May is a great month in Seoul. The warm sunshine and occasional spring breeze makes it nice to travel around. It is also a great month for university students (including me) because mid terms are finally over and you get to relax for a bit before the finals come and it is finally that time of the year for University Festivals!

UNIVERSITY FESTIVALS

2018 Hanyang University Festival

University Festivals or 대학축제 (read: daehak chugje) are festivals held by universities in Korea. At these festivals they usually have  food stalls / food trucks, photo booths, games, events, performances, etc. It's similar to a school cup or pensi (pentas seni) in Indonesia.

University Festivals at Seoul are usually held in May (mostly early to mid May, differs between universities). Not only you can enjoy good food and the festive ambience, at these time they will also  invite guest stars / singers and you can see the performances for FREE - how awesome is that!? 😄

Last year, I only got the chance to visit 2 universities festivals - Ewha W. University Festival and Hanyang University Festival. I had good experience at both but I do have to say I liked Hanyang University Festival slightly better.

2018 Ewha W. University Festival

Ewha's festival is quite nice actually. It has a lot of stalls operated mostly by students clubs that sell food and merchandise for an affordable price. Ewha's festival has that girly-cheerful ambiance in my opinion.

Korean pancake in the making :9

Korean Pancake! 😄🍴

They invited 3 guest singers: Juniel, Sleeq, and Jung Se Woon for the event. It was supposed to be an outdoor event but moved inside the auditorium due to the heavy rain that night.

2018 EWU Festival Performance Line Up (disclaimer: not mine, got this from Ewha Student Council FB Page, credits to owner)

Since I'm technically an Ewha student for a semester, I get the chance to come in earlier and get a spot quite near to the front of the stage, hence I can see them perform quite up close :D

Talent show lineup before the actual performance :D

Juniel 🎤🎸

Here is my low quality video of the performance on Ewha Festival I took with my phone. Should've brought my camera but it was raining and all :(

2018 Hanyang University Festival
Hanyang's festivals was quite different from Ewha's. It is somehow louder and more crowded.. And tbh, it seems more fun 😅.

2018 Hanyang University Festival Vibes - it's more crowded than it seems

Actually Hanyang University invited quite a lot of guest singers for their festival performances but I went there the day when Blackpink and DPR Live performed.

2018 Hanyang University Festival Performance (24/5) Line Up (disclaimer: not mine, got this from Hanyang University Student Council FB Page, credits to owner)

I went there with some friends and we arrived at around 6 pm. Thankfully we still got pretty good seats. We had a nice, slightly up-front view of the stage and I have to thank Hanyang for having the performances be a seated event as I would hate if everyone was standing because then I wouldn't be able to see a thing.

Refreshments! 🍕 - Got the Starbucks Chai Tea for free btw 😁

View from our seats

After we got our seats, the wait begins. As from what I heard usually the guest singers performances will start around 9 pm but that day it started at around 10 pm. We waited for almost 4 hours! It was worth it tho.

BLACKPINK! 💕

The Crowds

The performances were REALLY GREAT! It was a very nice experience for me, to visit other universities festivals and to see Blackpink and DPR Live perform live.

GUEST STARS & SINGERS

There are different celebrities for different universities. Other's from the two university festivals above, here is a little bit of the 2018 university festivals line up - just for references:


There are a lot of famous names here. But the ones I listed here are not all of the singers invited. For further info, you can go search at naver.com

To any exchange student studying in Korea (particularly Seoul) or anyone travelling to Korea in May, do try visiting these university festivals! They are definitely worth visiting!

Some recommended university festivals (according to my Korean teacher and friends) are Yonsei University Festival, Konkuk University Festivals, Korea University Festivals, Hongik University Festival - sadly Ewha is not on this list 😅.

"I WANT TO VISIT / SEE THE PERFORMANCES BUT I'M NOT A STUDENT THERE :("

As far as I know, these festivals are open for everyone. They allow non-students to watch the performance too. Some universities requires tickets to watch the performance but most of them are completely free - you just have to line up to get in. 

