Journal 39: Day 14: Home from Korea

Well, I am home and finally settled from the two weeks in Korea.  It was an amazing experience.  Overall, Korea is a place of hidden gems.  There is a sense of “manufactured” environment in many of the parks and reserves.  But in all that, it’s still something to be experienced.  It has a sense of human manipulation that I haven’t seen anywhere else.  It’s like they had a picture of what the environment was supposed to look like.  And instead of simply leaving nature to its course, they “made” it look permanently to their scale of how it should stay.

And it’s things like that which make Korea unique.  Of course there are beautiful places that have been left to the elements and have weathered into wonderful view-scapes of hillside and country.  And there are plenty of peaks to climb and villages to see.  But I think if you’ve ever been in a place where you look at something and your eyes don’t immediately register the information in your brain and you eventually figure out that it’s just an obscure scene; that’s what Korea is.  The customs and traditional life that takes place here, even with pop culture and fashion trickling in from all sides, are the stranger of the two things that your brain thinks your eyes are creating an images of.   You just know that what you’re seeing in Korea could quite possibly be normal.  But upon further investigation, they’re simply not.  They are the refined items that Korea has created over the years.  And there they sit; seemingly normal but profoundly off-centered.

As my time passed traveling throughout the Korean Peninsula, I was reminded of the joys of traveling to these new and fascinating places.  I was gifted with the insights of a new way of thinking.  I achieved experiential knowledge and the lessons it uses at imparting that knowledge.  And I had a peak into a new world with new rules.  It was truly something that I won’t forget.
Soon, I will be headed for Hong Kong; a city straddling the Bay of Victoria and bursting with lights and sounds of a busy metropolis.  I hope to come back with great photos of architecture, nightlife and of course, the people who make it all run.  It will be my forth time passing through, but this time I plan on putting in some time and visiting as much of it as I can.

Until then, I hope that you have all enjoyed this latest entry into my blog of travel and research from around the globe.  And I hope to have you back with me soon.

Be sure to go to my website, cyleodonnell.com, for the best and newest photography from these and other travels and for my latest books available through the site.  I hope to have at least two more published in the next six months.  So keep an eye out!

Journal 38: Day 13: A dodgy, little love motel on my last day in the Korean Peninsula

So it’s my last night here in Korea.  I decided to leave Jeju and come to Incheon where, I once thought, the city’s Chinatown held new opportunities for some great market photographs or architecture.  I was, I guess, hoping for some Chinese temples where I could snap a few shots of the animals cresting their eves or a dragon greeting me at the entrance.  Maybe I was expecting lots of commotion as bustling streets flowed with people moving goods and foodstuffs around with a sense of navigation that westerners can only stand back and gawk at.  Or perhaps I was hoping for some food that swelled with the heat that comes off it, food that you don’t have to crack open or cook yourself.

Alas, there was nothing.  Or perhaps I should say, there was nothing worth taking photos of.  Drab and somber, the entire area looked more like it was the outskirts of something much more interesting.  Its grimy streets and heavy overcast gave it a feel of old timey poverty just before a dustbowl was set to come in and put to rest any fleeting images of holding on to the last few drumbeats of an economic heartbeat.  It seemed like this was the place that was bashed with North Korean gunfire back in 2010.  But even that place was not far from here.  Only about 30 kilometers or so.

At any rate, I followed what I thought were Lonely Planet’s directions for a motel near the subway that I would take in the morning to get to the airport.  But after walking way too far with all my gear, I finally just used my visual knowledge of reading Korean signage and found a motel across the street from a pizza joint and down the block from a subway entrance and called it a night.  These two landmarks represented what my will had been ground down to; food and the quickest way to exit this country.  I’m certainly not regretting my time here.  It just seems like, now that the end is right around the corner, I may as well get it over with.

Anyway, apparently in my learning of Korean advertisements, I could read enough to know that the sign said “motel.”  But clearly I hadn’t learned what the text for “love” was.  When I checked in, I thought that it was odd that they owners didn’t give me a key to my room.  They also kept asking me in Korean if it was going to be just me in the room.  I kept saying that I, alone, was going to be sleeping and needed a key to protect my valuables.  But they were simply not happy with my response.

