1) The toilets are impressive!! Clean, ordourless, nicely maintained and some even nicely landscaped. For example, whereas we always had that impression that highway toilets were filthy and smelly, this particular highway toilet which we stopped along the way to Sangsoo Herbland to use left us in awe. It was a busy highway kiosk, yet it was sparkling clean, large with many cubicles, had a nice water feature in the middle of the toilet, and even had doors with lighted up "occupied" signs whenever someone used a cubicle.

Apart from the "occupied" signs, other technological features are things such as a rotating toilet seat cover which rotated for a fresh sheet just by pressing a button.

Even toilets in the wilderness like Seokguram were clean, although not as "technologically" advanced.

2) People there are quite friendly - at least to tourists I know they are. Despite many things getting lost in translation, all the Korean people I tried to speak to were very patient and always made an effort to try to understand what you were saying. Pleasant experience.

3) Which comes to my next point. Most Koreans do not speak English so be prepared to use gestures in getting your point across. The situation is slightly better in Seoul but don't expect to easily find someone conversing fully in English with you. Maybe apart from hotel staff in Seoul. Nevertheless, this is my advice if you want to be a 'responsible' traveller - get a Korean language phrase book and at least familiarize yourself with some common sentences like "how much is this" or even "I don't understand. Can you speak English?" I regretted not doing this before the trip.

4) There are only about 150 English-speaking tour guides available in Korea so check with your tour agent if they are able to find one for you. Most bilingual tour guides in Korea speak Korean and Mandarin.

5) Things in Seoul are expensive. So if you want to buy any souvenirs, just get them if you find them in the other towns and cities. So far it seems like stuff in Jeju are cheapest.

6) However, if there's one thing that's worth buying, it's local cosmetics. I had a whale of a time shopping for cosmetics especially at my regular brand shop The Face Shop. Whereas a foundation in Singapore can cost up to S$40, that same foundation in Korea can cost just S$15. The prices of these local brands in Korea are really really much much lower, mostly by half the price. Hence, if you are there, you might want to stock up on these brands such as The Face Shop, Missha and Skin Food, if you have been a user of these brands, that is.

7) Still, do note that goods are generally quite expensive in Korea.

8) Korean children are so well-disciplined! I mean, not in a millitary sense, but in the sense that although they still play around like all children should be, they are clearly respectful of the adults, and are not at all rowdy in puclic places. Conformity? In this case, not bad at all if such pleasant children are produced out of such a system. Stifling? All the children look so happy, don't look stifled at all. In fact, I couldn't help but comment that while in countries like Singapore you'll definitely get to hear screaming, tantruming children as long as you are in a place with kids, in Korea the kids I saw are actually happy, independent and well-mannered.

9) Only one thing though - the airport staff seem to like 'taking' locks. Upon arrival in Seoul airport Mum and I realized that the one lock from each of our bags had gone missing when we claimed our baggage, with no sign of damage to the zipper or anywhere else. I also found my travel tag with my particulars missing. Later after taking an internal flight, another group member's lock was stolen from her bag.

Not that the lock was expensive but in fact the reason why we installed locks was so that people could not stuff dubious stuff into our bags, implicating us in the course of it. So when the lock was removed in such seemingly clean fashion it was hard not to get scared. Thankfully we made it there and back safely, but this whole thing still seems very dubious, like some conspiricy going on.

We wondered why they only targetted my bag and my mum's. Later I realized that my mum's bag had actually been tagged under my name. So was this person targetting me??? Evil...

Otherwise it's a dubious, sick, mysterious fascination for locks by Korean airport staff.


Until the next trip!!