E.A.T Trip to South Korea (17-24 October 2015)

Exciting.Awesome.Tiring -  a basic summary of our trip to Seoul and Jeju.

We started off our journey with a mad dash at KLIA2 early in the morning.I'll admit, it was mainly my fault due to my bad habit of never remembering flight numbers or boarding times properly. This was actually not my first time experiencing such a boo boo XD

In my mind, we had to reach the airport by 6am but when the bf asked whether it would be necessary to arrive so early, I just went along with it and never bothered to double check the boarding pass. We arrived at 7am just to see on our flight flashing on the departures board. Turns out boarding time was 7am and not 8am as we thought, I had a brief blackout moment where my mind just went blank, but after being told that we could no longer check in out bags and there was only 20 minutes left for us to clear immigration, scan our luggage and reach the boarding gate, we immediately sprang into action. I immediately knelt on the floor and started stuffing everything from the large suitcase that wasn't going to Korea into any nook and cranny available - in my handbag, his laptop bag, sling bag and our one and only cabin sized suitcase, now that I think about it, I really have no idea how we managed to get on the plane, hahaha.. (If you want to know, we just left the 2 other pieces of luggage we brought along, L size and M size, in the middle of the departure hall, for the bf's brother to locate later XD)

The funny story about 2 towels:-

Pictured above is part of my Longchamp handbag and the Barry Smith cabin luggage that saved the day. The stars in the pic however, are actually the 2 white fluffy towels that were carried like babies all the way from KL to Seoul and then to Jeju XD. The night before when the bf was packing, he as usual, packed a towel to bring along. I never have the habit of bringing towels since most hotels have them anyway, but this time my itchy mouth told him to "bring one more for me! there's plenty of quota for the luggage anyway since we have 25kgs available for check in!" At that moment, his mum happened to walk past and asked why he was bringing ugly old, thin towels and got us these 2 brand new hotel grade ones that were so fluffy, they couldn't be stuffed any where during our frenzied luggage stuffing performance on the KLIA2 departure hall floor. I ended up hugging them all the way to Jeju. Wasted our check-in quota for both the Air Asia and Jeju Air flights. We were like crazy people with all our carry ons.. T_T

 Half crazy already after our mad dash, with underpants and socks falling out from his bag while we were running (I'm being literal here..). Luckily I was behind and was able to pick up whatever had dropped out. 

Had the mood to take a selfie after we finally settled in, caught our breathes and dried our sweat, we just found everything really funny after our ordeal~ Still hugging the towels until very luckily, the girl next to me changed her seat and we had the whole row to ourselves =D

In flight meal on the way to Seoul, to adapt, we both ordered the kimchi chicken meal, lol

Immigration form, they were out of the English declaration forms so I tried to complete the Korean version and got the air stewardess to check, very proud that I almost managed to guess all the columns correctly, hehehe..

After an uneventful and punctual flight, we arrived at Incheon Airport and it was another slightly crazy time as we had to collect our rented portable wifi device, purchase bus tickets, connect to Gimpo Airport and check in our flight to Jeju.

Extremely useful portable wifi device rented from Pocket Wifi Korea. I'll attach the link in case somebody needs to locate the counter in the airport, which is in an obscure corner that nobody seems to be able to direct you to (personal experience)...

Link: http://pocketwifikorea.com/incheon-location/

Got our tickets to take the standard limousine bus to Gimpo Airport quite easily

Settled down in the bus with all our bags and enjoyed the view along the way. My first impression of Seoul was that there are many bridges all over the place, in whatever size and colour.. Some of the places we passed looked quite dreamy, though I have no idea where we passed by..

We managed to arrive safely at Gimpo Airport way before our flight at 8pm++ and took the time to explore the airport and have our dinner. Nothing much to see at the Gimpo Airport domestic terminal but we did manage to get some Honey Tong Tong potato chips and the famed banana milk =)

Dinner was at a restaurant that was more like a cafeteria, and the food was nothing to shout about. No matter what, it was our first actual meal in Korea..

Self-service buzzer

Authentic Bibimbap

Authentic kimchi fried rice and pickled radish

One of the reasons why I love Korea, free unlimited drinking water at every single eatery!

Even better when there's a 'waiter' who helps you refill your drink, hee~

You only need to be at the gate 5 minutes before boarding, how awesome is that!

Flying over Seoul at night is a wonderful experience, all the light pollution is really beautiful to look at, hahaha.. Most airports are a distance away from the city so the surrounding area is usually not as bright. All in all, it was a nice 1 hour flight from Seoul to Jeju, with refillable juice and good looking flight steward to serve you *swoon* ( I swear I didn't notice until the bf mentioned it!)

We decided to take a cab to our accommodation from the airport instead of the public bus since it was almost 10pm by the time we made it out from the airport. Luckily we did, as our apartment booked via Airbnb was somewhat difficult to locate even via GPS and the lane leading down to the seaside apartment was really dark and quiet. 

