Thoughts beyond my life & my travel - Bel

When you travel from one country to another, there is always a time difference between two destinations. Then when you talk to a friend who lives overseas and travels to another country the same time as your travel, you definitely find it very confusing on figuring "what time is it" in different cities. I'm not particularly good in Mathematics but everyone can do some simple maths to figure out time differences but it came to a time that my head refused to figure out the local time for more than 2 countries. It was like my head having an argument with me saying that "how come you need to know the time in so many destinations. Right, so I negotiated with my brain and begged him to tell me just the time in one more country other than Hong Kong. He probably thought that it's a fair deal not to make him feel too confusing and tired. Ok, I could figure out the Frankfurt time while I totally put Vancouver timing aside. My friend wrote me a note last week, saying that s...

Korea has given us a high-tech and hip image in recent years. Korean fashion as well as LG and Samsung phones are quite a hit in Hong Kong and are being embraced by many young people. Cosmetic brands such as Skin Food, Laneige, Missha and Mioggi are quite popular, too. However, friends have been telling me that they love Japan but none of them find Korea a fun travel destination. So I decided to check it out myself and give it a fair judgement. Is Korea another Japan? Definitely not. I can only say that it lies in the middle of Japan and Taipei. Some of the shopping alleys do look a bit like Japan but the products are not that innovative and creative as in Japan. There are a lot more excitement wandering around the streets of Shinjuku or Subuya or even Omedesando in Tokyo. But I wasn't that impressed by the shopping areas in Korea. Is it high-tech? Maybe I didn't have a chance to check out its electronic stores so it's not fair for me to say anything I believe its mobile ...

I joined more tour groups recently as it's a cheaper way to travel and I didn't want to spend time planning for some of my trips. For sure, I prefer to travel on my own and find it more interesting even though I will get lost, spend more time walking or even spend more. I might not stay in a hotel when travelling on my own but I usually could choose to have a better meal no matter it's sandwich or a proper dinner. Of course, it's more fun if you meet an interesting guide in a tour group. The tour guide was a Chinese man this time. He's born in Korea but is so candid that you might wonder what he's trying to tell us. He's not eloquent in Cantonese and didn't know the hip things. The tour group stayed quiet most of the time. The only things he could get our interest was telling his love story. I bet that's the trick used by most of the tour guides in Asia. They always tell their personal stories (whether it's true or not) to relate to the local cul...

New airports were built in every city these days in order to stay competitive. Seoul also has a new airport built in Incheon located 40 minutes from the capital of Korea. I arrived early at the airport on the departure day and explored every corner of this massive airport. In terms of size, it surely beats Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, Japan, Taipei and Vancouver. It's the biggest and the best I've seen, too. Overall, the new airport is very big, well planned and taken into consideration many elements that truly cater the needs of modern travellers. Massages are no longer new in airports. But if you arrive early or need to spend hours before transferring to another plane, no problem at all. You can go to the Korean experience corner to build a rice box yourself or go to the free Wi Fi zone where they have free notebooks setup with internet access. How good does it sound to you? If you have kids, just bring them to the kid playground in the airport. As Korean currency was depre...