Imagine a place with no graffiti, no litter and no crime; where people are respectful, friendly, helpful and generous. Welcome to South Korea! What a wonderful month we had here. September brings dry, warm weather, clear blue skies and cool breezes; so perfect weather for strolls along beaches, hiking in the hills and exploring cities.
We started our stay in Busan's Gwangalli beach area. We had a hi-tech skyrise apartment which was a short walk from Gwangalli beach - it was a vibrant beach front with bars, cafes and promenading young dudes. Korea is a great place to be young. The youth have K-pop (you've heard of Gangnam style?), K-dramas, Korean movies and enough disposable income to have a great lifestyle, have the latest hairstyles and wear the latest fashions. Young Koreans tend to be safe fashion followers, groups of kids all dress the same. This year's fashion is the horizontal striped French sweater with shorts. We've seen couples dress exactly the same with matching hats and shoes - cute!
Busan is a sprawling coastal city with a population of 3m people. Even though the population is so large and most live in high rise blocks, it just doesn't seem crowded. The Koreans have developed within unspoilt hills and have preserved many green areas. The developments are approached by wide tree-lined avenues too and with spectacular bridges and clean, promenade lined beaches the area is heavily populated but beautiful.
We felt a bit overwhelmed at first, speaking no Korean. The subway is colour and number coded and the stations are written and announced in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, everything else is written in Hangeul (Korean alphabet). Very few people speak English in Korea, so our first meal out was daunting. Gwangalli has lots of tourist restaurants but they cater for Korean tourists. We looked for places with photos of the food. We ordered food by pointing and smiling and unwittingly got cold noodles with beef, served with a kettle full of hot clear delicious chicken broth and lots of side dishes of pickles. One of the side dishes was Kimchi which is fermented cabbage that has been marinated in garlic and chilli, it is meant to be an acquired taste but we took to it right away.
We stayed in Busan over Thanksgiving, which is a major holiday. It is celebrated with lots of harvest goodies like giant apples, giant oranges and food gift sets - the bizarrest was a Spam gift set. Spam is a real premium product here and a must-have over Thanksgiving.
Busan city itself was fairly built up, but it had many different areas. Jagalchi market was a fish market selling live, dead and dried fish. Nearby were streets selling all kinds of street food. Bundegi, steamed silkworm larvae, sweet potato matchsticks and our favourite Hotteok, a pancake cooked on a griddle and filled with brown sugar, honey, pine nuts and cinnamon. A friendly Korean passerby directed us to the Aqua mall where there is a water display on the hour in the basement. There are fountains and 50 metres above them are circles of jets built into the ceiling that drop cascades of water down. The cascades are lit with coloured lights - cool. We went for a Korean buffet in Busan, one of the staff was a Korean New Yorker who gave us a run down of the fare on offer.
Korea is great for hiking and boy do the Koreans love hiking. Not too far from any town centre will be parks or national parks or some other hiking areas. Even if Koreans are just going for a stroll in the park they get fully kitted up. Looking like they've been on a shoplifting spree in Millets they wear sun visors/hats, brightly coloured multi-panelled breatheable sports gear, knee pads and they always carry walking poles. Even the oldies will also have their Samsung Smart phones belting out some motivational music. We headed out in not so sporty gear to Beomeosa temple a subway and bus ride away from Gwangalli. The bus was filled with serious hikers, who didn't seem too impressed with our apparel. Beomeosa temple is up in the hills north of Busan and at the start of a short trek to the Geumjung mountain fortress. The original temple was 7th century, but a temple renovated in 1713 now stands in its place (see photos). Next was the walk up to the fortress, built in the 1700s to keep invading Japanese forces out. Only 4km of this walled fortress remains. The hike up here and along the walls gave us some great views across the region and of the landscape starting to turn autumnal.
