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Nami Island – Korea Day 2

With a very hectic first day, we woke up very late in the morning on the second day. Nami Island was supposed to be the itinerary for the 3rd day but the weather was alright and we were afraid it’ll rain on Sunday… So, last minute we swapped the plan for 3rd day and headed to Nami Island!

We made haste to the train station, bought the train tickets minutes before it leaves, which is a blessing cause the train interval is more than an hour…

railway station

We bought snacks in the train cause we didn’t even have time to grab anything to eat while on the way to the railway station. The train is very packed and there are sitting and standing tickets! We bought 1 sitting and 3 standing cause there are not more sitting tickets. The train ride is about 90min long and there were a lot of people there. Almost sardine-packed.

in the train

The destination station’s name is er.. this (in the picture below)

train track First thing we did when we reached there was to purchase return train ticket and also, lunch! Ate at a local shop where we had noodles, ramen and kim bab.

noodle ramen kim bab

Then, the jetty to Nami island! It’s quite funny though cause the jetty has its own ‘immigration’ centre but we don’t need to show any passports.. Just the tickets.

nami immigration

They call the Nami Island the Naminara Republic.. It’s like a Doraemon-pouch-shaped island.

nami map So, we set off to Nami Island! WIth a 15-min ferry rideferry We were greeted with a multitude language of welcome phrases..

welcome to nami island P1020544 And a sign-board which is rather unreadable…

signboard

The insides of Nami island is beautiful! It’s where the film the show ‘Winter Sonata’.. It’s a very romantic place and the scenic view in the island changes according to season. As it’s summer now, it’s filled with greeneries.

 scene1line trees

IMG_2930

pondbench

colour trees

The trees here are very nicely aligned in a very straight line…

tall trees There’s a nice railway track..

railway track 2 Large fields..

jump kungfu

Ponds..

fountain 2

Boardwalks..

boardwalk And mini chalets..

chalet tea table Even the toilet looks nicer than the average toilet..

toilart studio Of course.. this place is a lot about loveee…

 love back view

snow love

Not to mention about the many animals that inhabit the island…

duck 1 duck 2

squirrel duck 3

After spending 2-3 hours in the island, we took off and head back to Seoul..

Again, another simple dinner and went back to the hotel to change for the next item for the night..

dinner Clubbing! The clubbing place is around a university area, Hong’ik University. The area is filled with pubs, clubs and bars… The place we went to is called “noise basement”, which is a hiphop club..

noise basement The club there reminds me of Zouk Singapore. The people inside are squashed like sardine fishes..

P1020642 clubbing But the club is actually quite good.. Music is good, atmosphere is good… Just that, it’s teensy weensy bit too crowded.. Can barely able to move around the area.

And just when we thought the night is over after clubbing, we decided to go for supper with Beer & Fried Chicken!

two two fried chicken P1020648 fried chicken

The fried chicken is very very delicious and unhealthy.. haha.. The trend there is that people eat this while drinking beer… By the time we finished, it’s about 3-4am already.. Luckily we didn’t have much planned for the next day.. It’s free and easy roaming around Seoul..

Universal Studios Singapore

Sometimes, it’s good to be working in a big corporate company. SingTel has managed to get a 3-night pass (from 30th Mar to 1st Apr) to Universal Studios Singapore at a subsidized rate of $20 per person with a $10 meal voucher. The normal ticket rate is $66 but that’s from 9am to 6pm. This $20 ticket is only valid from 7pm-11pm.

USS tickets The rate can only be extended to one staff and another person. Naturally, I brought Yin Sin there. We were at Vivo at 6pm to explore around the place since neither of us has even been or knows how to get there.. The Universal Studios (USS) is located in Sentosa, the first monorail stop (Waterfront Station).

Universal studios gantry 

You can see this big globe of universal studio landmark there… The queue to go in was very long…. Everyone’s excited to enter..USS Globe

Upon entering

There are 7 different theme sets altogether in USS. They are:

  1. Hollywood
    Hollywood1 Hollywood Star
  2. Madagascar
    madagascar1 madagascar2
  3. Far Far Away
    farfarawayland1 far-far-away-castle
  4. The Lost World
    t-rex
     
  5. Ancient Egypt
    egyptian pharoah ancient egypt 
  6. Sci-fi World
    scifi-1 battlestar galactica entrance
    robot bay
  7. New York
    newyork1  newyork2

But because it’s only $20 and we only have 4 hours… we only get to sit a limited number of rides. The 3 main attractions are the following:

Waterworld Show, which is presented by SingTel (the main reason why we get this exclusive entry). I find the show is really worth watching. It’s like watching a show in a a movie setting. With lots of actions, explosions, and getting wet.waterworld

The stage area have a few zones. Soak zone (where you really get drenched with water. There are people selling ponchos there.)

soakzone

Then, there’s the splash zone where you’ll most likely get wet. Yin Sin and I sat right behind the soak zone, in the splash zone region. Have a very good view right in the middle. The actors/actresses were very interactive as well. It’s a very action-packed show and there was a point in time, I just took away my camera to enjoy the show..

