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One thing I love, and will miss most, about Korea is the food! There's such diversity in what you can eat; seasonal food, special celebratory food for different important occasions, fusion food etc. Towards the end of my stay in Korea, a friend and I made Wednesdays 'Korean food night' so we could get our fill of our favourite dishes. One of the first dishes a foreigner is bound to try in Korea is bibimbap. This is a dish where rice, mixed colourful vegetables (e.g. cucumber, zucchini, mushrooms, soybean sprouts, seaweed etc), and a fried egg are mixed together in a bowl with lashings of gochujang (chilli pepper paste). They come in so many regional variations. My favourite is dolsot bibimbap where all the ingredients come in a hot stone bowl where the raw egg is ... read more

It's so easy to be active in Korea and hiking appears to be a national sport, especially the older you get. Even when doing a nighthike at 4am we saw adjummas and adjoshis walking back down our local mountain walk. As summer hit Busan I went on quite number of hikes. One such day was in Busan around Igidae towards Oryukdo (islands): a distinctive part of the coastline. It was a fierce hot day which contributed to very hazy views of Busan. The walk itself was nice, apart from a steep crumbly bit where we had to pull ourselves up by rope! The views of the coastline were magnificent and we left the city behind for the most part. Oryukdo comprises of five (or six depending on the tide) craggy hills of rock that line out ... read more

My third trip up to Seoul and this was the first time I would see much of it! As my school gave me an optional day off work, I headed up by myself on Friday afternoon, taking the 5-hour bus for cheapness sake. We were staying at Base Camp hostel in Hongdae, the university area, and it has a really cool set-up: basically bunk beds in enormous canvas tents, in one large room. It was already very hot outside, a good 5 degrees hotter than in Busan at least. I headed off to Namsangol to see a traditional Hanok village. This area mostly consisted of five traditional Korean houses from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), recovered from different parts of the city and relocated to the northern foot of Namsan (mountain). The interiors of each of these ... read more

The Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea is one of the most famous and heavily fortified borders in the world, and we've been planning to visit since we arrived. One Friday evening, my friend Jackie and I got the KTX from Busan to Seoul. We stayed in the same hostel in Itaewon, Seoul's multi-cultural district, and finally managed to find a quiet bar for a few drinks. Despite out best intentions we ended up going to bed a lot later than planned, and the big excitement of the night was finding salt and vinegar crisps tucked away in a tiny shop! The next morning we were booked to do a DMZ tour with USO tours. We had to get up early to meet the group at 07:30 but got to doze a bit on ... read more

Back at the start of December; Conor, Deborah and myself took ourselves off to visit Haedong Yonggungsa - Busan's famous Temple-by-the-Sea. Most Buddhist temples in Korea are located in the mountains, so this temple is a rare sight hugging the rocky coastline north of Busan. The temple was first established during the Goreyo dynasty in 1376 and more recently re-constructed in 1970. We walked the gauntlet of street vendors hawking their wares and past tall stone statues depicting the animal signs of the zodiac. Dozens of stone lanterns led the way down 108 stairs symbolizing the 108 agonies and earthly desires of Buddhism. On our way down we spotted various statues of Buddha dedicated for everything from 'academic achievement' to 'granting a son'. Across the bridge we could see the main temple next to an enormous ... read more