We had several other days out in Busan, one to Haedong Yonggung temple, built above the cliffs overlooking a rocky shoreline. We also visited APEC house, purpose built to host the 2005 APEC meeting, a real opportunity for Korea to showcase its world presence. It was free to enter and was pretty much preserved as it was during the meeting with the delegates places marked (George W Bush was there). It even had a display cabinet showing plasticised versions of the dinner menu that the delegates enjoyed - weird! Another strange day trip was to Eulsukdo island, a bird sanctuary, there was a free island exhibition centre mainly in Korean. The exhibition looked impressive and there were huge windows overlooking the reed beds below. The one problem was that the birds only show up in spring. A very curt guide (who looked like a Korean Tommy Lee Hooker) showed us a video of the birds and then gestured that there were no birds now as if we were stupid to have turned up. Funny! A friendly young guy advised us that there was a bus tour around the island. We waited outside for the elongated, electric golf trolley to arrive and Korean Tommy Lee Hooker was the driver. He did the tour in Korean and despite his brusque demeanour with us, the Koreans were laughing away at his patter - perhaps he was more like Jack Dee. After a Korean bus tour of the empty bird sanctuary we headed back. A funny little adventure, lovely weather and a nice place.
Our next stop in Korea was Gyeongju, an historic area featuring the burial grounds of the Royals of the Shilla empire (the first unifiers of Korea). We took a very comfortable air con coach there. The hotels here were very expensive, so we decided to book into a love motel. Love motels are a relatively inexpensive way of staying in Korea. Korea was proving to be twice as expensive as the other places we have visited. Rooms can be rented by the hour. Our room was amazing have a look at the video. There was a shelf of porn videos outside the lift on our floor and the corridors were dimly lit. The staff were great and they even did our laundry for free. The hotel was great, Dream Hill Motel, right in the centre of town and a short walk away from the historic tombs. Gyeongju is inland in the south west of Korea. There is a vibrant and extensive shopping area, well-kept grounds (tumuli park) holding the Shilla tomb mounds and an amazingly beautiful countryside around. The tombs look like a tellytubby landscape, grassy mounds covering heaps of stones laid over the wooden tomb. We visited the tumuli park. One of the tombs was excavated and a vertical cross-section has been left open showing the layers of rock and the burial site beneath. Artefacts from the burial such as a golden crown were displayed in cabinets within the mound. It was very well done. In addition to this tomb there were many other sights from the 1st to 10th century Shilla era. We spent a day doing a walking tour of the national museum, Anapi pond and a folk village. We also visited Bulguska temple and on another day did a hike up nearby Mount Namsan, which had many shrines, stone carvings and statues dotted around the trails. (See photos) I had worn my sandals by mistake, so a mishap was expected. At the top, we reached a roadway under construction, the path was blocked by a JCB so we had to negotiate round it trying not to fall into the ditches either side. Paul felt the stone blocks below him give way and he fell into the ditch piercing his leg on a stone block. The hole was gushing with blood and the workmen near the JCB came to the rescue with bottles of water, tissues and plasters. They sooned stopped the bleeding and patched him up. The blood pouring from the wound seemed to have drained from Paul's face - he was ashen! We rested for a while before deciding to head back the way we came as we knew the route wasn't too bad. Paul's leg was aching, but he soldiered on, on the hour long walk back down. Paul's cut has now fully healed - no stitches needed, thankfully.
We next got a really comfortable train to Donghae a coastal town on the west coast. From here you can take a 2 night cruise to Vladivostock - I thought it might be a bit chilly this time of year. The weather in Donghae was great, clear blue skies, 25 degrees with cool breezes. We stayed in another love motel - Picasso, this was quite a classy place, although we did hear a woman in a neighbouring room in the morning. It sounded like she was enjoying a bit more than her chicken porridge breakfast - or at least she was pretending to! Every day there was a different flavoured porridge for breakfast - pumpkin, anchovy, mushroom. My birthday meal was a beef short rib table-top-bbq (see video). This was a popular dining experience in Korea. We then discovered another Korean speciality Dakgalbi - chicken, cabbage, rice cakes, inoki mushrooms and other bits cooked in a pan at the table in a spicy sauce. This was served with lettuce and perilla leaves (lemony/minty herb) and other side dishes including kimchi. On another occasion, when we were first served with the leaves, we didn't know what to do with them and dipped them in the sauces provided. The waitress arrived at the table with the meat and tutted at us, she then mimed that we should use the leaves as a wrap for the meat - aaaaah!
