Carribbean Bay

*Photos to be uploaded later* waiting for pple to send me...

Today's entry is for last saturday when i went to Carribbean Bay. Its supposed to be a replica of a water theme park in the US but i cant remember the exact details. All i know is that THIS Carribbean BAy is the biggest water theme park in Korea hence i was there to check it out.

I went there with my roomie, Andrew and his friends (Ayumi - Japanese girl, Mira - Canadian born korean & Alicia - pure korean) We took a red bus (a long route bus) from Sadang for about 1 and a half hours before reaching Everland. Carribbean Bay was just beside Everland. The place was surrounded by farmland and mountainous regions. SO ULU la...but thank God that KOrean public transport is so good that we only spend like S$3 for a one way bus trip. At first i thought the bus ride was going to take 40mins but who knows? It actually took so long. :D

When we were finally there, we were greeted by a tall castle-like building with the words: "Carribbean Bay" emboldened in cursive writing on top of the castle. In front of the castle were a few "docked" ships and the whole feeling was very Mediterranean. Like macham carribbean of the sea movie. haha. Oh yes, the ticket costs 40,000won EACH. thats like S$50..what a rip-off...

On the inside, there was an outdoor water theme park and an indoor theme park. Needless to say, the indoor one was much smaller in area than the outdoor one. THe indoor one was called aquatic centre and in it there were water slides with tubes and body slides w/o tubes. the slides were rather fun but compared to the outside rides, they were less exhiliarating. THe more interesting things inside where the hot pools with jacuzzi massage jets and dry and steam saunas. i was so amazed by the saunas initially. Steam sauna was like literally hot steam all over the room. U can hardly see anything in the dimly lit room and breathing was also labourious. The room was very hot at first but after the body gets used to the heat, it was kinda comfortable. On the outside of the saunas they had thermometer readings. THe steam one read: 45 degrees while the dry one read 80 degrees. So imagine my shock when i entered the dry one and it didnt feel 80. i think sth was wrong with the thermometer anyways...how can a human withstand such high external heat?? Anyways, the dry one was more comfortable as in it didnt feel as hot as the wet sauna. THey also pplace some cinnamon herbs in the room so it smelt kinda "nice"

On the outside, it was basically wet water rides. THere was one called Tower Raft. Each tube sat 4 persons and the slide was ultra big. And very fast. haha. We were screaming most of the way down but not coz it was scary but coz the water that splashed on us was super icy. YES ICY. imagine: autumn. cold wind of about 20 degrees celsius blowing at u. IF u are wet, FREEZING. i felt like a popcicle when i came out of the ride. hoho.. We went for more rides and kinda had to rush coz the outdoor slides closes at 4pm. who knows why...The worst experience i had was the wave pool. Ok it was fun riding the wave and all but...the water was cold and plus, each wave came at an interval of 90 seconds. So i was like shivering in the water...waiting for the wave to come...boy it was too torturous for me. i got out, shiver like mad and went to warm myself under the sun on the deck chair like a cold-blooded animal. haha..it was simple mad to play water activities during autumn la..but i had to go soon..coz it would be impossible to go in future when the water starts to turn colder.

THe longest time we spent at the Carribean Bay was the outdoor hot pools. they were soooo comfortable. Just sitting in the cold air, with ur entire body from neck down submerged in warm warm water with jacuzzi jets...it just felt so good. we just stayed there and chitchat for about 2 hours plus until 7pm closing time. Stay until my fingers and toes were threatening to permanently stay wrinkled. hahaha..

After that, we went to a nearby eating house and had bbq meat. Beef and pork. The beef was just so juicy and tender. never like what i tasted in korea before! The pork...the ahjuma said that it was smoked beforehand to remove the fats and to make it easier to cook. It tasted like char siew..MMMmmmm....dinner was good

All in all, the day went rather well. PLus the long bus rides, it felt like we been to somewhere far, like on a trip. :)

LOTTE WORLD IN KOREA

I went to Lotte World yesterday! woahhh!! Went with Christina and yinyee. The rest had sth on or didnt want to go. It has been such a long time since i have been to a real theme park. Singapore's one just doesnt count coz #1, the rides are kiddy. #2, It's in your home country so you wun feel so excited about it. #3, its not really a theme park...the staff at Lotte World wears costumes and are permanently happy! haha...

Ok so i was at Lotte World. Always wanted to go to a magical theme park setting. Makes me feel like a kid...haha like nothing else matters except to have pure unadulterated fun. Maybe thats why pple are willing to pay so much to get in. Ticket price was 35000 won but with the international student card, we got a 10% discount! :D happiness to the max.

