Korea Day 9 (Sept 25)

The last "real" day of the vacation today… considering the following morning is where I am right now… finally catching up on the last few days of travel experiences.

Once again we decided to go on a bit of a drive and hit up the town of Gyeonju… at this point we have pretty much gone everywhere in this country. In fact, more than the average Korean does in their lifetime…. so we were just pretty out of it at this point… regardless, the travel must go on!!!




Along the way we made a pit stop at one of the biggest temples in Korea, (name here). Supposedly it holds a body part of some famous monk, similar to pilgrimage chapels throughout Europe. I find it kinda odd how everyone thinks someone's femur has divine power, but whatever attracts tourists and keeps the money flowing into the churches coffers I guess. The surrounding area was actually prettier than the temple, the outside was absolutely gorgeous.


Pathway to the temple



Oh man deez rocks got writin all over them



Neato!


Afterward we went over to another big temple area, and checked it out rather briefly. To be honest, at this point me and Amy were pretty jaded to the whole temple thing, and everything sort of blended together into a temple mass that all looked the same.

On our way out, we were harassed like crazy by this little lady who demanded we eat at her restaurant. It creeped us out so much, we went the opposite direction but she made a roundabout charge and followed us to the location. We ducked into a different restaurant in protest to her assaults, and she finally left us alone. We then had some delicious beef with rice.

Our last stop was a pretty cool stone Buddha at the top of the mountain. There was actually roads all the way up, but they were DAMN scary as terrible Korean drivers barreled down, sometimes crossing into the opposite lane. These people are insane. We were tailgated by people thinking we were just too slow… going up a mountain.. after a small path, we finally reached the shrine and snapped a shot of the "no photo" Buddha. It was pretty cool.



Big ass bell near the start of the hike


Don't take photos of the Buddha, or you'll steal his SOUL!



The same building with the bell in it... i just liked how this looked a lot.



View from the top!


After being friends for over a decade mark finally wanted to be the tall one.



Another rocking view (good shots Amy!)

At this point we were done done. Super done, so tired and beat and stressed we didn't even want to meet any more of Mark's friends when we finally arrived back at Masan. We had some delicious Korean pancakes, and then called it a night since we had to get up so very very early this morning.

Korea Day 8 (Sept 24

Mark was stuck working again today (bahaha!), so we had another day to ourselves. This time we decided to check out the main area of the city mark lived in, Changwon. Now some of you may be a little confused since I've been using Masan the entire time. It's basically a small town that has been absorbed into Changwon, but everyone still references Masan by it's name, and all of the signs still say Masan, so it's kind of strange they bothered at all.

Mark dropped us off at a park in the central area, and we had a fairly mellow day just checking out the town.

We walked along a nice peaceful road, and then checked out the local mall… which was pretty insane. 3 cones connected to each other by bridges, the mall was all outside, yet all inside at the same time. Pretty bizarre.


One of the three.



Inside... and yet outside..




There was also a minor art gallery where all the works were done in beeswax, they were pretty sweet.

Skulls!



We hit up some more Mr pizza while we were there.


Delicious seafood pizza!

After that we just walked around, got sorta bored and took a cab back to the Masan area where Mark lived. He wasn't out of work by the time, so we went ahead and hit up the Movie room again and watched "9". It sucked. At least it passed some time though… eventually we met up with Mark and stopped over at Chris's place so we could go get some drinks.

At a fried chicken joint, we played the game "titanic" which involved a glass of beer with a floating shotglass. The idea was to take turns pouring Sojou (a sort of rice vodka) into the drink and whoever sunk the glass, had to drink the mix… the locals even started buying us more liquor.. which we dumped out after they left so we didn't feel like utter crap the next day ;). It was great times.

Monster plate of chicken... soo good, should have gotten more.

