Went for a winter vacation at Korea for a week with my wife and kid. Was it good? It was alright overall. Not world class but, it was ok for the price we paid. 

One funny thing happened before I went there though. A couple days before I flew there, I called up the bank to activate my card for my ‘vacation in Korea’. I didn’t bother mentioning which of the 2 Koreas, but the attendant had to ask if it was ‘North or South Korea?’.. like that. I was totally dumbfucked – does that mean that people actually go to North Korea for vacation? Or was the attendant just being retarded? I don’t know. Anyway, it was South Korea that I went to, if one has to ask. It was an 8-day vacation and at times, it felt like forever. Why? A few down points made me felt that way:

1) Food
There’s one thing very prominent about Korean people – they suck at making food. We’ve been introduced to heaps of ‘famous’ Korean delicacies and in my own observation, they’re basically comprised of only 3 types of food – barbecue, steamboat and kimchi. You just dump in different types of meat into the barbecue grill, or a pot with soup, and slap it with a fancy name – chances is high that it is a type of Korean food. Any vegetable or fruit can also be made into kimchi. So, it’s just maths from thereon, you just combine your meat vs vegetables vs fruits vs the either barbecue/steamboat/kimchi – you get a whole culture of Korean food. They’re more or less the same. It’s fucking depressing really (for Penang people, especially).

2) Language
I was told that English is a compulsory subject in Korean education. But to my opinion, that is a complete bullshit (well, either that or, everyone failed their English). Unless you speak Korean, you’ll never get your shit together there. Road signs, maps, amenities, they’re all in Korean hieroglyphics. Communication is a big major cockblock there, so, backpacking is totally out of the question (unless you speak Korean or good at figuring out alien languages at warp speed). I was thinking, why do we humans even bother beaming binary messages to outer space in search for extra terrestrial intelligent beings out there in the universe, when we can’t even fucking get around understanding the Korean people in planet Korea. 

3) Weather
I am a cold person. I like cold weather. But that’s about it. Having to weather the dry and sub zero temperature is not my idea of having a relaxing vacation, as I have to laboriously lug along thick winter clothing in and out of the chill and in between heated environments. It wouldn’t had been that bad if everywhere’s cold, because I could just keep my clothing on. But it had to be cold outside, and extremely warm indoor. So it’s either freezing to the bone, or hot to the core. That’s the part I hate most, adding and removing the layers as you go to places. It sucks and makes me appreciative of not having to worry about carrying extra clothing everywhere I go… here in Malaysia. 

4) Old people
Young Koreans are beautiful (plastic fucking surgery), but the old ones are on the exact opposite end of the distribution curve. They’re rude and ignorant. In the span of 8 days, I’ve been shoved and elbowed by old Korean hags (with oddly familiar cauliflower hairstyles) for not less than a dozen times. They would walk into my line of sight every time I wanted to take a photo and they do not bother to give any fuck. If you ask me, this seems to point to a disturbing trend – old people, they’re fucked up no matter which culture they’re from. But Korean’s worse because of the remnants of silicon and overly ebony wig, which give them the appearance of a stop-motion special effects creature from the past. 

And that’s about all I hated about Korea. Otherwise, it would be an epic vacation. The landscapes there are no doubt beautiful – I particularly enjoyed the view at a place called Seongsan Ilchulbong, at Jeju island – it’s basically a dead volcano by the ocean, and is a UNESCO listed site or something. Then there’s this place where we took a cable car up a mountain range at Seoraksan National Park, with a view to die for. Also, went to a fake island with a bunch of trees and stuff where a purportedly famous Korean love drama was made – it was just alright but nevertheless, better than something like our Cameron Highlands. Then there’s the ski thing we did, it was alright. We were also brought to a theme park owned by Samsung called ‘Everland’, which records one of the happiest episode of my daughter’s life. 

Also, I would like to mention this – I’ve never encountered a dirty public toilet at Korea during the entire trip. This is a feat that is hard to achieve in my humble opinion. Maybe I’ve been to only the good places but, they seem to be on the better scale than most people (I’ve seen bad toilets even in the U.S.). They have the respective janitor’s picture with contact numbers posted in each of the restroom, which I think could be the trick. They make the janitor own the fucking toilet like it’s his joint. The guy’s a phone call away from cleaning your shit and he can’t go very far – I think we needed that in our country because our state of public toilet is downright abysmal. It’s little thing like this that makes a whole lot of difference, don’t you think?

After we came back home, my wife and I agreed on one thing, the visit to Korea actually made us appreciate our home country more. We whooped some Hokkien Mee the first chance we had back home and 2 back-to-back meals of chicken rice for Regine. It’s one thing about saying ‘there’s no place like home’, feeling it is an entirely different thing. We needed this vacation and we had it alright.

Pangkor Island, the tropical paradise. Heard of that many times. Never got the chance to visit it… until last weekend. It was a big stinking shithole. Would never go there ever again.