Before I go on, I think it would be better if I explained just what a “love motel” and its purpose is.  Now, normally one would simply think, ‘Oh, well it’s obviously a cathouse and there’s nothing more to think about it.’  But, like most other things here in Asia, it has a deeper meaning and purpose.  And, make no mistake, its meaning and purpose follow lines to a source that hold no bearing on whether or not the western world would approve or even understand that logic.

A love motel can be rented by the night or by the hour.  A man can get a room alone, wake up with a woman and never feel shame from the owners as he’s checking out.  The owners of these establishments generally offer a woman to single men checking in and can suggest a man for the single ladies.  A love motel is a place most often occupied by actual couples.  But it can also be used as a discrete meeting place for strangers.

In America, it undoubtedly seems a little strange that a couple would check into a hotel for one night – or even a few hours.  It might also come off as odd that the owners might have some say in the eventuality in the population of each room’s occupancy.  It may also come as a huge shock that these motels have resident “lovers” who, from birth, have lived there to pay off their parent’s debt as sex slaves.  But then again, there are many things that Americans will never understand about what goes on in this strange corner of the world.

As the tradition goes in most parts of Asia, it is expected that the children, once married, move into the house of the husband’s parents.  It’s also expected that the wife becomes, for lack of a more polite description, a slave to the parents – fulfilling chores, errands and other demands.  Keeping in good with a family that demands strict adherence to a very conservative lifestyle, then, becomes an everyday challenge.  Sex, therefore, is a bit of an uncomfortable item which brings a lot of stress to the already difficult nature of a new marriage.

Love motels sprang up out of the resulting need for privacy in these new relationships in the turning of the world’s traditional ways.  These motels were first used as places for dating couples to spend anything from a few days of relaxation to just a quick visit between their busy lives.  From there, of course, the Asian culture of why-can’t-we-have-everything-we-want came into play and they started to gain popularity for other types of visits.  And as for the lifetime resident lovers; well, that was a tradition long preceding the invention of the love motel.

For thousands of years the ideals of Buddhism played into the perpetual cycle of reincarnation and parents thought once their daughters were born when they were expecting a boy, it was their karma giving them the requirement of payment for their ills in previous lives.  So giving up their daughters as payment for this karma was the right thing to do.  Their daughters, in turn, were taught their life of sexual servitude was them paying off their karma as well – otherwise, why would they have been born as the payment of their parent’s karma?

It makes a lot more sense once you have been living in Asia for a while and can understand the mentality of all the intricacies of what goes along with the absolute and unquestioning belief in rebirth.

So there I was, being probed by the owners of this motel and the lady starts moving her hands through her hair.  I had no idea what this meant until some time later.  But once she was satisfied – though not very pleased – knowing that I would be staying one night, alone and not be in need of anything “else” from them, she came up with her price and charged me for the room.

Once checked in, I dug out some cash and went across the street to the pizza place for edible, non-seafood that I didn’t have to break the shells off of or barbecue myself.  On the way, though, I kept wondering what the lady meant when she was combing her hands through her hair.  And it eventually came to me.  She was asking me if I wanted a woman for the night.  Then all the other mannerisms came into understanding as well.

The couple were upset that I didn’t want a woman because they could charge me more for the room.  They were displeased that I would only make them money on the room when, ultimately, this was not the kind of place where they only charge for the room.  This also explained the delay in coming up with a price for the room – essentially an overcharge.  And they didn’t give me a key because they wanted me to ask them for the key every time I wanted to enter the room because they didn’t want me hiring a woman from the street or from the little paper advertisements I would see taped up to the underside of steps throughout the alleyways all over the city.  That was the competition.  And for these elderly, Asian pimps, that’s just not the kind of place they run.

Since having been back in Taiwan, I have done more research into this and have talked to natives who indicate the benefit of short-term motels is much greater than having to put up with the prying eyes and ears of older, more traditional parents who would just as soon have their daughter-in-laws doing back-breaking work than to spend their nights corrupting their respectable son’s sensibilities.  They also confirmed that the majority of the love motel’s use was limited to these situations rather than for the sex-shops they’d more easily become reputed as being.

