Ladies and Gentlemen...

Announcing, the long-awaited tail of more stuff I've been up to in ye olde Republic of Korea. First off, on the last Friday in July, one of the head honchos at English Village was kind enough to take all of us edutainers out for shabu shabu.


Here is a good chunk of the group that was there. In the foreground you can see the man of the hour, Mr. Kwak (right) next to our stage manager, Mr. Kwak (there are seriously like 10 surnames in all of South Korea). We had a jolly, tasty time...


and the homies represented. After the meal Mr. Kwak (the head honcho one) took those of us who wanted to a local bar, where more merrymaking ensued,


and where they played exclusively Michael Jackson music videos on their TV screen. I had a great night.

The following Monday, Dylan Thomas and I embarked on our 5-day exploration of Korea. We headed to the bus terminal at Hwajeong in Ilsan, and after checking the schedules and consulting some maps and guide books, decided that Cheonju would be a good first destination, as it looked interesting and was on the way south.


Our journey to Cheonju took a little over two hours and was pretty comfortable. Upon arrival, we sought out what turned out the be the best hotel of the whole trip. Our room was beautiful and clean and had a huge bathroom with a jacuzzi. The room cost only 60,000 won. We dropped off our stuff and headed off to explore. Interestingly enough, Cheonju has the same crazy rows of identical, gargantuan apartment buildings as the rest of Korea. This picture was taken from a hill in a park that we walked through.

The park had bunnies! Very friendly ones at that. After being devoured by mosquitoes, we took our anemic selves out to the trendy student district where we checked out some bars. Most of these bars were pretty much the same the rest of the bars in Korea. Koreans seem to find a way of doing things that they like and to stick with it. Still, we enjoyed ourselves and made up our minds to visit Cheonju again, seeing as it's so close and all.


The next day, in the early afternoon we hopped on another bus, this time headed for Daegu. We enjoyed some good books (as you can see) on what ended up being another relaxing two-hour ride. When we arrived in Daegu, we had a minor navigational snafu, and then found a place to stay. We were a little disappointed by the meagre offerings in comparison to Cheonju, but still found a clean, comfortable, super-cheap room. When then set out in search of interesting things and food.

We ended up finding both. Dinner was had at an Italian restaurant, which served honest-to-god Italian-style food--five courses of it, in fact--in a nice atmosphere for more than a reasonable price. This was, in my opinion, the best meal we had on the trip (though DT was clearly exhausted by the very sight of it).


After dinner, we thoroughly explored the district we were in. We found some amazing T-shirts, which we bought and a funky pair of shoes for me with skulls on them. We also found delicious waffles and good people-watching.

The next day, we decided to head for Gyeongju, the historical capital of Korea (during the Silla and Joseon dynasties). The bus ride took only an hour this time, so we ended up with plenty of time to search for the best accommodation options and to check stuff out.


We first checked out a tomb-park, filled with the burial mounds of ancient royalty. As you can see above, these burial mounds require sweeping.


Next we checked out the oldest observatory in all of East Asia. Pretty cool, eh?


We then took a walk to the downtown area and walked through a crazy market where they had lots of things, including whole squid hanging from ropes. By that time, my feet were hurting pretty badly so we took a break. It was at this point that Dylan Thomas removed my shoes and socks and gave me a foot-massage, right there on the steps of a bank(!!!!) With my feet so kindly revived, we continued our walking-tour and found some great food and wine.


We walked through what was truly stifling heat to the Gyeongju National Museum the next morning. It was somewhat cool. While we were there, we were accosted by a timid student who asked us to fill out surveys about tourism in Gyeongju. It was full of a lot of amusing, rather leading questions. Still, a nice chance to talk about what I liked and bring up the fact that Korea is not always very tourism-friendly to someone who might actually be in a position to improve things.


On the way back, we walked through Anapji pond. A pond that was built by an ancient King. It was nice.


On our final day, we decided to take a look at Bulguksa Temple, the biggest, baddest temple in all of South Korea. It was cool indeed. Above is one of the four heavenly kings who guard the temple's entrance gate.



There was much golden Buddha action...


and even some restoration going on.


Though a lot of the temple designs throughout Korea are similar, they are definitely intricate and colorful.

After the temple, we headed back to Seoul, just in time for a large dose of heavy rain. We read, talked and napped our way back to East Seoul (a journey of five hours) and then took a cab back to Ilsan for some pizza and a video and a good rest.

The trip was fantastic. The sights were overall pretty good, and I feel like I have a broader vision of the crazy country that is SoKo. The best part, though, was just getting be with Dylan Thomas. I an incredible time just chatting, eating, laughing and walking with him (feel free to vomit at any time).