But I have to admit, the first impression at the marina (Marina Island – the place where my family and I boarded a ferry to Pangkor) was pretty good. It looked like an airport complete with landscaping and stuff. It even has an electronic ticketing system, where you don’t get to see middle aged creepy Malay blokes with strong B.O. going around asking for your ticket (like many places in Malaysia). I was like “Wow, this is impressive!”. The ferry ride was also quite pleasant. But that’s about the point where it ended.

Once we got to the other side (i.e. Pangkor Island), shit just went down 7 classes and negative 4 stars. It was like walking through a portal from a world class airport into a Mogadishu pirates’ fishing village. Filthy, worn out and fucked up. The whole place also reeked of dead animals – must be the fishes. And then, once we’re out of the fucked up jetty complex, we were swamped by a group of thuggish looking taxi drivers offering their services. I don’t know if it’s just me but, I felt intimidated by this… and felt strongly so much more after got up into their van-taxis. (total junk, no air conditioner, spewing black smoke – which is ironic about the claim of going there to whiff some fresh air).

So what about the place? It’s like a retarded version of Langkawi. But Langkawi is so much better because it has got cheap ass booze (otherwise, still suck as a resort place). But Pangkor, there’s nothing there – just some ridiculously narrow roads, giant landfill, expensive food and contaminated sea. I’ve heard people claiming it to be a world class resort, but that’s definitely a bullshit. World class for houseflies perhaps….

There’s another resort nearby – ‘Pangkor Laut’ – which I heard from some pesky housewives, is a secret hideaway for Brad Pitt and the chick who starred in ‘The Eye’ (hence the spillover claim of being world fucking class). But for a few grands a night, that better be fucking out-of-this-world awesome, but I seriously doubt it’d be just by being so near this big stinking shithole. Overall, it’s just an utter waste of time and money being at that few degrees on the surface of our planet.

If you’re planning for Pangkor, better fuck that plan. Go somewhere better instead – like Redang or something (but don’t come to Penang, we’ve got enough traffic already).

I always had the impression that Cameron Highlands is the ‘tame’ version of Genting Highlands. You know, instead of theme parks and casinos, Cameron has farms and fresher air. A laid back place to relax and shit. That was what I experienced when I visited that place 11 years ago. Time was slow there, and things were simple.

But not anymore. Went there again last weekend, and discovered that the place has turned into a shithole. Cameron Highlands, like Genting Highlands, sucks donkey cock. Actually, it sucks even more than Genting Highlands.

Let me tell you why. I’m going to make this in point form.

1) Bad traffic. It has only 1 main (small 2 way traffic) road connecting between all the towns and commercial spots, and there are like, hundreds of thousands of vehicles there. As a result, you get a simulation of what happens when a woman flushes down her big piece of sanitary napkin down the toilet bowl – an overflow of shit all over. Laid back and relaxing? Not really. Traffic jam, lack of parking space, frustration and cusses? Yes. That’s not my idea of relaxation.

2) Lack of fun. In the scale of 1 – 5, with 5 being the best? I’d rate the fun factor as 0.5. There’s basically nothing there. Only stuff commonly found in any pasar malam or wet market, nothing unique. And another thing that I noticed was, the people there seem to be very gung-ho about their strawberries. You’d see strawberry themed merchandise every-fucking-where. Giant styrofoam figures, pillows, lamp covers, etc. It was as if they invented and introduced strawberry to the world. “I see strawberry also, I tulan” – quote from me.

3) Run down. The roads there suck. Full of potholes, pebbles and garbage. We went to the pasar malam in the evening, it was full of garbage as well. The public toilets, like Genting Highlands, are a true reflection of our Malaysian hygiene. Filthy as hell. But they’re much worse than Genting because you have to actually fucking pay to go into their shitty toilet! The parking’s free though, if that’s any consolation to anyone… and not many of them around.

There you go. Some people say, Cameron Highlands is a great place to host gatherings with friends or relatives. I don’t know about that but, if it is the company of people that makes one enjoy an event, then why can’t that person do it somewhere nearer, cheaper or more convenient? It doesn’t fucking make any sense. Maybe I’m just hard to please and being pain in the ass, I don’t know. But it was really dumb of me – that’s for sure – to expect things to be exactly like how it was 11 years ago.

To make it short, it’s a boring place. The only thing nice is probably the tea plantation scenery there. But if you were to ask me, I’d say it’s not worth the trouble to go all the way up there.

All my life, I’ve never been to Genting Highlands for more than 10 times. I have to admit, I am never fond of that place for many reasons. I’ve only been to the casino to gamble 2 – 3 times, and have never really roamed the other areas, especially the theme parks, until last Friday – when I decided to bring my 3.5 year old daughter (with my wife) to the theme park(s) there.