Nevertheless, my last night in Korea did little more to put me at ease but ultimately summed up all my experiences in that amazing country.  No matter where you go in Korea, you’re sure to find yourself in one inextricably unique situation after another as you navigate the intricate web of peculiarities of everything from traditional Hanok Villages kept in the old ways complete with dances to entice the soil’s richness, to parks dedicated to phallic splendor.

Stay tuned for my last blog on my Korea trip and a toast for things to come.

Journal 37: Day 13: Soegwipo-Si and the motorbike ride to broken bones and freedom

If it’s not the broken foot that made this trip great, it was certainly the motorbike that broke it.  This trip was just what I needed after a night of gloom and a hangover that threatened to chew its way right out of my abdomen like some alien movie.  But all things considered, that would have probably been an experience all in itself.  And therefore, I’d probably embrace it as I have the rest of the oddities along this long, winding road carved into the limestone bedrock of the Korean Peninsula.

The day started off great.  I was up at 6am to hop a bus to the south of the island where I would take part in one or more of several key items listed on Lonely Planet’s inventory of must-see’s abound.  They ranged in definition from slightly dangerous to downright taboo.   And I was navigating my morning in the wake of a fresh detox.  So what I saw was a recipe for fun and ordered up a heaping helping of misadventure with a side order of senselessness.

Unfortunately, one hour into my ride I found out that I was not on the right bus.  But that was only a minor setback because I had plotted points all over the map that I wanted to see and there were a couple in that direction as well.

Once off the bus, I snapped a couple pictures of the volcanic tuffs in the horizon.  Then I went on what turned out to be an early morning 5k walk and found out the hard way that this stretched out town along the sea was no place for a sweaty westerner with an expectation for seeing all there was to see in just one day.  It just wasn’t going to happen in the time I had if I had to walk it all the way.

 

I eventually came across this little shop run by an older couple.  The husband had a cap that I hired as the mule that would save me from walking another 10 kilometers into town.  But whether I was walking or in a whatever I employed to speed up my sweaty trek, the Korean oddities just kept coming.  All along the roadway there were things that just looked normal being in Korea, but so abnormal had they been in any other place.

On the other hand, the people that have added so much flavor to the preceding moments of this trip were out in full flavor as well.  I snapped a shot of this shipbuilder grinding down the last of his nicks and burrs off the anchor he’d been repairing.  And the closer that I came to the capital city of the south of the island, Seogwipo, the more interesting the buildings looked and the more flavorful the people.  

Once in town, I headed straight for the oceanfront.  It was very quiet all around, but I made my way to the pier and could tell that it was going to be a nice, bright day with lots of opportunities for great shots.

Looking directly across the inlet, I could see what looked like a huge park with inlets hidden by the large, vertical pillars building up the volcanic rock wall.  I’d find out later that there were plenty of great little hikes, waterfalls and seaside resting areas to check out along the way.

What I expected to find was these amazing geological oddities.  But along with finding them, I also found some other amazing things in the area.

Columnar basalt rock comes from areas of high submarine volcanic eruptions.  Once the magma opens up on the sea floor, it quickly hardens, creating conditions where jointed columns of volcanic flows can be forced up over the seabed and given a longer time to cool and, under pressure, make large, polygonal pilasters.   The areas where millions of these pillars (and other basalt formations) have been pushed up through the ocean floor to the surface are called “tuffs.”  They are also known as pyroclastic rock formations.  But whatever they were called, I was on my way to see the most awesome tuff I of all.  Well, besides the fact that it was a famous one, it was technically going to be the only one I have ever seen.  But I was no less excited to do so.

But before getting there, I knew I had to rent a motorbike to see all that this spread out expanse of land had to offer.  So, on the way, I found a a place to grab a bite and sat on the steps inside to fuel up before I kept on.  While I was sitting there, though, I noticed and interesting sign.

