Challenge to the Max: Viper then Seoul (Day 3 & 4)

For day 3, we had usual toast at hotel. We chatted with the hotel manager, Mr Choi. He was friendly and gave us plenty of suggestions on what to do. We took a bus to North Seoul Tower. Through the bus you can see the various parts in the city.
Below the North Seoul Tower, there is a nice park for people to walk and enjoy the scenery. Due to the fact that this is still very early spring, there was hardly any trees with leaves.

 So not much of scenery at that moment. There is a platform where you can take nice pictures and and put your love locks on certain areas.

 If you are not going up the North Seoul Tower, there really isn't much for you to do there other than eating. So yea, off we go. As we took the bus here, we decided to go down using the cute, transparent box like elevator downhill.

As we walk along the roads, we are already at Myeongdong. Great, more shopping time. For cosmetics shopping, there was not many discounts going on. I bought the moisturizer/night face mask from Banila  Co since that brand cannot be found in my country as of now. We ate Dakgalbi for lunch. Luckily, we do not have to fry or cook our rice , noodles ourselves. Haha.

Next stop, Ehwa University and Dongguk University area, Both places are 1 stop away. Since those are students' area, the items sold are reasonably cheap or at least affordable. The snacks are impressive.

The have a wide variety of unique snacks that are not common in the usual tourist spot.
We stop by awhile at Ehwa University and spend most of our time at Dongguk University area.

That place was famous for cafe too. There were too many that we can't decide on what to eat. When it started drizzling, we rush into this budget bbq restaurant to have our Korean BBQ dinner. Food was ok for the price.

After eating, we continued our cafe hunting. We stop by a variety of popular cafes previous but could not find them during our second round. Hence, we went in to this cafe that gives us private room. Since everything looks so good, the price is amazingly pricey too. Since we were out of money for the day, we are back to our hotel.

The following day, Mr Choi informed that we can see Sakura at a nearby playground. We headed there and took some photos before packing and heading back. Mr Choi assisted us to carry out luggage down and advised us on the route to take for a better journey. We can actually take lift at one of the exit and head to line 1 for a cheaper alternative. We kind of went in the wrong train (Korea Train Express)  without buying tickets and ended paying more on the spot compared to taking the AREX express.  Yeap, blond moments for me. At least, the train was fast. Then we headed back to our country with a reluctant heart. I am going to miss Korea.

Challenge to the Max: Viper then Seoul (Day 2)

Our next day was as relaxing as ever. We woke up around 8.30 am then had our breakfast given by the hotel. We toast our own bread and drank coffee at the rooftop. The cool breeze was nice.

The first stop for the day was to Gyeongbokgung palace (entrance fee 3000 won). The place is quite big.

What really confused me was the explanation given by a tour guide between the difference between the queen's resident and the concubine's resident. The concubine's residence appear to be very well maintained. I kind of feel that it is unfair.

 Overall the place was nice and we managed to see some Sakura before spring. There were also royal guards standing there on duty.

Without further delay, we headed to the Bukchon Hanok Village (no entrance fee required, yay).

The place consist of residential area as well as tourist spot so we had to remain an acceptable level of silence. The tourist information center will provide you with a map on the places of attraction there. You can even wear Hanbok dress, learn to make Kimchi there.

 For lunch, we ate at this Korean Ginseng Chicken Soup that costs 45,000 won for a 3 person set. The Ginseng soup and fry chicken were excellent.

We were all stuffed  with energy to continue walking. We  walked and stop by for some snacks before heading to our last stop View 8: Samcheong-dong stone stairway and exit towards samcheong-dong road that was famous for the cafes.

As we were in a hurry, we had to compromise on the cafes there and head towards the train station.

Since we book our Nanta show (a comedy, musical cooking performance) at Myeong Dong, we headed there and collected our pre-book tickets.  The Nanta show was engaging, fun and entertaining. The performers were really talented.

Since it is late afternoon, there were plenty of stalls below selling food. Food was amazing.

The Korean Mandu

 Jajang Mian

 Korean pancake

Topokki (Korean rice cake)

As the night is still young we went to Dongdaemun area to look at clothing, DDP plaza's night view.

There were plenty of live night performance there to entertain tourist.

 Most of the plaza's allow tourist to bargain but nothing caught my attention. We went for Lotte mart shopping to grab our souvenirs. I really like the tax reduction via counter for tourist who shopped at Lotte Mart. We overbought stuff and my terrible skills of organizing groceries cost us the price of 2 big carrying bag. Hence, my improvement project of the year: improve organizing groceries skills in grocery bag.  That was tiring and back to rest.

Challenge to the Max: Viper then Seoul (Day 1)

It was an exciting weekend for me and my siblings.

We took the first step and joined Viper challenge which starts at 12am,the final session. 

The challenges such as the monkey bars and climbing wall type of obstacles are a pain for me. Makes me wonder if I trained myself correctly for this event. Thankfully, the organizer arranged volunteers to help those in need (me, haha). 

Despite the help given, there was no one to help at the "Eliminator ". Miraculously, we made it through all the obstacles and finished around 3.30am.

Here comes the adrenaline rush, we had a flight to catch at around 8.30am which requires us to reach the airport by 5.30am. We drove like mad back to our house and get ready ourselves in 30 min. Phew, luckily the place we stay was not far from Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Although we agreed to further challenge ourselves by not sleeping for that day, we doze off immediately at the plane. So much, for our determination.

We arrived at Seoul at around 4pm local time. Unable to read and understand Korean language, we began our journey in this foreign land by looking for the customer information center. By showing them the docs that we had printed out, we collected our pocket wifi. Our lives gets easier from there. 

To reach our hotel, we need to claim our AREX ticket that we bought online. Since there are 3 of us, 3 tickets for us to go to Seoul Station & 3 return tickets. Due to communication error, the receptionist issued us all 6 tickets in one go with the train being less than 5 min left. Yeap, the other 3 tickets kind of serve as souvenir only purposes. Hence, just claim the ticket that u need to use for that day only. Very important.

The AREX express was comfortable with only one stop at Seoul station.You can doze off until the one and only stop. Once we arrived at Seoul station, we got lost awhile with the entrance. We stayed at 24 guest house premier which is very near to the station if u take the right exit (exit 11 then walk along the road).

Since we are exhausted, we had our dinner at the food court at Lotte Mart. I really like the number coding system. When u cant read their words, you can just type the number listed in the menu in your phone and show to the cashier. There will be numbers in the receipt for each order and you collect it when your number shows on the screen. No miscommunication . Haha. Aside from the Korean delicacies, I find the Western food impressively good.

We stop by convenience stall for some snacks and start our supper fest back at the hotel.

Ta, da end of Day 1.