First up, after finals ended was of course none other than my FST lab. Which was stressful but fun. We bought food products and analysed the presence of micro-organisms in them and wrote reports and stuff. And my lab group was supposed to comprise of 3 people, but 1 person withdrew from the programme and the school didn't update the namelist so my lab partner and I were left to tank the work supposedly done by 3 people. We were struggling to chiong the lab report out even at the very last minute. That day was pretty horrendous hahaha.
Then came my Vietnam trip to Phong Phu Commune with SCBE OCIP aka Project TAB 2016. As a leader, I had faced many challenges, right from the beginning such as canvassing, managing resources, selection and all that. And it was tough but I enjoyed the whole of it. Looking back, I actually enjoyed those times of busyness although I did suspect that my academic grades would suffer a bit. Now that I have nothing much on my plate other than studying, it feels a bit empty inside haha. Oh I am weird. Anyway, would like to specially thank my fellow co-chairperson Wen Chuan, as well as other members of my Main Committee (in no particular order): Ranice, Jinny, Wei Xiong, Wai Kit, Edmund, Yan See, Hui Qing and Hui Ling. Especially Wen Chuan who had to tank a lot of the nitty gritty administrative work and did most of the liaison on top of the heavy work load from CBE. We both had disagreements but we managed to resolve them peacefully. Thank you for working with me and tolerating all my shit hahaha. As for the things that happened during the trip and my overall reflection etc, I shall not post them up here. But also want to thank my amazing group of volunteers for participating in and contributing to Project TAB and I hope you have gained much more than you expected from the trip!
Then after that was my summer exchange at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea. I spent 6 weeks in Korea, with 3 weeks at school and the other 3 weeks travelling around hahaha. It was definitely my first time being so long away from home. I didn't exactly miss home itself (other than my bed) but I did miss the company I had around me - family and friends. But all was fine. Poh Geok (my travel companion, roommate, translator and so on..) and I cooked our meals whenever we could to save money. On weekends, we ate out and travelled a lot. Total expenditure I calculated was about SGD5.7k, with school fees, accommodation, air tickets all in. A little pricey, but that's South Korea where the cost of living was relatively higher than Singapore. We first landed at Incheon Int'l Airport, stayed there (like hobos) for the night, caught a morning flight to Jeju, spent about 3 nights there, flew back to Seoul and then spent the next 1 month plus there. After summer school ended, we went to Busan and Gyeongju. And then finally back to Seoul, and back home. I shall briefly summarize my experiences at each city below.
Jeju was a pretty large place for an island hahaha. Okay but that aside, it was a pretty bad option to take public transport aka bus around because we spent majority of the time waiting/travelling and ended up not covering many places that we wanted to, which was a real pity. Signs and everything were mostly in Korean so I had to rely on PG to get around. Weather also wasn't on our side coz we were met with occasional showers. Especially with majority of the attractions in Jeju being outdoors, it was difficult to cope with the bad weather. We met foreigners along the way and saw some familiar faces from mainland China as we travelled (together). Quite an experience as I didn't think we would have spoken to anyone else but ourselves lol. Transportation cost was also not too cheap there (I think it's more expensive than Seoul). Some places were developed, others were not. Self-touring is possible, but it's best to hire a taxi for the day - I think it'd be more worth it. Or rent a car or follow some bus tour or something. Places I'd wanna visit (again): Mt. Hallasan, Seongsan Ilchubong (on a non cloudy day!!), Seojikopji, and majority of the attractions I'd missed at southern Jeju.
Seoul is like another Singapore with a well-connected transportation system and busy working adults. There are pretty sites around and good food around too. It's easy to get around and lots of tourists and locals in central Seoul. The outskirts of Seoul are quieter with more elderly folks. Although I stayed here for the longest period, I haven't got anything much to comment about Seoul. At least nothing much comes to mind as of now haha. Nothing much to comment on my summer school coz my class mainly comprised of NTU students so it was like being in a mini NTU all again. Was also honoured to be in a school with a long history in South Korea hehe. And like many universities in South Korea, SKKU was built on a hill. We went university hopping around many unis so I am kinda qualified to say that lol. My accommodation at Seoul was the best out of all: CUBNB. The hosts were really great and helped us in many ways, from providing travel and food advice and the occasional 'special breakfast' and so on! Really enjoyed my stay there a lot.
Busan was a really nice place and I wished I had spent more time there! We didn't exactly cover some places we had intended on going. But the people in Busan were really nice (well, aesthetically) and friendly. I still remember that PG had to top up her T-money card in Busan but there was no train station nearby for us to use the top-up machine. We searched high and low for a convenience store that could help us with that but there wasn't any. Then this warm friendly ahjumma approached us at the bus stop and using hand gestures and broken English + Korean, she tried her best to help us, almost at the expense of missing her own bus. We walked quite a long distance later to find the convenience store and finally got the card topped up. Another incident was when we tried finding the Orkyudo Skywalk at Igidae Park or something like that and we were completely lost. I saw a guard post and asked the security guard for directions. Strangely, he invited us into his guard post to take a sit and rest. I was feeling a bit apprehensive about the whole thing but still went ahead with my defences up. He then tried to convey to us that it was a hot summer day, so he wanted us to cool down before he gave us directions to get to the Skywalk. He took out a slip of paper with directions or something (I still duno what it writes till today) in Korean and using some elaborated hand and body gestures he pointed out to us how to get to our destination. That slip of paper proved useful as we approached many Koreans to bring us there en-route just by showing them the slip of paper. And there was once PG wanted to get to a fansign venue to catch her idols but the directions were wrong and we were led to a primary school lol. Apparently there was a student also in the area heading to the same destination, so we followed her and successfully got to our destination. Places I'd wanna visit (again): musical fountain place all the way at the last station on the orange line since we missed it (sorry I forgot the name), night markets (!!!), any maybe more but I can't recall haha.
Gyeongju was a rather historical and quiet place. Our accommodation was located at this ulu, almost dilapidated area where the streets were quiet. Plenty of Gyeongju ppang (bread) shops around Gyeongju. We went on a city tour for one day and it was rushed like siao. We spend like what, 20 mins at an attraction wth. The tour guide rushing to get off work is it. Anw Gyeongju is a pretty hidden tourist site, and has a lot of tombs around. Would be worth visiting back again in another few years, since some of the areas we went to were in the process of excavation which goes to show that it's a largely undiscovered place as of now.
All in all, this was how I spent my summer. Tata!
