Day 67: Mountains and trees and things!

Mood: Cheery again
Music: More of the singing from the lobby with the out of tune piano...

I actually managed to make breakfast today! Hurrah... I was given a menu and picked the 'beef and leaf thick soup' which turned out to be very nice, if a little spicy. That much chili for breakfast isn't most people's idea of a good start to the day, but it seemed to wake me up and clear my nose at the same time!

We set out on the drive across town to the Mt. Namsam park area. This has a set of paths leading up through pine woods to the ridge along the peak of hill. The park has 57 temples, over a hundred tombs and many statues and carvings of Buddha made from its granite rock. Several of the status were destroyed/beheaded in the Confusianist period of Korean history. Several also remain with their heads put back in their original places.

The walk was a few kilometers up hill, passing several sites of interest on the way. We also passed many locals walking up and down the hill. The thing that stands out about this is the way that many of the ladies wear sun hats and also masks which cover most of their faces. This is, according to my guide, to avoid getting tanned at all. That is because beauty is seen in those with lighter skin in these parts of the world. Whereas when the sun comes out in the UK everyone clamors to expose every last inch of skin to get a tan... here they all cover up to avoid getting one.

After we reached the top we had a bit of a look around and then headed back down by a different route. At the bottom we stopped for lunch in a place that specialises in hand made noodles. These were served with some of the normal condiments but also some green chili peppers. I was initially quite wary of these until Trueman took one and bit in after dipping it in the bean paste sauce. It turned out that the chilies were incredibly mild, just above a bell pepper and rather tasty. After asking were these not hot my guide suggested we could get some hot chili too... Most people know that I'm not one to turn down a challenge that involves chilies (so I've lost a few in my time but I have taken part). I bit into the chili and chewed it for a while in the side of my mouth and thought not much of it until I started to swallow. From that point forward anything other than water that I put in my mouth released more of the burning hot chili onto my taste buds!

Most of the rest of the meal tasted of chili alone, but it was nice both before and after this. Being a creamy sauce over noodles, eaten with chopsticks, things did not end too well for the black jumper I was wearing. I really need to practice eating noodles using chopsticks without spraying blobs of sauce everywhere!

In the afternoon we visited a number of other sites, both around the other side of Mt. Namsan and further afield, including one which is apparently on many of the Korean tourist guides. The photo in the guide books is taken in the middle of the summer when the Lotus flowers are all blossoming in the middle of the pond.

Later on we visited the Seoguram Grotto, which I had failed to visit yesterday. It contains the most spectacular stone sitting Buddha that was hidden for hundreds of years and only found again during the Japanese occupation almost 100 years ago. The grotto dates from ~800AD and also houses several large statues guarding the doors around the main Buddha.

After seeing this I was dropped off back at my hotel for the evening.

Tomorrow I say goodbye to Trueman and fly to the island of Jeju for a couple of days before returning to Seoul.

Day 66: Taking back the Swastika...

Mood: A little bored of the guesswork required with Korean food
Music: Supergrass - Supergrass is 10

Today was a free day for me. Or at least one that wasn't guided. I had a number suggestions of things to see and do though. First up for the day (ignoring the sales phone call I received at 3am) was to sort my washing. I know it's not very glamerous and you probably don't want to hear about such dull things, but they are quite important to such a trip. Given I've been moving on regularly, it's quite difficult to find the time to wash everything required.

The large Bulguksa temple, located a mere stone's throw from my hotel, is a major local attraction and it is not difficult to see why. It is wonderfully set on the slopes of one of the mountains that looks down over the city that was,well over a thousand years ago, the capital of a unified Korea, . The temple originally date back from these times but has been destroyed and rebuilt many time in its history. In the early '70s the Korean government restored the site and in the 1995 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list.

