We then went out for a BBQ dinner to show him what Korean cuisine was all about. After dinner, we went to a traditional Makgeolli (rice wine) bar at the end of our street and "enjoyed" some silk worm larvae which came as a free side with our drinks! We both thought eating the bugs was horrible, but Nick couldn't get enough and kept going back for more. After finishing the teapot of rice wine between the 3 of us, we made a brief stop at the baseball batting cages before going to a singing room for a couple of hours. Nick did Oasis, Nina did Madonna and Ed chose Prince, showing the varied talent on offer. Here are some pics of our first night reunion:
The following day, we set out early on the train to Gyeongju, an ancient capital of one of the Korean dynasties. We visited it before in January. After checking into our hostel, we went off to look for some bikes to rent so we could cycle around all the attractions in the city. We found a man who provided us with a great selection of bikes to choose from. Nina immediately fell in love with a pink bike with a front basket named 'Sunday' while Nick and Ed chose more manly bikes named 'Black Cat' and 'Fox Hound'. The owner, a man of few words, then told us "Shop close PM7:00 money now ID card". He gladly accepted Ed's expired student card as a deposit and we were on our way. Here are some pics of us posing with our bikes:
We spent the day cycling around the sights of Gyeongju. Ed was desperate to dress Nick up in traditional Korean dress and so found a culture centre which was definitely meant for children, where you could do just that. There were different scenes you could pose by; the traditional house scene, or the bench scene. After taking a multitude of photos we headed back out on our bikes around the sites of Gyeongju. We ended up getting a bit lost looking for a fortress which we later realised didn't exist and was only the site of where a fortress had once been. After cycling around in the heat for a good few hours we decided to return our bikes and go to a korean/japanese fusion restaurant for dinner. We didn't have a clue what was on the menu, but luckily there were some photos so we ordered some nice food and beers. As we were getting up early the next morning, we thought we'd just head back to the hostel and chill out with a few drinks. When we got back we were invited to join all the other guests from the hostel, it was quite a mix of people; 2 Australians, 2 Filipinos, 2 Koreans and a Danish guy. Nick was made to try 'somae', which is a mixture between beer and soju (a korean spirit which tastes similar to vodka). Judging from his instant look of repulsion, he didn't seem to enjoy it very much. We played various games which were apparently Korean but seemed to be simply an adaptation of games we knew! For example, we played '31' which was just the game '21' but longer! The night descended into a huge multicultural game of 'Uno'. You can always rely on 'Uno' to bring people together.
On Sunday we spent the day exploring Bulguksa Temple, the weather was lovely and sunny. We then took the bus up the mountain to see Seokguram Grotto and had a nice walk back down. Here are some photos from Sunday:
On our second and final weekend with Nick, we had planned to go camping on the beach. However, it being rainy season, it decided to absolutely pour it down with rain. As a back up plan, we headed to a coastal town called Yeosu in the hope that Nick would still be able to see some of the beautiful Korean coastline. However, the thick black storm clouds prevented this. To escape drowning in the rain, we visited Yeosu International Expo, which is a huge exhibition intended to highlight how different countries use the coast and the sea. It seemed to work in that countries had been invited to come and put on their own mini exhibitions about their own country. Some countries definitely put more effort in than others! Russia created a huge igloo and tracked the history of the use of shipping through the artic. Whereas, Gabon had a single wooden african carving in their area which had nothing to do with the sea! Nigeria also apparently didn't get the memo, as their exhibition area had a few lunch boxes with different types of nuts in and a shop area where you could buy traditional nigerian jewellery. That being said, they did have a single picture of a fish in the middle of the wall, which for them must have ticked off the 'ocean' theme.
We then went down to the marina area to get some dinner and drinks. We found a ssamgyupsal restaurant amidst the pouring rain and feasted. We had read in the Korean lonely planet that there was a cheap bar around by the name of 'Kings'. Throughout the torrential downpour all day the excitement to go to 'Kings' had grown and grown, so when we initially couldn't find it we were gutted. Just as we were about to give up, Nina spotted a crown out of the corner of her eye. We went upstairs into 'Kings' to find that it wasn't a bar at all, it was a singing room, and that we were the only ones there. It quite clearly wasn't the same 'Kings' as had been recommended in the book, but we never looked back. Once again we sung our hearts out, but this time as we were drinking Soju it escalated quite quickly. Nick insisted on doing songs by all his favorite artists like Maroon 5 and KT Tunstall. He even tried to make conversation with the woman who owned the place, joking that his singing was really bad, but she didn't understand at all. The next morning we woke up a little worse for wear and so made our way to the bus terminal to go home. It was an awesome couple of weeks and we are so thankful to Nick for coming out to see us, we had a great time!
