Before going to a different country or a new place, it is important that you perform some research first. The following are some of the things that you as a traveler need to bear in mind before making up your mind to travel to Korea.

To start with, obtaining flight tickets to Seoul does not wholly guarantee your entrance. Nationals from various countries are supposed to obtain visas from the Korean embassies back in their home nations to enter legally. Depending on the purpose of entry, an appropriate visa is going to be issued. Legal procedures should be followed after the submission of the outlined requirements.

Travelers also need to bear in mind that it is not all the Koreans can converse fluently in English. In some of the cases it has been realized that some of them usually get terrified being addressed in that foreign language. But signs have translations and taxis have free interpreters. Thus, travelers need to take time and study even the basic phrases. It would be enough to use simple greetings such as “kamsahamnida” meaning thank you.

As a tourist, you need to stay informed of the Korean weather conditions before you decide to travel. Spring comes between March/April to May/June. Summer falls between June/July to August. Autumn falls between August/September to November/December. Winters comes in between November or December to February or March.

The benefit of knowing the seasons is because it will help in selecting the type of clothing you should bring about. For those who live in subtropical and tropical nations, the cold seasons can be literally very cold for them. It is advisable to bring scarves, earmuffs, jackets and coats when visiting in such a season. Staying comfortable during the nights is assured of as most of hotels in this country have heaters installed in the rooms.

The above sums up some of the things a tourist should know before heading to Korea. A travel adventure is truly worth the experience in case you are prepared to travel to this wonderful nation.

There was no work today, because of the super typhoon and knowing I will not wake up early, I have decided to sleep late in the evening last night, to tweak and changed my blog\’s theme and as you can see, my blog is wearing a new theme.

I have posted it in my social account and my fellow bloggers, reminiscence their blogs and blogging life back then, as  they already stopped blogging and let their domain names expired. It was the same for me, I let some of my precious domain name goes, because I can\’t maintained them anymore. It was heartening to let them go, but it was for the better, I let my two travel blogs, photography, pet and food blogs expired. I choose to maintain three blogs, and I almost lost them a few months ago, but with the help of my facemask business at work, I am able to pay and renew my domain and pay my hosting monthly, as to this day.

The Blogger Theme

Anyway, my new theme was the theme I won from a blogging/writing contest back then, it was designed for blogger platform, but I tweaked it into a wordpress theme. What do you think?

We have been traveling in Eastern Europe for almost three weeks already,  we went from Hungary to Slovakia and now we are in Torun, Poland.  We stayed five days in Krakow and took an 8 hour bus ride to Torun, there\’s nothing much to see in Torun aside from the old town, churches and museums.  So after visiting two museums today and walking again in the old town (as we already wandered yesterday) we called it a day and headed back to our hotel to rest, we are heading to Gdanks tomorrow.

[Krakow, Poland]

I should be blogging in my main travel blog but it was stuck in Jeju, Korea blame it to procrastinated me. (Ha-ha), anyway while looking around my facebook page I have stumbled to a link shared by a friend about a blog of  two travel buddies who are disappointed/sick with Filipino food – I Would Rather Go Hungry Than Eat Filipino Street Food Again! Not new to me, my husband is not please with Filipino food either,  I will wait until he try an authentic Filipino restaurant. Lol!

Well, I admire their courage to eat street food because I would not eat street food unless I knew the vendor or person cooking it is better to be safe than sorry. It is like you travel to India and commit stomach suicide (errr Delhi belly)  by eating street food,  I am not sure if they do proper research before heading to Philippines or even try to use a lonely planet guide on their trip, because it is quite unbelievable that they are not able to try longganisa if they went to Ilocos (as I have read in few comments) you can get these famous longganisa in the street of Vigan and they even have their famous empanada with longganisa. Even if they didn\’t go to Vigan they can find longganisa in every wet market of the Philippines, they are all hanging like a wall decor in every meat stalls. So quite interesting they are not able to get one unless they really went to convenient store to look for longganisa, you know it is like buying  a loaf a bread in a pharmacy and buying  a medicine in a bakery.

