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3D2N – Bali Trip

We left Singapore at 10am and upon reaching Bali, we checked in at a place called Oranjje Hotel Kuta at Legian Area.

oranjjie hotel

The first thing we did was to supply ourselves with some shorts and clothes!

legian flea

We bought a dress, shorts and pants! We then looked for a driver at our hotel and we made some deals for him to bring us around Bali.

Our first stop is at a place called Uluwatu located at south Bali. This is the first time i see waves so strong with such large waves…

waves

Uluwatu is famous for its cliff-hanging temple where there is a temple right at the edge of the cliff.

uluwatu

The place has many cliffs where people would walk from one cliff to the other to look at what the view has to offer.

yinsin-uluwatu

I think by far the nicest is at the far left corner where here is a very long and large cliff with waves of oceans gently flowing to the beach..

cliff

cliff 2

Of course, with such nice sceneries, it’ll be crazy without taking pictures of ourselves…

cliff 3

Oh, did I mention that this place is filled with monkeys? There are monkeys EVERYWHERE!

 monkeys

After Uluwatu, we headed to Jimbaran where we had seafood dinner by the beach, while watching the sun set.

sunset

jimbaran seafood 1 jimbaran seafood 2

drinks

In the evening, we headed back to Legian area and we walked around the area and by the beach. We even did a 1 hour balinese massage! The massage there is rather cheap, approx SGD$8 per hour/pax

The next day, we went to Tanah Lot where the place is known for the temple on a rock. After entering through the main entrance, we were first greeted with an array of souvenirs shops and there, we bought hats and sunglasses.

sin-tanah lot

After all that, we reached the beach where the temple is sitting on the rock

 

tanah lot

 temple rock

Again, the waves here are super duper strong.

 large wave

You can see surfers enjoying the waves there..

surf

After Tanah Lot, we headed to Ubud. On the way there, we ate Babi Guling which is a delicacy at Bali.

babi guling

There are some parts that it was rather weird for me.. At times, I don’t even know what I’m eating.. hahah.. But I like the pig skin.. I even ordered another plate just with the pig skin… =D

Then, we went to see some balinese painting in action..

bali painting

But too bad, didn’t really know how to appreciate those paintings and we just headed straight to Ubud where, it’s a shopping haven for many.

It’s the flea market concept where you can bargain up to 20% of their starting price. It’s crazy theree…

ubud

But after a while, we realized that all the shops there sell almost the same thing.. hahah.. but some of them have really nice handicrafts

flea market

After the tireless walking, we then headed back to Legian.. We had local masakan padang where I think that local shop overcharge us like mad seeing that we’re tourists.

masakan padang

After that, we spent the remaining evening/night with a 3 hour Spa; 1 hour of Balinese massage, 1 hour of Facial and 1 hour of Foot Bath,

foot bath

It’s quite relaxing but could be better though. The masseuse wasn’t strong enough for me..

On the third and final day, we spend the day at Legian, preparing to fly off to Singapore. In the morning, we shopped around the area and bought cheap DVDs; approx $1 per DVD,

cd shop

We then had lunch at the cafe & bar. We had tom yam goong and nasi goreng; one of the nicer food we had at Bali.. haha

tom yam nasi goreng

After lunch, we loitered at a shopping mall near the Airport. We had A&W Float! Something that I haven’t had in years….

A&W

We left Bali at 5pm on a 2.5 hours flight back to Singapore. It was a quite a relaxing trip and I won’t mind coming back to Bali again…

Jeju Island – Korea Day 5

The last and final day of touring around Korea, we explored the Eastern part of Jeju Island!

We woke up around 9am where our driver pick us up to our first location, Manjanggul Lava Tube! It’s a cave formed by the flow of lava..

manjanggul lava tube

The insides of the cave is filled with chilly-cold air… Should have brought a jacket.. the cave is 7.4km long and is one of the largest lava tubes in the world with a height of up to 23m!

lava tube

^ A very blurry pic of the cave cause it was super dark..

