Day 1 - 18 Dec 2009
Boarding the plane to Korea.
Day 2 - 19 Dec 2009
Reached Korea at approximately 7:00am Malaysia time, 8am Korea time. One step out of the airport and we started to freeze. It was -3C, if i'm not wrong, and it's our first time on a winter trip. Our first stop was Seoul city. There were two ways to go to the city from Incheon airport: land and water. We took the boat across to the city, actually it was more like a ferry, and the bus boarded the ferry with us on it. It was like the ferry used in Langkawi. We went up to the second floor of the ferry, grab a drink, snap some photos. The scenery from there was beautiful, there were birds - seagulls (i think) flying around the ferry which was really nice. But the photos of me were horrible, i was dressed like an Eskimo. Into Seoul city, we headed for their War Museum, which was something like our Tugu Negara. The tour guide started to explain to us about the war between Korea and the US. I am not too sure about the details as the tour guide was talking in Cantonese, and my Cantonese which i once considered quite good, is half plus six. I had some trouble understanding what he was saying as he was actually a HongKee whom stayed in Korea for 20 years, so his way of speaking differs from ours. The museum was rather small, there was figurines and statues of the people and weapons from the war, the war between North and South Korea. The guy i remember out of his long story was Douglas MacArthur.
We headed for lunch next. We had Ginseng Chicken soup. The ginseng was really soup, and the chicken soup was more like chicken soaked in water. Differing from the Chinese way, the way they cooked chicken soup, was put all the stuffings, the herbs and rice into the chicken, and boil the chicken, as opposed to ours, which we put everything into the soup to boil. The Chinese way is better as the soup becomes really tasty. The first taste of the Korean Chicken soup was rather blend, as everything wrapped into chicken and you are to cut open the chicken to eat. According to the tour guide, it was because last time in Korea, the ginseng are only allowed for the King, so the ginseng farmers who kept some hidden stash for their own tasting had to eat it discreetly as they get be punished for stealing the ginseng, so what they do is put the ginseng with the herbs with rice into the chicken. It was a smart move, I started to search for the ginseng and it was actually quite hard to find it as the rice was like glutinous rice, rather sticky and the ginseng is wrapped inside it. The next stop was a CAR museum. There was like hundreds of cars inside that museum: Merc, Beemer, Ferrari, Rolls Royce.... One word WOW.
Talking about wow, there was one thing that it was most shocking, culture shock. The last stop of the day was Spa Greenland. The place was beautiful. The shocking part was when we stepped into the changing room, or the spa room. We saw many women... without a single cloth on them. They were walking around like it was normal, but for us Malaysian, it was rather awkward and embarrassing. I felt rather weird looking at them. I didnt strip this time as it was the time of the month, but the rest took quite a long time to be ready for the spa, which is strip strip and strip only. There was also a swimming pool and a sauna place in this place. It was a rather decent place, as the Korean actually come in a family for these spa trips. They have a common area where i see many Korean families lying down on the floor watching this huge TV, sleeping or having a nice hot Sauna, which is 68C. Then there was this few special places where people can soak themselves or their leg only outside in the open air, and all they wear is a shirt and pants or their swim suit. We tried the leg soaking, but we only lasted for a minute, as it was freaking cold outside, and a shirt and pants was seriously useless. Think it was below 0C that time, and there was ice everywhere. Dinner was a nice pork shabu shabu. Hot food in a cold weather was heavenly, and we enjoyed the meal but that was just the starting of the nightmare.
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