Korea Day 7 (Sept 23)

More and more I find that I'm more of a small city person than a big one. The big cities just stress me out. Initially we thought of having another Amy/Jesse day in Seoul but we decided in the morning that we would just be heading back with mark instead. We still had another whole Seoul day ahead of us!

Mark's biggest desire in the entire Seoul trip, was to hit the coveted Taco Bell that was located in the military district of Seoul. This is where all the foreigners could sit around and have everything they could back home, which seemed rather boring to me. Me and Amy hit up thai again while mark was chomping on burritos, to an even more lavish restaurant. It was too bad that the food was actually far worse than the little local place we stopped at the day before.

Near the military district was (believe it or not!) a US military base. This, of course, provoked little to no interest at all, for we were here to see the War Memorial/Military Museum right next to it.


The big 'ol front sculpture, complete with metal dudes.


Tanks


Artillery...


Planes...


And balloons... Amy was SO excited to have extra shit to carry around all day. She couldn't say no to the kindly gent who was giving them out.



The main plaza... they host weddings here... o_O

This place was loaded with all sorts of military vehicles, most of which were used in the Korean war. There were also tablet memorials to all the soldiers, foreign and local, who died in the war. At the heart of the memorial was a war museum.

Korea certainly had a war torn past. For thousands of years, it was invaded again and again. By the chinese, japanese, and of course, itself in it's own civil war. The exhibits inside were impressive.


Swords! Complete with zodiac foofa

Wared out, Mark suggested we hit up one of the primary shopping districts in Seoul to check out some wares, as well as meet up with his brother Tristan who was also teaching in Korea. He was stationed in Seoul. Sadly, this district was about as touristy as it got, swarming with massive amounts of people. Once again I became the meeting point for all of my friends, as I stood out feet above the rest of the pedestrians. We pretty much got nothing here, and at this point we were tired to the max.


I run into this dude EVERYWHERE. What a stalker.... on a side note.. didn't he originally not want any sculptures of himself? Reminds me of the bible too.. in the end no one gives a shit and wants statues to worship.

We briefly checked out another small temple in the middle of the city, then took a cab back to the park where we parked marks car (we couldn't stay parked at the hotel)…. then got the HELL OUT…. aghhhhhhhhhhhh big cities are stressful. After another long drive we made it back to Masan and sacked out at Marks.

Korea Day 6 (Sept 22)

AT LAST. No more freaking driving. A day just waking up in a hotel and not necessarily needing to. Of course, we still woke up at a relatively decent time, but the fact that we didn't have to felt great.


Our hotel room.. if you hadn't noticed.. no beds ever!

The first thing we did was hit up a cab to the center of Seoul, a grand city indeed. I knew cities around asia were bigger than their USA counterparts, but the insane amount of people and structures is still staggering. Busan was huge, but it was dwarfed in comparison to the capitol.



How do you get a statue of yourself in the center of town? Why, simple! Just invent the korean alphabet (which is vastly superior to chinese/japanese characters I might add)

We decided to mix things up a little bit in the food department and had some delicious thai food. We all had some pad thai, which was some of the best i've ever had.



Being sated, we began our pilgrimage to all of the big sites of the city. The first, the grand palace Gyeongbok .





Upon entering, we stumbled upon a recreation of the calling of the guard, which was pretty interesting to watch. I would have had a video of the event, but my camera ran out of juice midway.


Front of the Gyeongbok palaaaceeee

This place was pretty epic, lots of very interesting structures. Unfortunately , all temples and castles in korea pretty much use the same color/design scheme… which we later confirmed countless times.

Still pretty cool looking tho.



"NEAT!"


Alright, you've convinced me... I'd live here.


Next, we wanted to check out the "stream" inside of the city. Originally it was a stream, then it was a sewer, then they took out the road onto of it and turned it back into a stream again. Just a cool site inside of a big city. Apparently a lot of festivals and concerts go on in the area. I can understand why.

