My Trip to Korea 2018 : Hanwha Resort Seorak Sorano

Date of Stay : 19th - 21st March 2018 (Monday-Wednesday)

We stayed at Hanwha Resort Seorak Sorano for 3D2N. It's located at Gangwon Province, a mountainous, forested province in northeast South Korea.

Here we are... reaching the destination for our stay place.

Excited to take photos after having butt-pain taking long rides inside bus...

On Tuesday after eating our dinner, we were sent early back to the hotel (because Herb Island wasn't open on that day. So, things get early and ready-ing ourselves for our upcoming journeys).

Finally, it's time for us to appreciate and to observe the beauty の exterior resort building we stayed.

[ The next two photos are directly opposite to the main entrance. ]

We were given 2 rooms, both with double bed. The rooms are almost identical [Of course lahh, what am I talking?] So this is so-called, my room tour at Hanwha Resort Seorak Sorano.

The do-anything place. We eat supper here.

Maggi cups, instant porridge, ice creams, Castella cheese cake, homemade sandwiches are all eaten here since most of the time we're not at the room.

The typical bed place.

We actually didn't sleep at this bed, because there was no fan or aircond.

Not to say it's hot or we didn't make used to it, but the Korea tour guide told us that to ventilate the room, you gotta open a little gap of the door with net (the mosquito net?) to let air comes in.

But the air was too chilly, since it's windy days.

As usual, the TV was in front the bed.

You can watch TV programs from local news, products advertisements to local Korean-drama throughout the day till night.

Toilet. Or in Korean: 화장실

The toilet bowl has special features that rarely to be seen in Malaysia : 

⇢ Rinse + Dry your ass.

⇢ Turn the bowl seat to warm temperature.

#mesakai

The telephone has morning call, which almost acts as an alarm clock.

The Korea tour guide did request the staffs to make the call early at 6:00am for preparing ourselves to take breakfast.

Another special feature explored.

We slept at almost-to-say a store room with ondol feature on our stay.

Ondol in Korean traditional architecture, is underfloor heating that uses direct heat transfer from wood smoke to heat the underside of a thick masonry floor.

On Tuesday after dinner, we almost have no chance to jalan-jalan inside the resort. We went back to the hotel room and put down our things. 

My mum said : She's tired already, lazy to go out and walk. Need to pack things before switching to another hotel room tomorrow. We need to sleep early because we had insufficient of sleep... Throwing tantrum on not achieve something is my thing. [Travel experiences especially, throwback the times we went to Kuching, Sarawak... I insisted and win everyone's hearts to take a boat and cross over the river to enter Fort Margherita. 难得来到这里又懒惰去散步做么？]

Our journey exploring the resort keeps running...

We bought the blue and red boxes.

It's soft, sweet and delicious. I'm in love with it.

There are wide-variety choices of flavours in the two boxes.

Pandan, chocolate, red-bean... It makes me feel hungry (the sikit-sikit type of hungry) while drafting this post to let me taking a break for supper time.

The second day of drafting....

This is the place we had our two times of breakfast buffet.

I LOVE BREAKFAST BUFFET !!!

It's like you have no limit restriction of food intake.

You can eat all you might, as long your tummy can fit in.

We discovered a room called : Atelier 閑  at lobby floor.

Totally got no idea what's the room since we don't even understand the two big words showed on the entrance. 

There is not even a person who takes care of the place, so we just enter the room to find answer for our curiosity souls.

New words of the day : Just make my research after months of leaving Korea already HAHAH~

Atelier : An atelier (French: [atəlje]) is the private workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students, and apprentices can work together producing pieces of fine art or visual art released under the master's name or supervision.

閑 ：to stay idle • to be unoccupied • not busy • leisure • enclosure  [ Typing out this word takes a big effort though~ ]

Something I can relate as for now... quite interesting...

Not to forget, ambil gambar lahhh~ What some more can do during the holidays?

*wink*

Random thought

I somehow wish I could become a freelance model. You just need to get ready yourself to be captured, equip yourself with photogenic skills in front the camera, and BAM ! You got your pay for it. Easy, no stress. [I think so... Harsh reality I don't want to think...] 

 

Dad taking photo behind the ever-changing patterns on the large white screen.

After playing for so long with the fancy screen, we just realised that on top the white screen, there's a device which detects our face and it will display on the white screen. The device also follows our body movements to see swivel irregular shapes shown on the screen. Something new to explore. Thankfully, there's no one enter the room during our visit. We RULED THE ROOM!

Directly turned into 20-30 years younger than they're after happily playing with something technology.

Going out the room and explore the hidden sides of resort before going back to hotel room...

Went to CU Later Family Mart / CVS for You, a convenience store inside the resort to buy some eateries and... drinkies... //index fingers pointing each other.

Along our way, we found Pororo inside the convenience store...

...and another Pororo sitting near to the game rooms.

There're even karaoke rooms... 

[ Okay, I don't know how to end my blogpost... So yeah, this is my ending. ]

My Trip to Korea 2018 : Daegwallyeong Sheep Farm + Sky Ranch Tractor

Date : 20th March 2018 (Tuesday)

SECOND DAY at KOREA

The day before going to Daegwallyeong Sheep Farm, our Korea tour guide told us that "Tomorrow will be colder than today. So please wear thicker attires to keep yourself warm." We wore something casual and easy on our first day. The superior main idea is, we actually bring attires that are mostly can be wear on normal colder days in Malaysia.

I guess, YouTube gives me the wrong idea... I have watched several videos showing that the location of Daegwallyeong Sheep Farm is a place you can see flocks of sheep running around the green pasture (Just learnt a new word from mum.) Windmill and beds of colourful plants (sunflowers or lavenders) over the fences. Literally, I expect that it would be spring season during our trip. Kinda excited to feed them and stroke their furs. Take good shots.


