Well, it's Sunday, the last day of our 5-day weekend breaks for Lunar New Year. (Well I had a 5 day break and Jesse had 9 days). Since our breaks started at different times and I had made plans to see my friend from College, we ended up doing different things so we'll break it up into Ali's break and Jesse's break.
Ali's break:
So, my holiday didn't start until Wednesday (Jesse was off from last Saturday). On Tuesday, my students had a Lunar New Year party and all wore their hanboks. I had to work in the 'bowing room', where we taught the kids how to do traditional Korean bows. We definitely had the most boring room but teaching the kids how to bow took about five minutes and then we just had a dance party for the next 25. The kids were so cute in their hanboks.
The kids practicing their bows.
As is traditional for Thanksgiving and New Years in Korea, the kids got me gifts of tuna and spam. It still is very bizarre to get a huge gift box full of cans of spam.
Anyway, on Wednesday, I went in to the foreigner hospital to get my shoulder checked because it's been really bothering me for a few months now. But everything was closed because of the holiday so I just headed back home again. Then, in the afternoon, I went into Seoul to meet my friend Jen, who had come to visit from Changwon, I city in the South of Korea. We had booked a fancy hotel for the night so we just had a girls night in Seoul with a nice dinner.
On Thursday, we had planned to have a spa day in Seoul but, again we forgot that it was a holiday, so all the spa stuff was closed so, instead, we had a major shopping spree and bought all kinds of clothes. That night, we got on the KTX (the high-speed train) and headed back down to Changwon together.
There, we met up with all her friends, who I've met a few times before, and had lots of fun catching up with them. Jen has a really great apartment on a street with tons of foreign bars and restaurants. Changwon is a really cool city. Apparently, Changwon was built to be the 'back-up capital' of Korea, if Seoul was ever to be taken over in a war. It's surrounded by really high mountains and the main street running through the city is super wide so that tanks can drive on it and planes can land there. It's much warmer than Seoul and Uijeongbu and we were walking around with no coats on.
On Friday, we had lunch with Jen's friend Anastasia and then just walked around Changwon, getting a tour of the city. We just hung out and met up with different friends and had a relaxing vacation.
Saturday morning, I had to get a 6am bus back to Seoul so I spent most of Saturday in transit. Saturday evening was our friend Dickie's goodbye party in Seoul so we went there with our friends.
Anyway, my holiday was not very exciting - just relaxing and fun. Jesse packed a lot more sightseeing and culture into his so I'll let him tell you about it now.
Bye all! Happy lunar new year!
Ali
Jesse's Break:
So I had 9 days off starting with the Saturday but didn't leave until the Tuesday morning. My plan was to go to Gyeongju and Andong, both are very traditional cities with lots of tourist sites, and maybe meet some friends (co-workers of Ali) somewhere down there as they were starting their vacation the next day.
After a 5:30 wake up, and a 4 hour bus ride, I arrived in Gyeongju at noon and, with my trusty Korea travel book in my hands, started to make my way towards Tumuli park. One unique thing about Gyeongju is that it's the former capital of the Shilla kingdom that once ruled over Korea and all of their Kings and Queens were buried in these tombs that look like hills now. One of them was even open for the public to go into and see all the gold and treasures that have been discovered in the tomb.
Afterward, I spent some time walking about and seeing other tourist sights in the area such as another park, a pond, and the Gyeongju National Museum. The sights were really beautiful, especially the pond, but this being Winter the water was frozen and there was no flowers. I'm sure it's a hundred times more beautiful in the summer.
I checked into my guesthouse at around 4 o'clock. I had booked it ahead of time based on the description in my travel book. It's traditional style housing with a courtyard and individual rooms overlooking the courtyard. It's even got those paper sliding doors that we usually associate with Japan. It was actually a great place to stay as there was free internet and a kitchen I could use.
