seoul 5

kali ini message bergambar sahaja.. a picture speaks a thousand words.. will update soon with long essay...


some of the side dishes eat with rice. the red coloured one is the so-called kimchi. different places has slightly different tastes of kimchi since preparing the kimchi has no standard measurement or compulsory standard ingredients except it must has cabbage, chili, and salt.












one of the cake (like cekodok) made from sweet potato (and milk and ,i guess) baked with peanut filling inside.


























snacks for the koreans. some crepe (kerepek) made from ginger and sugar. nice taste.

Amesyt factory...

Road in Korea.. View taken from (in the bus of course) a fly over

the trees along the way/highway.. even thou without leaves, they are still look beautiful. wonder how they would look like during spring & autumn. :D

Yangji, one of the place to play ski

bridge at the ski area

playing ski .. (:P very badly)

oh yes.. since i have not enough money, these are the pictures of sourvenires for you. choose which picture u like the most:P

another road in the city of seoul. look at the middle point road. they have no divider here, and u can make the u-turn just like that (i mean provided there is no car). see the U-Turn signed next to the white coloured car.

people crossed the road. most korean guys are busy working while the fruit of their hardwork are being enjoyed by the family.

p/s: it's a rule here for the male employees to provide the bank account of the wives for salary. heheheh





that's all for now..

and yes.. i am in korea (again?? oh my God.. ) but now not in seoul, outside the city visiting places like winter sonata shooting places (Namiseom Island); Autumn in My heart, Mount Seorak for film The King and The Clown.. etc etc.. err this time it's for the spring :P and yes i was offered to become part time tourist guide leader in Malaysia due to my experience here.. he he he not a bad offer, maybe i can come here the next 4months for the autumn season ;). Opss.. forgotten our planned trip to oriental country by end of the year.. maybe the next 10 months:D..

till then...

Seoul 4

Pictures taken from my room.

(with closed window, of course)

Day 2
The night before it was snowing heavily. I caught bad cough and sign of flu. Cannot stand the cold; imagine I went to sleep with full attire � long wool sleeves (special attire you wore inside during winter); another long sleeves (you cannot wear this in Malacca during daytime, you are going to fall down due to the heat); winter coat; 2 pieces of long slack + wool slack; 2 pieces of socks � one ordinary cotton socks, another one wool socks and hand cover (sarung tangan?? Lupa la plak heheh). On top of that, the blanket/comforter fully covered my body. But still sejukkkkkk� i wore this special sleeping attire the whole nights there... huuhhu

I remembered to charge my camera battery.. only early of the morning on my last day i took few pictures from inside my room (and forgotten to take my room's picture). The room is quite small (if i can say it is really small..) , it is really like one room at home with attached bathroom except it is equipped with small kitchen.

By the time i stepped on the bus, my camera went out of battery again. Oh NO! How come this is happening again to me, scolding myself for buying that camera without properly checking it & scolding the camera attendant for selling me that camera (for i don't know whom shall i scold anymore), i switched of the camera hopping it will turn out ok later.

We went for a breakfast somewhere outside. Don't remember where.. Served in a buffet style, but obviously cannot eat much especially all the meat things, fried things. Saw few people took Char-koi, i also took few pcs. Tried to eat one, but just one bite and it tasted 'different' hehe so i took it out and opt for other vegetarians food. huuhuh Next days breakfast we ate at the hotel, so my main breakfast menu is fruits, rice with corn, salads and kimchi, and fresh juice/coffee for those particular days. uhuhuhhuh. btw i saw and ate a lot of vege that i never see before.

I saw people taking pictures, looked at them with those envy eyes.. uhuhu my camera. why why why.. it was then inside the bus i felt like checking the battery. And tada when i inserted the battery back, the camera was fully charge. Hmm maybe i have some kind of electricity inside me that able to charge back the battery.. heheh ok now with more pictures..

Reminder:

All the pictures taken are individual property. It would be much appreciated if you inform me if you have interest in any of the photos. Tak baik curi gambar orang tau.. :P

After the breakfast, we went to Presidential House.. The house of the President of Korea, the number one person there, second is the prime minister. The House is also known as The Blue House, because the colour of its roof is Blue - i forget but it holds some symbolic meaning in Korean culture and beliefs. The security there is strict, you cannot take picture just anywhere. They have restricted to certain area only or your camera will be taken. But we managed to take this picture before the guard asked us to move from that area. hehe so you can see that at the back of the blue house is a small mountain.