So, did she have a blast? Somewhat. But not for my wife and I. We (I) think the whole place sucks donkey cock. First of all, I find that everything there is too expensive (including the rides). Not that it’s new or anything so, I’m ok with that. Secondly, as one of the major national tourist attractions, I think the place is not up to the supposed standard. Many of the areas are dimly lit and poorly maintained. Garbage littered everywhere, walls overgrown thick with moss and fungus (also, check out the water in the flume ride, it’s brown in color ughhh). Makes me feel like I’m visiting Pudu bus station. And then the toilets. Man, are they a true reflection of our Malaysian public toilets. Cracked tiles, cracked mirrors, overpowering stench of ammonia, flotilla of unidentified brown objects in the bowl, what more can I describe. It’s a turn off.

But what’s most disappointing of all, is the seemingly long face of its employees manning the rides in the theme parks. I mean, I do not really expect them to be enthusiastic with their menial job or anything, but I believe ‘being friendly’ pretty much comes as part of the job. Just force a fake smile, I don’t care. Just don’t fucking make it look like we owe them money or something. But alas, none of them smiles. It is as if, Genting has a tacit no-smile policy in effect. If any of them is caught smiling, the perpetrator will be forced to clean the filthy toilets (that’s why they’re not smiling, and the toilets are so damn fucking dirty).

Well, except for one weird Indian guy who manned that 4D motion something something ride. He was the only guy who smiled at us. He would have won the ‘employee of the month’ (if not year) award, if not for his eccentric behavior – when being asked a question, the guy would beam a megawatt smile and give an incoherent one worded reply, and enjoy the shit out of himself seeing others getting frustrated. I fell victim to his shenanigan and so did a few foreigners. The guy’s obviously not right in the head, that’s probably why he smiled at us. Or maybe he just wanted the sense of control he has over others, which he probably doesn’t get a lot from the much more intelligent society… I don’t know.

All in all, Genting’s definitely a sad place to be. Overpriced, over-crowded, bad services, and poorly maintained facilities. It’s nothing more than a souped up gambling den for people with money to spare. If you ask me, I’d say it is a waste of time and money to go there for a holiday. If you insist, allow me to suggest Pudu bus station. Or Penang’s KOMTAR. You’d get the same experience, at a much cheaper price.

Attended a teambuilding event at Genting during the weekend. But it wasn’t really a teambuilding. It was actually a plan made by one of my colleagues to pave way for our team to have fun up there. The so called “teambuilding” event was just a game of bowling, which wasn’t really that nice (the alley was quite hot and stuffy). And the rest of the time, were for our own leisure.

But for the 5 of us (Wilson, Ken, Ted, AssTee and myself), the whole thing looked like a golden opportunity for us to romp. We hence made ourselves some plans to heighten the fun – to take a day off earlier (Friday) to Genting for a bit of an advanced national day celebration drinking event … then to continue through the weekend, head to down to KL, crash for 2 more days and only to head back to home on Tuesday (which is today).

So we stocked up our booze and got ourselves ready on Friday for the highly anticipated weekend. But little did we know… that the whole trip was an ill fated one… Here’s a summarized version of the fuck ups that we encountered (summarized because I’m damn tired right now)

- We’re supposed to leave on Friday noon, but at the very last minute before our journey, AssTee got himself caught by his retarded boss and was lectured for 2 hours. Something of little significance. He was asked for an assessment report to be submitted on that day itself. We told AssTee to ignore his boss and got the journey started.

- We got our booze and mixers ready for all the drinking event. But when we were at Genting, we realized that there wasn’t even a single convenient store that sells ice cubes/tubes. Because of that, we were forced to do a little bit of sweet talking to that lecherous looking Burger King cashier for a puny bag of ice cubes (which only lasted us for about 20 minutes). We took our drinks cold. Not chilled. (this is a big mistake)

- Alright, we soon managed to deal with it… we did it without ice cubes/tubes. It was before long, we started to experiment our drinks in different combination and had a lot of fun with it. But Ted got especially happy that night and drank faster than what a Formula 1 V10 engine could consume fuel in an hour, in less than a minute. Halfway through our high spirited event, Ted suddenly got up and walked like a possessed corpse towards the toilet and did a Linda Blair there. Green pukes all over the place (that was because we had BOLS Peppermint liquor in our diet). Each of us had to play a role in cleaning Linda’s Ted’s puke and wash him up for his big crash. Cleaning pukes was not part of the plan…

- There were supposedly 2 king sized bed for all of us to share. But because Ted got real messed up on one of the bed and there was none of us willing to sleep with Miss Linda Blair, the 4 of us decided to split the remaining bed – the top mattress for the drivers (because they’ve been driving) and the hard wooden base for me and Ken. For the whole night, Ken and I had to endure the cold (blankets prioritized for the drivers as well) and the kookiness of the wedged wooden surface. Short of a few rodents and roaches, it was almost like sleeping in a prison cell. It was no fun at all.

So there you have it. Genting. Fuck.

PS: Guess what I saw at the First World Hotel lobby? Some chick from China clipping her toenails at the lobby (on the floor) ! (sorry for the poor picture quality. I was using my zoom and was standing quite a distance from ground zero. Had to take the pic from far lest she would scratch me with her super sharp claws for taking her candid picture.)