KOREA TRIP JUN 2014

Day 10 is amusement park day! Whee~~

I short-listed a couple of amusement parks and water parks to visit and ended up choosing Seoul land only. I think the water parks are less convenient and are rly expensive in summer. (I might as well visit Sentosa Cove) Was choosing btw Lotte, Everland and Seoul land as these are the amusement park RM went. Most travel agencies visit Lotte and Everland, so that makes them much more crowded - long long q for rides. Furthermore, Everland is quite a distance away, about 1.5 to 2 hours from where we stayed. So I decided to visit Seoul land.

It is rly convenient, just train to Seoul Grand Park station and follow the signage. Admission tickets is rly cheap too! We were given a 50% discount at the counter (some foreigner discount) so it was only 15000krw iirc. Thats like less than 20SGD!

I read that there is a zoo too! With the sky lift (which I'm scared of!) but dint see it there. I'll definitely visit that next time! Oh yes! There is this larva character all around Seoul Land! Apparently it's from a Korean cartoon, and it seems to be Seoul Land's mascot. We saw it in the toy section of a department store back in Singapore too! (I googled it and found that its actually a cartoon with season 1 in 2011 and 2 in 2013! - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larva_(TV_series) )

Ok it's my turn to take over the writing of this part of the trip! Since the gf always says that I haven't been contributing to this blog :( Anyway we went on a weekday, so aside from a group of school kids, there weren't many people. The entrance of Seoul Land is quite nice, with plateaus covered with flowers and a nice bridge overlooking a river. We started off with the King Viking in Adventure Land. It goes pretty high! Gf was screaming all the way. Lol. Don't take this ride if you had a heavy breakfast before coming in, unless you have a strong resistance to nausea! After that we tried the Den of Lost Thieves. It's quite kiddy, but still fun. You sit on the ride, go one round a cave and use a laser gun to shoot pirates. BCX got the highest score amongst us, but that was only because my gun wasn't working half the time.

After that we went to try the Kartrider Bumper in Fantasy Land. We ended up taking this ride for probably a dozen times because BCX was crazy over it. You get into the car and spend the next 5 minutes bumping into each other. Haha. Was quite fun actually! Especially if you gang up to bump one person haha.

After that we went to conquer the most intimidating-looking roller coaster in the park - the Black Hole 2000!! This one was at Tomorrow Land. BCX was breaking out in cold sweat while we were queueing for our turn. Lol. Pretty intense stuff, but if you've surpassed the Battlestar Galactica Cylon in Universal Studios Singapore, then this should be a ride in the park :) We also wanted to try the Double Loop Coaster, but that one was closed for maintenance. Was slightly disappointed because several rides were closed on that day. While most of those that were closed were kiddy rides, it was unfortunate that the Double Loop Coaster was also amongst them.

We also went to this climbing maze thingy. Don't really know how to describe it. You can climb on a mesh of ropes to several stories high (see picture below!). In the end I was the only one who climbed up because BCX was scared of heights and the gf said it was painful to step barefooted on the ropes (we were wearing slippers, which we had to take off if we wanted to climb).

We also tried Top Spin in Samchuilli Hill! This ride "makes 7 spinning loops in the air"! Felt like alot more loops though hahaha. BCX has asked me to put a warning that this ride is not for the faint hearted. Lol. And that the seat mechanism "kiaps" your legs very tightly, making your thighs really painful. This ride is fun though! Highly recommended.

After that we went to the Haunted House. It was featured in Running Man! Was too dark to take photos, and I won't put spoilers here. Go experience it for yourself! And then, lunch time!! At Lotteria. We each had a burger, plus some fried chicken. We also ordered a matcha tornado (it's actually like matcha mcflurry), which was really yummy! (Dwaeji says there's much more matcha flavour in this than the mcflurry! )

This dome you see below was where Suzy was hiding in Running Man (gf has asked me to put this in; for the record I have no idea what she's talking about). Suzy is the girl on the korean potato chips that we bought from Lotte Mart (that's all I know about her).

After that, we headed to the Tilt House. It's full of trick mirrors which create optical illusions. There was even a pull up bar mounted on an inclined floor inside, as well as a maze where the walls were all mirrors.

After that we wandered around some more, taking some other random rides.

Finally, we decided to try the water ride at Adventure Land - the Flume Ride. Being kiasu Singaporeans, we had brought along disposable ponchos to protect ourselves from the water. But no one else was wearing ponchos, and people who took the ride didn't seem to get very wet. Didnt want to wear (cause paiseh) but gf wanted, so what to do, must wear with her. Lol.

After an entire morning and afternoon in Seoul Land, we left for Itaewon. It's known as "Western Town". Almost all the restaurants there serve international cuisine, from countries such as India, Turkey, Mexico, Japan, US, Germany, Italy and Spain. We ended up eating at a Turkish kebab place. Food was pretty good! But was quite abit more expensive than local food.

We walked around some of the streets after dinner, but there isn't much shopping to be done here. We stopped by a GS25 and got this ice cream (we call it the shit ice cream haha). It's frozen chocolate-flavoured ice in a tube. Gf and BCX love it. Me not so much. Prefer normal ice cream or melona haha.