OK some info about Lotte World. There was an indoor theme park as well as an outdoor one. The indoor one is just gorgeous. With a oval domed shaped glass roof to let natural light in and a vast open space without any unsightly columns, the entire place was just transformed into any kid's dreams: exhilarating rides, bumper cars, "hot-air balloon, merry-go-round, viking ship, real life concerts, candy floss, cinnamon sticks, ice-cream, soft-drinks, sausages.endless fun. haha. Inside, there was a ride called French REvolution. Indoor rollercoaster that have its tracks intertwined with all the little stores and other games as well.

Lotte World with the HUGE globe

Oval-domed shaped glass roof

Classic Viking Ship! This ride is SCARY

Just so fairy tale eh?

On the outside, more exciting rides were available. A rollercoaster called Atlantis that twist and turned so quickly that my neck cracked during one of its jerk. But it was crazily fun. the fast speed plus the wind in the hair. haha feels like im racing on a bike. Another was designed like a spinning top. Everyone sat at the circumference of the top and it will swing 180degrees. MAD ride i thought it was, that was before i took it. It was so high up that they even built a plastic visor in the seats to protect u from the biting wind up there. Well after the ride, i had a feeling what it was like to be superman. haha. ANother was a ride called Gyro-drop. Just like the name suggest, everyone sat ard a ring-shaped line of seats and we were brought up 70m into the air and then mercilessly dropped into free-fall all the way down. The brakes were only employed just before we reached ground zero. THIS ride was extremely scary. THe anticipation was worse then the actual drop. I actually thought "this was it" when i was up there with my legs dangling in the air, 70m high. :S but it was shiok. worth every cent man.

THAT is Christina. I dunno why she's posing with her camera like this...

CAstle!

Gyro-drop! 70 metres high. Free-fall!

In the evening we met Esther (christina's korean buddy) and she joined as in the theme park. She was extremely nice. She had a long day at sch but still took time off to ride the crazy rides with 3 swah-koo singaporeans. haha. she didnt even like the rides la.. We were there from 11am -10pm. Long and tiring day but experience i wun forget. Maybe the next time i would came along with my gf. hehe. down here is a super good par tor place. If only singapore had such a place.

Prisoner of Lotte World haha.

Christina, yinyee and me- taken during the live performance. they were celebrating Halloween. they changed the lyrics to a famous song: "im your venus, im your fire, your vampire (it was desire actually)" hehe

French Revolution!

Night view of the castle. M-a-j-e-s-t-i-c!

Merry-go-round? the one with the horsies. Christina says that it was one the set in Stairway to HEaven. ITs romantic enough. Oh the other girl is Esther the korean buddy.

Whats up with the "act-cute" pout? LOL

Below: Yinyee can actually bend her fore-finger all the way to touch her wrist. OUCH

accumulated pictures last week and this week

Stone Bibimbap
Korean grapes=grape gummy sweets
Kim-bap aka sushi roll w/o wasabi?

Mega bookstore at Gangnam

They sell very nice notebooks!

Taken with korean Olympic gold medalist for weightlifting- Jang Mi-ran (notice my tears too)

wa lau....sleep until so song...lucky i got space to sit...

Shoes anyone?

Beef stew- rather spicy beef stew

BBQ meat.

This was a buffet. super worth it. 9000won

i LOVE this. Sweet potato drowned in warm honey.......MmmMm

Dried sotong??

Omu-rice. I think i have eaten this in Singapore before...

This reminds me of Singapore's fish & co glasshouse..so i decided to take a picture with it...

Happy Midautumn Festival!

Has been more than a week since i blogged. Been busybusybusy. Part school work but mostly going out whenever there's no lessons. haha. It is our 3rd week of lessons here and they are getting tougher as the professors up their gear to teach heavier stuff and also to dish out the assignments.

The following are the modules im taking at Seoul National University:

1. Advance Building Construction Technology
2. Astronomy
3. English Poetry
4. Introduction to Photography
5. Korean Language

We could only managed to map one core because of limited number of building courses taught in english. furthermore, the only relevant courses are conducted by the graduate class. So actually one core from a graduate level is enough already. haha. Their further studies here is quite different. Singapore is graduate-masters-phd. Korea is graduate-graduate class (for abt 2 years)-masters-phd (in all is like 10 years plus minus...madness la..) by the time one reach phd already too old to think already....lol

Astronomy class is ahem..how shall i put it...XIONG. its basically astrophysics...first lesson taught by the prof and im drowning in mathematical equations...total 3 in all....MAD... and to think in NUS i try to avoid any electives with any hint of maths and physics.. T_T

English Poetry was alright at first because...no 1, the lecturer is an angmoh...a britain that speaks purrrfect Brit-glish...please lo, if you were here, you would understand too...english is like a treasure and would be much simpler to study right? wrong...English poetry....hmm somehow the english words i read dun mean much to me...haha...but it's way better than zero understanding with courses taught in korean. And of course, maybe this course will make me more *ahem* cultured. haha. oh and most importantly, no exam, only 4 graded assignments.

