Terence's @rchive

The morning call came in at 6:30AM, but I woke up half an hour later. Took a quick bath and quickly go down to the cafe to have my breakfast. They served some american breakfast items like sausages, hash browns, pancakes and etc. There are kimchi, seaweed and rice too. We left the hotel for MBC Daejanggeum Theme Park at around 8:30AM. On the way, Yuli introduced to us about a famous Korean show called Nanta Show. Since she highly recommended this show so everyone agreed to watch the show during our 2nd night in Seoul.

Half an hour later around 9:00AM, we arrived at Daejunggeum Theme Park, the main filming location of the famous korean drama Daejanggeum (Jewel in the Palace). The cold morning weather made everyone put on their gloves and jacket to keep warm as we walked towards the entrance of the theme park. If you a fan or you watch the show, each location and corner will remind you of scenes from the show (although I only watched 1 or 2 episode). There are many stills of the drama cast well placed in several locations for you to take picture with. Some of our group members even pay money to wear the Korean Traditional Costumes to take pictures. The structure of the sets are contructed smaller in size, especially the door frame. I knock my head on to the frame. Pain….

After spending around 2 hours in the theme park, we set off to the next destination, Namiseom Island. On the way, we stopped by a restaurant to have lunch. Our group occupied the entire 2nd floor. This time, we all ate while sitting on the floor. The menu are the usual kinds kimchis and a dish of vegetables with pork boiled on a hot plate. Agnes and I absolutely love Korean food so we ate alot alot. The rest of the group seems to enjoy the food too as I can see their plates of kimchis emptying over time. The previous groups of people that I brought didn’t enjoy Korean food as much as this group.

With my stomach stuffed with rice, kimchis, seaweed and meat, I am ready to nap while we continue another 2 hour drive towards Namiseom Island. That didn’t happen because Yuli prevented everyone from sleeping, she told us the history of the whole Korean peninsular. From the very old sword fighting days where Korean Peninsular was under control of China to being invaded by Japan during World War 2. Everyone stayed up to listen as it was very interesting. She stopped at WW2 because we reached the jetty to Namiseom Island.

Namiseom Island was formed after Cheongpyeong Dam was constructed, due to flooding of the surrounding area. The island is named after the brave General Nami who fought of some rebels (this is not history lesson so I shall not elaborate more). The island is made famous by another Korean drama called Winter Sonata. Alot of the love scenes from the show are shot on this island.

The ferry took around 5-10 minutes to get us across to the island. Yuli showed us General Nami’s tomb right after we got off the ferry. Then she gave us 1 hour and 30 minutes to explore the island. Timmy then started to bring everyone to good spots for photo shoot. Since everyone took off, I have time to enjoy the island’s romantic atmosphere with Agnes. We walked through the tall red wood lined road while enjoying the cool weather and nice scenery. After exploring the island, we met Timmy and got him to snap some pictures for both of us.

Time’s up, everyone gathered at the jetty and boarded the ferry to get back to the mainland. After a short toilet pitstop, we head for Chuncheon’s Myeong-dong Street in Chuncheon-si. We reached the place an hour later. The Chuncheon’s Myeong-dong street is a shopping arcade, some scenes of Winter Sonata are shot here too. They have the usual brands of retails shops here and some that I never seen before. I got myself a shirt here that cost 20k won (RM 80), not too expensive after conversion. The fruit stalls here sell huge, huge strawberries. My customers all bought from this fat Ah zhu ma (aunty in Korean) that speaks mandarin. She charged my customers 7000won per pack but I got it at 10000won because I only buying 1 pack from her. She’s a scary looking Ah zhu ma so I dare not bargain with her.

The place to have our dinner is just 5 minutes walking distance from Myeong-dong street. We came to a narrow stretch of road with restaurants on both side of the road. The restaurants here seems to sell the same chicken dish because they all have a big hot plate in the middle of their dining table and have chicken sign on their advertisements. We are going to have pan fried marinated sliced chicken with cabbage and rice cake. Timmy and the shop keeper went around our tables to stir and fry the dish for us. When cooked, we eat the chicken like how we eat Korean BBQ beef, wrapped it with vege and put the whole piece into mouth and bite. The dish taste good but its not the complete dish yet. When we finish around half our dish, the shop keeper came over with a plate of rice with some extra toppings on it. She moved the dish to the side of the hot plate, poured the rice on to the hot plate and started stirring and mixing the rice with the existing dish. The dish now became fried rice with chicken, cabbage and rice cake and it still taste extremely good.

