Talk + 5th Korea trip stories part 1

Hello everyone, long time no see.

Alot has happened in these few months.

The reason I haven't been updating is kind of personal but I'm sharing it with you because this keeps happening with my blog. This is going to be quite long explanation but bear with me, I have no way to explain this shortly.

So, I have been going back and forth to doctors for almost 4 years now because I suffer from different symptoms but the worst is feeling tired 24/7, 365 days a year. Doctors have yet to find what's wrong with me but basically I feel tired all the time; sometimes it's better, sometimes worse. I have tried everything what doctors suggested without results: tried to change my rhythm of when I go to sleep and how many hours I sleep, I tried to change my diet several times and I excersize going out for walks..

So what's all this got to do with my blog? Well, when worse periods hit I'm too tired to concentrate or write anything. I'm not lazy, just very, very tired. I'll try to describe this state so hopefully you, my readers will understand what my condition is most of the time. Imagine spending your whole day at school or work and after a long day you leave tired and just want to get home to rest. This is basically what I'm feeling everyday. I wake up feeling that tired and go to sleep feeling tired.

It's kind of funny but when I travel I don't get as tired as others because I'm already tired no matter what. So it doesn't take as much energy from me when I'm travelling and experiencing new things. I'm usually so excited for travelling that I even forget feeling tired. Although it usually hits me in the evening double as bad... Happens everytime I'm excited for something lol. But I still love travelling and wouldn't change it for anything. I try staying positive and fight this feeling of tiredness.

But anyway, I hope you understand. I try updating once a month or once in two months but sometimes when worse periods hit me the gap can be more than that.

By the way, I got into school! I'm terrified and excited at the same time. Don't know how tired I am going to be but I'm mainly just excited that I got in after trying for 3 years and to study what I love the most; travelling&tourism. My DP is Hospitality, tourism and experience management.

5th Korea trip stories part 1

 

Travelling to South-Korea and 1st day

I was accompanied with my friend Sirja to travel to South-Korea. By the way, I'm not publishing any photos with my friends in them in case they don't want to appear in my travel posts.

Anyway, we met at the airport on time, got through security check quickly and headed up to non-schengen area. We had to wait 1 and half hour until boarding so it was not that bad.

Flight went well for us. A little drama on board at one point when one person got some sort of sudden attack and flight attendants voiced if there is any doctor or nurse on board. Luckily, the person made it to Korea so we didn't have to do extra landing and the person received medical attention in Korea.

When we got off from plane and to immigration it all went pretty fast, couple last times I travelled to Korea had to wait like an hour and now something like 20 minutes only. We were out on other side in no time and ready to travel to Seoul city center. We travelled by airport subway to Hongdae first and then changed to green line (line 2) to Sinchon where our hostel was. It was really convenient because Sinchon is basically next to Hongdae so we didn't have to travel long. And Sinchon is a university area so lots of shops and restaurants nearby!

We found our hostel pretty quickly but because we arrived something around 11am and it wasn't check-in time yet, we just left our luggage there and started searching a place to eat because we were starving. And we found Kimpab chonguk pretty quickly, it's kind of fast food chain that offers korean foods. I ordered seollongtan (I think? :D ) and Sirja got bulgogiboggeumbap (which is meat and fried rice). Then we went back to our hostel to finally check-in and get into our room. It was actually super nice, we had our own bathroom too! I apologize for messiness in photos but these are only photos I have from our room xD

Now, at first I didn't want to tell anything in my blog what happened next because I'm still pretty pissed off but I think that this would be serving as an example for travellers what negative things can also happen.

So, 2 weeks before going to Korea one person on twitter contacted me and asked if we are interested buying her tickets for BTS Wings tour concert in Seoul. I was like well yeah and we went through with the deal. I am usually very careful with online sellers but this person seemed ok. Notice, seemed.
We talked with her and paid the tickets in advance because there were some things with her story we believed. She gave us her kakao and we talked there, she was acting really friendly even after we bought the tickets and continued to talk to us. But when we got to Korea we noticed she had deleted her kakao and twitter. We had no way of contacting her and that's when we realized we had been scammed. We were already in the concert venue area when we desperately tried to contact her and waited her in the spot she had promised to meet us.