After the lava tube, we went to Seongsan Ilchulbong, also known as Sunrise Peak! at sunrise peak

It’s a 20-min climb to the peak but due to time-constraint, we only took pictures outside which has a very nice view as well.

hill This is a place where they have famous female divers as well.

fishing village

And of course, we camwhored a bit there..

chee lim with grass

cheelim-bishanbishan

And we skipped off happily

skipping

Our next stop, is lunch!! Black Pig BBQ!!

black pig lunch

Oohh.. such a tasty dish.. We bbq the pork and wrap it in a leaf together with kimchi, taugeh, onion, etc.

bbq black pig wrap pork in vege

And why do we call it black pig? Cause the pig is really black!

It’s like Indian PIg.. haha

black pig We went opposite our lunch place to visit the Seongeup Folklore Village. It is an authentic traditional Jeju village.

seongeup folklore village There is a English-speaking tour guide who explains most of the things to us.. But basically, what they are trying to do is to sell us some health drink traditionally made in the village.

vase And again, more camwhore..

bishan carry vase chee lim carry vase

Our next stop is Seopjikoji, the place where they filmed the Korean drama, ‘All In’. But just about driving into the pathway towards Seopjikoji, we took a pit stop to a peculiar scene by the shore.

It’s filled with seaweed!!

seaweed beach

And being the ‘boys’ that we are, we tried to eat some of them…

eat seaweed

It’s really quite peculiar seeing so much seaweed at the shore at one place… Walking on it gives a tingly feeling.

seaweed shore Eventually, we reached Seopjokoki, the supposed highlight of the day. Upon reaching, our driver took us to the rocky terrain to take pictures, a place where tourists normally wouldn’t go. So, we had to climb our way through the rocks to take pictures.

imbalance Of course, all is worth it.. There is no crowd, and it’s very windy with beautiful scenes.

bishan with sea

chee lim-yee weng chee lim

clear water

And finally, we reached the famous ‘church scene’ in the All In show.church And once again, more camwhore.

cheelim-bishan yee weng-kungfu

The place has a very nice scenic view.

With horses,

horsesStatue of Mother Mary,

mother mary statue Trail to the lighthouse,

trail lighthouse

The lighthouse itself,

light house

The scene from the lighthouse.

 IMG_4357path

And the famous rock…

lalang, rock

Oh, one thing I must comment. A lot of couples in Korea has matching outfits! A lot of couple-tee and some, like this, have matching dresses and pants!

matching couple And since it’s the place of the All In drama, we tried to act out some of the scenes from the show!

scene 1scene 2

 scene 3scene 4

Yee Weng and I tried to integrate the scene from IP Man 2 into it….

ip man 2 scene

And that’s the last of it.. Right after Seopjokoji, we headed straight to the Jeju Airport to fly back to Seoul. We had some light dinner at the airport and the fried chicken again back at Yvonne’s place. Our flight was early next morning heading back to Singapore.

And that’s all for the Korea trip. I’d say it’s a short and sweet trip. Didn’t know that I’d like Korea and its food. I think the Korean food in Singapore is really bad as compared to those found in Korea.

Anyway, will look forward to the next holiday trip!

looking forward

Till then…

Jeju Island – Korea Day 4

Jeju Island – the country’s largest island, has an inactive volcano at its centre and it’s hosts scenes of many Korean shows! We spent two days here where we stayed at Hotel Milano Crown; at the heart of Jeju City

hotel milano crown

As Jeju Island is a rather large island, we hired a non-English speaking cab driver to drive us around Jeju for 100,000 won a day. An English speaking cab driver would cost us 150,000 instead. But since we already know exactly where we wanted to go, we took the less costly alternative. Turns out, our driver speaks a lil’ bit of English. He’s quite cute actually.. He ended up being our driver and photographer.. Ok, back to that later..