The beginning of the stream



It's rather long

Amy's big desire while in korea was to check out the art, so away we went to the big art museum of Seoul. Outside there were some very very cool sculputres… but the inside was rather lacking…. pretty much all video art and photographs. Which we all agreed where about the dullest media to witness. There were still a couple cool ones inside anyways.


trippy sculpture in the front.. made you think you were staring at a convex mirror



what the hell is this thing? oh... modern art.. i get it.. =/


Stopped for some korean food along the way for Gimbap (shushi like rolls), Dumplings, and of course Kimchi!

We then went out to check out the Seoul tower. In korea, it seems that every big city needed its tower to be able to have tourists come in and witness the surrounding area. Being the capitol, seoul was the most popular by far (much to our later dismay). We had a pretty cool hike up to the tower, which itself wasn't very high at all, but happened to be on top of a very large hill… we went up to the top of it.. but we had to wait through quite a few lines.


Amy was miserable the entire hike up... turns out she had 7 blisters on her feet.. yeowch


we made it! How exciting!

Apparently lines are fairly commonplace here at big sites, being that there are so many people. In fact, at most fairs the lines for rides are about 20-30 minutes long, something similar to the biggest theme parks in america, but everyone's used to it and just shrugs it off.


View from the top.. Seoul is rather huge btw

We had it with sightseeing, being tired and all that we decided to go back… to hit up the pubs! We enjoyed a few brews and then hit back to the hotel.



Drinkin away... they love putting napkins on top for twistoff bottles (but still put them on for ones that needed to be popped as well...)

Korea day 5 (Sept 21)

We slept in till about the last second possible, and then booked it out. For some reason Mark decided he only needed 3 hours of sleep, so he was a little out of it. We drove to Seraksan. To go on some freaking hiking!


Our lovely bathroom...


view outside of our hotel



Rest stop snacks on the way, delicious dumplings and Korean pancakes
Well… it would have been amazing… but it was raining like crazy the entire day. When I say crazy, I mean we got hit by a Typhoon all day, which I guess is an interesting experience from an indoor vantage point, but driving it was absolute hell.

Instead, we had to cop out and hit up the cable cars.. we would have gotten some rocking views as well, but the fog obscured everything in the area… even still, it was a fairly nice view. I guess you can't have everything go right during traveling. There was also a temple on the mountain, but it was



At least we gotta see a rocking Buddha statue. Unfortunately, the only "XL" poncho available wasn't quite my size or color preference.


Despite the fog, we still got some pretty sweet views.


On our way down
Feeling very wet, cold and dampened, we decided to head out as the rain wasn't letting up at all… so on to Seoul!

Neat bridge along the way that we stopped at.


Chris didn't wanna go to Seoul, so we made a side trip to drop him off at a bus station at another somewhat large city. Unfortunately it was a wasted effort because the buses didn't even go to Masan. Wa wa… this meant we instead had to drive into Seoul to drop Chris off, rather than our original plan to just ride a bus into the city. Man… what a nightmare decision that was… upon reflection we all agreed we should have just let him suck it up and stay in a hotel outside the city for a night.

Dropping Chris off wasn't the big deal, but the rest of the day… well, night, was nasty. We had to find a hotel to stay at, but also one that would allow a spot to park.. well also happened to be low on gas as well, and whenever we tried to get to a station we were blocked by a billion other cars who would not let us in.

Eventually we found gas and a nice little hotel to stay at and booked it for the night and the following one. Not exactly the greatest day ever..

Korea Day 4 (Sept 20)

Argh! I'm already hopelessly behind. I have a feeling a great deal of this won't even see publication still after I'm back in St Cloud. I've had the worst luck getting wireless and I've been absolutely pooped when it's around.

Woo, waking up at 5:45 and watching the sun rise on the beach is incredible. Good times. Of course, now that I'm writing this I sort of wish I stayed asleep a little longer. Why? The town is pretty dead in the morning. Everyone sleeps in here, since everyone works late. Chuseok has already begun over here as well so everyone seems to be pretty merry. Today me and Amy are spending the day by ourselves while Markus teaches back in Masan.