Now, I have seen a lot of strange translations on signs throughout Asia.  And most of the time, I wonder how this translation got all the way through the design phase, through production, printing, constructing and finally even being posted without someone actually reading it and wondering if there might be a better translation out there somewhere.  In fact, I often wonder if anyone actually even asked a white person how this phrase was supposed to be worded before putting up a ridiculous sign that means something much more comical than the author had intended.  But this one definitely perplexed me.  It was a sign on a trash bin.  And, well I will just let you see if you can try and figure out what the hell they were trying to tell you what to put in there other than your dog.

Walking along the coast was great.  I really liked the gardens and the way they were kept.  It was cool to see so much use of the volcanic rock that was so readily available.  And the things they crafted with it include everything from fences and sculptures to stepping stones and even curbs and sidewalks.

Moving onward, I could see that I was nearing a large waterfall that I had known would be around there somewhere.  It was cool.  Just a quick hike down and I was at its base.  It was very tall — 20 meters or so.  And I could see that during seasons of high rainfall, this could really be a very active one.

After that I made my way back up the hill and into town where I rented a motorbike and set off westward to circle the eastern roadways and head back to eventually make it back to the hotel on the other side of the island.  It was a long, comfortable ride punctuated with wonderful seascapes and vistas of people, animals and object of a very diverse nature in their own world.  It was something I won’t soon forget.

But another thing I won’t soon forget is the crash that snapped my left foot completely backward and left me limping for days as my blue-black ankle swelled to near bursting before the trip even started.  I wish that I could say that I wrecked to save some poor child who’d run into the road after is bouncy play thing had found him careening into my path and it was either him or me.  I wish I could say that the bike malfunctioned and the brakes went out, sending me barreling into the curb at an uncontrollable speed and I dove from the bike having known what to do in an instant’s notice and rolled to safety.  Hell, I wish I could say anything but the truth.  Which is that I turned to look at some random noise that happened behind me and when I turned back around, I was half-a-second away from plowing into the curb.  But I must admit the truth.  And when I hit the curb for lack of operable ability to manipulate the handlebars with cat-like calculation, I was sent over the handle bars and then the bike came over top of me.

It was completely embarrassing.  But what’s worse is that I scuffed up my favorite pair of shoes.  They remind me of Indiana Jones.  They’ve been with me for the last seven years of travel.  They’re so comfortable.  And they’ve even been resoled to keep me from having to try fruitlessly to find a size-12 in Asia to replace them.  They’re great.  And the best part is that I bought them for $10 at a thrift shop in Mercer Island, outside Seattle, Washington.  I will be oiling the hell out of them to try and save them.  But I am not holding out too much hope.  Time will tell.

 

Making my way to the tuff it was so awesome when I finally breached the last turn before seeing it tower high above the mainland below.  I had no idea that it was that big or amazing.  It was really something impressive.  Hiking up its western side, there’s only one way that you can view it.  But it was enough to be impressed.  The surrounding area from the top is really interesting, too.  It’s sea-chiseled bluffs and land jetties were quite random and beautiful from way up there.  Here are a few photos of the climb and the surrounding area.

You can click on them to enlarge the photo just like in the galleries.

Well, this could be a very long journal if I detail every single experience that I had while pulling over to all the awesome places that I saw along the way back around the coast.  But I think I will just add in a gallery and hope that the photos will fill in the blanks.  It was an awesome trip and I was so happy that I got to do it — injuries and all.

Remember, click to enlarge!

Okay, there’s one more blog on the way and I will be home from Korea.

 

Journal 36: Day 12 Busan to Jeju and the ultimate island bike trip

Okay, so this morning, I didn’t think I was going to make it to the airport on time.  In fact, I don’t think I actually did make it on time.

For starters, I thought that my flight was at 9:30.  And when I woke up at 9:15, I almost lost my breath.  I can’t believe that I had slept through my alarm.  But partying until 3am sometimes has that effect.  At any rate, I threw my clothes on, packed my bags and ran out to catch the bus to the airport.  It was quick and efficient, but expensive as far as buses go in Korea.

A half-hour later, I was sifting through people at the small but crowded airport when I realized I didn’t know what airline I was taking.  Luckily, in the domestic gates, there were only two airlines.  So I have a 50/50 chance of getting it on the first shot.  Korea Airways and Asiana were my choices.  And since the Korea counter was closest, I headed over and checked in.  They found my flight was actually booked for 10:30.

