Advertisement
Published: April 22nd 2010
Nakedness, a 5 hour hike, spa's, cutting the tape, norebongs and the continual pursuit of Super Mario Brothers, provided me with a weekend a travel blogger could only dream about. (Save yourself by reading half of this at one sitting and then leaving a book mark... an epic weekend is anything but short)
The weekend started with a visit to MJ's on Thursday night. The objective was clear: find out where the owner got Super Mario Brothers. We needed answers. What we ran into was a familiar nemesis. Go back to your blog memory of my travels and remember back to the time Bethany and I moved into our first way too small apartment. Remember the guy who was drunk, looking through my stuff, and talking to me WAY too close with breath that would knock someone out? That was the first person we saw at MJ's. But this time he played the role of a hero. He told Nick and I of a place that actually sold video games. Until that point we had convinced ourselves that such a store didn't exist. We woke up the next morning and headed to video game store. We were anxious
and hopeful. Of course, we quickly got into a half Korean half English conversation that is becoming the norm. I won't even let you guess who was on the only English side of this conversation. But the word 'ANYO' was all too familiar. But this time it got worse -- she told us (or tried to tell us) that Korea (yes, the entire country) does not sell that game. Ouch. On-top of that we found out via online forum that American games don't work with Korean Wii consoles. So someone sending us a copy was out of the question. We didn't leave empty handed as we bought a Wii Fit game and Wii Fit board, which has brought so much fun to the Schuett/Curtis families already. Along with the Wii Fit we decided to support the Mario Franchise by purchasing Winter Olympics.
Friday night saw some difficulties amongst our group that will not be mentioned here for privacy reasons and lack of time, but know that entire group was up until at least 3 in the morning and that everything is back to normal, I should have known.
Saturday began with less than 4 hours of
sleep as we all got up before 7. We were all on a bus headed to a mountain range 2.5 hours away from Cheongju. The should have been the foreshadowing for the rest of the weekend. It should have told me this weekend was going to be epic. The bus' interior was something of a middle eastern theme with tassels everywhere. Simply an interior I have never experienced, I should have known.
Given the options of an 'easy hike' or the 'hard hike' I don't have to tell you which one we chose. The 'hard hike' would take up 5 hours of the 6 hours allowance we were given. We set out and quickly found ourselves going straight up. But once we made it to our first peak (about an hour into the hike) we quickly knew it was worth it. Even though it was our lowest peak we could see all the way to the ocean. It was beautiful and was only going to get better. A quick snack and we were off. The second and third peaks would have been easy to reach if we didn't have to walk back down the mountain to get to
the them. The end of the hike came faster than anticipated. But the end was simply the best part. One of the main reasons so many people (we saw over 1,000 koreans) do this particular hike is not the beauty but the Buddhist temples that accompany the hike and the nation treasure that is at the park. The national treasure (no. 84) is a rock carving of a seated Buddha on the side of a cliff. It is about 5 stories tall and is absolutely amazing. That is one heck of an idol but the true treasure was the 1,500 year old temple that is on-top of the Buddha. Of course climbing the 5 stories of narrow small stone stairs (alliteration aside) is quite a task. Before you reach the top you can hear the monks chanting from within the temples walls. The front of the temple is open and you have total access to the temple. The monk is kneeling at the base of a gold Buddha situated in the middle of the temple. He is chanting something with a melancholy tone. After being tourists, snapping pictures and recording video, we quickly became worshipers. We sat there silent, listening
The Green Bandanas
This is the National Treasure no. 84 (Rock carved Buddha)to the words we did not recognize. I quickly realized that the Holy Spirit cared not about worldly boundaries. That kind of peace is nothing but enlightening and demands respect. As everyone walked around and hiked all day you started to see some monks walking around, they were quiet, and kept to themselves -- unless someone approached them and greeted them with a palms together bow. Such faithfulness and peacefulness is something that will always intrigue me to my core.
We arrived back at our rooms at 7pm and quickly changed to continue our legendary weekend. Stay with me if you can, Bethany's cousins husbands brother (who also happened to be Bethany's brothers college roommate) and wife just happened to be a 30 minute bus ride away from us for a soccer game. They teach and coach in the Philippines and were in the next town over for the weekend. Since this would be our first contact with people we knew (or sorta knew) we decided to do what we could to meet them, without cell phones. We picked a pub that someone had heard of and told them we would meet them at 10:00 Before we left
we headed to one of our favorite eateries: BHC Chicken. I'll give you 1,000 guesses to try and figure out what BHC stands for and you will never get it. If you thought Best Health Care Chicken then you would have guessed right. Somewhat of an oxymoron but nonetheless satisfying.
