A little bit busy...

I have been busy a little bit. Just come back from outstation for a week and will go again next week. My boss just come back form Europe and bring back Keukenhof fridge magnet which I love. It makes me feel so exited to plan for my Europe trip next year.

So far there is no plan yet but I just still thinking whether I should join Kelana Convoy, go with friends( I have none yet) or go by myself. Still planning and hopefully I have friend that want to follow me...anyone?

Wow it is already fifth month of the year and I think I have not accomplish anything yet, Where all the time has gone? The only thing that I love as the time gone by is seeing my niece getting bigger and cuter. Can't wait to see her walking and we can go the mall together...

So, I think I need to make plan so that the next 6 months won't be wasted. Maybe I will do something that I won't regret and waste my time. I think I need to accomplish something everyday. My target for today is to update my blog and perhaps for tomorrow do my assignment. That should do it...

Annyeonghaseyo Korea Part 5 - MBC, Myeongdong & Nandaemun

Ok, continue again...last part, I promise!

MBC

We went to MBC Studio which is quite far away as we departed from Everland. After bus, train and taxi, we arrived the place around 5 minutes before the official time they will close, which mean we can only have a short time there. We can't visit this one place as the closing time is 6pm and another place closing time is 6.30pm. At first I was not sure what is the place all about, then I saw the scene photos and it is actually a place where their film "Jewel in the Palace" series. A period drama where a woman become kind of a doctor in the palace, if I'm not mistaken. I didn't watch the series but I knew my dad loves it.

Well, perhaps because of lack of people day, the place look deserted and frankly speaking, I was disappointed. After all the long and tiring travel to go there, and this is it? I admit I was grumpy, seriously I think my group realize it.

On the way back, I was very quite and try to think positive, I mean is not that my friend know how the place look like and I trust her choice of place so far and she has done a good job. During the train ride, there this uncle, drunk and I though he wanted to sit so I get up and then he pushed me down. Then he is murmuring something and the smell of the liquor is so strong, almost make me want to puke. Then he was angry and we try to look around to find out if anybody can translates us what he wants, then he try to grab the hijab so we run away. Everybody else just with their own world and we are so happy when we reach Myeongdong. Then Zati's shoe gave up on her and she need to buy a new one. So we when to this store and she is asking for one design, and then the seller ask for size in cm, yes cm. Of course we don't know. Then when we asked for a different colour she is start mumbling something angrily and we talk to Zati, whatever shoes that she pass to her just take it, it doesn't matter the shoes fit her or not. Luckily, the shoes fit.

Deoksugung Palace 


In the morning, we was warn that it would be raining...and yes it is. But we decided still want to go to Deoksugung Palace where the palace is the middle of city. We missed the English Tour so we decided to just go by ourselves. It was big castle with a beautiful garden at the back. Zati wants to try to wear the royal costume at one of the restaurant but because of raining, the close the session. Bummer.

The best thing is we manage to see the changing of palace guard. It was quite ceremonial and I feel like the old days of Korean or in a period drama. We did took photo next to the guard and they just stand there like a stone. The train station here is beautiful and it is like a museum.

Myeongdong and Nandaemun

Then we went to Myeongdong for shopping and lunch. We met Zati's cousin for lunch and we eat at Korean restaurant. She ordered for us in Korean as she is studying one of the university there. It was a lovely lunch and we learn a trick or two on how to bargain in Nandaemun. Myeongdong is more on boutiques like Uniqlo or cosmetics such as Skin Food and Republic. Their workers will stand outside of the shop with free gifts to invite the people to go in the shop. It is quite havoc and they speaking not only in Englihs but also Chinese and Japanese. Talk about marketing!

I didn't buy a lot here but I shop a lot in Nandaemun. For some reason, Zati and I entered this building and the whole building sell brooch and jewelries. It was like a whole ocean of brooches,  bracelets and we don't know where to begin.but we just went to "kind face" I guess. Then we met this autie who is very pretty and nice. Between me and Zati, we must spend around RM 500 for brooches, bracelets and necklaces. I mean we are girls, right, we love jewelries.

In the end, I spent most of money for souvenir for my families and friends, t-shirts, fridge magnet, 2012 K-Pop calendars for my K-Pop crazy fan cousins. Name it I've got Big Bang, 2pm and sexy calendar of Super Junior. I even get myself kind of notebook of Lee Ho Min ( yes I like Boys Over Flowers).

At night we prepare to put all our things in the luggage and luckily we did bought extra bag allowance 20kg as if we not, then we have to pay a for the extra things that we have. We need to book a van for it as we don't want to carry our luggage by train.

At the end, it was great journey with great friends. At first we never thought that we can make it on our own because of the language barrier. There are some discussion take travel agent but in the end we did it by ourselves, the itinerary, the booking of flight to Jeju( in Korean and using my credit card), book the hotels and taxi. I was quite pride of ourselves as this is the first and the farthest place that we ever go by ourselves.
Hopefully we will be able to do it again sometime and perhaps go ever farther than this.