It was 10:15 when I arrived, so I had just enough time to grab a sandwich and a water from the shop and run to the gate for probably the easiest time at an airport in recent memory.  It was a breeze.  It was like the held on to the flight for me, didn’t give me any crap for carrying on my umbrella and then gave me a snack break in order to get some breakfast down.

Once on the ground, I was able to make my way to a beachfront hotel and check in.  I spent the rest of the day editing photos, so I didn’t get to see much.  But I can say that the first thing you start to see everywhere on this island are these interesting little statues.  They really are everywhere.  People put them in their gardens, they’re on fence posts, overlooking bridges and building entryways — everywhere!

They come in all sorts of sizes and are mostly made from the volcanic rock that’s found all over the island.  But they are also seen in wood and other substances.  Mostly they just have this stoic look on their faces.  But every once in a while you’ll see one smiling or made to look more like some animal or something.

There are so many of them that it started to feel like I was on Ester Island — but still in a city.

There are a lot of interesting things about Jeju Island.  Firstly, it’s the only autonomous province in Korea.  It’s Korea’s largest island.  It sits in the Korea Strait.  It has the larges flowing lava tube in the world.  And it’s got tons of amazing geological formations.  There’s everything from waterfalls and lava tuffs to columnar lava pilings and hot springs.

It can be visited in just a couple days.  But to see all that it has to offer, it’s best to spend a week here.

Now, I have to say that the people have been getting more and more abrupt the further south I have traveled in Korea.  In fact in Busan people were practically yelling at one another, and the most I could gather, beyond the fact that they were not really angry with each other, was that they were simply a rougher breed than their northerly cousins.  But here in Jeju they are basically all out at each other.  They really enjoy screaming into the phone and generally being as hostile as they can possibly be.

Much of the gloom can be pretty well seen in the representative water park in town.  Once you come to the main stretch just past the bus stop, you come to this “T” junction — another main artery through this part of town — and as you peer through the rusted out gates, you can see this disheveled park in its ramshackle state with upturned metal shards on the platforms where rust has withered its once-sound support system underfoot.  It’s frightening to look at.  But what’s worse is that it’s still functional — and I am assuming that term is used loosely — during the warmer months.  It’s frightening because kids play there, young adults congregate there; and all the while, the holes in the walkway threaten to break knees and remove toes as people break through them.  It’s a mystery that in a developed country, this place passes inspection.

More adventures tomorrow!

Till then, have a good night!

Journal 35: Day 11 – Part 2: Notes and Gallery

So, after my day of temples, bugs and journalists, I have compiled a nice gallery to go along with Journal 35 (part 1) and it follows.

For the rest of the night, I pattered around the beach closest to the hostel and noticed some nice sights around the area.

The buildings that surround the little bay that makes up the area’s beach are lit up in dazzling colors.  It’s great for the views, but they also bring out a lot of other interesting things as well.  Firstly, the musicians and painters like to flock around lighted sculptures shaped like huge elk from Montana and oversized pottery that looms over the fishing blocks.

The artists might be expected.  But things that were a little abnormal were, for instance, the reiki master who scans his clients’ bodies for illnesses and ailments and then gives the customer a reading of how to fix these problems.  That guy was probably the last one I would expect to see there.

But I kept going and tried to cover as much of the area as I could because I knew that the next day, I’d be on a flight to Jeju Island — a place teeming with crazy and cool things to do like see the sex sculptures on the west side; or go to one of the myriad golf ranges on the island; or do bumper cars, ride go-carts or go horse riding — available all under one roof — in the south; or ride a motorbike around the outside of the island.  But tonight it was all about the beachfront bars and lights.

I spent a good deal of the night walking around the beach.  But then I went into what looked like this nice place overlooking the water to have a couple games of darts and go home.  But I would up getting invited to a club called “Billie Jean’s” in another part of town.  It was all that it sounds like it is: music from the 80′s and Asians who love to dance to it.

