Trip to Sangju!

This weekend, we headed to the south coast to Sangju beach. The bus from Namhae to Sangju was a beautiful scenic trip of coastal mountains. Once we reached Sangju our first port of call was to find somewhere to stay for the night. We wondered around inquiring at minbaks and pensions. Whilst heading out of one of the pensions, an elderly woman beckoned us over to her minbak. We followed her to have a look. The room itself wasn't too bad but the problem was that Ed couldn't fit in the corrider as his head slided along the ceiling as he walked. The shower was also a tap on the wall. The woman was very keen on us taking the room whilst Ed was continually banging his head on the ceiling to try to explain to her why we didn't want it. She was quite a scary woman, we were genuinely a bit scared that she might have put some sort of curse of us as we left. We eventually found a friendly minbak to stay in above a samgyupsal restaurant. We spent the day on the beach which was great fun. We rented tubes and went swimming in the sea and played some games. Later in the day we decided to try to explore some of the area around the beach. A map we found outside the information point highlighted that there was a good view point just along from the beach so we decided to check it out. We think that the map must have been made quite a while back as when we reached the view point it was surrounded by barbed wire and was very weedy!! Nevertheless we got some good pictures overlooking the beach.

Most of the restaurants surrounding the beach were raw fish so we decided to try out the samgyupsal restaurant that we were staying above. It was delicious! After we had feasted on pork, we made our way back to our room but we were intercepted by the owner who beckoned us down some stairs into the basement. We were quite apprehensive of what was going on as walls along the stairs were covered in a sort of neon space theme with planets and aliens. He then revealed to us his 1980s style singing room. From the smell, it seemed to have a serious damp problem. There wasn't anyone there, so we assumed business was slow. He was quite disappointed when we declined.

The following day, we went back to the beach. We bought a beach ball and an LED frisbee (which didn't light up disappointingly!). It was more overcast and windy than the previous day, so we foolishly thought we would be ok without suncream for a couple of hours. How wrong we were. We got the bus from Sangju back up to Namhae then on to Masan. On the bus ride home, we both got progressively hotter and more red. By the time we reached home we were in desperate need of some moisturiser! Here are some photos of our trip:

Miryang Barbecue!

Last week we went to Miryang with a few friends from Jinyeong. The weather in the morning was quite ominous, we were all checking the weather on various phones with reports varying from sunny to thunder storms. We decided to risk the weather and go anyway. En route we stopped at a huge shop that sold nothing but meat. Literally any meat you could ever want was on sale! We stocked up on pork fillets for the barbecue but decided to give the whole pig's leg a miss. We drove through torrential rain to reach Miryang but when we arrived the clouds cleared and we had sunshine all day! We set up our barbecue on the river and spent the day swimming, eating and playing some games. Here are some photos of our trip:

Mama Joy comes to Korea!

By a stroke of luck, our Buddha’s birthday bank holiday coincided with Mum’s business trip to Thailand and Seoul. This meant we got to spend three full days together. We had such a great time, and fair play to Mum who embraced all we threw at her. We had anticipated an emotional Hollywood style hello, but our first encounter didn’t quite go as planned. We had been given directions from the subway station to the hotel, where we had planned to meet Mum at 10.30am. However, we got ridiculously lost (although at one point we were within 50 meters of the hotel without realising), and ended up in a café buying a muffin purely to use their wifi to get some directions! By this point it was 11.15am and Mum had come to try and find us. Finally, our paths crossed just walking along the street, Mum basically tapped us on the shoulder and saying “hey”. 

After some catch up time over a coffee (one of many coffee breaks over the weekend) we headed out to show Mum some of the sights of Seoul. We visited one of the main palaces called Changdeokgung and explored the ‘secret’ (everyone knows) garden behind the complex. It was nice to see a defrosted version of the secret garden as when we visited Seoul in January it was -6'C! We then wondered around the traditional Bukchon village and the quirky shopping area of Insadong where Mum bought a few souvenirs. For dinner we wanted to show her some real Korean food and we found a small place in Insadong that served a variety of Korean classics. We ordered a rice dish called Bibimbap along with some chicken and pork. By accident we got the octopus bibimbap which came as quite a surprise! The night was ended with a few rounds of cards, Ed learnt how to play ‘hearts’ and beat both myself and Mum. After the day’s festivities, Ed having enjoyed the day, without thinking commented, “Thank God it’s Buddha’s birthday!” Here are some photos of our first day:

The second day, we started by visiting the Gyeongbokgung palace guards. We got some good pictures, Mum nearly put her arm around one of the guards, which was very funny to watch. Afterwards, we wondered through a cultural exhibition and a rather eccentric Korean man came up to us and talked at us quickly in English. We think he was attempting to use every single English word he knew within a 30 second time frame. To our amazement, the next day we actually bumped into him again! He didn't remember us and did the same English splurge all over again while we politely smiled and nodded....again!

In the afternoon, we walked along a stream that runs throught the centre of Seoul. The stream has been built into a peaceful oasis designed for locals to come and escape the bustle of Seoul. It cost $384,000,000 to build- they must have been seriously desperate for some peace. As it was Buddha's birthday the area was decorated with lanterns and scuptures. We had wanted to visit a market place on our walk but unfortunately it was closed.

 In the evening, we ventured up Namsan tower for a panoramic view of Seoul. It being the holidays, the queue for the cable car was huge but we managed to pass the time with an epic game of 'quiz'. Questions included: name 6 active volcanos, name all the football teams in this year's premier league, and name all the Harry Potter books. Shamefully Mum and I could not remember the 5th book all night and had to look it up on the internet when we got home. 

The final day with mama was spent exploring Gyeongbokgung palace. Luckily we arrived in time to watch the changing of the guard ceremony which involved a lot of Korean men with fake facial hair and big drums. The pond in the palace was particularly beautiful as the lotus flowers had started to blossom. We followed this with a final coffee break to say goodbye and then jumped on a train back home to Jinyeong. It was a fantastic weekend!