Here are some few ‘screenshots’ of the Waterworld show

ww1 ww2

ww3 ww4
ww5

 

ww6 ww7

Then, there’s the Shrek in 4D.

Shrek 4D

I actually find it quite entertaining. Started off with a magic mirror and some imprisoned pigs.. haha.. It’s quite interactive. Oh, and the 4D is actually a 3D movie (not bad by the way) with the motion master effects. You can feel water splashing towards you, spider crawling over yet, wind blowing across your face, etc.

Then lastly, there’s the “Revenge of the Mummy”

 

 mummy1 mummy2

It’s an indoor roller coaster ride. Quite fun I would say. Yin Sin really enjoyed herself. She shouted and closed her eyes for the entire ride. Haha.. Effects are quite good where you can feel the warmth from the burning fire. I was impressed with their locker system. You don’t need to have a key for the lockers. All you need to do is to fill in your birth date and your fav color and the system will choose a locker for you..

At first, there’s supposed to be the big roller coaster ride as well. But it was closed down due to some technical glitch.

battlestar galactica

Anyway, I find the trip was really worth while. The setting was really very nice… It’s like being there for each setting. I think I love the “New York” set the best. Followed by “scifi world”. The sci-fi world makes you feel like you’re in a real-life MMORPG. By the way, forgot to mention that the food there is really expensive. Minimum spend for a simple meal is about $10 per pax. But they have snack carts all around.. Can buy pop-corns, ice-cream, drinks while on the go..

Really enjoyed myself and I think I’ll wait when all the rides are fully opened before my next visit. Or perhaps, when there’s a request when somebody comes to Singapore and wants to go there, I don’t mind going there again. =) Need to see what it’s like in daytime. Till then…

CNY 2010 – Day 3

Finally, I had some time to continue blogging bout my Chinese New Year days back in Ipoh.. Was pretty busy with training, work and other stuffs…
Let’s see… The 3rd day of CNY. Oh, right!

It was the 3rd day of CNY and my eldest sister is to return to Penang. My brother also had to fetch his gf and the in-laws back to Penang. Which leads to a very impromptu decision by my family.. “Let’s all go to Penang for a day trip!!”

At the time when they made the decision, I just woke up and was kind of shocked and flabbergasted with the news. haha.. but too bad, I couldn’t join them for the trip as I made a full-day plan with my friends already… They left for penang after lunch but before that, we took a ‘full’ family picture first.

family-portrait

Look at the number of nephews and nieces I have already…. Makes me feel old..

 

nephews-nieces

So.. they all left to Penang, with me in the house and Rosemary to take care of her new born son. Chee Lim came over right after my parents left.. She was supposed to come pai lin but too bad, no one was around. So, she just dropped by to see Elijah and Rosemary. Then, I went to her place to take something I left behind at her house the night before. And we headed for Choon May’s house shortly after.

Later after that, I went to Pinkie’s place, to meet her, joanna, jill and yee hui there. And guess what? We just watched TV.. hahah… Probably cause there isn’t much things to do at her place and only entertainment was the TV.. haha.
After waiting for yee hui to reach, we went to Jo’s house to play Pictionary!

pictionary

It was actually my first time playing Pictionary. I played something similar before, like Yahoo’s Graffiti, Win Lose or Draw.. or something to that category. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. But it was good play.. Need to think in the same frequency in order to guess what the other player is drawing.