Our hotel this time is Chuncheon Bears Hotel. Roughly around half an hour bus ride from Myeong-dong area. It looked like a 3.5 star hotel to me. Room is very spacious and clean. I did my usual rounds of room inspection and customers didn’t complain about this hotel. Went back to my room bath, change and zzzzzzzz. Long day….

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As usual, every chinese new year I will be leading tour to overseas. It has been like this since I was 18. This time the destination is Korea and Agnes came along with me. Will be going there for 6 days. There are 29 people in the group including Agnes and I.

I left Batu Pahat by bus around 1:50am for Singapore, Agnes board the bus in JB an hour later. After checking in our luggage, I reshuffled our group seatings so that families can sit beside each other. Our flight took off at 8:00am and I finally have some time to relax.

We landed in Incheon 6 hours later. Local time 2:40PM. I lead the group through the customs, got our luggage and came out to the meeting area. Yuli, our female tour guide was already waiting for us together with Timmy, photographer and helper for our group. Yuli lead us outside to the bus waiting area. As Agnes exit the terminal, she got to experience how winter feels like. The temperature was around 10 degree celcius, not too cold.

While on board the bus, Yuli wished us Happy Chinese New Year and proceed to introduce herself to everyone. Then she gave everyone a sheet of itinerary for the next 6 days. Her cell phone no was on it too. Its for emergency in the case someone got lost or in trouble or cannot get discount (just kidding).

Our 1st sightseeing stop in Korea is Wolmido Island. We will be riding a ferry to get there although there is a highway linking the island to the mainland. Our bus came to the pier and drove straight up on to the ferry. We exited the bus and went up to the 2nd level of the ferry. We were joined by locals and other tourist as well. Then, Timmy came up with a big pack of prawn crackers and started distributing the crackers to us. The crackers are meant for the seagulls. Apparently, they will fly close to your hand and pick up the prawn crackers. Some of us started sticking our hands out to lure the gulls to fly closer but they didn’t. The seagulls was flying around the back of the ferry because some other passengers threw the crackers into the sea and the gulls are picking them up from the sea surface. We end up eating the crackers ourself.

Wolmido Island is an island about 1 km off the Incheon coast. There are many cafes and seafood restaurants here. I saw alot of shops with live fish aquariums outside. This is my 1st time visiting to Wolmido Island as well although this is the fourth time I visited Korea. Behind the shops area, there’s a theme park called Play Hill. Saw alot of people playing the rides there.

The temperature is lower here as we are by the sea and the sun was setting too. Agnes and I felt the chill as the wind blew against us. Had to hide behind structures to be shielded from the wind. After spending around 30 minutes touring the area, we gathered and Yuli took us back to the bus.

Its dinner time, Agnes and I had been anticipating this for very long already. Our first meal in Korea. We had Pork Bulgogi with kimchis. Their pearl rice tasted really good. I can just have them with kimchi and seaweed. Everyone ate quite alot since its our 1st proper meal since we departed Batu Pahat.

We reached Eulwang Hotel in Incheon around 8pm. The hotel room is not too bad, has heated floor, basically nothing to complain about.

After checking all my customer’s room are ok, Agnes and I went for a walk outside the hotel. There isn’t much things to see. We went into a grocery shop to check out their stuffs. Then we continued to walk towards the beach. On the way, we passed by alot of seafood restaurants, the shop keepers kept asking us to go in. When we reach the beach area, the wind was really strong and cold, we dropped the idea of going on to the beach and walked back to the grocery store. I bought a cup noodle and some sweets to give out to my customers tomorrow. I cooked the cup noodle using the shop’s hot water dispenser. Eating hot and spicy cup noodles on freezing weather taste so good and it warmed my hands too.

We slept around 9.30pm. Super early considering we might not be home yet if we’re in KL. I fell asleep quite easily because of not enough sleep from the previous day and the journey here.

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