Korea Trip 2009 - From Singapore to Korea

The flight was at 2140hrs. A six hours plus flight, probably the longest flight I have been in so far. The furthest I went was Shekou, China on a business trip and I think that is just 3 hours plus.

We reached quite early, before 8pm for our dinner and then to meet up with the tour leader Ken to confirm the boading pass and the full itinerary of the tour. The tour sequence has been changed. We are supposed to go to Jeju Island first and then back to Seoul. Now, the Jeju island trip is changed to the last 2 days which confused the itinerary quite a little. Not sure if this is better but the tour leader and tour guide kept emphasizing that this arrangement will be for the better.

This is my first taste of the Korean food for the next 8 days. A dish called 비빔밥, (Bi Bim Bap), a popular Korean dish or affectionally called "beggar rice" by some of the Koreans. It was said to be part of the Royal Court Dish and in the present, the ingredients are varied according to the current tastes of the nation. I did manage to get to taste the more correct Bi Bim Bap later in my trip.

So with all the ingredients you are supposed to mix everything together including the rice which will give you something like this...

Doesn't look very appetizing ya...but it is still quite okay.

Here we are at 인천국제공항, Seoul, Incheon airport arriving from OZ752 @ 0630hrs in the morning. The temperature was supposed to be around -1 deg. Woohooo! My first time in such a cold country. We were introduced to the local tour guide, Novel Hsu, a local Korean who speaks good Mandarin. We were told to get some breakfast in the airport and will depart to our first destination in about one hour time.

We picked the most common food that is being sold everywhere.

Macdonald's breakfast! And it is almost identical to the ones they serve back in Singapore. One complain though...the coffee taste yucky. Ewww. And I did have any coffee at all during the whole eight days in Korea. Probably too frightened off from the first experience.

The first place we went. A beauty shop linked to "Face Shop" teaching us the essentials in applying chemicals etc to our face. (skin care course) The guy on the extreme right is our tour leader Ken. Pretty quiet and nice guy like me! There is a total of eight steps to be done if I remember correctly. If we have to do this everyday, I think I will waste one more hour daily for this. A price to pay for beauty. Nonetheless, we went ahead with the demo and did this.