Blogs from Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea, Asia - page 4

Before the oh-so-talked-of Joseon dynasty, there was the Silla ("Shilla") dynasty. A small collection of clans and peoples on Korea's South West coast that banded together and expanded between around 70 BC and 1000 AD. And their capital was Gyeongju. The (small) city was earmarked early on as culturally important in Korean history and has been carefully (one might almost say obsessively) kept very traditional. Former President, Park Chung-Hee (fun fact - assassinated father of the current Presidential candidate Park) used quite draconian measures - prescribing that there were to be no buildings above a certain height, imposing strict planning permission conditions and requiring all roof to be the traditional Korean tiled roof. This has meant that, while the city has remained highly traditional - and you can actually look around you to the mountains surrouding ... read more

Yesterday I saw the mock up of a traditional village, today I saw the real thing, Hahoe Village. Actually inhabited by actual people - not that you would know it because they were all either out at work or inside out of the heat! Anyway, the village was roughly circular and every building was the traditional wooden Korean hut, with either thatched roofs (for the plebs) or tiled (for the VIPs). The village is famous in Korea as the birthplace of the Ryu family which spawned a celebrated Confucian scholar and a government minister - in the 16th Century. Never say a good deed goes unremembered here. More recently, the village has been designated a cultural treasure by UNESCO. I was slightly frustrated that the few public buildings (such as the formal residences of the Ryu ... read more

I'm in South Korea for another six months, so I'm excited to tell you all about the crazy (and surprisingly normal) things I've experienced while living here as an English teacher from America. Recently, you may have heard that my BFF, Brooke, came all the way from Albuquerque, NM to see me in South Korea! It was interesting to see all of her reactions to some of the same things that were once new to me. We missed the train back to my apartment, so we stayed in Seoul the very first night she was here. She got to check out the crazy-complex (yet, usable) subway system and found, to her great relief, that there are Dunkin Donuts' everwhere! She had one banana-shaped doughnut that tasted like green apple! I prefer the red bean paste, myself ... read more

As I really only had one full day in Gyeonju, and the particular things I wanted to get to were relatively spread out, this meant a relatively early start (like 11!). There was a free espresso coffee machine in the lobby of the hotel so almost gave a random button a push (they were labelled in Korean after all) and at least got a shortish black coffee which wasn't too tragic. Noted that they even have a toaster, some bread and jam sachets. However I have tended to rely on places like Paris Baguette for my morning pastry. In this case I ended up heading off with only the coffee under my belt as I headed straight to the bus stop. Buses here tend to be of the exact change variety, although if you throw 2 ... read more

We had another holiday on a recent Wednesday, so I decided on a place a friend had told me about a while ago—Bogyeong Temple and Naeyeon Mountain, which has 12 waterfalls along it. I invited all my facebook friends to go, but most people wanted a restful day, not a hiking/traveling day. So I ended up going with 2 male acquaintances, who didn’t know each other.I was a bit nervous that we’d all get along, but the guys hit it off, so that was good. We took a bus from Dongbu bus terminal to Pohang, a city about an hour away. Then we had to take another hour-long bus ride to the waterfall area (ask at the info desk in front of the bus terminal for the bus times there and back). The weather was perfect. ... read more