Thursday, October 06, 2011

KOREA

It was a last minute for this Korea Trip, was still remember vividly that I planned trip itinery with Inge few days before we flew off to Korea but everything turns out just nice, was hope to have more time in Seoul though but so far the trip was a memorable one.

This post was was started in the hostel that we stayed in Sokcho but I have not have enough time to post the blog by then, so this will be a blog about the trip from Busan, Gyeongju to Seoul before we gotten here in Sokcho;)

It was FEELING SO FUCKING AWESOME when we first landed in Busan, everything was different, and it was a strange thing that it was a totally an alien city to me, the people, the language. The very vivid memory on this was we had to spent almost an hour to just buy a phone sim card in the airport. It was funny how they are trying to make us understand in Korean and we both felt like an complete idiots when we just converse in English and none Korean.

was manage to pick up a bus to Busan from airport. The town as we passed through was like a landscape itself, beautiful blends in with the mountains behind and everything seems so new.
Meandering in the narrow street in Busan and surrounded by all these narrow and low rise shop lots was pretty interesting, one thing that perhaps attracted me was all the Korean signs that pops out from the shops with full of alien Korean language, it's become a beauty of the street instantly. Although there are the similar things in China but the differences perhaps lays on the proportion here was just nice, and was not as giant and monstrous scale as it was in China and a whole lot more well maintain
and I love this cozy restaurant the moment I walked in.

The Busan Market that we went on the first day, the smell of the sea and the seafood that we had long forgotten since we have been in Beijing a for so long
The street beauty: the pop-out the Korean Signages Billboards, the shops, stalls and everything seems so pack and just fittingly nice.

The grid city view from the Busan Tower that we went on the later of the day.
The next day, we went to our next plan which was the Baemosa Tmeple one of the famous temple in Busan located at the mountain and the weather of the day was just perfect.Although it was far and tiring but mountain for several hours to here but we were glad that we did it because we had known a good folk here when we first reach to the mountain. It was really touching that the people here are really helpful, and this Ajusi is willing to spend his whole day guiding us to Baemosa Temple, and of course the journey throughout the day was a bliss, the aroma of the nature smell, the aerial city view, the chats:)

Ajusi shared half of his home cook lunch with us, it's real tasty:)
There were apparently 4 gates of such in this mountain and this is one of them before we enter into the Baemosa Temple Realm.
The ZEN.
Baemosa Temple
The Korean Bbq Dinner. One of the best dinner that we had in Busan so far. We had a long chat with Ajusi and of course I was so drunk because Ajusi kept asking me to drink white wine with him and apparently if is rude if you reject to drink in Korea. So it was several bottle of white wines were finished by both of us. Though we really enjoyed it and one good thing about Korean food is that you can have indefinite refill of side dishes when you finished them. This was probably one of the major "like" of the Korean foods.
We then rushed to Coop's latest design Busan Cinema Centre, I just felt so great that I manage to see this near to completion building, the world longest cantilever just looks amazing, but it was a let down because the design is so similar with the BMW Welt in Munich, Germany. Probably I had expected more or I had expected too much from him.

It was the last night that we had in Busan. Of Course, I wish that we could stay there longer because the city just just so beautiful, loving the city and the sea and there are loads more of places that I have yet to visit. It was a shame that we spent so lil time with our host in Busan, Andrew is definitely a cool guy, it's great to met his friend in the house, and had a long chat about tatoo, and stuffs. erm I think I did said that I wish to get one tatoo long time before, but well we will see.

GYEONGJU
Bulguksa Temple.

It was like an amazing race, we spent like less then an hour to visit this entire World Heritage temple, carrying our heavy bags, pictures were shot in ultra speed, it was crazy. We then off to another temple by bus and we were nearly missed it. It was funny that Inge actually left her Korea Tour Book in the toilet and she needs to get it back in the Female toilet when we were running back to the bus station. We were nearly convinced ourselves that we missed the bus to the other temple, but luckily we manage to catch one

The old cave temple was protected by this building and it was a shame that we are not allow to take any picture of the buddha.
After all the hassles and rushing around this city, we took the FREE SHUTTLE bus from GyeongJu to Seoul. It was so cool Korea is having this free shuttle bus from Seoul to other part of the city for 2 years under This Tour Korea Plan. and I gotta thanks to Inge for this great discovery, though just before we get in the bus we made a mistake on the travel time between Gyeongju to Seoul, instead of 2 hours which we though it would, the trip was actually taking 5 hours or more.So we by the time we reach to Seoul at about 9pm at night, we were really late and miss the appointment with our Seoul Couch Host which was supposed to be at 6pm . We felt really bad to have making him waited us for so long, and there were a great awkwardness between us but I am glad in spite of all these he still allow us to stay at his house for a night and bring us out to a club but that night we were really hungry because we did not have time to had any dinner other than some Chips and alcohol drinks that we manage to grab in the bar.
well next stop will be SOKCHO that I am yet to discover;)