We split our exploration of Jeju Island into two parts – East and West. Problem with going around Jeju is that all the attractions are very far away from the city; approx 1-2 hours drive. So on this day, we explored the West Part of Jeju Island first.

So, our first stop is to Love Land. A sex recreation theme park. We had a quick lunch there first as we were starving from our travel!

chee lim and bishan

The biggest saba fish I’ve ever seen…. (maybe because the SG ones are smaller)

saba fish

 

We took lots of pictures in the Love Land as some of the concepts/figurines are quite funny…

Such as the mermaid and the merman

mermaid merman

The dog and his host..

doggie style

And some legs upside down..

 inverted

Inside, there is a shop selling all the ‘sex-toys’..

 sex giftsdildo

I didn’t know Korea is so open in all these..

After that, we went to the Mysterious Road just next to the Love Land where it’s an optical illusion where you think that you’re going downhill, but when you stop the car, the car actually slides backwards…

Then, we journeyed to the 1100m above sea level at Mount Halla, the volcanic mountain of Jeju.

1100m

The actual peak of Mount Halla requires a 7-hour hiking trip which unfortunately, we do not have the time to do so… Apparently, the scenic at the peak of Mount Halla is beautiful, with the volcanic crater and all..

Too bad, we only managed to walk around the boardwalk of the natural surroundings around a volcanic mountain.

rock park

 bishan chee lim rocks

The weather was very cooling at the top… We were lucky cause it seemed like it’s going to rain but it didn’t..

We then headed to Jusangjeollidae, a cliff with Basalt Columns. The rock formation is breathtakingly beautiful

rocks1

 

 rocks2rocks3

rocks4

The area has a park also for people to well, linger around..

table stones

Nex stop, is the Oedolgae, aka the Lonely Rock

oedolgae

This is the place where they screened the show “大长今” or (dai cheong kam) in canto.

dai cheong kam

So, they have a place to put our faces inside to act as the pretty doctor..

  yee weng

Again, the area has a big park as well, with ponds, trees, etc.

chee lim park

 bishan grassyee weng oedolgae

Next stop, is the Cheongjiyeon, to see the waterfall. It’s a very commercialized place where it’s filled with tourists and it is designed nicely with trails towards the waterfall.

cheongjiyeon rockriver bridge

stream

They even have koi fishes and ducks living at the stream..

 koi fishduck family

Along the way, it has many mini-waterfalls…

 mini waterfall

leading towards the main waterfall..

cheongjiyeon waterfall

It’s quite a long walk leading to that waterfall.. And worst of all, it’s very crowded with people…

crowded waterfall

Next, we went to another less-crowded waterfall, the JeongBang Waterfall.. In fact, I prefer this waterfall cause

(1) it’s less crowded
(2) we can get a very close to the waterfall
(3) this waterfall flows directly to the ocean

jeong bang waterfall

We can fill the water splashing right into our faces; together with the strong sea breeze…

jeong bang waterfall close

We spent a lot of time in this area enjoying the wind, the water and the sight…

 

 yee weng jumpbishan waterfall

  korean girlchee lim ocean

And our final sight-seeing stop for the day, a view of the Sanbangsan.

sanbangsan view

The coast has many black rocks…

black rocks

And we just gladly take more pictures there…

posers We had seafood dinner nearby where we tried ‘live seafood’. Not exactly eating them alive, but when it was served to us, it was still living.. We had to boil/cook it alive.. *ouch*

live seafood

Outside the restaurant is where it faces China.. Albeit it’s geographically physically not visible, but the next land in that direction is China..

rock Turns out, the place is also where they acted the scene from Dai Cheong Kam.bishan scene By the time we’re done in this place, it’s almost night time.. We headed back to Jeju City for some light snack shopping before hitting back to the hotel.
It was around 9pm when we reached and I wanted to go out a bit more while the rest were watching how Portugal trashed North Korea in World Cup. So, I explored the surroundings alone and I managed to find a pork bbq place! I quickly went back to the hotel and ask yee weng if he wanted to eat… He gladly joined me and luckily, they screened World Cup in that shop too.