This gets more complicated but we paid her through her "friend's" paypal because she claimed she had no paypal. So we contacted this "friend's" email whose paypal we had paid to and pleading her to contact us immediately. She contacted us but told she was also scammed, that this ticket seller claimed me and Sirja are her friends and she need this other girl to help her using her paypal to get the payment from us. This other girl, let's call her Grace, she was from Singapore and said that she had paid via bank transfer and she lost more money than we did. Grace said she had been scammed second time for this concert and she had lost total something like $600. She then proved her story being also scammed by sending kakaotalk message screencaps between her and seller. It was also worse for Grace because it was her birthday and this concert was supposed to be her birthday present and party at the same time with her other friend who came to Korea with her.

We didn't have any way to even report this scammer to police or authorities because we only had her kakao and twitter, not her phone number or anything. So guys, please please please be careful and if you buy from online ask their information before buying. Ask like phone numbers, social media accounts etc. And if possible, ask for meeting face to face before concert day to buy tickets with cash.

I was sure I was careful but apparently not enough. But before this scam I bought a ticket online for Astro fanmeeting from online seller and it was legit ticket and not a scam. And she also acted similarly to this scammer so I guess that's why I didn't doubt the scammer and fell for it.

Anyway, we were feeling lost and disappointed as soon as we got to Korea. We would have wanted to see BTS because we both like their music and heard they have awesome show live. Since we were already in the venue area we tried to look someone selling their tickets but some illegal sellers had prices over 1000euros so we were like are you kidding me?! Not going to buy a ticket with that price even if it would have been our favorite artist ever in there. But we cannot change what is done so even though we were feeling pretty down we tried to cheer ourselves up by doing something to get our thoughts away from being scammed and went to Myeongdong to have coffee and tried some shopping and streetfood.

I can really recommend cosmetic brand Innisfree's own cafe which is upstairs in one of their main stores. The store is located in Myeongdong's 2nd mainstreet and you cannot pass it without noticing it. All what they offer has been produced in Jeju and their food is organic.
While we were in the cafe it started raining but we still wanted to spend a good evening and wash away our feelings of disappointments. We did some cosmetics shopping and tried several streetfoods like eggbread and tornado potato. Unfortunately I seem to have lost some photos of streetfoods but at least managed to find one :,D

After wandering around in Myeongdong we headed back to our hostel and went to sleep early.

I seriously try to post again within next month. Again, I'm really sorry I haven't been updating for so long.

By the way, got my next trip reserved and it's to Japan! Will be doing some roadtrip kind of thing with two friends, we'll be flying to Osaka and it's kind of our "base". But we also planned to stay couple days in Tokyo and Kyoto and head to Nara for a day. Really excited because I have been planning to go to Japan like over a year with one of my friend's whos now going with me.

Sightseeing and other events

Hi everyone :)

I'll start my post from last week's thursday, I went to watch korean movie Train to Busan with my friends. There was this movie festival in Helsinki where our biggest movie distributor company showed movies they don't normally take to their program. And there was Train to Busan which was box hit in Korea even though it's a zombie movie :,D I don't normally like horror at all but it was ok because it was more on the action side than scary horror.

On Saturday I went to Linda's birthday and had fun time there~ Linda had baked cheesecake for the first time and it was delicious! If I would try the same I would propably burn it xD

Then on Sunday and Monday I met with my korean friend who I know from one online app, he was visiting Finland for couple days before continuing his trip to Sweden. I enjoyed going around Helsinki even though it was a bit tiring because we walked alot lol. First we visited Suomenlinna (fortress of Finland). I haven't visited there for the longest time so it was nice for me too to see if it has changed or not. It actually had a bit, there were alot of construction work going on. I didn't remember that it was sunday so museums were all closed in the morning or either opening very late.. so a little disappointment but anyways we enjoyed going around and exploring.

