INTRO (pinned to top)

Unfortunately i have to rewrite this blog because i just lost everything due to the previous blog provider i was using and a little bit my stupidity. I wanted to delete a blog and accidentally deleted my account, and the stupid blog host doesn't have an UNDO option.
So i'm kinda sad, rewriting it will be fun but i lost the effect of having it written while i was experiencing it.

INTRO

Hi, i'm a 36 year old woman from the Netherlands (a small country in west europe), i was 33 when i started this blog.
When i was young my family didn't really traveled far for vacations, we stayed in this country or traveled to our southern neighbors; Belgium. Once we went with all of our aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews from my father's side to Eurodisney near Paris in France, that's about a 5-6 hour drive from us, that was very far for me.
Later when i was around 14 years old me and my best friend went again to Paris and Eurodisney with a group bus tour, 14 yes...we where the good and quiet girls in school, so our parents didn't worry about us doing stupid things.
Later, much later when i had a job at a company that was doing very well back then, we went on a weekend "study"-trip to Budapest, Hungary (those good old days when the company was doing well), i was 24 back then and it was the first time i set foot on an airplane. As far as getting traveling experience from that...not really, i was just blindly following my colleague's with no idea of what i was doing and where i was going. Later i asked my colleague's if this counted as vacation/traveling and they told me this definitely didn't count. 2 Years later we did the same and went a weekend to Capri, Italy.
So, as my colleague's said, i never had gone on vacation or traveled outside of the country before (i was very experienced in traveling inside our country though, always going everywhere with public transport). In my 20's my friends and me went to festivals and concerts allot, not really interested in traveling and only saying "when we have enough money when we're older we want to go to ...", we had allot of fun and a good time, i never regretted it.
But then i got interested in South-Korea, i won't explain why here, that's a story for on my "About me" blog. I watched allot of Korean drama's and variety shows, and became fan of an amazing k-pop group. As i watched those drama's and variety shows i wanted to see and go there myself, walk in those places i saw on t.v., experience their customs and traditions and what is was like to be there amongst those people. Slowly i wanted to go there more and more and my mind started thinking about how i would do that...a girl with no traveling experience at all wanting to go to a small, rather unknown, country on the other side of the world, where in addition people didn't speak English very well mostly. The only thing i could think of was going with a group tour....
And that is where my blog kinda started, hope you enjoy following me on this awesome trip.

Tour planning day to day

Day 1:            Airplane
Day 2 - 4:       Seoul
Day 5 - 6:       Yeosu
Day 7 - 8:       Hadong
Day 9 - 11:     Busan
Day 12:          Tongdosa Temple stay
Day 13 - 14:   Gyeongju
Day 15 - 16:   Seoul
Day 17:          Airplane


Day 1:
The airplane will leave around noon from Schiphol Amsterdam, and with a stop in Abu Dahbi it'll be a 17 hour flight until landing on day 2 in Seoul, around noon local time. So that's 17 hour trip plus a 7 hour time difference. The group will gather in Seoul because there is a local tour guide, so this will be by myself...maybe some others want to meet up at Schiphol already so we can wait and transfer together.

Day 2:
Arrival in Seoul and meeting up with the tour guide and rest of the group at Incheon airport and go by shuttle bus to the hotel. Rest of the day is free time.

Day 3:
Free day, with the option of joining the tour guide in the morning for a walking tour in the area around the hotel. In the evening there is an optional event to go watch a traditional music and dance show which i'll be going to, you have to subscribe while booking the trip already.

Day 4:
Free day, with the option of going to the DMZ (demilitarized zone between North and South Korea), you have to subscribe during booking to this as well, i won't be going and will stay in Seoul, plenty of things i want to see and do there.

Day 5:
Go with the KTX (high speed train) to Yeosu. After arrival you can join the tour guide and go see the turtle ships that the famous and legendary admiral Yi Sun Shin created.

Day 6:
Excursion to Geumo Island, with a local ferry you sail to the island and during a hike across the island you can enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Day 7:
Travel from Yeosu to Hadong that is located near Jirisan national park. You can join the tour guide to go see the orchards or go explore the village.

Day 8:
Free day, you can join the tour guide to go visit the Chamunhwa Tea Culture Centre to attend an official tea ceremony and go for a 3 hour hike in Jirisan national park from a temple to a waterfall.

Day 9:
Travel from Hadong to Korea's second biggest city Busan. Busan is a big harbor city with an impressive fish market which you can go to with the tour guide.

