If you meet a tiger on the prowl it's bound to be pretty aggressive, and aggressive is a good word to describe low cost carrier Tiger Airways which just keeps on roarin'.
As if it wasn't enough to announce a million new mainland Australia routes last week, now Tiger's adding a bunch of extra flights between Melbourne and Tasmania; double the number of flights will now go to both Launceston and Hobart. The price of A$30 (US$25) is definitely a bargain.
The only place Tiger Airways is being slightly less aggressive is in Korea, where a deal with Incheon Airport to start a joint venture budget airline is now on hold. That's mainly because the local Korean budget airlines have bullied Incheon into giving up the idea. Seems tigers aren't always so brave.
Personally we always find that Korean pickled cabbage they call kimchi a bit too spicy, but since it's been named in a few lists of "top ten anti-cancer foods" we're trying to be open-minded. Presumably we'd be able to cure our aversion to it by visiting the Gwangju Kimchi Festival which takes place this year from October 15 to 19.
Gwanju, about three hours away from Seoul, is quite famous for kimchi and the festival does pretty much what you'd expect: Celebrates the dish in all its many forms. You can watch it being made, you can make it yourself, and you can eat a million varieties of it (give or take a few).
After four days of solid kimchi eating, you're either going to love it or hate it. But just be aware you're going to be around thousands of people who are also eating an overdose of cabbage.
Flying around South Korea is about to get cheaper and a whole lot cooler, after the weekend's announcement that Jin Air will be the promised budget offshoot of Korean Air. Flights start on July 17, and major routes will include flights from Seoul to the southwest city of Busan, and on to the holiday capital of Jeju Island.
The powers that be were going to call the new airline Air Korea but they must've had a marketing consultant in, because they have a ton of good reasons for going with Jin Air instead. One: Jin can mean "truth" and "sincerity"--nice qualities for an airline. Two: Jin also means jeans, and that's what the flight staff will be wearing, plus T-shirt. Very hip.
And three: By extension, the airline's already calling the crew jini because it makes them sound like magical genies who can do everything.
If you're looking for a soulful cultural experience in South Korea, you can now try staying in a temple with Buddhist monks. According to a recent Go World story, the temple stay program in Korea isn't a long-standing tradition. Quite the opposite: It just sprang up during the 2002 World Cup season when accommodation was in short supply, and grew from there.
These days there are 43 temples participating in the coordinated program and you can learn traditional crafts like making prayer-beads or lotus lanterns. You'll get fed a lot of mild-tasting vegetarian food, drink tea with monks and even meditate, all of which makes for a different kind of holiday, but probably a good contrast to bustling capital Seoul. And you never know when prayer-bead-making skills will come in handy in life.
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by amandak