After arriving back to mainland in Helsinki, we went to Senaatintori (Senate Square) and after my friend was done taking photos there we were so hungry we went to eat. It's a shame there was only either veeeeery expensive finnish restaurants or asian restaurants near... or mcdonalds lol. We decided to go to one japanese restaurant and ate kind of fried rice dish. I'm horrible host lmao I took an asian person to eat asian food in Finland when I should have introduced our food culture xD but we were so hungry xD

After eating big lunch at Momotoko we went to rest a little to Esplanade park. Coincidentally there happened to be food festival.. but we had just eaten lol so we just looked around and sat on a bench.

Then we were wondering where we should go next and decided to go to Sibelius monument. My friend wanted to visit there, I guess it's very popular among asians because almost every asian knows it. It's not so popular among finnish people because it's just ordinary park for us where just happens to be a big monument :P

We were starting to get a bit tired but still went to Temppeliaukio church xD After it we just sat down in one bar in Kamppi, just talked awhile and then I had to leave. My friend stayed in Kamppi.

Next day we met up again and we wanted to visit Seurasaari but it had just been closed last week :,( bad luck.. so we just walked around Hakaniemi and visited Hakaniemi old market (Hakaniemen kauppahalli). Then we just walked around Helsinki center until my friend had to go check-in to Silja Line for his trip to Stockholm. I said bye to him at the terminal. Bye the way, before going to terminal we had lunch at Kauppatori where my friend tasted finnish food but it was soooo expensive for like a plate of couple potatos and little piece of salmon. So if you have foreign friends coming to visit seriously, search restaurants in Helsinki beforehand xD I did a mistake of not searching and we ended up eating expensive lunch. (They have high prices in Kauppatori because there is so many tourists).

Anyway, I had busy monday because right after saying bye to my friend I had to hurry home because I had my korean language lessons in the evening. It was funny, after I said to my friend I study korean and have been trying to study by myself for 4 years, he started speaking more and more korean with me and now he sends me messages only in korean xD much stress though because I'm very slow writing in korean and he writes so faaaast and I'm like slow dooooown xD but he always waits patiently my answer if he asks me something because I usually have to check one or two words from translator.. because even though I know the word, I usually mess up writing it so I have to be sure I'm not writing it wrong... or the sentence might get totally different meaning xD At least now I get to train my korean skills :D

This weekend

Yesterday I met up with Annina and went to autumn market to Tikkurila. It was a big market event and we had nice time just walking around. We also discovered a new cafe; Kahvi Charlotta which was right opposite of dixi. They have one cafe in Kamppi apparently and they will be opening third to esplanade. I liked interior design of this cafe and they make coffee from fresh beans which was totally pleasant surprise~ And customer service was excellent, I'm totally recommending this place :) Also, their carrot cake was yummy :P

Recommending~

So what are the things I have been enjoying these couple weeks?
Well, one is a korean action drama that started last week: The K2. It tells a story of an ex-soldier Kim Jae Ha (played by Ji Chang Wook) who ends up being a bodyguard to one Assemblyman's wife and his illegitimate daughter. Je Ha couldn't care less of anything at first because of his dark past but he has his own reasons which eventually makes him agree to work for Assemblyan's wife. He gets codename K2 and that's why this drama's name is K2. 4 episodes have been aired and it has been very action packed with interesting characters. I'm totally hooked. I'm also recommending The K2's first OST song, it's addictive especially from the chorus:

Also cosmetics I have been liking:

Lancome Hydra Zen neurocalm. This was very moisturizing face cream and it has pleasant texture. I got this with discount but I know it's normally quite pricy. Anyway, I liked this because it spreads well even though it at first seem heavy (it really isn't). And it made my face feel so soft! Repurchasing it if it appears on sale sometime. You can get it almost from everywhere where they sell high-end brands.

The Face Shop x Kakao melting color lip creamer. This has become one of my utmost favorite lipsticks! It's very creamy and hydrating without being too much if you know what I mean. It has very pretty, light peach color which shade is 12. Plus packaging is very cute! You can get this for example in ibuybeauty.


Next post is up in about 2 weeks. This week I'm going to Helsinki zoo free event on tuesday and on friday to Linnanmäki amusement park light carnival (it officially starts on Saturday but I got invitation to private event :P ).