Day 10:
Free day, you can go for a local bus tour or a hike by the sea.

Day 11:
Free day, you can go shopping in the worlds biggest mall, visit a museum or just rest up on one of the beaches.

Day 12:
Travel from Busan to Tongdosa Temple for the temple stay. This is a very exclusive part of the tour, you'll be living ina Buddhist temple for 24 hours and live just like the monks do. You get to join in the meditations, help with shores, go to bed at 9 pm and wake up at 4 am to meditate again and have a tea ceremony with the head monk.

Day 13:
After finishing the temple stay we'll travel to Gyeongju. Gyeongju was once the capital and now there's allot of cultural heritage still there. Gyeongju is on the UNESCO world heritage list and all buildings, even as they are new, have to be built in the original Korean style.

Day 14:
In the morning there is a bike ride to see the rice fields, in the afternoon you can go to a museum or go visit the Bulguksa-temple and Seokguram-cave just outside of Gyeongju, in this cave you can see a huge stone Buddha. In the evening you can join the tour guide for a real Emperor's meal if you want to.

Day 15:
We'll travel back from Gyeongju to Seoul by train and have the rest of the day free time. Hopefully i can go visit Namsan Tower and the Han-river which i want to see.

Day 16:
Last day, with still so much to do.
If i haven't been able yet at the start of the trip in Seoul i want to go shop for k-pop stuff, go see the building where Shinhwa Company (the k-pop group i'm fan of) is located and visit Shinhwa forest (a forest that's made true donations of the fans to commemorate Shinhwa's anniversary) at least.
In the evening we'll leave for the airport and the flight back that will leave around midnight.

Day 17:
Arriving back home halfway the afternoon after a long flight and transfer in Abu Dahbi.

Real publishing date: 10-03-2019

Here I come South-Korea!

I have been preparing for this trip for about 2 years, from the moment I decided I was actually going to do this until the moment I was on the airplane.
I had no money and no idea how to do this, with no traveling experience I was definitely not going there alone, there was no question about that, but there was also no one I knew that had the slightest bit of interest to go with me to South-Korea.
At first I mainly just wanted to know roughly how much money I would need for this whole thing. I started to look for group tours, but as you can imagine there where not much of those, I didn't care if it was from a Dutch travelling company or an international group, actually I thought an international group would be more fun than to be on the other side of the world and still hear a bunch of people around me speaking Dutch.
So I looked all over the internet and went to traveling company's, but i couldn't find any, there where some pre arranged tours that you could take by yourself but none with other people.
After a long search I finally found an international group tour, it was a bit short, only 11 days racing around there, but it was all I could find. I could book this true a Dutch traveling company, i couldn't find much reviews and such about this company so I made an appointment with them to get more information. They where located in another city, so by train I went to their physical shop.
Unfortunately from the moment I walked in there it didn't feel right, it was a tiny office with 3 desks in it, the interior seemed it hadn't changed for 50 years (like an old second hand bookstore should be) there was only one guy sitting behind the first desk. He was kind and gave me information about the tour and all, but on my way back to the train I already decided that I wasn't going to book there. I might be desperate but I wasn't going to loose my hard saved money to a scam or badly organized trip.
While I kept searching and saving I kept looking up travel information about South-Korea; which time of the year to go, what to do with drink water, what vaccines I needed and so on, in the end I knew more than a non-local tour guide I think. What I didn't learn from watching South-Korean TV shows already I learned now, I learned all about their customs and how to behave in public transport, how to hail a cab, how to cross the street (that was seriously tricky sometimes in the big cities). I've been "driving" around Seoul, with Google street view (I love it, you can explore a city without having to go there), for hours already.
After about a year I finally found a group tour with a very well known specialized far-away-travel company, even I heard of them before. It was rather expensive but the length and tempo of going around there was good, much free time to do whatever you wanted, almost perfect, it only was a national group.
I got enough money together and booked for the end of April because that was a good time to go, good weather and cherry blossoms. Now I only needed to wait for at least 7 other people to book this trip...it would only go when there where 8 people on the group with a maximum of 18. I had a hard time to keep myself from checking in each day to see if more people had booked.
Meanwhile my preparations got more serious; go get vaccines, get a suite case, get a world power plug etc. and find out what I wanted to see and do in the city's we would go to and print out maps on how to get there.
I was busy as hell and time seemed to fly.

real post date: 08-03-2019