Today we went to Kangnam station to go shopping. Yeni's dad was smart and stayed at Yeni's aunties house so he didn't get dragged around with the girls all day. I wasn't so lucky. First we went to NamDaeMun Market which was quite a large market in the street. There was quite a lot happening and the salespeople are quite agressive. They tried to pull Lisa into their shop but she ran away. Being a foreigner you seem to dodge most of that.

Very original title huh ? Well it was our second day in Korea and a very busy one. We met Yeni's mum's family for lunch which was really exciting. Quite a few of her uncles could speak English very well, although they thought that they could not. It was really great to meet them all and they treated me very well.

There was heaps of food and just when I would finish one dish, a new one was already out on the table. There was also a lot of toasting with Soju which was great. Everybody was worried about whether I could handle the Soju.

After the lunch we went out with Yeni's cousins and their wives. Two of Yeni's cousins had a Starcraft battle at the local PC bang while one of the cousin's wives took Yeni and myself out shopping, out for coffee and took us to buy some couple tops. It was really good fun and her English was really good too but I think she was a little shy so she didn't speak in English to begin with.

We then joined the rest of the cousins and went out for dinner. We went to a Korean BBQ place, one of those places with the hot coals in the middle of the table for cooking on. The food was really nice and again we ate heaps and drank more Soju. After that we went to another place and all ahd some beer. We were then pretty tired and met Yeni's parents and went back home to sleep. Tommorow we will go to Lotte World.

Today we arrived at Incheon and bussed to Seoul. It is an amazing place. I had some expectations but like they say, being there is everything. When we first arrived we went to Yeni's Auntie's place. She spoke a little English so it was quite funny the way we communicated. Fortunately Korean and English share some very similar important words such as Coffee and Television.

We met JuWan and his Parents for lunch which was great. We had some very spicy seafood which is usually a deadly conbination for me but I somehow survived it. JuWan's parents spoke a little English but for me interpreting most of what they were saying came from a few keywords and a lot of body language.

We went for coffee after the lunch and I felt a bit disappointed that I was unable to join in on what seemed like a very interesting religious conversation. We went back from Dong-Incheon to Seoul and checked out a market. It was all that I had been told about the markets but it was quite cool to see it for real. Most of the sale items didn't at all interest me but the atmosphere was great. I also managed to get my ass grabbed by some girl which was kinda flattering a creepy sort of way.

JuWan took us back to Yeni's auntie's place and I got an idea of how good he was at driving. He was navigating his way through single lane/1.5 lane side streets on hills ! I don't think words could possiblty describe how hard this looked but it was insane. There are heaps of windy little side streets and people walking about so there are heaps of hazards.

Even though JuWan and myself can only exchange a small fragment of intelligable conversation, I can already tell that he is a nice guy and treats Lisa really well. Maybe we can organize some Skype Korean/English lessons or informal talks.

After getting a few 'bargins' we headed back to Yeni's auntie's house to get a weeks worth of clothes and stopped off to have some spicy chicken and beer. While there I had an improptue Korean lesson and experienced a real Korean toilet. When I was speaking to Yeni I wasn't too sure which was the worst toilet out of the one at MegaCyberIsland or the one I visited tonight.

The last part of the night involved driving back from Seoul to Incheon (Thanks JuWan) where we are going to stay at Yeni's Dad's friends house for about a week. Hopefully he has net access so I can upload these blogs or a neighbour has unsecured wireless/ICS setup on their PC.

Today is our last day in Singapore. We enjoyed our last buffet breakfast and checked out about 12. Our rough plan was to go shopping and then hit up Happy hour at the Brass rail lounge. We got the hotel to hold our luggage and headed off to Orchard RD to do some shopping. We had a look at the shops and then went to the HardRock Cafe. I had a margarita and BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger and Yeni had a Strawberry Daquari and some Pasta. The meals were good but expensive. We also got to take some photos of guitars and stuff.

After that we decided to go and see a movie. We went to see Hitman which we both enjoyed. I played the Hitman game a little but not enough to know the story so I enjoyed that. After that we went to the Brass Rail Lounge and had a couple of beers as well as play some pool. I bet Yeni in 2 out of 3 games, it would have been 3 out of 3 if 8 hadn't sunk the white on the black because of an annoyingly placed pylon.

Next we headed off to the airport where we wasted a few hours waiting for the plane. There was a free foot massage which was pretty good. We will arrive in Incheon about 7am after leaving about 11.45pm Singapore time. If we don't sleep we'll be pretty tired and we are meeting JuWan (Lisa's boyfriend) and his parents. Should be good fun though.

Today we went to Funan IT mall. Most of the suff was the same sort of stuff we had back home and about the same price too so we weren't that impressed. We went to an internet cafe and did the Singapore air checkin.

After having some lunch and taking money out we headed off to Sentosa island. We went for Cineblast - a ride took about 5mins. It was fun but bit costly. We headed to Image of Singapore - was like a small museum and there was 5min intro show. It was well made and were lots of information about the country and the culture. After that we went on Skyride down to Siloso Beach. Yeni got really scared of height to start off but got better by the time we got off. We had a dinner at a place called Taste of Singapore - Steak and Spaghetti were very tasty. To finish off the Sentosa mission, we watched a water show called Songs of the sea which was a really cool light projected on water and lasers projected on water show. At the end they had some pyrotechnics and fireworks.