Wednesday morning I woke up early and got on a 40 minute bus ride towards the ocean to see Bulguksa temple, which is supposed to be Korea's most beautiful temple. Korea has a hard time in the tourism business compared to it's tourist heavy neighbours Japan and China and there's good reason for that since Japan seems to have done a better job of preserving and protecting their ancient sites and China is just so big that they have more things for tourists to see, plus the great wall. However, this temple was definitely the best that I've seen in Korea and was comparable to some of Japan's. All of the various buildings had incredible statues inside of Gold Buddhas and other things, but I couldn't get any pictures as each building had a Monk inside doing their thing. I could walk around inside though so not a total loss. I was there pretty early so it was very quiet with little tourists around which made it much more enjoyable. Another reason might be because it's a holiday where people go to their hometowns to see their families.
My next stop was Seokguram Grotto, a grotto way up in the mountains. I didn't know what a grotto was (and I still don't) but it was a UNESCO World Heritage site so it seemed like it would be worth the trip. The bus drove up the mountains for a good half hour before we arrived. I wasn't sure if I'd been that high in the mountains before. There were a few more temple buildings and some cool statues but the real highlight was the view of the city below.
My next stop was even further East all the way to the East Sea to check out the "Underwater Tomb of King Munmu." No, that's not the next title of an Indiana Jones movie, but a tomb where King Munmu was put to rest. However, the real thing was not as cool as the name as it turns out it's some rocks out in the sea, where his ashes were spread so that he could come back as a Sea Dragon. In the middle rocks, there's supposed to some sort of tomb, but of course, no one can see it.
I got on a wrong bus and was stuck in some seaside village for awhile waiting for another bus, but this turned out to be a blessing in disguise; I was at the bus terminal getting my ticket to Andong, and just as I was reaching for my wallet, my phone rang. It was my friends telling me that they were heading to Daegu (Korea's 4th largest city) and only an hour bus ride away. So I quickly bought a ticket and was on my way. It's not exactly a tourist city. It resembles most urban Korean cities. One unique thing it does have though is themed streets where all of the businesses sell the same thing. For example, there's herbal medicine street, washing machine street, motorcycle street, hardware street plus some more. So anyone out there who ever wanted to go shopping for washing machines but didn't like the hassle of driving around to all of the different stores, this city is for you. And for anyone else who wants to buy a wide range of goods in their shopping excursions all in one place, well... maybe you're better off in your current city. Anyway, the 4 of us got a motel and went out for the night to different restaurants and bars. One of the guys is dating a girl from Daegu and so she met up with us and showed us around since she was in the area visiting Grandparents.
Thursday morning, the 4 of us took a 2 hour bus ride to Andong, a city that has 2 big cultural draws in the surrounding area: a traditional folk village and a Confucian academy. We were up to see either of them but we arrived at 4 o'clock and there was only one bus left to the folk village so we booked a sleeping area there and arrived just before 7. The folk village is very rural and the people living there get Government subsidies for staying there. There's no regular stores around and people grow some vegetables and raise chickens that they live off of. A lot of the houses had straw roofs. We did some night time exploring and then settled into our traditional room for the night, sleeping on a heated floor.
In the morning (Friday) we did some daylight exploring around the village and saw some pretty cool sights. It's a bit weird seeing nice cars parked in front of straw houses, though.
The guys had to get back to Daegu for 4:00 because they had already booked their tickets back, afraid everything would be sold out. I booked a bus ticket back for 5 o'clock from Andong, so we parted ways. I had some time to kill so I went to check out Andong's other big site, the Confucian academy. It was another half hour bus ride and was pretty impressive. But I had already seen so many temples that I'm sure some of it's beauty was lost on me. Thankfully the 4 of us went to the folk village and not here because while the academy was nice, you were done with it an hour.
Overall, it was a great 3 city-tour vacation and made me realize that there are more tourism sights in South Korea than what I had originally thought. Monday I'm back at school, and another month, I'll be home.
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