The place where the film the series

Kak Ain with the costume

Photos of the character in the series

The MBC studio

Entrance to the Palace

Inside interior of the palace

The throne

Royal Guards ready to change

Kak Ain can't wait to take photo with the guards

It is raining

Follow them!

Cute huh!

This is the restaurant where we have our lunch

Lunch time!

Nandaemun

Our group photo before leaving the country

Annyeonghaseyo Korea Part 4 - Everland

This is a long week and it is still middle of the week. Quite tired. I've been so busy and tomorrow got another function at One World Hotel for whole day and at night still need to do some preparation for Thursday's presentation. So instead of I blabbering a lot here, why don't I just put a lot of photos as Everland is so beautiful but unfortunately we only take one ride only, yes, one ride as half of the group "has visited by their aunt" so they feel moody and tired all the time as well as the rides there are scary. Seriously scary as I would have my heart jump out of my body and run away. That scary. So we only ride, what I think the most safest ride there hehe. 

The scenery there is sooooo beautiful There has this Holland village that makes my heart sank because I really want to go to the real place. During our visit they have an event, I think for the school children, it is a musical show.As we went for 4 people, so we decided to register as group that gives us 10% discount, which is great as the ticket value is RM 300, still what a waste.

On the way there, we took the bus in front of Lotte Mall, and I didn't manage to get a seat for about one hour journey, so I was cranky a little bit. It is not that my friend didn't save me a seat but somebody took it so, can't do anything. When we were there, a group of children looking at us and then one of them took courage to speak English with us. I think they in the "The Amazing Race" and they need to take photo with foreigner, so they choose us. What an honour!. But they are very cute, seriously.

After half a day, we decided to spend our time at MBC instead. Boy, what a disappointing it was. To be continue.... 

Our ticket

The entrance

 Halloween is coming to town

Beautiful Rose Garden

Lovely roses

See the scary roller coaster at the back, scary huh?

Love this garden

Holland Village in the background

Musical show

We play this one

One of the scary ride, we saw people vomit after riding it, seriously!

In Holland Village

The power of 4

P/S: I notice some people do read my blog...can you please becomes my follower or at least say hi so  I would know that I'm not blabbering alone? I really appreciate that. Thanks (^_^)

Annyeonghaseyo Korea Part 3 - Nami Island and Lotte World Star Avenue

Nami Island 

Third day arrived and I'm so excited that we are going to Nami Island. It is a long train journey and we didn't manage to get seat at all. The only time we are sitting, when we took a taxi from Gapyeong Station to Nami Jetty. Although still in the morning, but still there are so many people there.

We need to buy ferry ticket to the Island but actually you also can do flying fox to the Island. It cost around RM 100, I think. The ferry journey just around 10 to 15 minutes.

From my understanding, Nami Island is actually belongs to some company or a person, but since the Island becomes famous for Winter Sonata, the owner has let the Island to be visited by tourist. That is why the Island name is Naminara Republic.

I'm frustrated a little bit as when we are there, it was not autumn yet, because I know if it is in Autumn, the trees would be more beautiful. Nevertheless, the scenery is still beautiful. I just can't take my eyes on the small road with tall trees along it. It was a magnificent view.

Of course we took a lot of photos, jumping, hugging the trees and even we took photos at the scene of Winter Sonata. The drama was great, but I didn't like it much because it is too depressing form me. I mean seriously, so many tears and the background music make me stress.

After that, we went to have lunch at the only vege/halal restaurant there. We choose our menu just from photos. Don't know what we are going to eat. I think kak Ain choose a soup which I try to blow it before eating which turn out to be a cold soup. A very cold soup. I have this rice with egg and vegetable that is sooo hot that we need to have a special mitten to hold it. It taste ok and we meet a lot of Malaysians there as that is the only restaurant available for us. By the way, they also has some sort of "surau". It is above Chinese Restaurant.

Most of people there, especially the tourist quite taken to us, perhaps because we wear hijab. There is one uncle like gesture about the hijab, I guess, I said Malaysia. If he is asking my name, then to him, my name is Malaysia.

After soaking all the natural beauty we decided to leave before anyone leave as it will be crowded. We wait for the taxi and again, we saw something we've never seen before. There's a young couple on the first line and the taxi is approaching them and then come uncles who waited before us but at a wrong place, march to the couple and took their taxi. They have communication fight and one of the uncles push the young man. I was like woah, this is something. Luckily the couple gave up and gave the group of uncle their taxi. I just hoping there is nobody to steal our taxi later.

Ferry to Nami Island

On the way to the ferry

Zati ordering her lunch

Jump shot!