So that was my night.  I rushed home at 3am to hopefully get enough sleep to make it to the airport in time to make my 9:30am flight to Jeju.  But, knowing how time works here in the southern part of Korea, I was pretty sure that wouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Soon it would be fun in the sun and checking out all that Korea’s most prized tourist island has to offer.  I just hope that it’s not too sunny out.  I haven’t been reacting too well to the sunburns that I have gotten so far.  And if it’s anything like the sun in most tropical islands I have gone to in this part of the world, I am in for a few nights of jamming on the bed, oiled to the gills in aloe and watching all my episodes of “Raising Hope” that I got just before I left for this trip.

But here’s hoping that I will make it for three last days in style.

Journal 35: Day 11: Busan and the hotchpotch of city characters

This morning I hopped on a bus, then another bus, then a train, then another bus and then humped it to the subway which dropped me about 25 meters and four floors away from my hostel: the dingy and abandoned-looking Actor’s and Backpacker’s Guesthouse.

This place is owned by a fellow traveler and self-proclaimed thespian.  In the basement at most hours you can hear his troupe practicing their acts so loudly you’d think they’d been invited to Broadway.  But it affords a nice view of the city and it’s right in the middle of two consignments of city fun.  There’s food and bars where the hostel is.  But not far away is the university quarter where the bars and nightlife are.

But using those two points as vectors for triangulation, just head south and you’ll hit the beach which I won’t get to see tonight, but plan on seeing tomorrow.  Today agenda includes seeing the temple in the middle of town and eating strange, new things.

In my hostel were two journalists working for Samsung.  And that might come as a shock to think of a writer/reporter and a photographer to be working for just an electronics company.  But let me tell you a little bit about this little family business as it occurs in its home country of South Korea.

Samsung may only been seen as some small framing on your TV or stereo equipment.  But here in Korea, they reign supreme.  They are everywhere, are seen in everything and have their hands in just about every market you can think of.  Here, the Samsung family makes cars, distributes medical supplies, owns hospitals, has a media enterprise and even has a line of ship-building compounds (the second largest in the world).  They opened a theme park in 2002 called Samsung Everland Park.  They have amassed several four-star hotels ranked within “2009’s World’s Best Top 100 Hotels” by Institutional Investor.  There’s a branch of the Samsung group called Samsung Heavy Industries whose engineering firm was ranked 35^th out of 225 global construction companies.  Samsung has an entire city named after it, Samsung Town, where its headquarters are located.  And they are currently the world’s largest technology production company.

It’s amazing what you don’t know about your world until you find yourself nestled smack in the middle of your most recent unexpected find while exploring the world.

Anyway, so the journalists seemed keen on hiking around the temples with me so we headed out the door and off to the subway.

Once at the temple, we couldn’t really see much because of some very strange crow-crazed speech that was underway by the time we got there.  Some obviously influential speaker was rabble-rousing from center stage as people in the audience fell under his spell, donned funny, blue hats and listened intently as his propaganda blew out from the loudspeakers all around the temple.  It was a little uncomfortable.  But it seemed like most people were pretty okay with it.

Walking further, we could see that it was quite a lovely temple with lots of additional interest paid to the towers overlooking the city.  And all around it were  these really cool buildings peppered with little mini-gardens where Buddha was looking over them.

There was even crowd control in the form of shop owners playing with their toys in the street in order to attract attention – and hopefully sales.  There were artists, painting passersby.  There were people perched under huge, blow-up octopi.  There were street venders really not wanting their photo taken.  I saw shoemakers, people hanging around huge photos of athletes, ladies making breaded cookies out of these strange, tubed presses.  There were even drunk people dancing in the street.  It was, as Korea has proven to be, unexpected – a truly Korean experience.

[click on the photo to enlarge]

After leaving my fellow journalists at the scene of the temple, I headed back to the subway to see if I could make it back before my stomach chewed a hole through abdominal muscles.  But on the way I noticed some interesting things about people on the midday trains.