Phototography is fun. The lecturer is an angmoh too. Australian. This course is from a design school. SO basically we just take some artsy-fartsy pictures and hand them in. Voila! thats our assignments and this course also no exams. quite good eh? :D The only bad part: 3 hour lectures...sit there and listen to the prof drone on and on and on and on about supposedly famous photographers. boohoohoo.

Actually i wanted to blog about the weekend but somehow it started with my modules. Anyway this weekend was the Korean Thanksgiving holiday. It's called Chuseok and during this time, they all go back to their hometown and visit their families. Its macham like our CNY reunion. But the interesting thing is: it falls on the same date as our Midautumn Festival. (sidetrack- thanks Lynn for your heartwarming ecard.. :)) Seems like the Chinese and the koreans have much in common. Soo..during this time, all of us just went out and shopped, visit museums, palaces..and shopped somemore...haha but only the mega shopping malls were open. small shopping streets were all closed and walking through them make u feel like u are the only pple alive...really like ghost-town. Today was the worst..we couldnt even find a place to have dinner! So we ended up eating macs! They have this burger called the Big Bulgogi burger...my my my...it tastes verrry good...2 juicy, tender, sweet beef patties clasps in between 3 slices of bread..wow...its nth like carl's junior.. after that we went to Baskin Robbins for dessert! Who has heard of or tried Baskin RObbins tag the board! haha...their ice cream is very nice..reminds me of Ben and jerry's. Makes me wonder why singapore dun have Baskin RObbins...but then again..i dun see Ben and Jerry's here in Seoul.

"Maek-do-nal-dir"

Big Bulgogi Burger - Im lovin' it!

Yummy! ok it looks better in reality..

Baskin Robbins! Look at the anticipation on that face...

Wild Strawberry Banana yogurt ice-cream

Chocolate and rainbow sherbet ice-cream

the taste of home..finally

Boy do i miss western food! I have been having korean food everyday since the day i arrived here..white rice...kimchi...soup...ramen...i was craving for some fries and cheese and good'ol chicken wings when it was time for dinner today! After lesson, we decided to go out of school nearby to have dinner...partly coz it was late and the cafeterias all closed and partly coz we just needed to get OUTTA sch...even for a while.. haha.. Outside, we just zoomed in on all the angmoh restaurants and decided on PIZZA HUT! haha...we had BBQ chicken pizza and omg la...they taste so heavenly good...haha...melted cheese...toasted crust...capsicum..a real taste of home man...21000won. worth every cent. haha

Half eaten pizza. but still look ohhh soooo good..

First lesson today on our one and only core module in SNU. and a graduate course at that..the lesson was okay. Conducted thankfully in understandable english and wasnt too chim. The prof though was strangely nice. TOO nice. haha. i helped him complete his sentence coz he couldnt find the right word and he said: "wooo...10 pts to 조엘 (joel)" haha i also didnt know what it meant but i think he was joking. He also took the effort to ensure we (the singaporeans) were split up separately into groups with the koreans so that we get the chance to mix ard and the best part was..he even planned a mountain climbing expedition to the nearby mountain just beside our school! haha...it would sound just so absurb in sg la...but in korea..its just a welcome activity for the foreigners. ha..i'll be looking forward to it. :)

Korean lesson no 1

My first lesson in korean in Korea today! haha..it was very very good. the entire lessons is crafted so well, almost everyone learn very quickly and managed to pick up the basics quite fast. Come to think of it, the korean language lessons provided by the community centres really sucked man. I dun rememeber my korean teacher teaching me how to ping yin and all. But ya, the korean classes in SNU really is fun and spur me on to learn more! :)

I had the Astronomy class today again and once again, the class was conducted entirely in Korean. But thank God, the ppt was in English..so i managed to understand some stuff. My classmate, Jeon, also was really kind and took the time after class to explain to be carefully what was taught during the lecture. He did it even when his english was not good. He seriously tried his very best to make sure i understood. Really hard to find this kind of friend la...haha..

Then super funny after that...somehow, he and the Teaching Assistant (the one conducting the astronomy class in korean) started asking me to write chinese words on a piece of paper. (to koreans, they are actually quite surprised to find out that we learn both english and korean in sg) So i wrote chinse words and they actuallu can understand what im writing! later i learnt that many(about 50%) of the korean words originate from chinese words and some more educated pple can actually recognise chinese characters! Only thing is: they pronounce the chinese differe ntly from us.