The site actually contains several temples, each with a differing golden bronze Buddha. The buildings are very ornate in themselves and the site is very relaxing to walk around. Not for the first time over the last week or so, I noticed several Swastika motifs on the lanterns of the complex and also in over one of the main temple buildings. I was perfectly aware that it was originally used in the Hindu religion but wasn't aware it featured heavily in Buddhism as well. Perhaps had I paid more attention to such religions I would know more about their roots. I have noted that it is used on maps here to denote Temples.

<Rant> I think in the Western world we have allowed to great a significance to be placed on the symbol and as such could not use it in this way. Or could we? Perhaps by encouraging its use by the Eastern religions we can reclaim their symbol from the hatred that it currently represents. That way the next generation would not make those connections and the symbol would be free again for any use...</Rant>

The photo of Rolf is next to such a symbol woven into the railings of the hotel I'm staying in.

The rest of the day I've pretty much wasted... Mostly by watching a film (Zeitgeist - Moving Forward) and playing Transport Tycoon on my netbook (both using the hotel TV as a screen).

This evening I went to the Korean restauant in the hotel.  I ordered a blue crab stew... I wasn't expecting it to arrive with most of the shell still intact though. Having nobody to copy on the meat recovery front I went at it with my spoon and chopsticks but wasn't overly successful. There were also a number of vegetable side dishes of various descriptions. A couple of which I recognised, may others I didn't. I'm almost looking forward to picking up food and knowing what it's going to taste like before I put it in my mouth!

I'm now sat in the hotel lobby listening to the same people as yesterday singing. A notible low was the piano playing guy singing The Macarena... really... he did.

I join back up with my guide in the morning and head for a day walking on Mount Namsan before one final night in this hotel.

Bye for now!

Day 65: I'm on the road again...

Mood: Gald I'm not on the road tomorrow!
Music: Sub Focus - Sub Focus

Well, here we are again. Firstly I'd like to apologise for not getting yesterday's Rolf photo up earlier. I was very tired and also didn't want to start unpacking all of my belongings all over the very small traditional guest room I as sleeping in. Needless to say, he is there now.

We set out after I had eaten a traditional breakfast consisting of rice, a bowl of soup and anumber of dishes of stuff that I couldn't really identify. There was definately some strips of egg and some kind of meat, a dish of small chunks and then some small pieces of honey fried nuts and seaweed. In this last dish there was also a chunk of chili in the same coating. I think this might have been a bit strong for breakfast when you weren't expecting it!

Our first stop of the day was a paper factory. Whereas I had been taught at schol how paper was made, this would be the first time I would see it done live by hand.

I'll run through the steps now for those who want to know... if not skip on a bit as this might be dull(er than my usual drivel ;))!

********* Begin Paper Making *********

The bark of the tree is stripped and dried and then boiled in a lage vat of water and left to soak. The boiling and soaking is repeated several times until all of the pigment is released from the bark and it becomes a set of fiberous strands. These are picked by hand for their consistancy and then passed on to the next process. Those not selected are boiled yet again until they are ready for pulping.

The pulping is done by a large machine that is like a bath tub with an oval in the middle. This is so that the thrashing pushes the water and pulp around the tank in a circle to allow a greater amount to be processed in a single batch. The thrasher breaks up the strips of fiberous material into very short strands.

These are then transferred into a fairly deep pool. Also added into this is a semi viscous binding agent made from the released substance from the root of a plant that I could not understand the name of. The roots were all in a bathtub of water which is changed periodically. Into the pool a hanging tray is dipped. On this tray is a wooden blind. The blind is shaken with a layer of the pulp and then taken out an layed over the top of the previous layer with a tiny thread along one edge to sperate the layers.

This pile is then pressed in a huge mechanical press and the resultant sheets seperated and pressed onto a large metal frame with very hot water inside. The sheets dry out in a few seconds and are piled up ready to be dispatched!

********* End paper making *********

At the end of the factory was a shop containing a number of things made from paper including some clothes!

We took an early lunch here so that we could visit a nearby beef restaurant owned by a number of local farmers. The food was cooked on a circular dish with a sauce in a lip around the edge, on a burner in the middle of the table. We sat on the floor and filled up on really rather nice beef and accompaniments.

