Pakistan 2013: Dinner at Monal Restaurant

Continuation from here...

10 April 2013

After our meetings with the client, we were able to go back to the hotel to rest for a bit. I wanted to take a nap before again going out for dinner but I wasn't able to. Must be jet-lagged. We were picked up at the hotel around 5pm. But before going straight to dinner, me and my lady colleagues went to the F-6 market. We went to this handicraft store where they sold everything you can think of that was made in Pakistan - from clothes to home decors to shawls. I was able to buy a few local tops (the embroidered ones) and a shawl. We then went up Margalla Hills again to eat at Monal Restaurant. The gentlement in our group decided to hike going up to the restaurant. We were so glad we didn't come with them hehe.

 

 

The view from the restaurant was amazing! And you can just imagine how cold it was since we were almost at the top of the mountain. This was higher than Daman-e-koh.

 

This was also the first time I was able to try Islamabad's local dishes. For our lunch the day before, we went to a Chinese restaurant and then for lunch that day they ordered Pizza Hut (I know right?). The night before at The Polo Lounge, the food was continental. But really, one of the other things I was worried about for this trip (yes I had many anxieties for this trip) aside from security in the area was the food. I'm not really fond of curry-based food - well, I thought their food was curry-based. Boy, was I so wrong. I loved their food! I just coudn't take how spicy their food was! I wanted to eat more but my I felt that my tongue would explode from my mouth, it felt that it was getting bigger and bigger by the minute because of all the spice!

 

 

Here's our whole group with our client.

Panorama shot of the restaurant

Pakistan 2013: First Two Days

Sorry for not blogging as often these past couple of weeks. But to make up for it, here's a rather lengthy and picture heavy post - a continuation of my Pakistan posts.

*******

8-9 April 2013

 

As I’ve mentioned, we arrived in the late evening of our first day/night in Islamabad. We didn’t do anything but check-in to our hotel. Along the way to the hotel, we saw some campaign posters. It was campaign season too in Pakistan at that time. Their elections were held May 11, I think, while we had ours (Philippine elections) on the 13^th.

Looks like Manila, right? With the campaign posters and concrete barriers along the road.

 

The next day aside from our meetings with the client, we were able to go around the city. Thanks to our very generous client. After our meetings, we were able to freshen up in our hotels and then they picked us up for dinner and some sight seeing. We first went to Pakistan Monument.

 

From Wiki: “The Pakistan Monument in Islamabad, Pakistan is a national monument representing the nation's four provinces and three territories. After a competition among many renowned architects, Arif Masood’s plan was selected for the final design. The blooming flower shape of the monument represents Pakistan's progress as a rapidly developing country. The four main petals of the monument represent the four provinces (Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh), while the three smaller petals represent the three territories (Gilgit-Baltistan, Azak KAshmir and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas). The Monument has been designed to reflect the culture and civilization of the country and depicts the story of the Pakistan Movement, dedicated to those who sacrificed themselves for future generations.”

 

Then we went up to Margalla Hills to visit Daman-e-koh. But before going to Daman-e-koh, we stopped by the road to take a photo with the Faisal Mosque.

 

 

From wiki: “The Faisal Mosque is conceived as the National Mosque of Pakistan and named after the late King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, who supported and financed the project.

The largest mosque in South Asia, the Faisal Mosque was the largest mosue int he world from 1986 until 1993, when it was overtaken in size by the newly completed Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, Morocco.”

With my colleagues and client

Explore Daman-e-Koh after the jump...

Seoul Last

For our last day in Seoul, the first thing we did was attend mass. We went back to Myeongdong to attend the mass at the Myeongdong Cathedral. I'm not sure if the directions I downloaded from the internet was wrong or I wasn't reading the map correctly but after a few blocks of walking we kind of got lost. Then I saw some policeman so I asked them for directions, I was holding a city map when I went up to them. Tough luck they didn't know how to speak English so I had to show them the map. The first policeman I asked had to ask another colleague of him. I'm not sure if I should have shown him a map with Korean symbols written on it or if he's really not familiar with the church (to think we were only about two corners away). They said that it was straight ahead so we walked again. After a few meters, I had to ask another policeman or rather show him the map for directions. Good thing there were a group of people, maybe tourists, that were guided by another person asking them to go this way. I had a hunch they were going to where we were going and the policeman did confirm that we should follow them. So after a few minutes of walking we finally reached the church, although we were a few minutes late. One of the few things that were different there compared to masses here in Manila is that when we got to the offertory part, no basket was passed around for you to drop your offertory, rather you had to queue and drop your offertory to the person in front of the line kind of like what happens during the communion. Another thing is that there were some Koreans who were not Catholics yet but were attending the mass. I knew this because the priest mentioned about them that they can not take the communion yet because they weren't baptised Catholics.



After mass, we went back to the shopping area of Myeongdong and spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon there. We saw a lot of street food like this




We tried this by the way, it's deep fried squid.

We had the best lunch we had in Seoul on our last day. Sorry but the restaurant's name is Korean Traditional Restaurant that's what it says on their chopstick wrapper. Or maybe we just have to learn to read Korean, so that we'll know the correct name of the restaurants because all the restaurants there are named Korean Restaurant or something like that.

