Early Saturday morning we took the train from Jinyeong to Jeonju. We checked into our hostel which was a really nice chilled out place although we think the owner had an addiction to the computer game 'bejewelled' as everytime we saw her she always seemed to be playing it. The first day we looked around the city. Jeonju is split into two areas the new city and the old. In the old part all the buildings are in the traditional Hanok style. It's a really lovely place to wander around. Our first stop was 'Jeonju Gyeonggi-jeon' as it was right next to our hostel. We think it may have been a living quarters for some of the royal family. At the front gate there were some of our favorite dressed up guards. Although, it has to be said, that these guys had nothing on the ones in Seoul! There was no sign of fake facial hair and they spent most of the time trying to chat up passing Korean girls! We played a competitive game of 'arrow toss' (don't think that's it's real name), Nina came out as champion.
Working up an appetite we decided to find something cheap to eat for lunch. We came across a small restaurant which appeared to meet our needs. A couple ran the place, well actually the wife ran the place and the husband was possibly the worst restaurant manager ever! He probably made the restaurant harder to run! We ordered some Gimbap (Korean sushi) and some Mandu (Korean dumplings). He prepared the gimbap but when cutting it he managed to break the seaweed so it just ended up being some rice and seaweed in a pile on a plate! He also warmed up the Mandu, took them out of the microwave and then forgot about them for about 20 minutes! Later on whilst we were scooping rice from the plate into our mouths he just stood in front of us and stared for a while. After a few minutes he looked at Nina and said 'beautiful'. In other circumstances, it would have been taken as a compliment but his lack of teeth in his grinning smile made it all rather creepy.
In the afternoon we looked around the Hanok village where there were some lovely boutique shops and cafes. It was all too tempting for Nina who bought some hair bands and a scarf, all things she really didn't need but they were very pretty! It being Korean Thanksgiving all the restaurants were rather busy come dinner time. We were about to go into one place which looked ok but a Korean came up to us and said "The food is not delicious here". We thanked him for his advice and tried to ask whether he'd recommend anywhere else to eat but it appeared that his English only stretched as far as the first initial phrase. In the end we found a great place serving kimchi & steamed pork.
On Sunday we got a bus to Jinan to visit Maisan Provincial Park. We took a taxi to the South Gate of the park and we had arrived all prepared with sandwiches and snacks for lunch. However, this all went out the window when we saw that the restaurants at the bottom of the park were selling barbecued pork ribs! The area is famous for 'black pig' which we're not sure if it's tastes different to any other pig, but they first smoke the ribs in an oven then finish them on the barbecue. We each had a plate of ribs along with a bowl of bibimbap and we both agreed it was the best meal we've had in Korea!!!
Once we had filled our bellies, we walked through the park to see a place called 'Tapsa' which is a beautiful temple built within the rocks. There's a story that a religious man stayed there for 15 years and built 80 stone towers around the temple. Apparently even in the strongest typhoons they never topple! The park was beautiful and we walked up to the North gate to take a bus back to Jinan.
In the evening we decided to go to the cinema to see 'Ted'. All the staff seemed very excited to see foreigners! The box office was located on the bottom floor of the building however the cinema screens were on different floors all the way up the building. Unluckily for us there seemed no logic to this cinema labyrinth as the first floor held screens 7 & 6, the next floor screens 4 & 3. The other problem was that as our cinema ticket was in Korean we couldn't work out which number was our seat number and which was the screen number! So we spent a good 10 minutes wandering up and down trying to locate the right floor! Eventually we sat down to watch the movie along with 4 Koreans (apparently it isn't such a popular film over here!).
The final morning we explored the Hanok village a little more and walked down the river. We stopped at a cafe as it was quite a warm day and ordered some lemonade which to our surprise was blue! Ed was not impressed! We then ventured over to the bus terminal and took the bus back to Jinyeong!
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