After that was finished we went back to the mainland on the cable car which was really cool, we also saw a massive cruise ship. We decided to taxi back after that and probably got ripped off paying $30.00 for a 'hotel shuttle' which was probably an unlicensed taxi. We were just proud to be home though.

We had a bit of trouble sleeping last night so we slept in a bit today. We were having breakfast today and John and Lynee met us again. We started a bit earlier so we left before them. They were talking about LuckyPlaza because they went shopping there yesterday. We decided to go and check out Lucky Plaza on the way to Sentosa Island. I got a USB mains charger for my pocket pc for $20 instead of $48 so I was pretty pleased with that. Still looking at cellphones and the choice seems to be between the Nokia E65 and the Samsung i600. So far nobody has been very compeditive on price. Yeni got a new pair of shoes.

We missed the bus to Sentosa which was annoying but we decided to go back to the hotel for a swim. After getting back we decded to get lunch instead. When we went to get our bus the worst rainstorm we had seen hit. That cancelled our plans and got us stuck at the mall for a couple of hours trying to wait out the storm. Eventually we caved and got a cab back to the hotel.

At the hotel we enjoyed some two for one drinks which was great because Tiger beer is $9.00 per glass. The singers from the other night were on stage singing Christmas carols. We forgot the camera to take their picture.

After that we hit the Chineese buffet on the 3rd floor. It was different from other buffet places - you decide what to take from the menu first. We had jellyfish salad, bbq pork, chicken, prawn and crab which was a mission to eat! It was about $54 but was good food and good experience. When we got to our room, we pretty much hit the bed straight away. We'll goto Sentosa tommorrow.

Today we were still struggling to sleep in. In the elevator we met the people from Perth who asked about swimming. We found out their names were John and Lynne. We had breakfast with them wich was very cool because they knew quiet a bit about transport and were very friendly.

After breakfast John gave us the SIA shuttle timetable and we decided to have a look to see what we could find. The shuttle is only $3.00 for a days travel as long as you have the Singapore airlines ticket stub. Turns out there is a whole bunch of cool discounts at http://singaporeair.com/boardingpass. So we jumped on the shuttle and decided to stop off at the botanical gardens.

After going to the gardens we stopped off at a mall called Plaza Singapora and got some food. It was only $5.00 for a bowl of Teriaki Chicken at Yoshinoya. Very nice and filling. We had a look around the shops and got some batteries for the camera.

Then we decided to head home and go for a swim. After doing that we decided we should go do some wedding photos again and we went to see if we could use the net closer to the hotel. There was a WiFi access point at McDonalds but it was $y per 1/2hr. We decided to head back to MegaCyberworld. We spent awhile there and managed to miss happy hour again. We decided to order room service as you can get a main for about $12.00.

Finally we planned our trip to Sentosa Island the next day and went to bed.

After waking up heaps we decided it was time to get out of bed. We checked out the internet center in the hotel but it was $10.00 per 1/2hr. I couldn't use the free WiFi becaue it complained about Javascript not being enabled on my PDA which is not true. I tried Opera too but no luck. We enjoyed a continental breakfast and went for a look around. We walked along the Quays looking for the Singapore river boat tour. It was so hot and humid so we decided to find a drink and we got some band-aids for Yeni's blistered feet. When we decided to leave the super market it was torrentially raining. It was insane. It was really warm but still raining. We caught a cab back to the hotel which was only $5.00.

Then we decided to check out the pool. We met a couple from Perth, they asked us where we were from after we said how the heat was killing us.

Then we decided to find an internet cafe which was harder than we thought it would be. We ended up going all through Chinatown and just when we were about to give up Yeni spotted MegaCyberWorld. We went there and used Skype to call our parents at about 11:45PM NZ time but they were quite happy to hear from us.

Then we headed back and decided to get food. There was a wedding reception in the resturant on the 3rd floor so we couldn't go there. Instead we had a snack at the Coctail bar (named the brass rail bar). It was quite entertaining because there was three singers but the music was so loud we had to shout to talk while sitting next to each other.

We went back up to bed. I decided to try and telnet the WiFi page to see what was going on but both Putty and the Filecommander telnet did not seem to send CrLfs so I couldn't see anything.

After the Wedding we got up about 7:30am. I managed to get about 20 pictures of the wedding preparation up on Picasa. We got to the airport in time to check in at 9:00. Yeni's parents dropped us off and my parents came to say goodbye which was nice. We just watched music videos and talked waiting for the plane which left about 1:30. The plane flight wasn't too special. We had heaps of food on the flight (Singapore Airlines) and we watched the Korean movie Marrying the Mafia 3 which was really funny.

The view of the port and Sentosa Island was awesome ! There was so many container ships. After arrival we were really tired so we got to the hotel and went straight to Bed at about 9. The time difference was 5 hours so we were pretty tired.

And here's a full size shot of the guitar, it's still a little battered but I think it's looking much better now.