Photo of a few of the delegates at the Blue House Area

Pictures at the side of the road, Blue House

Next, we visited the National Folk Museum.

The Country of Korea actually is the merger of culture of 3 main kingdoms in the past. One of the Kingdom named Shilla Kingdom, the queen wore crown/tiara. The other 2 kingdoms had distinguished attire, but Shilla Kingdom's King and Queen attires somehow similar to most of the other features we saw in other kingdoms.

Korean culture values Knowledge; Creation of knowledge and preservation of Knowledge.

Picture here shows the steps to print letters and preserve the printed materials.

However, in the past only guys were able to learn how to write and read. While the girls have to prepare themselves to become a good housewives and mothers. Even they have separate learning places for the sons and daughters.

Replica of common people marriage festival.


Replica of common people who lives at the foot of the mountain, and main activities is farming.

The noble ladies attires inside the house

The greenish/blue dresses are noble lady dressed out attire. Notice they hide the face and hair when they go out. :) Reminds me of those Muslim noble ladies wore headscarf to distinguished themselves from the slaves, as the slaves did not wear headscarf.

Process in making Kimchi - a must to have dish for the Koreans; eat as the side dish (lauk) for rice, noodles etc. just like ikan masin, cencalok, sambal belacan, ulam etc. to the malays.

Next to the museum is Gyeongbokgoong - (Gyeong Bok Palace). Only part of the palace remains, the other was burnt during the Japanese invasion. There is one palace nearby remains untouched (not burnt) by the Japanese, it is declared by UNESCO as the world heritage. The palace name is Changdeokgung. The last King stayed there before he migrated to Japan and died there. So that is why Koreans has no more King. During the Japanese invasion, the crown prince at that time was forced to marry a Japanese lady and live in japan (i think in exchange of not hurting their people, so the crown prince agreed). This lady was particularly search so that she cannot pregnant the prince's child, but the Korean said the Japanese assigned was not-so-clever doctor. So she had a son. This son was living in Japan, cant speak Korean, continued his study in western and married to a western lady. But the Koreans doesn't like it, did not (do not?) want to recognize her as their queen and so they were forced to divorce. They were eventually divorced, and the last prince migrated to Japan.

The other royal families now lead the life as the normal/common people.

This is one of the backdoor to the palace

Different angles of the palace. Beautiful isn't it? If you can see, the snow is falling down during the time i took this pictures.

The palace from the backdoor; entry door from the museum.

to be continued...

Seoul Part 3

[1] My first Cupcakes

Who said chatting is bad? It is not bad at all.. heheh I was online in the middle of the night, when i saw Tauke Kek Cawan Kak Sity was online too. Chit-chatting with her about this and that, only to know she was baking cup cakes; while chatting with me.. huhuuh.

Wahh hebatnya kawan2 saya. Another cakes tauke in the group. In the end, the conclusion was because of that i received special cup cakes from her the next morning (yeah, provided i have to rush down to KL just to receive this special gift..eheh). Thank you very-very the very much kak sity. Muahhhs.

Here is the cupcakes for me!!

Those interested may give her a call. ;)

More of the cupcakes pic at http://sity29.fotopages.com

[2] Continue journey on day 1 in korea.. (bila nak abis da..)

Picture of a street in Seoul
(Rollie, this is my own photo, ok:P)

After the meal we went to the Seoul World Cup stadium. For someone who is not so keen in football, I think nothing much for me to see there. The stadium has setup boards on pictures of Korea/Japan final matches, shop selling souvenirs and yes, I found one big heater where it became the center of attraction for everyone. Heheh On our way here, the snow started to fall down. The cold wind strongly blew inside the stadium, made me (us?) unable to even put your hands out of the jacket. Thus, you can imagine how cold it was.

If I am not mistaken, there will only be snow when the temperature falls below 10Celcius (-10C). It was not supposed to snow anymore since it was the end of winter. But I think so many people in the busses were praying hard to see and feel snow; and their praying was granted. Nearby the stadium there is a booth, we assume it is a public phone booth but using cards. It looks sophisticated; until we cant figured out to the end how to use it:P. Nearby, there are also few public phones using coins. Now that we don’t even looked at it. (sorry, cant have the pic since my camera was not ok yet. Remember?).