Well if they stay in a hotel/hostel they should ask the information desk where to get traditional food if their travel guide (book) doesn\’t say so or a simple question to Mr. Google is already a big help.  Asking people in the street is like asking for direction, some people knew and some people don\’t.  If they want to Filipino street food like balut they can get them in the local market, just look for egg stalls and ask for balut but of course they have to boil them themselves unless they found a street vendor walking in the street shouting \”balut! balut!\” you can find balut vendor from 5pm till midnight.

Most Filipino eat heavy breakfast, consist of fried rice, fried eggs, longganisa and tuyo (fried dried fish) or tapa. If they want to eat Filipino breakfast they should went to tapsilugan or Chowking, Greenwich and McDonalds to order tapsilog, longgilog and more (see more varieties here).

Furthermore, I have read they want to eat like locals, but sad to say they failed. Filipino foods like adobo, sinigang, kare-kare, nilaga, bulalo, sisig are mostly cooked at home and can be found in a medium scale restaurants or large restaurants. Mostly Filipinos will not eat food they can easily cooked at home, so if you went to turo-turo (point-point restaurant), you will mostly see menudo, dinuguan, afritada, bopis and taghilaw or those food that you can only eat during birthdays, wedding and feast season. If you really want to eat well prepared food be ready to spend some shackles, further more if they are really in their tight budget or trying to spend $25 a day, malls in the Philippines has food courts where they can try different foods local and not.  Eat wisely,  eating in the street of South East Asia is not like eating in the street of Europe! Saving money while traveling doesn\’t mean eating bluntly and sacrificing your health.

Originally posted on March 21, 2014 @herztravel

Growing your food isn’t rocket science, it is very simple when you have the desire and will to do it. As a kid, I grew up with my family doing backyard gardening, to sustain our daily needs at home.  We planted string beans, eggplants, and ladies’ fingers, which became very helpful to us because having a harvest means a free meal or viand.

Today, my father still does backyard gardening and it was very beneficial to us in health and somehow in our food expenses, as it saves us from buying fruits and vegetables which are present in my father’s garden.  Growing vegetables at home does cost a bit on seeds and supplies, as we don’t have a large backyard. Most often my parents plant vegetables in empty cans and bags.

The other day, my father came home with ripe papayas after tending his garden. We still have the pineapple he harvested the previous day, and the bananas he harvested a week ago, which was kept in our old fridge to ripe, We took photo of it, amaze what a simple gardening can do.

Since we couldn’t eat them all, my father brought some of the fruits to his employer’s house to share, which he always did.  They were very kind and helpful to us and even treated my family just like no other. When my grandmother died, they \ were the ones who lent us a large sum of money without batting an eyelash, so we could all go home for my grandmother’s funeral, They also gave work to my father, even if it wasn’t needed, so it is just right to share our blessings to good people, right?

It was been raining hard these past two days and last night was no different. In the middle of my sleep I was visited of the same dream again, the same, because the dream was familiar and I knew that it wasn\’t the first time I have dreamed of it.

The dream was about me and my friends who are my coworker in this life, we sailed through a wooden boat and it was capsized and me doesn\’t know how to swim drowned, but I was very peaceful when I drowned, I didn\’t struggle to live nor to breath, I just accepted it was already my end.

[Photo courtesy of Engin Akyurt/pexels.com]

To dream of dying wasn\’t new to me, I dreamed of it once and I thought I have wrote that dream, but perhaps I didn\’t because I can\’t find it.

On that dream, I am a man lying in the hospital bed surrounded by my wife and two children, I was dying and gasping for air, but everything was very peaceful, that dream was very realistic because I can feel it until I woke up from the dream.

The realization hits me that my dreams about me dying were my past life, I have been trying to do past life regressions these past few months, but I keep jumping back to the present, but there are two new things I saw when I did the regression.

First, it was very dark and all of a sudden a bomb exploded and the only thing I saw was a baby wrap in a pink blanket thrown into the air cause by the explosion, second was seeing a fire camp, it was dark ages, I am black knight I guess, now I understand why I am so interested with the dark ages when I am in secondary grade, I was too excited learning about that age or era.