DieHardX's Territory

DIEHARDX GOES TO SOUTH KOREA DAY 1 & 2 OF 8!

Here it goes. Long, long episodes of super long journey to the land of the morning calm! We took a tour package with Hong Thai Travel. We went on the 15th March 2009 for the 8 days 6 nights with Jeju Island tour package.

Took off around 10+pm from Changi International Airport Terminal 1, Singapore via Korean Air. After experiencing their airline, I have to say Singapore Airlines are really better in terms of service, more leg room and having individual tvs. That's probably why you pay more. I know there was once when the guy sitting beside me was enjoying his music in his sleep when the air stewardess just push his chair upright after failing to get him to wake up. He was like shocked when suddenly his chair moved. Hehe! Their air stewardess gave me the impression of being ignorant, rude and hasty.

The way they handle meals was very chaotic indeed. You have people serving drinks and food separately. Hence, they can miss people along the way. What is more interesting was when they were supposed to serve you meal in a row and they can just skip you totally although they just served your neighbour. Incredible!

Seoul is one hour more than Singapore. Therefore, we arrived at around 5:36am local time at Incheon International Airport.

We had time to take some photos in the airport as our bus was not there yet. Temperature was around 5 degree Celcius.

We went Everland straight away after reaching our bus. Since we are extremely early and it was a Monday morning, there was really not much crowd. That's the main reason why they wanted to push the visit at this period, to avoid long queues.

We were probably not used with the weather yet since we felt extremely cold. Everland has not changed much since my previous visit. The only addition that is extremely significant is probably the T-Express.

The magnificent structure of the T-Express. This monster just kept taking our attention away!

I went to the safari bus ride. My previous trip was loaded with animals. This time around, unfortunately, we only have more or less just lions and bears.

Of course the main attraction here is the lion-tiger mixed carnivor. The tour guide told us that this is the only one of its kind in the world. The story goes that when they were put in the same location, the tiger/lion gave his/her share of meat to the companion as a show of love. First day, no reaction, second day, no reaction but finally on the third day, finally got touched. Wahlah, this is the result of the love...

The lazy bears.......

Forced to stand after giving it enough baits to eat.....

Some of them didn't even care to eat....that's how lazy they can be...or probably they were sick and bored of us tourists coming everyday

We went for the wet water ride in a circular bumper boat. We needed to shield ourselves with the waterproof blanket.

At the end of the ride, there was a heater for you to heat yourself up, especially in areas of your body which is very wet.

We went back to the same place I ate last time around when I dropped by. They still serve the same food and they still taste good! The chicken chop / cutlet was still as fantastic!

Kimchi, the mandatory side dish for every single Korean meal. You will die without it!

I like the white carrot.

The dining hall.

The unlimited pass.

We were given around 4 hours to spend our time in the whole place.

We went to the huge carousel for a ride.

We went up the ferris wheel.

This is generally the bird's eye view of the entire Everland site.

Finally, the moment of truth, the T-Express. We had promised to turn up here with another couple to enjoy the crazy ride after hearing constant screams after screams.

The Everland mascots.

The queue was extremely long. It took us around 15 minutes to reach inside. The queue was a nervous one since you literally had the roller coaster ride going on top of you while you hear the other people screaming their hearts out. It was like a preparation for the death sentence! Haha!

We had our photos taken and were very satisfied. The world's steepest roller coaster ride at 77 degrees is really crazy indeed. You feel your entire body floating in midair when we went for the deepest plunge.

We left Everland to Gimpo International Airport to catch a domestic flight to the most southern island of South Korea, Jeju Island.

It was operated by Korean Air as well. They are celebrating their 40th anniversary and the new range of uniforms they designed for their air steward and stewardess and basically all the air crew are so identical to office wear. I don't feel that it looks like an air crew uniform.

We finally reached Jeju International Airport.

Jeju is famous as a romantic getaway for honeymoon in the past. However, now that the price of everything has gone extremely up to an extent that it is just as expensive to go here than other neighbouring countries. Thus, it is no longer so famous now among the Koreans to have their honeymoon here.

Jeju had a volcano in the past. That's why it is famous with tonnes of rock formation.

As well as this infamous local earth god. They said if you touch his nose, you will be able to have sons. Legends...

You can see some flowers blooming already.

Some of them are quite nice.

Yeah, like I said, these earth god statues are everywhere.

We went to a museum to understand the local cultures.

They have so much rock that they used it to build anything, from walls to roofs.

Some gigantic sea creatures. Since it is an island, fishing is a big industry here in the past.

We went to the Mysterious Road (Dokebi Road) where they switched off the bus engine and the bus can go uphill. I heard literally everything will go upwards here, including bottles of water. Basically it is an illusion where a downwards slope appears upwards. This is sometimes called magnetic or gravity hill.

We had chinese dinner. This is probably the only meal we had in Korea without kimchi.

I was attracted to this kick-ass huge Korean calendar.

E-Mart, the largest retailer in South Korea, is just opposite our hotel of the night, Jeju Oriental Hotel. When we reached there at night, they have many huge bargains on food. I got extremely excitied with the raw fish. 14,800 KRW to 8000 KRW. That's about SGD14.80 to SGD8. Wow!