Korea has participated in a total of 18 editions of the Olympics Winter Games. The olympic winter games will be held in Korea for first time in 30 years after the Seoul olympic games in 1988! Have you get your tickets? It's almost selling fast!

Soohorang and Bandabi! Soohorang is a white tiger that relates to korea mythology- a symbol od trust, strength and protection. Bandabi is an Asiatic black bear. The bear is symbolic of strong will and courage. I saw how cool black bears in everland theme park were!

This was taken while on the bus in the safari world. I was super impressed as how korea black bears were. They knew how to walk like human, play bear and put into the basketball hoop. That showed how smart they were!

Some of the very exciting facilities that are gonna be in place just for you.

All the competition venues of PyeongChang 2018 Olympic winter games are situated within 30 minutes driving distance from the Pyeong Chang Olympics Stadium. This made it extremely accessible for anyone to travel around without hassle. I believe there are public transportations and good hotels around those regions.

and we are just D108 days away from the winter olympics opening ceremony!!!! woohoo!

Here are 5 of the hyped winter games that are highly recommended by me and worth snagging your tickets for game's seats!

Figure skating is a type of ice sport where athletes wear bladed skates and perform various specific acrobatic movements that have a certain level of difficulty. They are judged according to their accuracy and difficulty of their manoeuvres. The size of the whole arena is specific to be around 56-60m in length and 26-30m in width. There are total 5 events in Olympic winter games that include men and ladies single, ice dance where the men and ladies dance together to compete in pairs and of course, team events.

The individual performance must include jump, spin and steps. Each performance has specific requirements whereby it constitutes different time. 2 min 50 minutes for short program, 4 min 30 seconds for men free skating and 4 minutes 10 seconds for ladies free skating.

For pair skating, they will perform series of manoeuvres including throw jumps (the man throw the woman so that she can jump, and overhead lifts where the man lift up the woman with different positions and pair spin together on a common axis, 360-degree spin almost parallel to the ice.

That is wow.

You can watch it above. I love the choreographed piece!

2. Sliding Sports Luge (for those adrenaline seekers!)

 Luge is basically a small sledge which the athlete sledges down 1,000 to 1,500m while lying down face up and feet first. The race track is built with a length of 1,000 to 1,500m, a difference in elevation of 110 to 130m. The course includes left curves, right curves, S shape curves and labyrinth. It is also designed to have walls both side so that the sledge may not skid off the track. It is considered a fast sliding sport where competitors race down and runs are timed up to 1/1,000 of a minute. The fibreglass and steel sledge is customized for individual athlete height, weight and proportion with absolutely no support for head rest.

I think it will be like watching F1? having the adrenaline rush and all watching them race

3. Snowboard (for the WOW OMG feels)

Snowboard is a sport that uses a board attached to rider's feet to speed down a slope. In this event, two athletes depart simultaneously the two gates courses (blue and red) which are installed in parallel. The athlete who comes down faster wins. There is another one that is halfpipe, where athletics perform jump rotations, and twists in the air. There will be 6 judges, which marks the overall performance score according to the height, rotations, techniques and degree of difficulty. It will be determined by the average score of 4 judges after excluding highest and lowest score.

They really got some death defying balls to play that! Soo dangerous but they are so good at it.

4. Ice Hockey (the one for all, all for one sports)

Ice hockey is a winter sport where two teams face off, which carry a maximum of 22 players and three goldtenders. Up to only five players that can skate on the ice at one time for each team and normally the goaltender is the sixth on ice player. Each team battle for the possession of the puck which is a disk made of rubber serves the same function as a ball in competitions and players use hockey stick to control it. The team have to score a goal into the opponent net to score points.

The rink is divided into two sections using a red-coloured centreline between the goals.

The game consitute three 20 minutes period, 15 minutes time out interval.

Goal hahahahaha

5. Biathlon (Interesting game!!)

It is a combination of cross-country ski-ing and riffle shooting.

The first one to reach the finishing line wins!!!

Overall, It would be an interesting experience as we don't really have snow in Singapore, and hence no winter sports. if you're interested, you can check out the ticketing details for all the highly recommended winter sports at kingdom sg website, one of the authorized sellers of Pyeongchang Olympics 2018 on the prices. The prices were reasonable and you could bundle them up with accommodation. 

