Jeongju, Cheongup and Gwangju Trip

I haven't blogged for a long while because I had lots of projects and homework to catch up with.

Anyway, Liwei, Gary and I decided to make a short getaway from Seoul during last weekend to the abovementioned areas which were mainly the South South part of South Korea. Actually, our main purpose was to check out the maple leaves in Naechangshan but we decided to explore the other places since they were nearby.

Departure from Express Bus terminal. It took approximately 3 hrs to get there or maybe longer. We were easily the youngest people on board the bus.

We arrived there only to discover that Jeongju was...quite rural. The streets were pretty quiet. And we were walking around to look for a decent restaurant to have our lunch. (We didnt plan too much for our trip, maybe only one night of itinerary planning, so everything was pretty impromptu and extremely 'bagpackish').

The restaurants that we stepped into all had a weird smell. We were wondering if they were serving dog meat..because the smell was really fetid and vomit inducing. (I apologise if I am being culturally insensitive but I really couldn't take the smell there :| ). Finally we settled for a shop that didn't smell so awful and we ordered Jeongju Bibimbab which was their local specialty dish.

Our bibimbab, which tasted fairly ordinary. They served us 8 side dishes! but none of them tasted good :(((. And they had a special 'sidedish' which looked like flattened beans. They turned out to be silkworm larvae. Apparently they believe that these larva are nutritious and high in protein. Liwei was so disgusted by the sight of it that he wanted to leave the shop. Only Gary made the bold attempt to sample it but he nearly vomitted. Lol.

After our lunch, we headed out to their traditional village area which was their main cultural attraction.

We went in to their medicine store and went to sniff around the medicine and poked at the herb soap that they were making. There was a middle aged woman who spoke to us in rather fluent english and we were stunned when she explained to us the herbs and process involved in making the soap.

An art and craft shop. Their papercraft is amazing. I think Korean's paper technique is more superior than China's even though Chinese were the pioneers in paper making. Kick ass.

My abject sexual fantasy. Hahaa

Xiao Ao Jiang Hu.

Liwei taking a quick relief. The traditional way.
So now we know the secret behind kimchi making. Hehe.

I love their traditional woodcraft and sculpture. So inspiring! Sensual and artistic.

Playing traditional games at the village with some locals.
Some old folks playing chess. The Korean version allows elephants to swim across the river. Maybe Korean waterways are more shallow.

We left our scribbles on a guestbook at some Revolution Museum. Gary wrote that he was looking for a Korean girlfriend. And I just wrote, me too. Haha.

Nice lily made of paper. And nice balls. Extremely artistic piece.

If your chinese is good enough, you'll understand the first picture. Its a tortoise btw.
Gary playing with a football at their gate which was a tourist attraction. We weren't supposed to enter in the first place. Lol. Much less play around with a ball.

We had noodles at some famous noodle restaurant in Gyeongju. Yes. I am a sucker for noodles. I guess I inherited my father's genes.

In the evening, we took a bus to Cheongup so that we could get up early the next day to head for the mountain to admire the leaves.

Upon arriving, we walked around to try to look for reasonable accommodation to spend the night. We settled for an average motel which cost us 40,000 won (thats around 64 dollars) for 3 persons.

Our program when we turned on the TV. Well..thats the standard channel for all motels in Korea, irregardless of Seoul or anywhere else. Motels are meant for couples to have a fun night out/ husbands to cheat on their wives /wives to cheat on their husbands. Hoho.

We just sat there transfixed to the screen. Even though we keep complaining that the sex was unnatural with lots of feigned moaning and they didnt even reveal the nether regions.

It was pretty funny.Imagine 3 guys silently watching porn and all refusing to take their shower.
Haha.

I'll continue the rest on another day. The dorm is cutting the internet supply now. Grr.

I'm finally done with my mid-terms!
Now I can play with unfettered abandon without the nagging thought of exams. Haha, well...not that I studied real hard but enough to do okay bah, at least I hope so. I'm been going out very little during the exam week. Mainly camping in my dorm to read my slides, dota.

Most of my meals were settled with cup noodles. In fact, I've consumed so much over the past week that I think I am now certified to do a review on Korean cup noodles.

The cup noodles here are pretty good and theres a good amount of variety to choose from. Shin ramen, KimChi ramen, Maruchan ramen, Spicy ramen, Udon ramen & Seafood ramen.

Prawn flavour noodles. Non spicy. Kind of like Myojo prawn flavour. Its good to have this when you're sick though because its mild and good comfort food. You think of Singapore food and you realise that your soup gets more salty because of your tears dripping into the water. Haha just kidding.

Spicy noodles. Er..I think its obvious from that reddish soup base. The noodles (tang myun) are more like mee sua which is different from the typical cup noodles. So-so.

The Kimchi. This is cheap and good. Lots of noodles, good for fulling the stomach. I'll skip introducing Shin Ramen, you can easily find it available on the shelves of all Singapore supermarkets.

The 'higher class' version of Kimchi flavour noodles by Nongshim. They use dehydrated soup base with tofu cubes and big slaps of kimchi. This is good shyt but kind of costly. So I hardly consume them.

Bibimmyeon. Basically its noodles mixed with gochuchang just like bibimbab. I love this. But I love the real thing even more. Of course, the egg is sold separately.

Chachangmyun! My favourite noodles but somehow processed chachangmyun doesn't taste anything close to the real thing. In fact, it tastes really different especially in terms of the black bean paste and the elasticity of the noodles.

A smaller version of chachangmyun. Good for light supper before going to bed. Its fit for girls with small mouths. But definitely too little for me. I can finish it in one swoop.

Spaghetti. Would've tasted like the authentic stuff if the noodles were thicker. Nice but the portion was too little and pricey.

My all-time favourite! Ra men bokki. Ramen with spicy sauce that they use for tteobokki. Its so good that I swept all the remaining cups off the shelf. I am going to pack a luggage of this back to Singapore.

Teen Teen Agricultural Fieldtrip (Day 2)

Milk for the morning.

The next morning, we headed out to Taeshin Ranch to get our milk from the Korean cows.

We had to walk through this long path between the cows. I nearly fainted while getting myself across. The stench was bad as with all dairy farms in the world. If hell were to really have 18 levels, this would probably be the 9th level and the International House male toilet would be the 10th level.

Milking the cow. Took me a while to get the warm milk squirting into my palms.

I've seen Singapore bred cows and I compare them with the Korean cows. Koreans have bigger teats than their Singapore counterparts. Maybe its the climate or the food that makes their assets bigger. Cows, yes cows. I was referring to cows.

Got onto a tractor to take a leisurely tour of the farm.
We got warned by the owner of the farm not to disturb the sheep because they had weak minds. -.-

An ass carrying another.

Ariyo bulling. Tsk tsk. This is turning into a bestiality site, haha.

Making ice-cream later. We spent 20 minutes mixing the milk and strawberry flavour over a tub of ice-cubes. Which we consumed in less than 2 minutes.

I checked the itinerary and it said that we were supposed to visit some HUB farm to do some HUB candle. I was curious and my mind was throwing up ideas as to what HUB was.
LUB? RUB? WTF was HUB? Toa Payoh HUB? Our mystery was solved when we arrived at a greenhouse filled with plants. Ooh HERB Farm. We had curry lunch there which had me craving for prata... T-T.

Our try at making herb candles. I picked the lemon flavour because I don't really fancy the smell of lavender.

And at the end of it, we received a certificate of completion, which commended us for our 2 days of slacking. WORK and STUDY programme! HAHAH
From the Minister herself. And a genuine signature instead of a electronically generated one.
Wahahah. I love the Korea Government.