Usually the gate to enter the event place is opened first to the students of that particular university and around 1.5 to 2 hours later, they will open the gate for everyone. The students of that particular university do have some privilege. 

Some university also make a special designated area for their students (usually in front / near of the stage) whilst outsider can sit (or stand) on the area behind. It depends on the university so do check the regulation first.

If you want to see your favourite Korean singers, these festivals are really a good chance to see them perform. Usually one university will invite a couple of singers / guest stars and one singer or group usually perform around 4 - 5 songs. Just don't expect a 'concert' concert vibe tho because it isn't, just think of it as a mini concert. 

TIPS

Here are some tips if you want to visit these festivals to see the performances:

1. Check the festival schedule & guest stars line up 

It's easier if you understand Korean a bit or able to read hangeul (korean letters). Go to daum.net / naver.com and type in "20XX 대학축제 라인업" (you can change the XX to the current year). You will see some results similar to this one. Then you can check the schedule of the festivals and the line up for the guest stars for each university. 

2. Check the info on their Facebook page

Pick some of the university festival that you want to go and go to their Facebook page for more info. Just search " XX 대학교 총학생회" (change the XX to the university name) on Facebook. Again, it's easier if you understand Korean. On their Facebook page usually there will be some information about the gate opening hours for students and outsiders and some other info like whether you need to pay for a ticket or not, the time of performances, etc. 

3. Check the location! 

Do note that some of the universities are not in Seoul (for example Sungkyunkwan Univ is located in Suwon which is around 1 hour by subway from Seoul) so you have to plan ahead on how will you get back to your accommodation. These sort of event usually started around 5 - 7 pm for opening performance and around 9 pm for main performance. They usually end pretty late and the public transportation is not open 24 hours so you might consider checking the time for the last bus or train to go back. Another option is to take a taxi back but it can be expensive, depending on where are you going.

5. Come early!

Whether you're a student or not, do come early to get the best spots, especially if the singers or guest stars are very popular in Korea. 

And that's all for this post! Thanks for reading!

April is here and it means spring is coming! 😃

Spring in South Korea is actually a very pleasant time of the year (aside from the high level of fine dust 😅). The weather is starting to get a bit warmer and the flowers are blooming in various parts of the country. In Seoul particularly, there are some places where you can see spring flowers blooming beautifully such as Seoul Grand Park, Seoul Forest, Namsan Park, Gyeongbuk Palace, Changdeok Palace, Kyunghee University and many more. 

{On side note, I considered myself lucky as Ewha also have spring flowers blooming all over the campus. It makes the beautiful campus even prettier 😁}

Apart from those places above, I want to highlight two of Seoul's well-known Spring Festivals which are Yeouido Spring Flowers Festival and Seokchon Lake Cherry Blossom Festival. I went to both last year and they were great! On these festivals you can view lots and lots of spring flowers and enjoy various events and fun things to do. Do note that these festivals is usually crowded so it's not the place if you want to take pictures without other people in it. On the other hand, I think the crowds and all of the events in these festivals makes them more fun and enjoyable. 

Hi guys! 😊 Me and my mom just got back from our Thailand trip a couple weeks ago. The trip was planned super last minute, it was super short, but super fun!

We visited a lot of great places which I can't wait to share with you. But as for this post, I'm going to keep it short and dedicate this one for Chocolate Ville Bangkok only - because it is definitely a place that deserves an entire post to fully review.

After a 3 hours flight from Jakarta, we finally arrived on Don Mueang Airport in Bangkok. We took a taxi from the official taxi stand to go to our hotel in Pratunam - we stayed at Berkeley Hotel Pratunam. Make sure to get taxi from the official taxi stand to avoid getting ripped off. The trip cost us 390 Baht (include 50 Baht airport surcharge & 120 Baht toll fee).

Bangkok looks and feels a lot like Jakarta except the confusing yet beautifully unique Thai writings everywhere. It is crowded, hot, has a lot of traffic jams and in Thailand they also drive on the right side of the road. And to be honest, Thai people are not very different with Indonesian people in appearance. So it feels a bit like home away from home.