The only other stop of the day was the traditional Andong Hahoe folk village. This is a collection of maintained and lived in buildings. The area has a small exhibition celebrating the fisit of Her Majesty the Queen several years ago.

The rest of the day was spent on the road driving south towards Gyeongju. The twist roads soon opened out onto large motorways but it still took several hours to cover the hundreds of kilometers we were from my hotel for the next couple of nights.

Right now I need to get some washing done before heading down to peek at the karaoke bar here...

PS. The karaoke bar was a booth thing for groups. Rolf is pictured in front of the people singing in the reception area this evening (during a break).

Day 64: Confucious, he say...

Mood: Enlightened
Music: Some old English language music my guide had on CD in the car (ABBA, the Carpenters, Bee Gees among others)

Today we spent pretty much all day heading south in the car. We stopped off just before lunchtime at the Hwanseongul caves. These are a massive set of interconnected caves with a metal walkway leading visitors through about a mile of metal pathways. Some of the caves are almost 100m high and have stalactites and rockflows running down them. One of the most impressive formations I saw was a "bacon strip" formed like a stalactite but in a strip leading down the cave wall from the source of the water.

I would be pointing you at photos of these formations but photographs are not allowed. I was told I couldn't even take non-flash photos because other people would see me using a camera and start flashing away with their own.

We took the monorail up and down from the cave to speed up the journey and get us back on the road as soon as possible. After a brief stop for lunch we carried on our journey, passing through large mountainous regions. The roads had turned very windy but in most valleys we saw the path of the new road being build on a series of bridges and tunnels that will lead straight through the mountain range.

In the late afternoon we arrived at the Dosanseowon (the Dosan academy). It was originally founded by Yi Hwang, one of the fathers of Confucionist thinking in Korea, in 1561. The small school like compound contains a lecture area, housing for a small number of students and some other buildings (a library, a printing house, a shrine and stores). It was one of the top academic teaching places for Confucionism in Korea for centuries and still hosts some ceremonies. As today is the mid point between the summer and winter solstices, they were preparing for one such ceremony while we visited.

This evening I've been delivered to my guest house. I have a small room with sliding doors and a traditional mattress on the floor. Thankfully the floor of the room is heated else it would be rather cold!

I do have electricity and wifi though.

Enough for now. Night all. 

Day 63: Soeraksan National Park

Mood: Cold (again, not a mood but there we go!)
Music: Chase and Status Ft Plan B - End Credits

I met Trueman in the lobby at around 9:30am this morning, for our trip into the national park. I only realised it was raining when I got downstairs as the net curtains hid that from me with my view over the trees growing up the hill that rises behind my hotel.

We set out on the 100m walk from my hotel to the park entrance and from there walked out into the park a couple of miles towards a cave that sits on the top of a very steep hill. As we got ever so slightly higher above sea level the rain turned to sleet and then snow. By this time my ungloved hands were getting rather cold! The cave has been used for prayer and meditation since at least the 1300s and has a very small temple built inside. The monk(s) who are there sleep in a wooden box that is almost strapped to the side of the mountain!

After visiting the cave we went back down as and had some soup made from some of the dried fish that I had seen yesterday at the fish market. After this we walked back to the park entrance and took the cable car up to the viewpoint from the top of the connected hill. We did not do this first thing as the rain clouds were obscuring the top station and we would not have seen anything at all had we gone up then.

The area around the top station had recieved a fresh covering of a few centimeters of snow and this made it all rather pretty. We investigated the viewpoint above the station and also the ancient temple that sits on the top.

The final visit for the day was a waterfall lying just under a couple of miles from the park entrance. This had some steep climbs in quite deep snow to reach but was very pretty. Rolf is pictured here also!

This evening I've come back to the hotel and have had time to sort through my photos from the last couple of days. It turns out that I've now crossed the 10,000 photo mark for the trip. Count yourselves lucky that I'm not planing on any "full holiday photo viewing" sessions!