On the bus after taking breakfast buffet, the Korea tour guide told us that the journey to Daegwallyeong Sheep Farm will take around an hour. It's sort of on the boring side. It's more like going to somewhere kampung places. Old houses and trees in brown colour. Crossing tunnels for a numerous time. Everyone is quiet and sleepy.

At first, I was continued to write down yesterday's happenings since we slept early last night. Bumpy condition inside the bus, which doesn't really allows me to write nicely on my travel book. Sometimes, I played Sudoku on my phone to kill my boring time on bus. Gradually getting tired, sleepy, and fatigue. I have of no choice but to drown into a good sleep, leaning on the glass window for cool sensation. (Since it's cold on the outside, the bus driver turns off the air-conditioner. I think he turns on the warmer instead.)

"What was that on the floor? Why is it covered with white surface?" I got no one to ask. Everyone is still soundly sleeping. Note that I just wake up in confusion of what's on earth is going on at here.
Mum wakes up, and she looks at the view. She wakes my dad, and she told him that it's the snow. Something that happened beyond expectation.

Reaching the destination... excitement raising even higher. It's snowing. Whom would each one of us believe that we're actually experiencing winter at Korea? Not even me, because the given itinerary has mentioned that we are supposed to bring winter attires (Long-John? Never heard about it before... I even laugh on its name.) But I decided to ignore the given facts, and pack ordinary printed T-shirts with shorts to prepare myself for spring-summer types of weather. Dad however queries the weather in Korea which it wouldn't be as cold as typical English countries (that he has experienced before).

With surprise, the place is actually located at Pyeongchang. Experiencing winter season almost half a year, from November to May. Try to calculate this: The month of March is directly the borderline, which is the peak of coldness to be experienced. HAHAHAH AIN'T NO JOKE RIGHT NOW! IT'S -5°C. [PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games...recently held from 9th to 25th February 2018. Will talk more about it on upcoming post/s.] 

Directly after touching down from Kota Kinabalu to Korea, we directly went to Nami Island. I only wear a printed collarless T-shirt, a tracksuit, and luckily, a pair of sport shoes. But this time, I wear 4 layers of tops (starting with a collarless T-shirt, following with a collared T-shirt, a jacket, and the last one is a jacket with hood) But still, I feel cold until I almost shiver all the time. You can see us wearing something irrelevant with the weather since we're clueless to be in this 'cold' condition.

Photo taking before entering the farm... No more green pasture.

 

Beautiful scenery.

Note that some photos aren't really portray similarly as the actual places.

First, some photos are edited in terms of brightness, contrast, colours etc.

Second, our cameras are not canggih-canggih one; and

Lastly, we don't know how to take beautiful photo.

And so, here we are... on our long Long LONG way to the farm.

Mum fixing her scarf. I like this shot. 是我拍的~



Dad holding his hockey stick. 

I even make my selfie stick as a crutch. But kena scolded.

Someone wears way thicker than us.

*She's one of our tour members*

Mum is photogenic or the photo capture at the right time?

E eh... terselfie lahh pulak AHAHAHAH 

After a long walk, we found these sheep. 

But still, no more windmill and beds of colourful plants. 

Here I am, asking weird question. Which pair the photos of sheep is cuter?

The left side or the right side?

(Please leave your answer on the comment section to get my attention...)

    

Finish feeding them... heading to a shop and rehat-rehat before going up the Sky Ranch tractor. But my family likes to take photos very much. How can we leave this precious cool snow experiences without enjoying it? Jalan-jalan sekejap, ambil gambar. Nampak pemandangan yang cantik & indah, tangkap gambar. How beautiful every edges of the world can be.

Sister bought a pair of gloves. Mum bought this without knowing what it actually is.

플레인 요거트 = Plain Yoghurt
It's said to be the 1st Best Seller.

Mum asked me to take photo of that cleaner who is swiping off the ice on the floor.

Yeah, it's not visible but that's the intention.

Sister is taking photo — shows the tractor that we will be riding after rehat-rehat.

It's somehow a waste on the photo above. So, I cropped my sister's face and edit it brighter.

Left : Increased backlight and patching up colours on her forehead.

Right : Merely increased the backlight only.

Q : Which one is better though? Left side or right side? (Comment down below... I'm such a boring person hahah~)

"Dad is lucky... to have this photo taken."

And so, here we're taking the tractor going up... to see even beautiful snow scenery (I guess?)

Together with Mandarin-listener tourists, one Daegwallyeong Sheep Farm tour guider and one tour guider interprets it to Chinese.

Horse photo — taken a photo of it inside the tractor.

No one wants to go out the tractor for this.

Going up the top of the mountain...

This is a spot where my dad almost fell down.

He thought every surface of the floor can be walked.

[There is one part that has longkang, or drain filled with snow ~ That's what I meant...]  

I think... the answer is : She's a photogenic. 

She puts well-efforts in her pose to get great photos.

Top : I look so fake in this photo. Tbh, I feel comfortable to not wearing the hood. As I said, "I prefer cold over hot temperature."

Bottom : Yeah, much better... and the hair colour suits well the background surrounding too. Thumbs are all up!

Going down using the tractor. Literally from what I can conclude, this Daegwallyeong Sheep Farm is actually a place for us to experience winter and taking family group photos. Not much looking at sheep and feeding them. Lari topik sudah...

Into the warm place.

Fyi, My sister had done a great job in video shoots and editing.

Please check out her video : VLOG: Family Trip to Korea (Part 2)