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My WCG Experience Part 2:

In this Blog I'm going to share my experiences and thoughts on the travel part of my WCG trip in Busan, Korea. The actual matches and meeting the players part will come next as the final part to this blog series. Sorry this took so long, I've been putting off doing it cause it takes so much time to type up. Hope you guys enjoy the read!

This is the basic outline:

Day1:
Flying to Busan
Cobo
The SPA Story
Opening Ceremony Dinner

Day2:
Breakfast
The Event
Decline of WCG
Free food!
Flag Ceremony
My games (covered in next blog)

Day3:
GLaDe's matches
Dinner with Housemates

Day4:
Seoul & WCG Grand Final

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So I had to stopover at Hong Kong to change planes before going to Busan as Busan isn't such a popular destination and thus Singapore only has direct flights to Seoul. First thing I realized was Hong Kong had a massive airport because they were smack in the middle of Asia and all the flight routes whereas Busan wasn't that's why their airport is probably 5% the size of Hong Kongs. Kinda the same reason why Singapore's airport is so big as well. It also makes you wonder how much of a factor the strategical geographical locations of these two cities have played in their economic development as they are arguably the most developed countries in SEA and they have a booming tourism / trade industry.


Didn't get much sleep, flight left at about 11pm, stopped in Hong Kong at 2am, then arrived in Busan at 6am. It was also because I was super excited so I really didn't mind haha..

Interestingly enough the Aussie SQLTt team for LoL were sitting infront of me on the plane from Hong Kong. Was looking for GLaDe but I remember he said his flight was the next day. BlinG was nearby too but I had no idea that was him at that time. So was Rotterdam and he looked tall and good looking IRL, quite different from the camera version of him. I think it has to do with the dimensions of your face shape. If you have face structure happens to look more aesthetically 3D you look thiner and more photogenic and if it doesn't you look better IRL then in photos.



Sad that Singapore didn't really have a budget or team and apparently it has been this way for awhile, eSports has basically been declining in Singapore for sometime now. Besides me there was just the Flash LoL team (Rev's team) but their tickets were sponsored by Riot games (makers of LoL) itself and the Asphalt (Mobile game) player and that was basically the whole Singapore team for this year. So traveling by myself was quite lonely but things got better as i soon saw Cobo board the bus!! Unlike Singapore, he was part of a full Malaysian team of 15 players and they had a team leader too to guide them and take care of all the expenses, kinda like what happened in Singapore 6-7 years ago! They had their own team shirts and you could immediately sense the difference and team spirit in the air. I do not know where all our sponsors went between then and now but we once had that too Anyway Cobo didn't have time to prepare much as well, and we knew we were going there as severe underdogs and we shared the cheese we have prepared for our opponents on the bus journey. In terms of preparation at least all our opponents had tons of replays out for us to analyze and devise hard BO counters / cheese for, which sadly still failed (more on that in part 3). Well at least I didn't have to play MVP haha!


cobo is an extremely good player, up to this day not many people rate him because he is so low profile and doesn't play much in tournaments. He used to be a Starcraft 1 WCG Champion as well. This year he later took a game off Cytoplasm in their WCG exhibition match and was so close to beating him in a epic 45min match in the group stages.

Anyway unlike in 2001, my mentality going to Korea was now totally different - this time i was going to WCG more as a tourist needing a holiday break rather then as a player looking to compete. In 2001, I was 17, wasn't adventurous or independent and didn't really care about experiencing a different culture. Gaming was my life and all i wanted to do was stay in the practice room and play with the other famous players around the world and make friends with them. I hung out with the USA players at WCG back then and eating dinner with Maynard (Yes, that Maynard transfering Maynard!) and Whear was pretty awesome. This time however, gaming had long taken a backseat in my life. I have never seen Busan before and I did not play a single game of practise while i was there.. my aim was to just do okay (since im repping Singapore after all I have that responsibility to at least do decent) then explore the city and its attractions and get a picture with my favourite player KiWiKaKi!!



Was so looking forward to going to the SPA it was supposedly 4 stories of heaven in Shinshigae, the "biggest department store in Asia" with 22 spa rooms and a hot spring bath! The awesome thing was it was just NEXT to the hotel so i could walk there! It cost about 12,000 won or $10 bucks for 4 hours. And it was freezing cold, my hotel room was not ready yet (remember my flight arrived at 6am!), and so it was the perfect opportunity to kill time in the freezing winter in a nice hot spring full of random naked men.