Our first day in Bangkok went very well actually. We arrived at our hotel at about 2 pm after surviving some traffic jams and even got the chance to have lunch at the famous chicken rice stall across our hotel before finally going to Chocolate Ville.

The best way to go to Chocolate Ville, or Chocoville for short, is by taxi / uber. As a lot of people said that many taxi drivers in Bangkok don't want to go by metered argo and set a fix price that oftenly are a lot more expensive than the actual fare by meter (though we don't experience this with any taxi we took in Bangkok, the drivers are also very nice so we gave them some extra tips - just round up the nominals like we usually do in Jakarta), we ordered Uber which already have an estimate price that's cheap and very reasonable. It actually cost us 226 Baht to get to Chocoville from our hotel but we don't have any small bills so we give 300 Baht to our Uber driver and consider it as a tip because Chocoville is a lot farther than we expected it would be.

The trip was smooth, there are only a little bit of jams and it took us around 1.5 - 2 hours to get to Chocoville. When we arrive at 3.30 pm there are not many people there, we only see one or two staffs cleaning here and there. I'm not complaining though, it's nice to take photos without someone photobombing in it 😀.

Oh, and in case you haven't know yet, Chocoville is a large outdoor restaurant with an European village theme. Very pretty indeed and I can't help thinking that it looks so much like Disneyland. It is, at least for me, a mini Disneyland with all the beautifully made buildings and scenery all over the place. It really remind me much of Disneyland's Main Street area.

I got the urge to always emphasize that this place is very very cute and very very instaworthy 📷. And here are some more photos to proof it :

Although it looks a lot like a cool village in Europe, you can't fool yourself that you are not in Bangkok because the weather is very hot and humid. But don't worry because I found a perfect cooling place which is . . . the toilet! 😁

I think the toilet is the only air conditioned place in this outdoor restaurant except the wine shop. And its not bad either to occasionally 'hide' from the heat in the toilet while fixing up your hair or simply touching up make up for more photo opt.

One more thing to note is you must try their fresh coconut. It was 90 Baht and it made an excellent refreshment. It tasted sooo sweet and it was cold as ice, it tasted heavenly! 🌴

We had our dinner at around 4.30 pm and ordered Stir Fried Pork with Basil and Sweet & Sour Chicken with rice. It tasted well actually but nothing special. The stir fried pork is sweet and taste a bit new with the fried basil on top while the sweet & sour chicken . . . I can say I've had better ones in Jakarta. Nevertheless, I have to admit that food wasn't the main reason we went there.

When we already had our fun exploring and taking photos in all parts of the restaurant, we finally went back to our hotel. We took a taxi from the taxi stand near the gate of Chocoville. And to make sure that the driver goes by meter we simply just state our hotel name and ask, "By meter?" Then the driver said, "Ok." so we board his taxi and go straight to our hotel :) The trip back cost us 345 Baht including 20 Baht taxi stand surcharge and 115 Baht toll fee. The journey takes around 1 - 1.5 hours (which is about 30 minutes shorter because we took the highway).

Overall I really really enjoyed our visit to Chocolate Ville and it has become one of my favourite place during our trip to Thailand. Will make sure to come back!

P.S : Here are the address & map of Chocolate Ville in Thai so you can print & show it to your Uber / Taxi driver to get there although I'm pretty much sure that most Uber & Taxi drivers already familiar with this place because during the past few years it has become one of the main tourist attraction in Bangkok 😄. But just in case . . .

(Disclaimer : this map is not mine, got it from google image. credits to owner ☺)

That's all for this post. Will write about more exciting places we visited while in Thailand in the next one. Thanks for reading 😀!

Chocolate Ville (อคโกแลต วิลล์)

Soi Nawamin 74, Yak 3-8, Kaset-Nawamin Road, 

Klong Kum Subdistrict, Bueng Kum District.

Bangkok 10230

+66 819212016

http://chocolateville.net/