Korea's newest national park, Mudeungsan National Park! It became the twenty-first national park of Korea in 2012, and is still so new it doesn't even feature on the National Park website. Before becoming a national park, it was a provincial park. I came to Gwangju a few months ago, but didn't see much of the city, so I vowed to return. This time, I still didn't really see anything of the city, but the real purpose of my visit was to Mudeungsan for a nice autumn hike. I was up at the crack of dawn, after very little sleep, it's been a long time since I slept in a dorm. I took the subway to the Culture Complex station, and took exit three. I found the bus stop with a bit of difficulty, I was on ... read more

So, the Asian Games came to Incheon. We knew that it was happening for a while, but there was a complete lack of information online in English. When the timetable for the events came out, we looked to see what was on, that was also a mess, as it wasn't set out very logically. We tried to figure out how to buy tickets, haha not a chance! There was no ticketing option in English, and since we don't have legit ID numbers on our alien cards, (foreigners have either more or less digits, so a lot of websites don't recognise them) we couldn't order tickets online. A friend tried to help us out, by ringing the event organisers. That just made her angry as they never answered the phone, so she rang the Incheon city government, ... read more

We were up at the crack of dawn again today! Today was our only chance to see the farmers' market, that happens every morning in Takayama. The market started at 6 am, which was a bit too early for us, but we got there around sevenish and had a good look around. The market is along one side of the river bank. There were quite a few different stalls, selling a variety of stuff, not just fruit and veg, but also artwork and other stuff to entice the tourists. We also found out the reason why all the shops close so early, they are all open at 6 am, to coincide with the market. We wandered around the market, I didn't really buy anything, only this interesting food item, which we tried when we were waiting ... read more

We were up bright and early and made our way to the bus station. I had definitely slept well on the futon, it was really comfortable. Luckily the bus station is right next door to the train station, so it was really easy to find. We bought our tickets and boarded the bus. It left bang on time, 7:50 am, I love Japanese efficiency. The drive through the countryside was beautiful, and we went through about a million tunnels, it's the only way to get through all the mountains. We made a brief stop at Shirkawago, it looked great, I can't wait to go back there on Tuesday. The journey took just over two hours. at 10 am we were deposited at Kanazawa bus terminal. We found the bus stop for our journey back and also ... read more

15th Aug: We left late the night before from Nambu Bus Terminal in Seoul at 11:30 pm. We were on one of the posh buses only three seats in a row and we were in the first row, so we had loads of leg room to dump our stuff in. The traffic was good, an we arrived in Tongyeong very early, around 3:30 am. We had a lot of time to kill, as we weren't catching the ferry until 7:30. The bus terminal was pretty tiny and ghetto. It was pissing down with rain, so we sought refuge in the only place that was open a 24 hour McDonald's. We all ordered a meal, I had a 1955 burger, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We managed to stay there until about ... read more