This was my first time trying Airbnb and I found it to be a very good experience and I have already made another booking via them after my Jeju trip. No need to print anything unlike hotels as everything can be communicated with the host via chat apps beforehand. We owed our whole Jeju itinerary to our friendly host, Eugene, who speaks excellent English. She had everything you would need available in her cosy apartment including utensils, toiletries, microwave, fridge, hairdryer, full length mirror, super-speed wifi etc.... It was like going home after a very tiring day. I loved it!

The listing: Spacious room for 2 near beach and airport
 

Breakfast stuff all for us, the milk bread was so addictive!

Okok, so towels were provided as well -______-

 

Bath items well provided for

Just only realised that I actually did not take any more photos of the room, how strange. Anyways, it looked exactly the same as depicted in the listing, maybe that was my reasoning at the time, lol.

I really hope that I have the time and willpower to record my memories during the trip in order to remember the little details in decades to come. 10 years my boy, no mean feat! =P

Milestones Unlocked

Hi Blog, you may have missed me~

Since I'm backing up the photos in my current phone maybe it's time to do a little update on the recent happenings in my life. As the title suggests, there have been some important events which I want to jot down for remembrance sake as well.

Dog had an awesome Christmas 2014!

We've had Dog (her actual name is Sandy) for two years+ now and I know I still haven't gotten round to penning down the story of how we came to have her. She's currently the most popular member of our household. Just look at the amount of Christmas gifts she received @.@

10 Guests

One of the great things about owning your own home is that you can invite people for sleepovers any time. We had our largest number of guests to-date during Christmas and it was quite fun! First time seeing my living room all filled up like this. We also proved that our not so large kitchen actually has the capacity to cater to such a huge group, hehehe.. Just look at our spread for dinner~

Enjoying my kitchen

Pretty proud of the completeness of our new kitchen. We have an array of gadgets and serving dishes which just encourages playing with your food. I think my homemade steamed buns were quite successful, can't wait to finish the second half of the ingredients that we did not finish. Happy that I got to start cooking from scratch. My other completed dish was sweet corn soup but didn't manage to take a photo of it.

Turned 27
I think this is worth mentioning since it definitely only happens once in your lifetime ROFL. Thank you to my bro for the cake from Verbena.

Reading again

I think this is the first time I completed a new book in a long long time. I thought it would never happen, but I have been feeling sleepy everytime I read recently. Thank you to my awesome colleague for gifting me this John Green book for my birthday. I managed to finish it in one day while having my hair done at the hair salon.

Driving myself

I gratbbed the car keys and drove myself out for the first time. It may have just been nearby but it's still a first for me. While going to the Bank, I managed to park the car properly and I just had to take a picture to remember the moment. I think my parking is still hit and miss but at least I did it perfectly once. XD

Finding a new job

After completing my 2-year slave contract, I have been feeling the urge to leave the company but I held on until I obtained both my Associateship and Permanent Residency status. No picture taken with all my ex-colleagues but I did manage to take some with colleageus whom I was closer with. Definitely no picture with my hopeless bosses. While I was procrastinating on updating my resume, my new job came and fell right into my arms. Turns out getting a LinkedIn account wasn't such a bad idea after all. No doubt it has not been confirmed whether my new job is better or worse than my previous one but at least the benefits are waaaay better and I did try to change my environment. #noregrets.

Riding in a Volkswagen after a long time

My goal is to have new experiences each year. This year's first one was going on a test-drive. We visited the Volkswagen showroom and tried out the Tiguan, Polo Sedan and Passat. He drove while I just enjoyed the interior and new technology, haha. No Jetta available for test-driving but I will never forget how awesome it felt to sit in one while I was touring Scotland in 2009. Cross fingers that someone will get a new car soon so that I can enjoy the lovely smell of a new car.... By the way, I wouldn't mind the Passat now that I've tried it, even though I had mentioned before that the Jetta is my dream car. I am flexible like that, hahahhahaa.

I tried Milkcow at last
Of all the new shops in Mid Valley/Gardens, I was most looking forward to try the Korean organic soft-serve ice-cream from Milkcow. Well, it tasted good but not until the level where I would be craving for it again any time soon. Wonder what the hype is about. Hmm... The red bean one wasn't very good or maybe I just don't really like to have powdery stuff with my ice-cream.

First night out in 2015

Went to Chijmes with the two buddies I've known since Tricor days and we spent the whole night discussing our fears and aspirations. No alcoholic drinks on the table but it was great fun. I finally tried Nam Nam, the Vietnamese restaurant with the long queues. Frankly, the service sucked but the pho was the closest match to the real Vietnamese one that I have tasted in Singapore so far. I may or may not be back. =P

I should make this a more regular thing since I think my brain cells are dying out at a much faster rate at this new job but... who knows when my next post will be *shrugs*