So, we had Pork Belly BBQ!

korean pork bbq

Even the sight of it makes me drool… It only costs us about 14000 won for this meal…

yee weng korean bbq

That is all for the first day in Jeju… Coming up next, the other half of Jeju!

Light & Easy at Seoul – Korea Day 3

After a night of clubbing, the 3rd day was pretty simple… It’s a free and easy to have a quick ‘recharge’ whilst enjoying the sights and sounds of Korea…

forever 21

The 2 girls went on their shopping spree at Forever 21 which is a very huge store here… It’s like the entire building is forever 21..  Apparently, the Forever 21 staffs would line up in straight lines and wish their patrons Good Morning! Talk about Customer Service..

lineup

While they do their shopping, Yee Weng, Yvonne and I wandered aimlessly around Myeong Dong.

We had a very peculiar lunch. Ginseng chicken with rice fillings!

ginseng rice chicken

At the centre of the chicken is glutinous rice! I liked the chicken.. and the soup… but the rice is a bit out of the ordinary for me..

And desserts was Ice Cream @ Cold Stones!

cold stone menu

There was a promotion outside where you speen the wheel to get coupons to be used inside!

 spin the wheel

We had some ‘size ups’, and ‘free waffles’ for our ice cream purchases. Yummyy.

Cold Stone Ice Cream

Oh, I also bought my first krispy kreme here!

Krispy Kreme

Okay.. enough about food.. As the girls were crazily shopping, to us guys, we just immersed ourselves into the Korean atmosphere.

towel red building

road korean girl hilly road

drink stall sausage stall

 

Did I mention that Korea has very very cheap cosmetic/facial products? There are so many different competitors around..We bought loads and loads of masks..

aritaum innisfree nature republic  Yin Sin asked me to buy a whole list of Skin Food Products which costs more than SGD$30 but only costs around SGD$10 here.

The one thing that’s “fun” is that they give free-gifts for you to just browse around the shop. And for every purchase, they’ll throw in a lot more freebies such as more masks, cotton pads, sample products, etc.

And the highlight for the day….

Charlie Brown Cafe!

charlie brown cafe

This was a request by one of my fellow travellers who is crazy over Snoopy..

The place is pretty interesting actually… Everything is really based on Charlie Brown.. The tables, the walls, the window frame…

cafe1

The plates, plastic wrappers, cakes, food…..

cake and mousse

The glass window, ceiling and floor..

 window1 floor glass

It also has a lot of miniature figurines..

 miniature figurine2

And the happiest girl of all…

bishan1 bishan2 bishan3

bishan4 bishan5 bishan6

She was happy and nice enough to treat us all at the cafe!

tea time

After Charlie Brown Cafe, we resumed shopping and sight-seeing…

And the next item of the night, groceries/souvenir shopping at Lotte!

We bought so much stuff we had 2 fully filled trolleys!

trolley snack

Ok la, basically it’s just me and bishan who bought a lot of things..

Chee Lim and Yee Weng only require two small baskets… :p

basket snack

From all the stuffs that we bought, we didn’t have enough luggage space… So, we packed them into boxes and check-in those boxes!

box

All these shopping made us forgot about dinner… The girls took the cab back to the hotel with all the boxes while Yee Weng and I hunt for food..

We wanted to head back to Namdaemun market for the pig throttles but alas, the market closed already by the time we reach there..
We managed to find something to eat at the street-side though.

street stall

We had Udon and Ramen.. And we tapau-ed back the Ramen for the girls.

udon ramen

By the time we returned to the hotel, it’s around 10 plus. Had to start packing and prepare for the following day’s early flight to Jeju Island!

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..

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