View from the hotel room, writing some blog posts!



They had a sex toy vending machine on the stairs... pretty funny

Right after we woke up we decided to go out and walk the beach, there were many very cool sculptures in the area. Sadly, I already started to regret the whole waking up early decision and started to feel very sleep deprived. A white chocolate mocha (from a starbucks, they're everywhere here) and a double shot later, I started to feel quite a bit better.

Cool head sculptures on the beach..

Each one had a different theme.. I bet you can't guess this guy


Rather than hail a cab, we decided we'd walk to our first destination, the art museum. I mean, it can't be that far right? It's oh so close on the map! We had no idea the magnitude of the size of this city. So we basically walked about the 4th of the way and then headed back to our base at the beach. Then when we got back we realized the art museum was actually closed because of the holiday. Luckily Amy wasn't distressed and too high on the foreign travel to really mind. Instead we decided to go to the giant Korean war memorial. Shortly afterwards we hired a cab.


Another classic Korean site we saw along the way, free outside gyms.

I figure this is a good time to talk about the whole cab/car system here. Back in the states, I considered them a medium of transport for the lethargic, wealthy or drunk folk, but here, they are a lifeline. Pretty much as cheap as can be at about 12000 won for going across town (~10 dollars). Unfortunately, you need a picture or some korean words ahead of time to avoid a very lengthy charades process, but luckily Mark warned us of this before hand. As far as the average driver goes, everyone.. EVERYONE has a GPS. Why? Because the roads are clearly made by drunken Irishmen to quote our old muscle head governor. There are no signs, and intersections are like some spider's web where the spinner was a lab test subject on Meth. Everyone parks every which way, and people literally stop in the middle of the road, turn on their hazard lights, and run over to the nearest bush to take a leak. The driving is also crazy, and makes St Cloud drivers look a little more sane, although probably still more dense.

We arrived at the war memorial and were amazed at the monuments constructed to commemorate such a struggle. When one thinks of the cold war, they generally think of the past, but officially it is still going on every day, the Korean war never ended.


War is hell. I think this picture sums it up pretty nicely.

A picture of the main memorial, the inside part had a small shrine covered with tablets inscribed with the names of hose who died. It was also on a very tiny island in the middle.

Another memorial, with Amy at the center

Afterwards we headed back to the area around the bus terminal, so we could get an easy exit from the city. Being hungry again we decided to hit up the local pizza place, Mr. Pizza. Man, foreign pizza is so much more interesting than the basics america has to offer.




check it out! 4 types! It was good!

Time to hit up the bus station.. and how much did an hour bus ride to Masan cost? <70 cents! Woot. Upon arrival, we still had some time to kill before walking around so we decided to check out the area around Masan. We didn't end up really finding anything interesting, but I got one of my first admirers. While we were talking a young girl just dead stopped in her tracks and pivoted around as we walked by. About 30 yards further I looked back and she was STILL staring at me and she waved, I waved back and I think I made her day. It was pretty funny. As a result of this we decided to have a minor competition as to who would get stared at more… Amy won.

Afterwards we hailed another taxi driver to get back into Mark's area, unfortunately the fellow wasn't too sure as to where our destination was, so we were quite worried for a bit… luckily I started to recognize the area and we were able to find Mark's place of work just in time to frighten his students with my height.

Afterwards we met up with Mark's friend Steven and decided to hit up a vietnamese restaurant, good stuff. We decided we'd drive out tonight to potentially avoid the chusung traffic, so we picked up Chris who was coming and along and headed out on a very very looong drive…. 6-7 hours.

It's fairly nuts when you think about the driving here, because the country is smaller than the size of Minnesota. However, it's so mountainous that something that could take about an hour and 30 minutes could take, well… 7 hours… needless to say by the time we arrived at a hotel (4-5am) we were really tired.