We decided to take a day trip from Kyoto to Osaka. It took about 30 minutes by train to get there. Once again the weather was very poor, so we decided not to bother going up the famous Umeda Sky building for the views of the city. We instead headed straight for Osaka-Jo, a famous Japanese castle. Afterwards we headed across the road to the Osaka Museum, which details the history of Osaka. The museum is built on an excavation site and part of the floor is glass panelled allowing you to see the ruins discovered below. The museum is quite [View Full Entry]

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It took about an hour and 40 minutes by train for us to get to Kyoto. We had no where to stay when we arrived, so we eventually managed to dump our bags in a locker at the train station so we could figure out what we were going to do. We found a pay phone and rang about 10 places before we eventually found a guesthouse with a room available. So we grabbed our bags and hopped on a bus. The bus took about an hour and was incredibly painful as it was packed with locals trying to get home [View Full Entry]

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Well the ferry to Japan was a bit of a novelty in itself. We were lead into our cabins, which turned out to be a large carpeted room with roll out mats to sleep on and no partitions between them. We slept 6 abreast and toe to toe with the guys on the otherside of the room (although this may have only happened in our case being "slightly" taller than everybody else on the ship). After a few beers with a mental Japanese lad called Korda we hit the sack. The next morning the lights came on at 6.30am and we [View Full Entry]

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We arrived by train to Busan in the evening, and grabbed a taxi to our motel. Upon arrival at the motel we realised we did not have Ronans camera! We think we must have left it in the taxi. The next day we stopped in at the local police station to report the camera missing. That was an experience in itself as we sat down at a table with 6 Korean girls who were having lunch and between them, they managed to translate for the police. We spent the afternoon wandering around the busy area of Seoymeon. After two nights in [View Full Entry]

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After a few complications on the Seoul subway system, we eventually found our way to the train station and grabbed a KTX train to Gyeongju. On arrival we found ourselves a cheap motel, tired from a day of travelling we had a bite to eat and headed to bed. The next day we visited Gyeongju National Park (or Tumulus Park). The park is made up of large mounds of earths which are graves of ancient kings and other royalties. The park was packed with school kids on tours. We soon realised that we were a far bigger attraction for them than [View Full Entry]

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We were up at the ridiculous hour of 5.30am (The price of doing an official army tour) and headed to the USO office in central Seoul. From there we had a two hour bus journey with a Korean guide trying to be funny and unfortunately failing fairly miserably. Once we arrived we got a presentation from a US soldier and then met our guide. He was a hilarious soldier from Florida who took the seriousness of the location in his stride. Our first stop was at the front line where soldiers from South Korea stand and face their North Korean counterparts [View Full Entry]

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After sitting on the floor of a train for 2 and half hours we made it back to Seoul, and back to the same guesthouse. Since we were going to be up very early the next morning for the DMZ we headed straight to bed. (see seperate entry for DMZ). That evening when we returned from the DMZ we met up Roisin, Stephen, Craig and Amanda and went for a tradional Korean dinner in Insadong.We enjoyed some great food and some local beverages including soju, bamboo leaf wine and rice wine. Afterwards we met Krista in Route 66 for some Long [View Full Entry]

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We caught a bus from Sokcho to Chuncheon, a major city in Northern Korea. Ciaran managed to "mildly" upset the bus driver over where we put our bags but after a brief standoff we were on our way. Two and half hours later we arrived and found ourselves a dodgy motel shaped like a castle to stay in. The next day we spent most of the morning trying to find the major tourist attraction in the city - the lake which we eventually stumbled across.We visited the statue park beside the lake and a Korean war monument dedicated to Ethiopian Soldiers [View Full Entry]

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We got a bus the next day from Seoul to Sokcho in North Eastern Korea. A big winters sports region we even say snow on the ground a major change from Hong Kong, our last stop before Korea. While Sokcho isn't falling over with tourist attractions it does sit beside Seoraksan National park which was our eventual destination. We stayed in a gigantic Youth Hostel beside the park and headed back into Sokcho for some food. 10 ATMS later we successfully withdrew money, ate and made our way back home to bed. The next day we were up early and after [View Full Entry]

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Ok, you may notice there are no pictures for large chunks of Korea. We has the misfortune to lose Ronans camera in Busan which was a disaster but the Blog must go on. The pictures we do have were kindly donated but tend to be primarily of us out on the town which we asure you represents only a small proportiion of our time in Korea... We arrived in Seoul and through the twists and turns managed to find our Guesthouse/Hostel. We then met up with Roisin and her fellow teachers Craig and Stephen. They were having a beer in an [View Full Entry]

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