Part 4: Hanyang International Summer School (HISS) 2017

Hello reader!

In this blogpost, I would be sharing about the 4 free activities that Hanyang International Summer School organized by Hanyang.

This blogpost is dedicated to one of my reader Duẫn Hảo Trịnh who posted a comment asking about the free activities that Hanyang provides. Initially I wanted to reply as a comment but I realised I was typing a bit too much and hence decided to come up with a part 4.

On 14 June 2017, Hanyang sent us an email with the link to register for the 4 free activities, application for airport pick up services and SIM card.

(You may want to check out part 1, part 2 and part 3 of my Hanyang International Summer School experience!)

Free Activities

For Summer 2017, the 4 free activities are:

Week 1: Hangang River Cruise (Mon, Tues, Wed)
We were given 3 different days to select from: Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. As it was July, Seoul kept raining and the river cruise kept getting postponed. So what happened on the day was that we had classes as usual in the day and were asked to report to Jamsilsaenae station exit 7 at 6.45pm after our classes. If we were to travel as a group together with the Hanyang staff and Korean student leaders, then we would have to report at Hanyang University Station at 6.30pm. (We had to pay for our own transport using T-money card)

Once everyone was at the meet-up location, we followed the Hanyang staff and student leaders to walk towards the dock along the Han river. When we arrived at the dock, we were asked to show our identification (IC or Passport) for attendance purposes before entering the building connecting the dock. They provided us with a sandwich and a small bottle of water while we were waiting for the cruise to arrive.

There was two decks on the cruise, the bottom deck had air-con while the upper deck was open air. When my friends and I boarded the cruise, we immediately went up to the upper deck as it was super windy. At the lower deck, there were plenty of chairs arranged in "church style", a small stage right in front, as well as a small bar at the back with free alcohol and snacks. There were Korean students singing and performing on the stage with their guitars. I would recommend taking a beer and going to the upper deck as it is the place to take nice photos of Seoul at night and enjoy the breeze. The only downside of the upper deck is that the seats are very limited, my friends and I were lucky enough to find some benches although we were not the first few people that boarded the cruise.

Hello Sheron!!!!

Week 2: SM Town OR Nanta (Fri, Sat)
I chose to attend Nanta instead of SM Town, so I am unable to share the SM Kpop experience; However, I saw my friend's instastory that they were basically in theatre with videos of EXO, SNSD, Super Junior, SHINee, Red Velvet etc. If you are a SM fan, you will probably enjoy it. SM Town was held on a Friday while Nanta was on a Saturday.

As for Nanta, it was a non-verbal Korean cooking themed performance. If I remember correctly, we were given 2 slots to choose from, one was a Friday and the other was a Saturday. We were asked to report at the Nanta theatre at Myeongdong ourselves. There were HISS staff outside the theatre to guide us in entering and getting our tickets.

There were enough reviews on Nanta around the web, but I would attempt to convince you to choose Nanta instead of SM Town because:
1. Nanta was a live performance while SM Town is just watching videos
2. The girl in the Nanta performance is pretty
3. The show was hilarious, I remember laughing a lot
4. Nanta theatre is in Myeong dong and you can have lunch or do some shopping after the show


Week 3: Everland OR Caribbean bay (Fri, Sat)
Everland was a theme park like Universal Studio while Caribbean Bay was a water theme park like Wild Wild Wet. My friends and I wanted to go for both but unfortunately, it was a 2 choose 1 so we decided to go for the one where the entrance tickets was more expensive. After much research, we discovered that the tickets for Caribbean bay cost a lot more than Everland.

If my memory served me right, there was only 1 slot for everland and 1 slot for caribbean bay. Everland was on a Friday, while Caribbean bay was on a Saturday. A few days before the trip, Hanyang sent us an email regarding the bus number we were allocated to. The list included our bus number, Hanyang student number and home university (that is also how I found out the huge number of NUS and NTU students at Hanyang). I was very lucky to be assigned to the same bus as my friends. Hanyang told us to board the correct bus number and not change bus for attendance purposes (but I saw a few people secretly swapping bus).

Additionally, Caribbean Bay was about 1 hour bus ride away from Hanyang University.

Another reason to choose Caribbean bay was that we felt that Everland was a theme park like Lotte World. Hanyang emailed us regarding the sale of Lotte World tickets at 20,000 won each (SGD$24) for a full day entrance ticket we can use anytime in the month of July. This means that we can still get a Korean theme park experience at Lotte world.

Caribbean Bay Entrance

Caribbean Bay

Road to Caribbean Bay and Hello Sheron again!!

Week 4: Boryeong Mud Festival (Fri, Sat)
To be honest, I did not attend this mud festival despite signing up for it because my friends and I were all girls and period syncing is real. We emailed HISS few days before the activity to inform them that we were not attending (but we didn't give a reason) as they were supposed to provide transport and lunch for the people going. Actually the Friday session saw many people skipping and not informing HISS, hence the admin team sent an email telling us that it will be good to inform them if we were not attending.

End of part 4.