Ticketing details:here!

Thanks for reading and watch out for the space for more updates! :)

Affordable and tasty skewers and hot pot combination!

I used to cross over the immigration border quite frequently from Woodlands checkpoint to Johor Bahru to patronize those vans selling skewers known as lok lok. By the way, Lok lok is a dish consisting of various deep fried food such as meat and vegetables that are served on a skewers. Those people would lay out nicely all the raw food for selection and everyone will be busy choosing what to eat. There was a time where I had an unbearable stomach ache due to slight food poisoning from eating the overly dirty and exposed skewers from malaysia. Thankfully, Lok Pot by Lucky 5 has a pretty clean ambiance and hygiene where the skewers were placed in the fridge to keep its freshness and hygiene purposes and not forgetting the huge variety of seafood, mushrooms, and vegetables! Even better than what I have expected.

You could either choose to have your food deep fried, boiled in the hotpot soup or to be barbecued by the chefs in the kitchen. Lok Pot gives you the options to choose them. One of the highly recommended skewers would be either green broccoli, oyster mushrooms, or potatoes.  My highly rave selection would be to choose deep fried so that they will add spices and flavoring to the skewers after deep-frying it! You could select 2 different kid of soup combination adnd they will prepare it for you.

There are also different sauces, continents at the station for you to mix with. I personally love this because I am a big fan of mixing everything together. For instance, I would mix oyster/fish sauce, with a little garlic and spring onion! :-) They also have their very own homemade sambal belachan chili which tasted so so good dipping with the fried skewers.

When asked how they prepare the uncooked skewers, they told us that they painstakingly poke the meat into the sticks one by one slowly. So much effort!! I believe some of you might hear about some horror stories where some owners collect the sticks wash and reuse them for the next batch of customers. Urghh. Rest assured that in Lokpot, all the sticks are brand new and newly prepared. Also, the small octopus skewer will look crunchy after barbecue nicely.

The skewers are ready to serve! Grilled mushroom, and chicken slices skewers. They added some spices which tasted really awesome. They even have big Sri-lanka crabs available!!

You can request to view and choose any crab you want before it is served!

The uncle was really friendly in helping us to get the biggest crab for our tasting!

It is a must to have a selfie with the big crab!

And... you know what is the best part is?

You get to drizzle or dip those crabs with chili crab sauce!! They even provide fried mantou on the counter (free self-service even though you never order crab!) for you to dip the sauce and eat it. I am impressed with the egg taste combination and the sauce together with the crab. I just had to... scoop more sauce into my tiny bowl haha!

Then it was the...time for the mouth orgasm oysters. Okay what a word but, the oyster really tasted so good and juicy!!And the best part it comes with garlic shallots and chili or you could opt to eat it just raw. The oysters per piece are not expensive at all. I love how I could taste the freshness in my mouth. It was just pure damn good.

We also had the opportunity to go to the back kitchen and, I really like how they cook their seafood white beehoon. The taste of wok-hei stir fry and the sauce smelled so good. The white bee hoon was bathed in delicious broth.

Check out the cool fried broccoli and the deep fried straw mushrooms yo 

And after the food tasting, we managed to talk to one of them that owes LokPot eatery. We were so overwhelmed by their kindness and they kept asking if the food was okay and did we like it. :) No doubt their service standards are of A++! Bonus points to him being very young and ambitious of wanting to do well in this business with his dad. I do highly recommend this place!! Also, the eatery closes at around 2am so you can drive there grab some skewers and slowly chill, eat with your family or friends.

Lastly, special thanks to Smitten team for inviting us! 

Lok Pot by Lucky 5

How to get there:

Address: 416, Bedok North Avenue 2, #01-53 (can take bus from bedok interchange or a 5mins walk away from bedok library)
Singapore 460416

Opening hours: 4pm onwards

Telephone number: 6445 8887

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/lokpotsg/

Final verdict: 

verdict: 4.3/5!

Food: 4.2/5

Ambiance 4/5

Service 5/5!

Thanks for reading!

MARK YOUR CALENDARS GUYS. For those who love soju and ski-ing, this is for you! 

Do you know that Macdonalds in Korea is officially their partner? Saw the banners everywhere while I was in Seoul and I heard that they will be starting to sell merchandise of Soohorang which you can purchase with a upsize meal. Very cute!!