As Forest Gump proclaimed, you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes.  Generally, they tell you where they might be going.  And, as one might expect, the midday traffic filling those shoes consisted mostly of out of work college students or business types.  That was kind of a given.  But what I liked the most about the train cars was that there was a section dedicated just for the old people.  And I don’t think I have seen a single older lady in that section in between breakfast and dinner times.  There are just always a couple of strange characters sitting there sleeping or reading the paper in their zoot suit – or the ever-present pocket vest.  It’s strange that much fewer women appear on the trains during these times.  But the guys that wind up napping the afternoon away really claim that section of the train.  And even if the car is totally packed, you better not think of sitting in one of these spots unless you’re receiving a pension – or risk a cane whack to the shins.

 

Instead of making it to my destination, I got off on the wrong stop.  I thought that I was headed in one direction on the train, but clearly was misinformed.  I’d done pretty well up until that instance.  But navigating the subways here is surprisingly easy.  Nevertheless, as I poked around the entrance to the street-level stairway, I gathered that there was a beach nearby.  So, rather than get frustrated and hop back on the train to spend another hour in transit, I figured I would just get something to eat while I was here and maybe scout out a different hotel to sleep in for the night.  The place I’d booked, while filled with nice people, just wasn’t up to my cleaning standards.

Looking around, I found lots of food stands, restaurants, bars and lots of other places leading down to the beach.  There were even the steamed silk worm larvae that I ate near the DMZ.  So naturally I dove into a small bowl of those while I walked around.  All along the beachfront, there was some pretty amazing architecture.  Lots of hotels and apartments made up to look quirky added quite a bit to the ambiance of the area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After lunch and sightseeing, I headed back to the subway to get off near a stop where I had heard of the “Dragon Temple.”  This was supposed to be a temple built on the rocky coast nearby.  It turned out to be pretty cool.  There was a Buddha near the entryway whose belly had been rubbed so much that it started to get an oily polish to it.  There were also life-sized sculptures of all the animals of the zodiac — complete with guards looking over them.

 

There were dragons on the columns, pagodas in the courtyards and even an intricately built bridge that welcomed visitors to the main area of the temple.  But what i really thought was interesting were all the miniature pagodas lining all the stairways of the temple area.

 

They were made out of concrete, but they were all lighted from the inside and had little lanterns in them for when it was dark.  I am sure that it makes for a great feel to the place after the sun goes down.

 

In between all of the statues and sconces are natural flora drooping in over them and growing in around them like a garden fighting for its real estate.  But it’s not enough to make it seem overgrown.  I think that it had a good mix of old and new worlds mixed in with the natural setting right there on the beach like that.

 

After the temple tour, I headed down to the street entrance where I noticed a restaurant and thought I would grab a bigger meal for dinner than I had for lunch.  Bugs and soda only carry you so far.  So I found the Hae Dong Yong Gung seafood restaurant and ordered some spicy soup with noodles.  It was mostly a wildly thrown-together batch of octopus, shrimp, muscles and clams with pepper sauce, water and ink-stained noodles.  It was good.  It was hearty.  But more importantly, it filled me up and I had enough energy to go back and see the area around the hostel that I didn’t get to see previously.

But, since I have used up my gallery for this blog already, I will continue that in part two of this journal entry.

Journal 34: Day 10: Southbound on the Korean Peninsula

Traveling in Korea, even the slower patches along the eastern seaboard, eventually makes everything a blur.  Not keeping up with even one day of journaling makes for a very confusing backlog of information.  There’s just too much to see and do.  I had to start going through my receipts to try and decipher where I was and when I was there purchasing this thing or that food.

All confusion aside, it’s very enjoyable to romp around the country and enjoy what hits you at every turn.  This evening, for instance, there was an impromptu market that sprang up that wasn’t there before.  It was my second and last day in Samcheok and I was just hungry enough to take myself away from journals and photo editing to go and grab a quick bite when I strolled down an alley that was filled with all kinds of excitement.

I love Asian markets.  They are always filled with amazing sounds, sights and smells.  And there’s never a shortage of characters emboldening the feeling of walking through these dirty streets narrowed even more by the tarps, tables and tubs.   It’s never disappointing.  There’s always a bin with something wiggling around in it or a box full of dehydrated animals of the marine variety.  You never know what you’re gonna see; you just always know that it’s going to be amazing.

Here’s a gallery of the incredible things that were hiding in the Samcheok Market.