conservative me wasn't too willing to bare my skin for it as you are not allowed to wear anything in there. Instead, we played at the water theme park. The theme park was nothing too amazing.. something like the old Fantasy Island in Sentosa, only much smaller. But it was sure a memorable experience to be wearing so little and playing at the pool side with cold pool water in a weather of about 8-10 degrees C. The indoors spa area was lovely though, with jaccuzi and what-not targetted at different parts of the body-- neck massage, body massage, back massage.. you name it man. What's best is the warm warm water there haha
Decksan Spa Castle water theme parkDAY 6 & 7 - SEOUL
The time at Seoul was mostly spent shopping, buying stuff ranging from ginseng, amethyst, cordyceps to faceshop products. We also had traditional Korean show, tradition Korean costume fitting, kimchi making etc. Went to another theme park on Day 6 night, Lotte World, which had indoor and outdoor parts to it. Went for some rides and settled for a simple ramen dinner.. a nice and sweet theme park worth coming again I would say...
All of us in Korean traditional costume
The 4 Korean beauties =P (ok.. I know I'm not) 
The girls at Lotte World entranceSeoul marks the end of my Korean trip.. meaning back to Sg.. and yar back to work. Sigh..
_________
Cheers!
Yummylicious!
The girls with the apple trees
Apples for sale!
Apple pancakes & pomegranate wine
Me with Veronica at the other end
Beautiful autumn
Brr... (ps. see the temperature display at the back for evidence =p)
Kitchen corner with living room at the back
Decksan Spa Castle water theme park
All of us in Korean traditional costume 
The 4 Korean beauties =P (ok.. I know I'm not)