In Donghae we visited Mangsang beach (see video) and Mukho lighthouse and went hiking in Mureung valley (see video of the hikers). I made friends with a 74 year old hiker on the bus there. We managed to chat most of the way there despite the fact that I couldn't speak Korean and she could only speak about 5 English words. Miming is the new international language. A sign in Korean on the bus, next to the driver was translated underneath in English to "Please keep it down a bit". How cute! The hiking trails are always well laid out with platforms, stairs and lots of maps, albeit often only in Korean. I had started to learn the Korean alphabet now and so was able to decode some stuff. People often stop you to chat, especially English teachers. The valleys and landscapes were amazing but the autumnal colours were not fully out, so we could only imagine what it must be like mid-October.
Our next stop was Sokcho on the north west coast, not too far from the North Korean border. Being north of the 38th parallel throughout the Korean war, Sokcho was actually originally part of north Korea.
Our hotel Rocustel was a pimped-up, pink and blue palace, see photo. You could pretty much see it from any part of town. There was plenty to do here too, there were beaches, lakes to walk round, a rope-pulled-ferry that I was coerced into having a go at and also hiking at nearby Seorak national park with its amazing waterfalls (see photos). The weather, however, had turned a bit British and we had to dodge the showers. We had a 'fatback' pork BBQ at a local eatery and I regularly had the spicy beef soup (Yukgaejang), which was delicious. Despite the weather, Sokcho was a lovely friendly small town with lots of variety.
We had booked to stay in a Hello Kitty studio apartment in Seoul, which looked crazy and was pretty cheap, but our host on AirBNB would not respond to my emails or webtexts. We had to escalate our complaint to AirBnB and the booking was cancelled. At short notice we had to book into yet another Love motel called Yes motel, hopefully not named after the cries from the rooms. Another luxury bus trip - the Dongbu express took us across to the capital on the west coast. The extensive Seoul metro system was a bit more tricky to negotiate, but we got to our hotel without too much trouble. Yes motel was not as classy as the other places and most of the staff didn't speak a word of English, but as usual a bit of miming and Konglish (Korean/English) got our laundry done for free. The staff also kept us in good supply of coffee - our room being kitted out with a hot and cold water dispenser. I expected Seoul to be avant garde, maybe a bit like Tokyo with crazy fashions and wacky themed restaurants etc. but it was fairly tame for a capital city. It was busy and vibrant but unlike capitals it was still friendly and accessible. We packed a lot into our last three days in Seoul, visiting Changgyeongung Palace and the trendy arty Insadong area on day 1. Day 2 was the War Memorial of Korea to learn more about the conflict. That had some great displays and was free. We then headed to Gangnam which was buzzing. It looks like a place full of cafes, restaurants and fashion stores where the kids hang out. We ended the day with a visit to Bongeunsa temple and were in time for the evening drums, bell banging and chanting. On day 3 we headed to Gyeongbokgung palace. Passing a statue of Sejong the Great (15th C. King of the Joseon dynasty) I noticed that there was a lift and stairs underneath. The stairs led to a free entry museum about Sejong who introduced the simplified Korean alphabet to improve literacy rates in his kingdom. It is ingenious, one interesting thing is that the consonants are based on the shapes the mouth makes when sounding them. We also went to Deoksugung palace for the changing of the guard (see photos). We also fitted in seeing Old Seoul station, which has been turned into an art and culture centre. On our last evening we headed out to Hungang park which was on the opposite bank to the 2014 Seoul firework festival. We arrived a couple of hours before the start to get a good view, but half the population of Seoul was already there, sitting in tents or on picnic blankets. They had clearly done this before. We walked for a while along the riverside and found an embankment that was starting to fill up with people. We clambered up the steep bank and sat on our paper tourist maps and awaited the show. There was music blaring and presenters of the show were displayed on big screens. The first country taking part was UK. The display was set to James Bond film themes, Diamonds are forever, Nobody Does it better, Live and Let Die, Goldfinger and Skyfall. We were not expecting it to be too impressive, but it was amazing. Probably felt proud to be British for the first time ever. After a short break the Chinese display was next - Pink Floyd The Wall, Run Like Hell and J-Lo's On the floor were part of the score. Perhaps a bigger display than the UK but not really better. We decided to stay for one more display, we were keen to try and avoid the crowds leaving. The Italian's were next with another great display. What a fab ending to our stay (see video). Korea has been one of the highlights of our amazing adventures. Thanks for reading! Keep sending the messages.