Some classic examples

  • Pinkie drew a rat with a thousand legs…
  • Yee Hui’s version of Venus is “Gillette and Venus”, not the planet Venus…
  • A liver with a swimming pool is called “liverswim” and not liverpool..
  • Russia and a cow becomes “ruscow” and not “moscow”.. Lol

It was a fun game but too bad was a bit short.

jo-pink-jill

Right before we left, we played this game called “Killer Bunnies”. A very fun game but we didn’t really had enough time to fully enjoy to fun of it.. I guess there’s always still next time. =)

killer-bunnies

And night time, there was Susan’s CNY house party! It’s something like Chee Lim’s version but the people there were more of a mixture between RPP, Sam Tet, SMI, MC and MGS people. So, being a very ‘shy’ person.. I just stick back to the people that I know.. hahah.. Saw some old friends that I haven’t seen for a while, like Nikhil Roy, Rui Yang…

susan-house

facebook_017

It was great and Susan prepared lots of food to eat. Lots of fried chicken, cocktail, bak kwa… I guess that’s the end of the major big gatherings for me… But within that few days, have already met up with lots of people.

CNY 2010 – Day 2

On the 2nd day of Chinese New Year, I woke up just in time for lunch where my eldest sister would then return to Ipoh from Penang.

lisa

And my brother also returned from Penang after picking up her girlfriend from Penang. I stayed at home during the daytime to spend time with my family and also to just laze around in my room…

The main ‘event’ for Chor 2 is the family dinner where we booked two tables at Sun Lee How Fook Restaurant. Too bad this year, grace and rosemary couldn’t join us. Grace is not around while Rosemary is still in ‘confinement’ mode.

family-lou-sang

There were also some new faces. Like my brother’s soon-to-be (hopefully) in laws.

brother-with-inlaws And some hopeful in-laws.. =)

IMG_1063

It wasn’t as ‘fun’ as previous years though.. but at least the food is quite good.. haha

Right after dinner, I headed towards Chee Lim’s house party. She normally organizes one whenever she’s in Ipoh for CNY. It has been there since form 4/5 already… I think she invited the whole Ipoh village there. The house eventually packs up with people, mainly her schoolmates and some of her non-schoolmates.

girls1 There are only the above people when I first arrived at around 10 smtg… Then it slowly growed and growed…

group-pic I think it’s the picture have most of her guests inside. Apart from some that left early..

There’s the smaller group of people outside

outside-group

Versus the many people inside… It’s quite fun actually to see so many people at once. Like meeting alot of people at one spot at the same time. No need to have so many separate sessions to meet up.. Hahah

inside-group Nah.. Just kidding. Meeting up is fun. Knowing what’s happening about the people that we used to know.. Like those who didn’t used to study well end up to be very successful people. Some that were very notorious in school has one of the better professions. Like some becoming pastors and lecturers.. Amazing how people change, especially those for the better.

Category: CNY, family, fun, holidays, ipoh gang  Tags: , ,  2 Comments

CNY 2010 – Day 1

This year’s ‘chor 1’ is a day where my dad did not need to remind us to be ready to travel to his hometown, Tapah because.. well, we were not allowed to go there. Haha.. And the reason for that was because my 3rd sister just gave birth to her 2nd son and she (and her family) is considered dirty and not allowed to go around visiting, believing that it will bring bad luck to others…

I never really understand such tradition/culture but that’s the believe and we just obliged. Better to be safe than sorry when something bad really happens and they blame it on my family. Hence, the first day of CNY was a very relaxing day. Of course, we did the usual ‘rituals’ to visit neighbours, bring gifts and exchange ang paus. And of course, the main event of the day – The tea ceremony and the family portrait taking.

IMG_0909 Each of us to pour tea to our parents in return to receive ang paus. Starting from youngest to oldest. And lastly, the exchange of angpaus between my parents. =)

IMG_0925 Then, the family portraiture taking… This year’, we’re short of Grace as she’s in UK for her studies and she just came back for Christmas.

IMG_0948Then, with the younger children – My nieces

IMG_0953 The three fat-mans (to resemble the Laughing Buddha) for the year.. We have a new champion this year..

IMG_0961The two brothers

IMG_0962

The kungfu-duo

IMG_0939

And the people who started it all…

IMG_0952

And it never fails to end with a loud entrance to the start of the new Lunar New Year by burning some firecrackers!

firecrackers

For lunch, we just ate a simple lunch at Mar Poh and didn’t do much later in the afternoon. Haha.. Just relaxed and enjoy the atmosphere at home with the kids playing and siblings chatting around.

——

At night, I met up with Jason Lee, Omega, Delicia and Chin Zwen… We wanted to try out this new place called Papa Rich but it was super crowded. Even the cafe next to it, Taste of Soup, was full house.

facebook_016 We ended up going to Delicia’s house. Chin Zwen left to go to her other friend’s place.

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