After that, Jeon invited me to go out drinking with him and Nok-do (it means Green Pea in Korean coz a general that was damn short like a pea, died at that area..haha lame i know)
The entire drinking session was very interesting. We talked about our own countries...how expensive cars are in sg...HDB...govt policies about housing, babies...we even talked about religion and God. I told him sth that kinda got him thinking i think. I told him that ya although man can call themseleves their own God or rather, they are masters of their own lives- meaning that they can plan every single detail of their lives to make it as perfect as possible, they are eventually some things that cannot be anticipated and pre-planned. For eg like the weather, ur health...

bottom line: there is a God out there that pre-determine our lives. Believe it or not, it's true.

sch start lo....

School finally started today and i just moved in to the dorms yest noon..The dorm is alright..double decker bed with desk, cupboard and aircon even...condition of the building is overall not bad. Actually i have nothing much to complain about the dorm except that the pillow that i bought was just too high...couldnt sleep well last night as a result. Even my roommate was ok. Hongkong guy that is studying in Aussie...got slang and all but at least he speaks english..appears to be a cool dude..

Yest afternoon as i was unpacking my luggage and unfolding and hanging my clothes in the cupboard..i was thinking again...what am i doing here? Why am i putting mysef in an uncomfortable spot...far away from my family, my gf and my home? Sigh la. seems like the change of environment is getting to me. Maybe it'll be better after i made some good friends.

Soo..i just went for my first lesson in SNU...and it was quite horrid actually.
Firstly, it rained in the morning.(actually i like rain coz it's more cooling)
Then suppose to have breakdast with my roomate but i was too slow in preparing coz i wanted to check my email before gg out then in the end i had breakfast alone (some cheese toast with cold coffee...it tasted quite nice though)
After that i managed to find the class and reach on time..but horrors of horrors...the teacher was speaking in korean! Everybody was speaking in korean..even the handout was korean! i was like thinking: isnt this supposed to be a course taught in english??!
Thank God He provided this guy called Jeon to help me out with the language barrier...(he was a korean that could speak some english and was very helpful)
So in the end i found out that there was 2 classes each week. Both classes are conducted with relation to each other but one by a professor and the other by a vice-prof. The prof will conduct his class in english but the problem was that the vice-prof ( who is a girl and looks like a student) doesnt speak a single word of english! Which means her class will be in total korean!! Ahh..So after much chicken and duck talk...i found out that i have to go for both classes and she will help me out by providing me with a english textbook and a grp that is proficient in english.. hai so much for calling this course an english course...

I should really brush up on my korean..

BEACH!

Went to the beach today! haha it was very beautiful and was as such as what pple call it: Got hill, got water. hahaa...but in chinese of course. :)

Look at the Korean Beach. Even the air is different. haha

Starting our journey at 1030am, we took the subway and travelled all the way to Incheon station - the last stop of one of the lines. That took about 2 hours already. From there, we still had to take bus - a one hour bus ride all the way to Jung-do island! and we even passed the freaking Incheon International Airport. THAT was how far it was. Imagine: to get to the beach. we have to travel a total of 3 hours! crazy man...





Good thing was the beach was just excellent. The sand was clean, the water was clean, the sun was good. no clouds in the sky..we sun tanned, i swam...it was just pure relaxing la. haha..One problems though. ok 2. There was nothing much to do except suntan and swim. The other was: there were no chicks! ZERO. how sad was that. go to the beach and all we saw were aunties and teenagers and worst of all, the policemen were having some games day at the beach today. haha...but yinyee and christina were happy la. LOL

Yours truly

Sunset..picture taken from the restaurant

After that we had seafood dinner! We ate at the beachside with incredible view...with the sunset and all...haha. Dinner was a spread. The side dishes alone were enough to fill our stomachs. Kimchi, vege, bean sprouts, pumpkin with redbean. Our main dish was a spicy fish soup steamboat or some sort haha. The fish meat was not too bad. but the girls sad it was a bit old and coarse. i thought it was good la. fussy queens. oh brown rice was served instead. Nice la.

Euwin, Yinyee and Joel

Fenni and Christina Tay

Look at the Fish steamboat and spread. woot

Then we had to make the 3 hour journey back home. I wonder when will we be back. Hmm

Picture Frenzy

Some photos of my days in korea so far...

Oh man...the BBQ meat here just rocks la...check out the spread:

Night lights in Korea

Some street food! chicken!
Dongdaemun!

Inside on the shopping centres at Dongdaemun

Tired from all the walking

Gyeongdeukgung palace



Soju! tastes horrible! ywucks

haha joke man