(Picture of snows on top of the vehicles and on the road, after a heavy snowing on the night earlier)

After that, we went to Itaewon. By the time we departed from the bus, the snow was heavily falling down. I mean it was really heavy and everyone was like Hu Ha Hu Ha Yeah Yeah.. Well, a usual reaction from people who faces humid, hot and raining season through out the year:D.

Itaewon, a shopping district. This place is famous for two reasons; one because the only Mosque in Seoul is here and most of the Muslim’s communities are here ; and 2nd because (according to them) the US Army based is nearby Itaewon.

Since to my knowledge that the only mosque in Seoul located here, we were trying to look for that mosque. Unfortunately due to language barrier (most Koreans cannot speak English; and all Malaysians delegations there cannot speak Koreans:D); and ½ hour before due gathering-time we were informed that the mosque (they referred it as Muslim Temple.. err.. what to say?) was about 1km more. I don’t buy anything yet. (not planning to buy actually..not enough money..ehhehe).

We (the muslims) were so hungry since we dare not to simply eat anything on the streets. The non-muslims really enjoyed the food there. The only thing most of us did was went to the McD nearby. I bought a cup of Hot Chocolates only since not dare to ask for the others, they serve hamburgers –pork meat (that cost me about 2,000 won or RM7.6 if directly converted to RM).

Only when we were in the bus we saw a muslim restaurant across the road; a little bit up of a small hill (Seoul is surrounding by the ocean and has a number of mountains around; so geographically the road/land is not technically straight). But then we were already late. Since the dinner is not provided, thank you to all the instant noodles we brought from Malaysia – that is our dinner.

The end of Day 1.

P/s: 1. The end too for this posting. Did my writing too lengthy and too detail?

. Some friends complaining that I am not posting my own pictures, but photos taken from other websites. Well, dear friends, otherwise stated all the pictures are mine. I took it myself. :P

Seoul 2

One of the billboard there..
Not sure what was written.:P


But i guess it sounds like Nong Soo San Hom Syo Bing. :D (hopefully it was correctly spelt)


Much awaited posting..
My journey in Seoul continues here…

Did I mentioned that on the departure day I was rushing with a training; a bad headache; and not-so-well stomach that made me vomited twice on my way to the airport? I thought I won’t be able to make it to Seoul. I can’t eat anything because everything will comes out. But alHamdulillah, after Isya’ pray at the airport and (yes, solat hajat and lots of Doa for me to be able to go to Korea without much problem) I gained back my health. Only then I felt hungry; bought a sandwich; but only managed to eat half of it since (1) just vomited twice, so cant eat much (2) it was night, felt so sleepy- prefer sleep to eat (3) there was food provided inside the plane – Korean Air.

And yes the stewardesses are all beautiful. But not all of them are Koreans; some even from Malaysia and India. They have this collaboration between airplanes service providers.

Next.. you may view it through my previous posting here…

And continue the reading here..
(Remember than my camera was out of battery, so some of the pictures here were taken from the net)

It was freezing cold. I can’t enjoy the scenes and places there much since were always looking for heater. But the buildings inside the studio were nice. They even displayed part of the movies scene (of course with replicas people and items); and the type of foods prepared for the king and royalties. Memang banyakkknyaa!! So many varieties of foods for the King! I don’t remember all but a set of meal for the king must have like a cold dish, hot dish, soup dish, combination dishes etc. etc. about 12 kinds of dishes.


Surasang: Royal Dishes and Table Arrangements

Click to view bigger size.

Click to view bigger size

Courtesy from: Tour2Korea (http://english.tour2korea.com/)

Also, at one corner of the kitchen area there were big pots (in Malays we called them tempayan) arranged and stored. These pots are called ‘hangari’, used to store sauces like soy sauces.



Courtesy of My Korean Kitchen (http://mykoreankitchen.com)

There were stalls selling foods along the road to the studio. Since our delegation consists of about 120 people with families, there were also teenagers in our group. (I consider those with school uniforms as teenagers; and those not have to wearing it anymore are adults:D). One of this boy was asking to the seller what kind of food they are selling. One of them said; this is chicken, and this is vegetarian food. This boy’s father was asking what is next to that vegetarian cake/kuih (cooked on a different pan), and the cook answered that was pork. So they refused to buy (besides that ‘ayam katok’ – the name given by the families ). The seller persuaded again that the food is vegetarian. Guess what the answer of that boy’s father? ‘Yes I know, but they (are) seated near, so they are friends.. Cannot cannot.. friends already..” while showed his left and right index fingers together. It was funny, isn’t it! I bet the lady didn’t understand the correlation.

