It has been ages since I wrote anything here but life has been busy. We just got back from our month long holiday where we spent time in Thailand, Bali and Korea. I’ll write a little about Korea in this blog and work backwards to Thailand over the next couple of entries! Over the next week or so, I will write some more detailed articles on http://stevelepoidevin.hubpages.com about some of the places we visited during this holiday.
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My son, Pat, is working in Mokpo, which is about four hours by train south of Seoul. We spent a couple of days in Seoul before taking the train south. The guest houses we stayed in were comfortable and nice enough but didn’t come close to some of the other hostels we have been to in other countries, including China. Both places were fairly sparse and didn’t have the atmosphere of other places we have been to over the years. However, that being said, they were very quiet and clean, our two major criteria when traveling lol.
Seoul was a great city and we would love to go back someday to explore it in more detail. We were basically only there for one day in transit so we ended up taking the bus tour around the city. It is an easy way to get around and see the place if you only have a limited amount of time. It is called the Seoul City Bus Tour and stops at all the major tourist sites around the city. There are a couple of options for routes depending on what you want to see and a day-long ticket costs less than $10 Canadian. You can get off and on the bus throughout the day. Korea is a cold country in the winter. It was about -10 Celsius in Seoul when we arrived which was a 40 degree drop in temperature from our departure in Bali. Usually we travel with one small bag of shorts and t-shirts. This time we had to lug around a suitcase each with all our winter clothing. There is skiing in some parts of the country but we just didn’t have time to check it out.
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After a day in Seoul, we headed to Mokpo on the “fast train”. It reached a top speed of about 264 km/h, not quite as fast as those in China and definitely not as smooth a ride. Somehow, China has managed to get rid of the joints in the rails, so their bullet trains are more like flying. There is no thunk, thunk, thunk as you ride along. The first thing we noticed about Seoul and the countryside in general is that it is very westernized, modern and clean. Most people we ran into spoke some English and English signs were visible everywhere. As we rode along in the train, we passed a variety of well-built houses and country farms, etc. It was a totally different picture than a ride through the Chinese countryside. The landscape was also very scenic with lots of rolling hills, open meadows and forests. Except for the Korean rooflines, it was very similar to many North American rural areas.
The trip to Mokpo took about four hours. Pat was working so we had to find our way to his apartment using his instructions that he had given us. The taxi driver didn’t speak any English but understood my first attempt at speaking Korean when I gave him the address as best I could. We got dumped off in front of the huge apartment complex, a series of 16 storey boxes, and made our way to his place through a parking lot jammed with cars, many blocking the paths of other vehicles. We later found out that people leave their cars in neutral so that neighbors can push them out of the way to leave the lot in the morning. They also often leave their phone numbers in the window so that they can be called to move their vehicle, if necessary. Very strange!!!
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Over the few days we were in Mokpo we had tons of traditional Korean food, including Kimchi, squid, and Korean bbq. All of it was incredible. Other highlights included a visit to the vagina tree (ok, maybe not a highlight but interesting nonetheless), the Ceramics Museum, the National Maritime Museum and Yudalsan Mountain. And the most bizarre of all, a pet cafe where you could drink coffee while surrounded by dressed-up and made-up cats and dogs!
On the day before we left, Pat and I decided to take a trip to Heuksando Island for no reason other than it was something to do and somewhere to go! We got up early in the morning and boarded the 8 am ferry, having no idea what this place was like. It is about 100 km off the coast and not the most popular tourist destination, especially in the middle of winter on a dreary day! But it was an adventure. The ferry was basically a huge water taxi; it was not a car ferry. It was not possible to go outside and the windows were too dirty and fogged up to see much out of. After one stop in between, and a two hour ride, we ended up at our destination. There was a town but no people to be seen. Despite the population of 3,000 on the island, I think it would be exaggerating to say we saw more than two dozen humans the whole time we were on the island. But it was a fascinating place. Obviously a fishing village with many boats in the harbor and some unloading fish as we walked around. We walked around the town along narrow stone-wall lined alleys and then headed down the road to the next village. No English, no restaurants that we could see that were open and no people. It was like a ghost town!
We got a taxi back to where we started and started looking for a place to eat lunch. The first door we entered put us in the middle of a room that had four or five people playing cards and a bunch of couches. It was a café but no food. The lady took a pot that had a bit of cold coffee in it, boiled it up, poured a bit in each of our cups and added hot water to fill it. Ok, coffee a la Heuksando. We drank our coffee, which wasn’t bad btw, and continued our quest for food. Walking down a small alley, we saw a place that sort of looked like a restaurant. A man was just leaving but saw us and waved us in. The only other person in the “restaurant” was his wife or daughter lying on a blanket on the floor watching TV. In Korean, Pat asked him “what the best thing was that he had to eat” in the place, a sentence that I will definitely have to learn in Chinese for back home here in Wuhan. After a little discussion that neither of us really understood, he returned later with a bunch of side dishes and two bowls of delicious tofu/clam stew. We downed it along with a couple of bottles of beer and were soon on our way again.
After a little looking around, we discovered that there was a local bus that circled the island every hour or so. We hopped on it, paid the driver the equivalent of about $2 each and headed out for the ride of our lives. I have been on switchbacks before but this was ridiculous! The island was very mountainous and so was the ride. Up, down and over we went for a total of about an hour. Along the way, we passed beautiful little beaches, a host of tiny fishing villages and many cliff-hanging viewpoints. Not to mention, switchbacks from hell.
All in all, it was a fun trip, including the rough ride back to Mokpo through open seas. Stay tuned for entries on our trip to Thailand and Bali.
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