Anyway, we ordered that combo with the picture behind us.


Since the waitress didn't speak English I had to point it from their menu and signaled the number one, I meant one order of that. Then she had three fingers up and pointed to all of us. So I thought "ah okay she's just telling us that the order is only good for three". And then our order came, so many different bowls were placed on our table. My brother said, "Ate, baka tatlo yung in-order mo ha!" I told him I didn't, the waitress was just telling us it was good for three people and this is what the whole order looked like. And then we started eating so we totally forgot about it. We're not really familiar with Korean cuisine so we had to look at the other tables on how they eat their food hehe. But the waitress did give us instructions on how to do it (by pointing to the ingredients). So we had to grill the beef, and when it's done we can wrap it with our leafy veggies and add in the different condiments that we like. It was delicious! I was so happy with our lunch!


When Mama and I were paying for our bill, we totally thought we were misreading the cash register because it was around 86 or 88000won! What the?!?!?! I remember seeing the price of our order at around 28000won. So my brother was right! What the waitress was telling us was that she was placing 3 orders of the beef for us. HAHAHAHAHA

It was finally time to go back to our hotel and wait for our guide to pick us up and bring us to the airport.


Gimpo airport was formerly their international airport but now it's used for their domestic flights. There was only just enough time for us to check-in and eat dinner at the airport. We ate Korean dishes for dinner as well.


Then it was really time to say goodbye to Korea. Cebu Pac was on time on the flight back to Manila. As a matter of fact, it was a few minutes early :-)


The gate to our plane was in a different side of the airport so we had to take the train (inside the terminal) to go there. So if you're coming from Incheon Airport, make sure to check your boarding pass where your gate is. Another thing I remember about Korea is that the weather there is not as hot here in Manila. We were there mid-September and the weather was like Baguio weather and it was the middle of summer there - our guide was even telling us that the week before that was even cooler, it was hot during our stay there (according to him). I had to wear a jacket during the night because I was really cold. And I didn't even bring a jacket, I had to borrow from my husband hehehe.

If I go back to Seoul, I wish I can watch the F1 race there.

Lotte World

Our third day in Seoul was spent entirely in Lotte World. It was easy to go there from our hotel. We just took the subway and we got to Lotte World in one piece hehe. When you go there by subway, like we did, just get off Jamsil Station (line 2) and use exit #4. We availed their passport ticket and got a discount because we were tourists.


We're really not familiar with the characters of Lotte World but here we are taking our pictures with Lotty and Lorry.
Lotte World the amusement park has two main parts - Adventure Land, which is the indoor park, and Magic Island which is the outdoor part of the park. Right after you enter, you can get a map of the whole park. Be sure to get the English map. One of the shows we watched was Fantastic Odyssey. But there's really nothing fantastic about it.

The truth is we were a bit disappointed with Lotte World. Compared to HK Disneyland, Lotte World's shows seemed like a bore, simply because the shows were in Korean (no English translation or subtitle) and we felt like there wasn't much preparation with the shows. I dunno but it doesn't feel as special as the shows in Disneyland. Needless to say, there were still some amusing things about this amusement park.

They also have a castle like Disneyland. This is in Magic Island.

Magic Island is the part of Lotte World with the dare-devil rides, like the Waikiki Wave. I made a collage of the series of pics we got of the wave. Isn't that fun? No, we didn't ride this one. We didn't go in any of the adult rides. Both my brother and husband didn't want to go, they were both queasy about it. If I had gone there with Charline and Penny, for sure we would have stayed in Magic Island the whole day. This might be one of the reasons we didn't enjoy Lotte World that much, we weren't really able to experience the whole thing because we skipped so many rides.

The one show I enjoyed was the magic show. This was because of the audience we were watching with, who were mostly toddlers. They were oooh-ing and aaah-ing to every magic trick. They were so much fun. But I was impressed with the floating lady trick.


Another highlight of Lotte World for me is the miniature village at the Folk Museum. If you get the passport ticket like we did, the entrance to the Fold Museum is free. The miniature village was one big hall with different miniatures. The details of the works are simply amazing. I went gaga looking from one exhibit to another. This I think was a recreation of a Korean wedding. I wonder if they used authentic materials for this. Like if they used old clothes to make the small ones. Or if they used parts of vintage rings or vintage pendants for the accessories of the dolls. There were a lot of vintage style rings in the National Museum that we went to the day before.

After going around the museum, Joema and I had fun riding the carousel. Look at us, we're like kids!

They also have parades. And since we were there a month before Halloween, the theme was ..wait for it...Halloween!

Their night parade was a visual treat.

One of the amazing shows we watched was this acrobatic stunt. The man is hanging from the ceiling and from his mouth he has a rope where the lady is holding on to. And then the man twirls the lady around. It was amazing!!

The finale was a laser show. I don't know if they had fireworks outside, but this was inside Adventure Land.

More photos of the trip are uploaded on my multiply. Up next, last day in Korea.

