Arrived in Busan by bus on the outskirts of town and found our way to the hotel by underground train - Our double rucksack configuration was not particularly popular on the local transport system but we were starting to feel like we were proper "backpackers". First impressions were of a big city with bright lights, similar to Seoul in many ways - Bizarrely, although the metro made navigation fairly easy, it was possible to walk from station to station underg...

Working our way south through South Korea, this leg by a 5-hour bus journey, our next stop was Gyeongju, which is a city on the southeast coast. It was the capital of the 1000-year long Silla dynasty and is known for its extensive historical remains. Trip advisor calls the city "a museum without walls" and claims that it has more tombs, temples, rock carvings, pagodas, Buddhist statuary and palace ruins than any other place in South Korea …….We did our c...

We took a 3.5 hour bus from Seoul to Sokcho, a town in the North East region and quite close to the border. It was our first hostel of the trip and we had forgotten how good hostels can be when one is travelling. This one was called "the House" and was extremely clean, our room had air-con and TV along with the emergency escape kit, which like Seoul included a long length of rope - This time only on the third floor, so our abseiling skills would be far less cri...

The week we spent in Seoul passed very quickly, plenty to do in day including visiting historic sites like Gyeonbokging Palace, where we saw the changing of the guard……. Bizarrely, at all the historic sites many of the Korean tourists arrive dressed in elaborate period costumes - Our trips to Venice carnival come to mind. Noryanjin fish market was unbelievable, it was housed in huge building containing more fish than the Atlantic and mostly alive. Restauran...

We took a day trip to the DMZ (Demilitarised Zone) which is a section of land 4 kilometres wide, stretching the entire width of the country at each side of the 38th parallel and is a no-go zone for citizens of either country. The DMZ is jointly policed by UN soldiers representing the ROK (Republic of Korea) - American and Korean troops, and North Korean troops representing the DPRK (Democratic People Republic of Korea) - Although visible to each other, there is n...