(Halfway point)
We discovered that the last bus from Cheongju to Daejon ran at 21:30. Unfortunately I was not apart of the group that read that on the website. Those who did see 21:30 on the bus website thought that was 11:30. My unwavering love of the 24 hour clock would have come in handy at that point. We arrived at the bus station at 9:40. Yes I said, 9:40. We missed the bus by 10 minutes not knowing that we had missed it at all. We actually thought that we would grab an earlier bus since we had two hours before the last bus would run. Little did we know the last bus leaving for Daejon had left 10 minutes earlier. The only option: a 60,000 won can ride. Of course that turned out to be around 8 bucks for each person (which isn't too bad).
As we arrived at The Sponge Bar half an hour late we saw that we were at the right place. It was indeed a 'western bar'. But a 'western bar' without the people we were supposed to find. After 4.5 hours of waiting (or drinking until we started a dance party- ok well everyone else was drinking but I was definitely apart of the 7 person dance party at 2 in the morning) we decided they weren't going to show. My friend Nick's classroom aide lived in Deajon and decided to meet us there. She was drunk when she arrived and didn't stop drinking. She was an absolute blast. Before things got crazy she told us that her parents (who she lived with) wanted us to stay at their house for the night. Knowing that we had left for Daejon without an exit strategy a parent-owned-shelter was heaven sent, I should have known.
After leaving Sponge at 3:00am we decided to pay a visit to the nearby norebong (if you remember back a norebong is a rented room where you have your own private karaoke/dance party). Jin (Nick's roommate) decided to stumble her way to the norebong with
us since she was supplying us with a place to stay. Jin disappeared within the first 10 minutes we were there. Without a trace. We called her to no avail. She must have snuck out while we were all screaming the lyrics to a Backstreet Boys song. I should have known. But again, is it really an epic weekend when you know exactly where you are going to end up? No.
We didn't let Jin bring us down (a note). We continued to give the mic some more spit and love. We left the norebong at 4 and began walking around aimlessly. We didn't know where to go but we had somewhat of an idea: a jingabong. Now I should stop here and make an entirely different blog entitled: Jingabong - A lavish spa meets homeless shelter. None of us have ever experienced anything remotely close to what we were about to step into. A Korean world we were unaware of completely. For 8,000 won a person (about 6 US dollars) we all had a place to stay. Of course that place was a marble floor in a room the size of a gymnasium with about 200 other
people. Besides the homeless shelter aspect of a jingabong it is entirely a bath house. Of course at 4 in the morning we just wanted a place to sleep. But when we woke up the next morning (to some man snoring his brains out 10 feet away from us) we decided to venture into the spa section. This was all taking place on three different levels within a normal looking office building. The jingabong took up the last three stories of the building and was divided to girls only spa and locker room on the 7th floor, sleeping area on the 8th floor, and the boys spa with locker room on the 9th floor. We couldn't enjoy the baths/spas/saunas together but we were all able to sleep in the same gymnasium sized room. The spa's were amazing, with a cold pool, multiple hot pools (including a hot mineral bath), a full sized cold swimming pool, and 3 separate large saunas ranging from super super hot to hot. We lived like kings for the morning. Naked kings. I have never been so close to coworkers before. i made the comment, "NOW we are coworkers!" And Nick quickly replied, "now we are
BROTHERS." Ha.
We lazily made our way to the nearest coffee shop for some lattes and food of any type. We couldn't leave Daejon without asking someone We had enough of Daejon and looked for the nearest bus station after breakfast. We were back in Cheongju in enough time to get redressed and head to the Daejon/Cheongju Hanwha Eagles baseball game. It was the battle for last place as the hometown Eagles lost 15-0. We left after singing the 7th inning stretch (while Koreans looked on in confusion). The weekend ended with everyone crammed in Nick's room playing Wii fit and Wii Winter Olympics. I should've known.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.265s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 13; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0645s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Lacey
non-member comment
Oh my gosh...i am trying to envision the tassels, wow. Also, BHC for best health care chicken is so funny, haha. And, the jingabong experience with your coworkers is hilarious. I wonder what percent of Americans would participate in something like that? Few.