When and how to go there?

The Pyeongchang olympics is set to begin on February 9, 2018. Athletics from more than 80 countries will compete across 15 disciplines in 102 events. Some of the games include freestyle ski-ing, ice hockey, ski-jumping which will be very exciting! Also, Winter Olympic organisations have announced the completion of $3.7 billion bullet train connecting Seoul to Pyeongchang in just 69 minutes! This means you can book Singapore - Incheon International Airport (Seoul) to wipe all the cosmetics in Myeongdong HAHA, and then bullet train to Gawon.

Pyeongchang is home to several ski resorts which includes Yongpyong, Bokwang Phonix Park and Alpensia- all which will serve as Olympic venues places. The bullet train will travel up to 300km/hr and can hold up to 400 passengers per trip. The fast transportation system made it really easy and quick for anyone to travel between cities with comfort. I would definitely strongly recommend you to reserve seats online quickly as train seats typically sell out fast!

But before this, you must be wondering, why travel all the way for pyeongchang winter olympics right?!?!

Firstly, would be to see all the talented pretty girls around ski-ing elegantly. They are legit super chio and I always love those choreograph ski dance pieces especially where they swirl and turn in the mid-air, so beautiful! It takes many years of effort to train this because winter Olympics happen once every 4 years. And even if you're not watching any of the games, YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY WATCH THE OPENING CEREMONY!!!

Picture are taken from Sochi 2014 winter olympic games.

It will be once in a lifetime experience watching the magnificent fireworks and the performance that will be put up. I just checked the tickets for opening and closing ceremony, they are selling out really really fast! They are left with a few tickets, so if you're interested you can grab your tickets here! Also I believe that the Olympics will incorporate visual effects from Samsung which uses highly advance technologies to bring the best entertainment to audiences.

Pyeongchang country? What can I travel and do there?

Pyeongchang is a country in Gangwon province of South Korea located in the Taebaek Mountain region. The country has a slogan, name as "Happy700 PyeongChang" where the average elevation of approximately 700m is known to make people live in best condition. The three mottos related to the slogan are best place for health, rest and leisure sports. It brings health and longevity.

Pyeongchang attraction: Yong Pyong Resort (용평리조트)

It is nested at the foot of Balwangsan Mountain and has an annual average snowfalll of 250cm, perfect for great ski resort. The ski resort is close to many attractions and Goblin, the movie actually filmed there!! It will be so romantic to have your love one with you exploring this beautiful place and ski-ing.

Address: 715 Olympic-ro, Daegwalnyeong-myeon, Pyeongchang-gun, Gangwon-do, South Korea

Pyeongchang attraction: Woljeongsa Temple (월정사 (오대산)

The temple is located in a forested valley east of Odasan Mountain, and have over 60 temples and 8 monasteries. The temple was first established by Monk Ja Jang (590-658) and it is also a site of Seongbo Musuem, displying artifacts and treasures from Buddhist culture of the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392) and include a nine-story octagonal pagoda) Goblin also flimed there as well!

Address: 374-8, Odaesan-ro, Jinbu-myeon, Pyeongchang-gun, Gangwon-do

The local food in PyeongChang

Like in Seoul, they ate many different side dishes such as kimchi, preserved vegetables, fishcake and also seafood pancake. The colourful variety of side dishes make my stomach growl so bad! However, they are famous for the buckwheat jelly.

Buckwheat jelly is a light gray-brown muk (jelly) made from buckwheat starch.

And renowned for their korean beef!! I love the tasty texture and the flavourful marinated meat.

And of course, trying hanbok in the winter. (Very cold, but really beautiful!)

Hanbok rental are typically 1hr-2hrs, and it is inclusive of the hair accessories and a small bag. It would be really memorable to take picture in such coldness.

credits: sweetscape.com

Here's a picture of me in hanbok:

We are just 200 days away!

You could join all the free activities at Korea Plaza to know about the upcoming Pyeongchang winter olympics. It will definitely be a fun and fulfilling day. If you're travelling there, the nearest MRT would be raffles place MRT, a short distance walk away. I will be there on the day itself to visit! Hope to see you guys! Let me know if you're going as well :)

Thanks for reading!!