Since I got married, my holiday destinations have been determined by how easily my husband and I are able to communicate with the people whose lands we would be visiting. For example, because of my inability to speak Mandarin, I refused to visit China a second time(the first was in 1979 for a series of friendly matches after competing in the 39th World Table-tennis Championships in Pyongyang) until my second son was given the opportunity to attend a month-long table-tennis training programme in Shanghai in 2002. So, why did we decide on Korea for our holiday?
One main reason was my daughter wanted a skiing holiday after having done some skiing in Australia in 2005. The other reason was the attractive cost of the holiday package which was a great incentive. So, even though I was told that the tour guide would be Mandarin-speaking, I decided that communication was not that great a problem after all. One could always read up about the tourist sites before the trip itself.
Secondly, it was the first time my sister's family and my family decided to go on a holiday together. We also took our mother along, knowing there would not be many other opportunities to bring her on future trips as she tired easily and was losing her memory - she gas Alzheimer's disease. Here's an insight into how Alzheimer's had affected her memory. We had just landed in Incheon International Airport and were having dinner in the cafe at the airport when my mother asked if we had just gotten off the bus and were on our way to Genting Highlands! Likewise, after landing in Hong Kong (our trip included a stopover there), she had no memory at all of having been in Korea the past week.
Thirdly, the Korean experience was our first holiday without my two boys. My elder son had just finished his national service stint and was taking a break at home. Being a homebody, he refused to come along, preferring to fight a virtual war in cyber space or as he claimed, he had a very important role to "defend the ancients". My second son on the other hand, had won a lucky draw ticket to watch the SEA games in Korat during the same period we were in Korea. Anyway, he had already gone to Korea in July, having taken part in the Asian Junior Table-tennis Championships and was not interested in going a second time. So, we had our girl all to ourselves.
Another reason why the trip was special is that ever since we came back from Korea, we have developed a special appetite for Korean food. My husband now actively seeks out the Korean stall and seldom fails to order a beef bulgogi rice set whenever we set foot in a food court.
The trip also got me (and I believe my husband as well) hooked on the Korean drama serial, "Da Changjin", a serial about the palace intrigues of the Korean royal kitchen. During the coach journey, our tour guide would play an episode or two from her abridged version of the serial. This helped greatly to reduce the monotony of the ride from one city to the next on our itinerary. Five months after the trip, my husband stumbled upon an episode that was playing on Channel U. By that time the serial was about half-way through the storyline but because we had watched the whole shortened version of it, I was still able to follow from that episode on. That was how I received my daily one-hour dose of "Jewel of the Palace" as it was titled, five days a week, for about two months. On days when I could not rush back in time to watch it, of course I had it taped. However, it got to a point where taping the serial was too much of a hassle as I had to remember to remind my helper at home to tape it. So, that was when I decided it was time to buy the complete set of DVDS (10 in all). In fact I got the whole set for a steal! Watching the serial also allowed my daughter and I "to bond" (as my daughter claimed, but it was actually an excuse either not to sleep early or to get away from finishing her holiday homework), during the marathon viewing sessions which lasted about four hours at a stretch, every few days.
Lastly, the trip was an eye-opener for my daughter and her cousins who were introduced to a new culture where girls and women alike were not ashamed of their bodies but were very comfortable walking about in their birthday suits. They would walk from the shower areas to their lockers in the ladies' changing room and changed in the open area around the lockers. The rest of us, non-Koreans and non-Japanese, meanwhile desperately and self-consciously tried very hard to change from our dripping-wet swimsuits into our clothes without having to reveal an extra inch of flesh more than we should as there was only one makeshift changing room with a door; the rest of the cubicles were doorless.
Having gone on many free and easy holidays, I must say this package tour was an enjoyable trip, one that was worth the money we paid for it. My two main grouses were firstly, that there was insufficient time to shop at the famous shopping malls I had heard so much about and secondly, the tour guide was not familiar with the ski slopes we visited, thus causing us to waste precious time at the top of the mountain instead of spending time skiing at the bottom of the slope. Well, hopefully, things will turn out better the next time we visit S. Korea if we should do it again.
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