During that visit, it was strawberries time. Every where they were selling big strawberries. If you go to big supermarket like JayaJusco in MidValley you may found this strawberries from Australia with big size, and reddish colour. The strawberries there were like that. And it tasted sooo good, so sweet. I felt like eating strawberries ice-cream.

Everyone was talking about why they cannot received their roaming (phone) there. The reason was because the advancement of telecommunication technology there. So if you roaming your phone and go to Korea, please use 3G phone or else you won’t be able to use it there. Only 3G phones (or higher) are acceptable there. Lower than that, sorry to say. Some of them rented the phone there (at the airport). I don’t roaming, but my father’s friend borrowed my 3G phone. Which later I figured out actually I did some adjustment on my phone’s camera settings and forget to change it back.

I have forgotten where we went after that. Oh yes, so it was almost lunch time. We had mushrooms for our lunch. A big round pot with a lot of mushrooms and varieties of it was put on fire (how do I describe this.. suddenly out of idea). Served with a bowl of rice (Korean rice – a little bit sticky, but delicious) and side dishes consists of Kimchi (spicy fermented cabbages - jeruk kubis cina), fried big bean sprouts (taughe kasar goreng), dark green seaweed (not sure whether it is cooked/boiled or raw) and crunchy seaweeds mix with mayonnaise.



We were seated 4 in a group, to each pot. And using Korean dining utensils of 2 long chopsticks made from metal was quite hard. I meant it. The chopsticks are in the shape of rectangle, so you have the tendency to drop your meals if not careful enough.

No wonder they seems to be so behave and polite during the meals as the utensils used really thought you to be one.


I guess that’s all for now since my lunch time already come to the end.
More to come…

Seoul

Seoul..
One of the places that most of my friends and I want to visit. Reason? Takde reason lain kecuali sbb byk sgt tgk cerita korea. hohohohoho

My flight schedule was brought forward from 1.00 am on 8-3-07 to 12.30am on 7-3-07. Since i only took leave on 7-3-07 for preparation, and only knew about the changes quite last minutes i was rushing to prepare everything only to know that the weather was still cold at that time. It was supposed to be aroung 3Celcius - 12Celcius; but turned out to be -10Celcius. So i have to request my father's assistance in bought me few extra & special clothing. Total cost of clothing to go there already make me blinking my eyes so many times infront of the cashier. tapi sbb nak pergi juga kann... oklah (with the hope to go to some winter places in the future:P). BTW i spent more than RM600 for the clothing itself.

Arrived there in the morning of 7-3-07, watched the beautiful scenary of sunshines from above the sky. Tak tahu nak describe macam mana, tapi bila berada di atas langit tu nampak cahaya warna jingga satu lapisan, kemudian warna putih satu lapisan dan atas sekali macam warna keunguan sebelum jadi betul2 cerah. Unfortunately tak boleh ambil gambar dalam flight sebab masa tu airplane dah nak mendarat.

Sampai2 kat airport, dah tgk beberapa male tourist guides (TG) korea yg wajahnya not bad la.. pandai marketing diorang ni. sbbnya the main TGs were actually elders people. These young guys (BTW, diorang panggil i Nu-na* :P) were photographers that accompanied us for the visits.

From the airport we went straight to the MBC Studio, to visit Dae Jang Geum (Jewel in The Palace) shooting location. It was so cold, i don't wore enough cloth, plus my camera was suddenly out of battery. My handphone camera suddenly seems like not OK anymore (i thought it was because the phone was aging since the colour of the picture was blur). So terrible coz i saw Kang Ji-Hwan picture but unable to snap with 'him' (:P); I tasted Dragon Beard - according to the TG it is a snack for the emperor made from flour, sugar, peanuts, honey etc. It priced 8,000 won for 1box/12 pieces (10K won = RM38. Convert la sendiri ok). One piece tu sekali ngap je. Sedaplah juga.

To be continued....

p/s: Hari ini ada orang belanja saya makan. Meraikan perpindahan kata mereka. (huuhuh mcm nak suh cepat gi je..ahah:P) tapi best juga sbb dapat hadiah - salah satu buku yg ada dlm checklist utk dibeli. lama dah tak dpt hadiah, terima kasih yer kawan2. :)