cruising from beachy to Jeonju hanok village land

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This is starting to get rather behind and so is going to have to get possibly rather shorter rather than a ramble on (some of you may cheer!). Anyway I am actually now in Mokpo but must rewind back to Daejeon beach (sorry if the spelling may have been inconsistent with a "j"-"ch" there maybe in that name). Having checked out the hourly train times with my temporary American friends yesterday while I was at the station got a taxi there for the 1 PM train which went to Iksan, then a 20 minute changeover time to get a chugger to Jeonju which is not on the fast KTX line to Yeosu, which is where the Expo 2012 is - will get there later, having been to the Nagoya one in Japan in 2010 (simply because I was there and I had never been to one). Because I arrived by train (which is in a somewhat out of town location -- but so is the bus terminal, just not as far) decided to buy my onward ticket for the next day while I was there. And got a taxi to the bus terminal, knowing that there would be plenty of cheap motels around there. Found one with a room for 30,000Krw ($28) with Internet. Later realised that all the noise the next morning was of the buses leaving the terminal down the one-way street in front of my hotel! However the so-called Internet at this place was the slowest in Korea, believe me it was virtually slower than dial-up , which I did not believe what is possible in this country. Hence no blog then as it would have been ridiculous attempting to upload any pictures (well possibly not as the upload line speed was better than download, which is common in Korea). I had to get a taxi downtown to where the main sites are as even the bus terminal is about 3 km away.

Finally found somewhere to look at, namely the historic hanok village quarter where there are apparently almost 800 old historic homes and buildings. Made the mistake of ordering a long black coffee in one of them now a cafe - I think I should be cured of this by now because coffee here really just is not any good. There is quite a strong Catholic tradition here -- likely because so many were martyred here in the 1800's as being seen to be contrary to the virtually official Confucian tradition. There is quite a nice Catholic church there at the end of the Gyeonggiro, which is where all the hanok buildings are. Went into the Gyeonggijeon enclosed area which was originally constructed in 1410 and contains shrines and storehouses relating to the Confucian rituals previously conducted there. It was getting late so headed off in search of this great Lonely Planet recommendation for food. Trouble is their maps, although giving you a reasonable idea of the street layout, do not name most of them which makes it impossible to know how far off course you are! Almost by accident, which is about the second or third time this has happened to me, I actually found the place - called Sambaekjip. But as the name is in Korean script how would you know?! I simply held up my finger to indicate one person and they then set about giving me their local specialty (I did wonder what I was going to get but that is half the mystery). Its called (LP says) kongnamul gukbap (got that?) which is rice and beansprouts cooked in a stone pot with a raw egg broken into it. It is apparently supposed to be a good hangover cure. So to make it worthwhile I also got a bowl of their local homebrew called moju, as I will likely be unable to taste it elsewhere. It is a muddy brown gingery tasting brew based on raw rice wine.

From there it was only a short walk to where all the boutiques and so on are which were still open till 10 PM so there was still plenty of action. A taxi home from there by simply saying bus terminal - one advantage of staying near there is all of the drivers understand terminal.

Next day 19 June, as my train was not until 3 PM, went for another helping of the hanok village area and the surrounding area. Although I had previously thought of possibly staying a second night there in Jeonju glad I did not as the later train made it possible to have a second look and that was all that was needed. So got the train back to Iksan to connect down the two hours or so to Mokpo which is the end of the Southwest line. There was only a 10 minute gap and my train was running about six minutes late so I only just made it by the time I changed platforms. Into Mokpo and another story begins.

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Photos

Jeonju hanok MoSim cafe
with bad coffee (what's new)

Jeonju Pungnammun gateway
the only original one left (first built 1398)

Jeonju hangover cure
bubble, bubble, toil and trouble indeed

Jeonju hanok buildings
I think this is the most in one place in the whole country

Comments

[Huddo]

Travels.
Hi Mike, Slow internet download, slower than dial-up! phew. The hang-over cure looked a beauty. The Mo Sim cafe shot looked very nice, shame about the coffee standards there. Huddo.