Honestly, I haven’t finish blogging about Korea yet. I mean how can I? Korea’s so awesome, so fantastic, such a land of paradise, I can write endlessly about it. It’s just that lazy-o-me is just… well, lazy-o-me!
So today I decided not to be lazy anymore and shall try to relay as much as possible of what I experienced into this blog (for keepsake). Actually I thought what I blogged was enough but thinking back, there was still the hot springs and FOOD which I haven’t really talked about. I mean how can I forget about the cuisine? And the hot springs which was totally an EYE-OPENER for us, if you get my point. If not, that’s okay. Carry on reading and you’ll know. :)
Hanhwa Hot Springs Resort was the place where we spent a day and night at. It is where we slept tatami-style. It is where it’s JUST right at the border between S.K. and N.K.
Right then, while heading towards the resort, Micheal, our tour guide (so I realised I haven’t mentioned his name before, i think) told us in the bus that if NK decides to attack SK, it’ll only take them 2 minutes? I think it’s around 2 minutes or so to reach the resort! Scary thought. He talked about it is because that was the time when tensions between NK and SK were oh-so-high. What with NK so-called “testing out” their security system, or whatever system that is. Then SK or US or Japan (whoever) threatening to shoot it down which pissed off NK who in turn threatened to start a war on SK if it was shot down. Oh politics! Whatever.
At that time, I just have that typical Singaporean thought, “ah! It won’t happen to me.” :x
Anyways, I’m not sure if I have ever mentioned this before. Initially, everyone in the tour group was given beds in their rooms in the resort but the 3 of us specifically requested for tatami-style mattresses. It’s such a waste to not experience tatami when you’re in Korea! In the end, even though there was Sheraton Hotel, tatami was the best night out of all the 6 nights in Korea.
For the hot springs, there were two options- you can either go to the naked section or to the swimsuit section. Guess where we went to? We thought that since we were in Korea and needed to REALLY experience hot springs so we went to…
the naked section. Everyone had to strip completely! c-o-m-p-l-e-t-e-l-y.
That’s why I was just kidding about us going to the naked section! Heehee. Of course we didn’t go to the naked section! We went to the swimsuit one.
But going into the women’s locker room was just like entering the naked section. Korean women were all completely naked inside! Be it bathing or changing, they did it out in the open. Yeah, we saw everything. Lol. The best part was, the shower area had NO doors with just shallow partitions to separate each “cubicle” (I wouldn’t even call them cubicles if I know another word to describe the place). So yeah, the women just… shower out in the open.
Anyways, it felt damn good to soak ourselves in hot water during the cold season! The place was like a water theme park, with indoors and outdoors. There wasn’t much indoors, just the hot springs pool, the mini-waves-pool thing and the water slide. As for outdoors, we didn’t explore much since the weather was so cold. We did go outside to try out the outdoor hot springs pool and whenever the wind blows, I felt like I was going to freeze to death. Imagine it, swimsuit, water and cold wind. Cold as hell. Well not literally of course. X]
Indoors, we played in the wave-pool thingy where man-made waves were created so people can lie on floats to play on the waves. Wild Wild Wet has it I think, but the one we went to was much much smaller.
Oh, the highlight of hot springs was the water slide! The water slide was actually limited to certain time slots and unfortunately, when we wanted to play on it, it was closed. There was about 20-30 minutes before the slide would be opened. We also had out time limit for the hot springs, being in a tour group and all. At that time, we calculated the time we had to wait, to play on the slide and to wash up before our designated meeting time with the tour group.
Time allowed us only ONE play on the slide. The slide was more thrilling than I expected it to be. There were more than one instances when I got the heart bursting feeling while sliding down. Soooo fun!
Too bad we could only play once. After that, we rushed like mad to change and wash up a bit. We didn’t shower (thankfully) as we’ve got no time so we just cleaned ourselves up.
In the end, we were early when we reached the meeting place.
Dinner was another unforgettable moment. I ate raw, living octopus!
The octopus was alive, all slimey and squiggly. We sort of had to bite the tentacles then we could take pictures. While taking pics, the tentacles had those suckers which sort of sucked on my tongue, giving me a shock! Lol. After that, the ahjumma will cut the part for us to chew on. It was so fun and cool. It tasted okay… no fishy smell or any smell at all. It’s kind of tasteless actually. Tasteless and chewy.
I don’t know if it’s true but Micheal told us that octopus eat their own tentacles when they’re hungry and can’t find any food. So they won’t die just because 1/16th of their tentacles are missing.
Okay so that was pretty much it for Hanhwa Hotsprings Resort! :)