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*

Day Trip to Sekinchan 12.10.2013~

I'm having a good rest on Labour Day, the day where all labourers can forget about their jobs, listening to Daughtry and wondering when will my next spontaneous trip be. Being an office labourer, it's extremely hard to take off. Every single trip has to be pre-planned months in advance so that it won't clash with meetings or busy days, sigh..

2013 was quite fulfilling in terms of holidays for me. Besides Hong Kong and Siem Reap, I also made a trip down to Sekinchan in October. Nevermind that it was a local destination, for me, visiting any place that I have not been to is a new experience!

This is no normal patch of grass ok, this is a tiny chunk of the Rice Bowl of Peninsular Malaysia, no joke. It just doesn't look very green since the weather wasn't very sunny when we arrived after our drive down from Klang. We had expecially chosen October since the paddy would be growing nicely. Do refer to the chart here for the visiting schedule, you really don't want to go in the months when all there is to see is mud and dirt, haha..

  

The sky was ridiculously dark when we arrived. If I remember correctly, it even rained a little T_T The 2 pictures above were taken mere seconds apart, see how the rain clouds came rolling in?!

So where could we go next? Basically, there's nothing much to do in Sekinchan, just relax and enjoy the scenery, buy lots of local produce and have the must-try shark porridge for lunch. The portion was quite generous, so as advised by the lady who took our order, we only had 3 dishes to share.

 

 

建旗海鲜饭店 （Jiann Chyi  Restaurant） 156, Bagan Sekinchan, 45400 Sekinchan, Selangor. Tel: 03-3241 4690 / 012-234 5478 

Coincidentally we both wore red that day, matchy matchy :D

Trying very hard to enjoy the noni drink which tasted rather 'interesting' @@

  

 Thank goodness the sky cleared up after lunch and we finally got to see the awesomely green paddy fields. Really soothes the eyes!

Ok, just wanted to post this since I looked very happy =) 

The other half of 'The Four'

  

  

 Spot the auntie going to the market, heehee..

Like I said earlier, there isn't much to do except buy buy eat eat and we ended up with a car full of mangoes, sweet corn, rice, prawn crackers, etc etc etc, it really seemed like we had gone to the market. Ended the trip with cendol while on the way back to Klang. I think our day trip was quite short compared to some itineries I have seen, since we skipped the fishing village altogether but nonetheless, my main reason to go was to look at a sea of green and have fun, so I was quite satisfied~ 

 Ending this post with some funny pink stuff we saw all over the place. Really curious to know what kind of spawn it is? Frogs? Fish? Dragonflies? Hmm..

Dining In The Dark

Decided to do something special for the Boy's birthday this year. Instead of a romantic candlelit dinner, we went and dined in pitch black darkness! @@ The restaurant in question is very simply called Dining In The Dark - KL and its located at Changkat Bukit Bintang, beside Movida and opposite Radius International Hotel. Be warned though, I would recommend this experience only to open-minded people and those who are not that choosy with their food. You never know what you'll be served during the meal, hehehe..

For me, I was really impressed with the details even before reaching the restaurant. You get a reminder call as well as a very detailed email informing you of the location, what to expect and even the weather! 

When we first arrived, we were given a welcome drink at the lounge area. I would say choose the alcoholic drink since it will loosen you up before you prepare for the experience. There are games that you can play to acclimatise yourself to a world of blindness (our game was to pick the 4 paperclips from a bowl of dried foodstuff, not as easy as it sounds, I almost thought we would have to wait till midnight for us to finish the game before dinner) and then time to lock away any items that emit any light or glow, so no phones allowed during dinner.

I chose the White Russian Cocktail =)

Sneak peak at the menu, which doesn't really tell you what you'll be having @@ You can expect the final bill to be less than RM150 per person depending on the drink you choose to accompany dinner. At the end of the meal, you will be shown the actual menu with descriptions of the things eaten and we were very lucky to get a chance to try out the Christmas menu. The menu is changed every month by the way.. Very hard to describe in detail here but we were really stuffed to the brim after the appetiser (4 dishes) + soup (2 soups) + main course (3 dishes) +dessert (5 desserts)!!!

I enjoyed the experience very much since its not something you would do all the time. I'd imagined that we would at least be able to see some silhouettes of the utensils and stuff but no, I couldn't even see my own fingers much less anything else. You really have to feel your way around and I did touch several of my dishes by accident, lol. Kudos to the wait staff who are visually impaired but remain cheerful and helpful throughout!

 A great end to a fun day!

Special mention to Jo who styled my hair for me *love*

 

A very happy birthday to the boys who love us, hehe..

The almond tiramisu cake from levain patisserie which was a tad too sweet, but the amount of almonds given was awesome!

 Hint: I'll be expecting something special planned for my birthday this year too eh!