Basically you are given a key which opens your foot locker, your clothes locker, as well as tracks the exact time you've spent in the SPA. Super advanced technology! First culture shock was when I went into the changing room and everyone was completely naked. I thought we would be wearing swimming trunks / boxers etc, but apparently not lol. Oh well. Now in Singapore we don't do this people normally go into changing rooms, especially the younger generation. So after summoning up enough courage I decided to strip completely nude as well and go into the hot spring. It wasn't an easy thing to do! I then realised everyone was looking at me strange! I felt funny but still tried to walk with an air of confidence (so i appear normal) into the hot spring lol. I later realized it was because 99% Koreans are circumcised. Me and most Singporeans are not! So it might have been quite an unusual sight for them to see a foreign appendage frolicking in the water. I never noticed this when i first went in because I never looked at the parts of other guys OWW my eyes!! But after that i began to observe them and whoa theres a huge difference in the appearance of an uncircumcised one and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

So after the hot spring you can go wear a bath robe and hang out in the unisex Spa area, 22 rooms of varying temperatures. They also had a massage area, and an entertainment area where you can use internet or watch cable TV. Lots of friends and couples were there hanging out there lazing the day away. It was very spacious and it wasn't crowded. Its really amazing when you think all this cost just $10 and I wish Singapore had something like this that we could do on the weekends and stuff.

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Breakfast was provided everyday. Not going to comment on the quality but you can judge yourselves from the photos. Everything is free, so I'm not going to complain haha.












An awesome thing is some of the meals are provided. They normally give you coupons to a few different places and you can redeem these coupons, and basically eat free. They even gave a surplus this year, and you could collect the change if you spent too little. Coupons for money! Haha IMO their handling of meals and actual organisation of the tournament / matches (I think SK.Reis was in charge) are the things WCG do great every year without fail.


McDonalds was super crowded! Man if you're a westerner and all you do in a foreign country is eat MacDonalds and hangout with other westerners its a pretty fobby attitude to have, kinda like AZNs who keep to themselves, don't learn english and just eat their own food in Australia - its the same thing. So if im in another country I think its pointless to be eating the same food you eat back at home and you should experience a different culture, but well thats just me. Anyway we were given 10 restaurants to go to, 2 were western and therefore super crowded and the other 8 were Korean food, they were super delicious and there was no queue at all. yay for me!

This cost 4,000WON. Had a 5,000WON coupon so got 1,000 in change and i was technically paid $1AUD to eat this lol!



Every WCG has a flag bearing ceremony when a rep carries the flag and all the countries are introduced. Its a really nice feeling to be carrying your country flag and representing your nation! RedArchon seemed so tense during the whole tournament. He said he practiced really hard for it like 1k games on Korea, sucks that he had to be in such a tough group!! Worth mentioning is he beat ToD and made him rage quit the tournament halfway haha! Go RedArchon!!!!!!!





Had dinner at one of the more rural suburbs. BBQ Pork belly complete with and egg dish and plenty of sidedishes. They cook it for me too! Costs about 10 AUD in total, unbelievably cheap and delicious. In the more city areas it goes for like 16AUD and in Singapore probably about 25AUD.

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Met my ex-house mates for dinner! They now work in Busan and drove about 2 hours to come see me, and treated me to dinner at an italian restaurant. They are a married couple who met in france during university. The guy is from Brazil the girl is from China, and we lived with them while renting for about a year in Singapore and they were great house mates. They have an awesome approach to new cultures, they take Korean lessons, always try speaking in Korean much to the amusement of the waiters and are really enjoying their life in Korea!

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Didn't get to stay for the WCG finals. It was time to go off to Seoul to visit my in laws! My sister-in-law had just hatched a mini zergling!!




Me being in Seoul meant I didn't get to see the WCG finals live in Busan. Not to worry though this is Korea!! And we just had to turn on the TV and there it was. Yona looks mad because im not playing with the new baby and im watching sc2.

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Coming soon!

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Part 3: Meeting the players and thoughts on games