Tomorrow I head south about 4 hours drive to Andong. Time for me to go look for food...

Bye for now!

Day 62: Go East!

Mood: Sleepy
Music: Deadmou5 - Strobe

Today was a day spent mostly on the road. We stopped at the Namhansan Fortress first. This is a fortress with walls which run along the tops of the surrounding steep hills. The wall runs for over 12km and is over 10m high with archery posts every 2m or so.

We walked up here and saw some of the large gates and the commanders house before walking back down the hillside to the car. From here we set out on the 200km drive east to the coast and the location of my hotel for the night. I managed to catch up on a little bit of sleep on the way, I did find myself drooling a little on me when I woke up at one point which I thought was particularly fetching.

We stopped for lunch in the food court of a service station before driving onwards. Our only other stop was to give Trueman, my guide for the next few days, a break from driving. The place we stopped at had some rather interesting wooden carvings. Some of you know what I'm talking about, the rest probably don't want to know...

We arrived in the coastal town of Sokcho and had a look around their fish market. From here I was taken to my hotel and left to my own devices for the rest of the afternoon.

Tomorrow I'm going to hae a look around the national park that my hotel looks out over (not my room, I face the back of the building).

Day 61: Deey-eM-Zee

Mood: Somber
Music: Kings of convenience

Today started with a 7:50am pick up from my hotel by my guide for the day. There was only one other on the tour with me, a Canadian school teacher with a penchant for travel.

We set out heading north out of the city of Seoul towards the border. On the way we mostly travelled up alongside a river. The edge of the river has razor wire along a fence with lookout stations every hundred meters or so. The reason for this, we were told, was that even so the other side of the river is in the south, North Korean spies use the river to gain entry to the south.

They also have nets on the river every so often. These occasionally catch bodies floating down from the north and they have also caught mines attached to floatation devices that have been released by the north.

As we got closer to the DMZ the traffic thinned out and we arrived into the large car park, with attached peace gardens from which the tours into the DMZ leave. Our guide lead it's from our transfer bus and into the tour bus. At the end of the bridge that marks the edge of the civilian controlled zone we had our passports checked before being allowed to proceed.

The first stop inside was the 3rd tunnel found by the South Koreans that the north were digging under the area. The tunnel is deep underground, blasted through solid granite using dynamite.

This tunnel was apparently located by the drilling of a large number of bore holes by the south Koreans following a tip off by a defecting tunnel designer. The holes were filled with water that was checked from the surface. As the bed rock is granite there was no leakage until the tunnel was located as it passed through such a hole.

Personally I don't believe that more modern techniques weren't used. It seems like a but of a yarn to stop the identification method being revealed to the North Koreans. I'd suggest that a form of triangulating sonar in the bed rock would be fairly foolproof. These days ground scanning radar/sonar would work too I guess but I'm not too familiar with the modes of operation of such kit.

Anyway... I digress... Next up was the view point of the 1st battalion. It was for this one hill that 30,000 American's and Koreans were killed during the war. It holds a very prominent position looking over the rivers in front of it and is obviously of great tactical significance. From here you can look out over the barriers to North Korea. It is not permissible to take photos from the within 10m of the barriers and a large yellow line marks this out on the floor. Apparently due to the potential for camera flash to be mistaken for muzzle flash. As I'm quite tall I could hold my camera up at full stretch and photograph over from behind the line. I was then asked by numerous people to do the same for them due to my hight! Rolf id sat on one of the telescopes at the viewing platform.

From here we were taken to a gift shop selling foods grown in the dmz and also some North Korean foods and beverages.

Our final stop was the train station on the north end of the southern part of a train line that runs all the way through Korea and up into China. This station has never served the train it was built for and wool not do so until unification. Our guide said they are preparing for either unification or another Korean war.

The visit finished with a trip to an amethyst factory a few meters from my hotel.

In the evening I went back out into the city to take some night shots of the main street of this city with over 20 million inhabitants.

And that's about it for today!