Seoul Enriching

On our first official day in Seoul, we were scheduled for a city tour. Our guide picked us up at 9am and then brought us to the National Museum. I think we spent almost two hours going around there, knowing more about the history of Korea. Did you know that Korea once had three kingdoms and one of the kingdoms is named Goryea but most people can't pronounce it properly thus Korea was born.

Here I am in front of what's supposed to be a tomb way back then in Korea.

Joema and I looking at a map.



This artifact was taken from Korea (forgot if it was China or Japan who took it) but was later on returned to them and was placed here in their museum (I hope I got that right)



From all the bits of history in the museum, I found this water cooler (which isn't really part of their history) really amusing. Well, mostly it's the "paper cup" it uses that I found amusing. Forgive my ignorance if this is common in your part of the world, but it's the first time I saw this. The cup isn't really a cup but more of a small envelope without the closing flap. And you can drink water from it!




Next stop was the Gyeongbok Palace. If you've been watching a lot of Korean shows and movies, I'm sure you've seen a palace like this on TV. I'm not really a fan of Korean pop culture so I don't know much about them which was ironic because I get to visit the country without realizing how fortunate it was for me since there are thousand of Pinoy fans out there who are dreaming of going to Korea just to get a glimpse of their idols or the places in those shows/movies. Anyways, this is outside one of the entrances of the Palace.



We were part of a guided tour. Our tour guide speaks very good English. The Palace grounds is massive. We went to different buildings. This one is the Geunjeongjeon Hall. Remember this photo? At the side, there are markers where the cabinet members stand as the king and queen walks towards the hall. The center is slightly elevated because only the king and queen walks there.



A little trivia about the structure. Can you see those nets on the roof? The guide said they were put there so that birds won't build their nests under the roof.



I think this is the king's living quarters and then behind it is the queen's living quarters.



This was the retirement home of one of the royalties. It's a very relaxing place, very laid back compared to the other buildings in the compound.



This is the building inside the "secret garden". See those two small gates? Again those are for the cabinet members and other dignitaries while the big gate is for the king and queen.



The secret garden is actually more of a min-forest. It's called secret because this is where the king and queen rendezvous hehehe.



This is the oldest tree in the palace. It looks like a big bonsai.



Next stop after the palace is lunch. Our guide took us to this restaurant that served us ginseng chicken soup. When I first read this in our itinerary I was like "just soup for lunch???" Me and my big mouth! It was soup alright with one whole chicken and rice. Kind of like arroz caldo but more watery and not bits of chicken was included but as I've said a whole chicken for each serving! Our guide ate with us and we were so pressured to eat quickly because he ate fast. The soup was piping hot but it's like it didn't even bother him. He was dumping chicken bones in the little pail on our table like there's no tomorrow while we're blowing our spoons before even taking a mouthful.



We then bought a few pasalubong outside the restaurant.



The husband was very happy with our next stop.



He is such a fan, I don't know why he wanted a photo with this clock.



We were there in time for the 6th Asia Song Festival and a group was there rehearsing. If I only knew who they were, I would have teased my friends about it and let them die of envy.



In the museum they have this interactive game where you get to play the goalie. My husband was happy to oblige.



After this was shopping time. First stop was the amethyst store. Bought a little something something for myself hehe. We have no photos there though. And then we were dropped off at Namdaenum market. I think our guide left us there for about an hour and a half. Bought more pasalubong from here. By the time we got to the hotel, the boys were tired. But my mother and I still went out and went to Myeongdong. We rode the subway from our side of the town to Myeongdong. Their subway is as efficient as that of Hong Kong. No worries! The subway cards can be bought from a vending machine, then you can replenish the amount and after you're done you can return it and get your deposit back. Although we only figured out we can replenish it on our last day, on our last subway ride ahaha. So everytime we rode the subway, we immediately return the ticket and get our deposit back. So every ride, we have to get new cards ahahaha!



If in HK you get to see Giordano in every corner, in Seoul you get to see The Face Shop in every corner.



I tell you Koreans are shoppingeras! We were in Myeongdong on a weeknight and that's around 8pm but the Koreans are shopping like there's no tomorrow. We'll go into a store expecting there was a sale ongoing because of the throng of people but we were mightily wrong. We were only able to buy stuff at Uniqlo because that's the only place with the sale items ahahaha!

When we got back to the hotel, the boys have rested and were both hungry. We decided not to experiment this time so we went to a chicken place. Every restaurant in Korea serves kimchi as side dish and they give a lot, they replenish the plates after you've finished it. Aside from kimchi they serve other side dishes. If you want to scrimp you can just order one entrée and then just eat kimchi ehehe.



One setback of tourists in Seoul is that not many people speak English. When we order we only point to the menu and gesture how many we wanted. In this particularly restaurant they have regular rice and sticky rice. We ordered the regular one but they came back saying they don't have it anymore. We asked what's the difference but we shouldn't have asked anyway because they couldn't understand us. So we just ordered the sticky one. Good thing not much of a difference in taste, it's just that the sticky one is well sticky.

Oh one more thing about the restaurants there, they don't get your payment from your table. After they served you the food, they will give you your bill. And then after you've eaten you have to bring your bill at the cashier, which is usually located at the area just before you exit, and make your payment there. We had to observe this system before making the payment on our first night there.