I love this view

Me and the famous snow dolls?

The cold soup

My lunch for the day

Winter Sonata mini museum

The famous couple

It looks so beautiful in Autumn

Lotte World, Star Avenue

Then we went to Lotte Mall for Lotte World Star Avenue. We went there because the night before we have chit-chatting with a Chinese Malaysian that have been there. My friends were quite excited to take photos with K-Pop celebrities, although they are only cardboard.

Kak Zubaidah and I enter a room where we could see a drama, and recorded with our voice. It was so funny, I can't follow the script. We tried so many times until we are satisfied. Here is the video for it. Please don't laugh.

Then we go photo crazy with all the superstar there. I know some of them, like Big Bang and 2pm. The place also got the artist memorabilia and also there is a part where we can write note to them, like send them an e-mail. It was quite fun, especially my K-Pop friend, Kak Ain. Oh, I just realised , here at Lotte World that they film Stairway from Heaven drama.

Where we recorded our drama

Me and Big Bang, I guess

Lotte World

Overall, it was a fun fun day. Can't wait for tomorrow journey. To be continue...again....

Annyeonghaseyo Korea Part 2 - Itaewon and Seoul Tower

Well, we continue our journey to Seoul. But before that I have a scary-funny thing that happen to us on the way to Jeju Airport. Our flight is at 8.30am and we are late. We are supposed to take 6am bus to airport but instead we took the 6.30am instead. We overslept because we were so tired the night before.

So when we arrived at airport it is 7.50am, and we were so worried that we will not able to get on the plane. Then, there's along queue to check in with a lot of bags, from the language, they are from China. Then, I've done something I never done before, I cut the line and and beg to the counter girl, to let us check in first because our flight is 30 minutes away. Luckily, she said ok and I know the China delegates said something bad about us but I don't care because I need to get on the flight pronto.

Then, like The Amazing Race we rush off to the gate and the funny part is, our flight has been delayed to 10.30am, after we've been told off by the China delegates. And the most funny part is, they are in my flight. Hah!


Our flight, Jeju Air








Itaewon


When we arrive to Gimpo and took bus to Myeongdong. Our hotel, Namsan 2, doesn't look at hotel at all. We didn't notice it first. We book two room with Korean sleeping style. Oh boy the room is so small but very clean. The toilet is so small and only one person can go in at one time. So we have to change outside the room and one of us need to close our eyes or not looking while we are changing. Funny memories.

Supposed our plan to go to Nami Island but because it is late already Beriyani Rice and it so we plan to go Itaewon instead for lunch. It is different side of Korea where we saw a lot of Arabic, Turkish restaurants and Halal shops. After scavenging we decided to have lunch at Foreign Restaurant. I ordered Beryani Rice and it was the most expensive rice ever about RM 30 (10 000 won) but it does taste good and have a lot of portion. Tehn we went to Salam Bakery, to buy bread for our dinner. I tried pavlova for the first time and it was sooo sweet. We tried to find where is the mosque then we decided to ask one of the shop owners there. The masjid was big and beautiful. There's children playing there, they are Korean but they are Muslim, there's not a look that you can see everyday. The entrance for man and woman was separated so when we decided to take the photo in front of mosque, the cute little boy was saying something but we do not understand until one of the tourist, which is a Korean told us that we can't take photo there because it is for man area only.

After that we went to Nandaemun but unfortunately, a lot of stalls close already. Then suddenly, we heard people screaming and guess what we saw some of stall owners fighting. We not sure what they are fighting about but it involves both ahjumma and ahjussi. Physical fight. I was quite stunned but the best part is, my friends able to go to the nearest shop bear the fight incident to shop. I was like, seriously? And that is the first glimpse I got about the Korean people. It was not as portrayed in dramas. Far from it. We just bought some spoons and other knick knacks then straight to hotel.

Seoul Tower

At night, we decided to go to Seoul Tower, which was behind our hotel. We walked there around 15 minutes  and a very could weather. The cable car to go up is ok, perhaps because it was at night and I can't see what happen down there. The tower is quite high and the scenery was night. They have this wall where people put locks and also they have a hearth shape poem which every couple try to take photo with it. My friend was so happy to get there because if I'm not mistaken, one of the restaurant was in the famous Korean drama which I forgot already. I didn't get good photos here as my camera can't take good photo at night, so we use Kak Ain's DSLR camera instead.

After coming back from the tower, we decided to have Maggie mee party at the pantry. I love the pantry, it has the biggest fridge I've ever seen . It was spacious and we have the place for ourselves. You can surt internet and make internet phone calls here. It also a mini gym. They have bag scale which we use to weight ourselves instead. Then we called of by 12pm as we need to wake up early tomorrow to for Nami Island.
To be continue.....

Cable car to Seoul Tower

Love poem 

Wall of padlocks

Seoul at night