27 Sep 10 - Day 4 (Yasan Farm, War Memorial, Jeju)

This morning the morning call was at 6:30am. As usual, I got up first to wash up before waking M up. We had breakfast at 7:30am and left for the Yasan Farm (Agroland) at 8:10am. We saw many big cows, sheeps and horses. We even get to feed the big cows with grasses and the younger cows with milk. We were told that most cows would be slaughtered at the age of three. One particularly big cow was aged seven and we were told that because this cow was tamed and was used as cow ride for the children before, she was able to escape from being slaughtered and now kept as a pet.

Pet cow with length of 1.7m

The owner told us that for a normal cow, she could give birth to 11 times during her life span but if the cow is one for farmer to milk, she could only give birth about four times. At her prime, she could give out 50 liters of milk a day and if a milk cow is coming to the end of her usefulness, the farmer usually would give her away coz he wouldn’t bear to kill her. The meat of a milk cow is not as tasty as those breed for meat and different parts of a cow are sold separately.

Then we were given a chance to try our hands at milking another cow. Most of the people in the group were scared to try their hands at it and I was getting impatient with them. Just when I wanted to go and be the first to try, finally one of the group members tried her hands at it. Soon one followed the other and I pushed M to have a go while I helped to take photos. I didn’t milk the cow since I had tried it before when I was in Perth couple of years back.

M trying cow milking

After that, we went on a tractor ride around the farm before leading to a place where we get to do ice cream. We were again teamed with Cynthia. Gathered around the front table to see how it was done and then were told that there were three flavors to choose from, Strawberry, Chocolate and Banana. M didn’t want Banana and I didn’t want Strawberry so we chose Chocolate before Cynthia could protest. We did the process quietly with Cynthia making comments on and off. Finally we were done and got to taste our own ice cream. Cynthia didn’t eat much coz she didn’t prefer chocolate so she went to taste the others.

Some photos of the farm animals :

Finished up our ice cream and headed to another place in Seoul for lunch where we had Saba fish and Yellow Flower fish. Since we finished lunch early and still have time before going to Gimpo Airport, we headed to the War Memorial of Korea in Itaewon to look at the weapons used by the Russians and Koreans during the war back then. M and I covered most of the grounds and most of our group members only covered half. After spending some time there, we continued our journey to Gimpo Airport where we took a domestic flight to Jeju. Recalled a blogger saying that the tomato juice was good and so told M about it. Chose tomato juice when the flight crew was serving drinks and indeed the juice was very refreshing.

End product of our ice cream making

Some photos from the War Memorial :

 

Reached Jeju about 5:50pm and headed to the underground shopping street – Tapdong Street. It was basically one long underground street with shops lining the two sides and a few short side streets. We were given one hour there and so browsed through the shops. Most of the clothes were for autumn season hence not suitable to buy. As for boots, most of them were with killer heels hence couldn’t get any either. Passed by Innis Free and bought the Olive real-Eye Cream that sis’s SIL asked. Saw the other group members and they were spotted carrying big bags of facial products from Etude House and other facial product shops.

Passed by a music CD shop and went in to check out the prices for the CDs. M saw a few that she had on her shopping list and so bought them. She was happy coz according to her; she found the first album of Girl’s Generation. The rest of the disks were also rather cheap after conversion and compared to our local prices. Left for dinner before going to watch Nanta Show at 7pm. We were seated on the left of the stage second row. As we still had some time before the show started, we went out to look at the merchandises. M was eyeing the t-shirt and so bought one in the end and I didn’t get anything.

Stage of Nanta Show

The Nanta Show was basically a simple plot where four chefs had to prepare for a wedding dinner in one hour and there little dialogues and mainly sounds made from hitting the various pots and pans. It was very funny and all of us laughed out loud. In between, audiences were invited to participate in the show and in our group, the guy Norris from the couple was chosen. Oh man, compared to the other guy who was also invited, Norris was really slow to register what he had to do on stage.

Towards the end of the show, small plastic balls were thrown to the audience and M picked up two to keep as souvenirs. Show ended at 9:35pm and we headed to Jeju T.H.E. Hotel to stay for the night. Settled down, watched a bit of tv, packed a little and slept.

Thoughts: Was happy that M enjoyed the farm experiences and I got to learn how to make ice cream. Will probably try out the ice cream making at home someday. Nanta Show was really good and I wouldn’t mind watching it over again.