Korea & Hong Kong vacation Dec 06 - Part 1

Hello !!! I’m back – from a good 8-day break to Korea and Hong Kong.

Lucky I’m back on 30 Dec and I had 3 good public holidays to do up all the laundry as well as to pack away my shopping !!! Hee hee hee…..

But seriously, I actually spend more on shopping in Hong Kong than Korea.

I’m going to tell you why, plus many many more of Korea !

In fact, Korea is not one of my must-go destination and so I didn’t even bother to go through the tour itinerary until the eve of departure. It was Alvin’s friend who keeps egging him to join his family for this holiday that we go along to Korea.

Nevertheless, I try to put down as many facts I can remember and my personal opinions too. Hope you manage to find some interesting stuff down here.

Let’s start off now !!!

Day 1 – Korea, 23 Dec 06

It was a transportation day basically and we are at the airport at 6am. The airport was very crowded and packed with people. It was then that we realised that we didn’t have any Tour Leader as out group is small (25 persons) and so, the Tour Leader of the Taiwanese group (from the same company) has to do the check in for us – unwillingly. We spent the next 1 hour sitting there waiting for him to check us in for our Cathay Pacific (CX) flights. I guessed we are the ‘step children’ of his responsibility and we are only cared of after his Taiwanese group is done. True enough, I was right.

Anyway, we boarded the plane on time and I was disappointed with CX. It was a 3 – 3 – 3 configuration in a 737 Boeing. The seat pitch was narrow and that was enough to put me off. I never expect such a small plane. Oh well, maybe because the flight is full and so I felt claustrophobic. Nothing fantastic on its entertainment but this is not important as I was very tired so I slept most of the time to Hong Kong (HKG).

We transited in Hong Kong for 2 hours. Enough time for me to go and have a decent meal and to find out where exactly Wing Wah is located in the HKG airport. Wing Wah has this very famous egg rolls that you can die for and both Alvin and me couldn’t resist the egg rolls. There is one time that we almost finished the whole tin within 3 days !

Time to board the connecting aircraft to Seoul, hoping to get a much bigger (leg space) aircraft and to my horror, the aircraft is even smaller ! It’s a 2 – 3 – 2 configuration in a Airbus. The meal was usual. Luckily, the cabin meal includes an ice-cream. Somehow, it traded with some extra points that I’m going to deduct for CX as a premium full service carrier.

Nevermind, we reached on time and touched down at Incheon airport. Incheon is not part of Seoul. It is a separate island or state by itself. This airport was built and was in operation in 2002 because of the World Cup. Korea is one of the organising country. We collected out baggage and went out to the arrival hall to look for our tour guide. One young Korean man was seen waving the signboard of the name of the Singapore travel agency’s name. I thought to myself, so lucky we got a Korean star – lookalike tour guide?

Ha ha….he turned out to be the ‘xiao di’ (little brother) of the tour. Our tour guide is a lady, her name is Rosa. She is of Chinese parentage and she is locally (korea) born and bred, thus she is able to speak both fluent mandarin and Korean.

As why we had a ‘xiao di’? It was the rule by the Korean government that every overseas tour group must have such a helper. This rule was created after the war in the 1950s to help those soldiers to gain employment as they have no skills. Their job on the tour is mainly to help you with the luggages; guiding you going on and off the coach; make sure you are always full during every meal by refilling your bowls; and most importantly, taking pictures of you and sell you the pictures at the end of the tour. They do not have any allowances nor receive tippings. Their main income is from the commission of selling your photographs at the end of the tour. So, the more you buy, the more commission he has. Definitely there are no more such soldiers working on tours anymore. This job has since been taken over by university Korean students part timing during the school holidays or freelance photographers. So, our ‘xiao di’ is a 21 years old Korean uni student whose name is Seven ! He was given this name by a Taiwanese tourist who said he look like one of the Korean singer also named Seven.

It was cold and the temperate in the evening was about 6 degree. According to Rosa, this is not cold in Korea, just normal winter temperature.

Off we go for the included dinner. They served hot pot (steamboat) with rice and some condiments of vege. The hot pot serves 4 persons and in tt, you can find assorted vege and thinly sliced pork. Then the condiments consists of giant ‘tau gey’, seaweed, radish, some other green veg and kim chi ! I tried the kim chi and was surprised it was not salty and spicy although it is red in colour. It is so different from Singapore which is usually very salty. I like it very much and finished all of them by myself.

After a warm meal, we checked in to the hotel in Incheon city. I was utterly disappointed with Hotel Robert. The room was dark and dim. The bed caved in when you layed on it. We were provided with 2 small towels almost in grey colour (sport towel size) and I asked the house keeping to bring me towel again as I presumly thought they have forgotten to give us ‘proper’ towel. It turned out that Korean (local) hotels do not provided big towels. All their towels are that small ! So, no choice lah….. we make do with the tiny towel. Lucky we were there for a night !