Amazing Backpacking Trip in Korea!

So my vacation was a success!  Not only did it start off with a couple of lazy days off followed by the Ilsan Beach Festival, but it included an amazing backpacking trip right here in Korea (and I have TONS of pictures and videos that can't be left out).  A lot of people in my shoes have both the opportunity and the desire to travel all over (especially in South East Asia), and it seems that many ignore what Korea has to offer.  I have now had 3 vacations (in 1 year!) and 2 of them were right here in Korea.  Of course Thailand was amazing, but the likelihood of traveling SE Asia at a later date is much higher than traveling in Korea later on in life.  The first vacation included Seoul and Jeju which was amazing, but this trip was truly unique, and had it's fair share of surprises, characters and amazingness!  

We (Alex, Karl and Becky) started off taking the KTX (speed train) to a city called Dajeon where Karl has a friend who had agreed to show us around.  When we arrived there we hit an amazing sub sandwich joint that we'd heard great things about called Lion Sub.  Eating that is what made me realize how much I actually miss a good sandwich from Subway or the like.  Anywho, so far so good.  

I also have to point out that we had a basic outline of what our trip would look like, but we were admittedly "winging it."  After having an early dinner at Lion Sub we met up with Karl's friend Nick who helped us find a good motel in a wise location.  After hanging out at the motel for a while (which was actually really nice) we hit a couple different establishments before going on to the grand finale, the LIVE octopus restaurant.  And here is the footage:

I know my mom is pretty jealous that she missed out on this opportunity, so I will try to prepare this dish when I visit home :P

Here's a cool picture of Alex the next day on our way to the KTX station.  In the background were the first of our very interesting characters.  The old Korean men were gambling on the sidewalk there, but were slamming their game pieces and money down quite enthusiastically.  They also kept sending the.. interestingly dressed woman there back to the store to get them ice cream.  They sent her back 2 different times before we left the scene, who knows how long that went on for, haha.

The next portion of the trip was the only REAL planned or reserved part of the trip, which was a temple stay at a Buddhist temple down in the South West part of Korea.  It was near a city called Haenam, which is considered the "End of Korea."  The temple stay cost us each 50,000 won, which included accommodation and meals for 24 hours, and was an amazing and unique cultural experience!  Mr. Park helped us find and book this temple stay which was great since many others were booked up (it is peak traveling season in Korea right now), and because he helped us find one with an English translator.  We actually thought we had misjudged the arrival time (thinking a 12 pm train from Dajeon was plenty of time to get there by 5 pm).  What we didn't realize is that our train to the end of the line (Mokpo) was an HOUR bus ride from Haenam, which was another HOUR bus ride from the temple.  We got really lucky with the first bus departure time, and took some great advise from a nice Korean man on the train to take a taxi from Haenam to the temple.  Somehow we pulled it off and arrived at the temple at 4:55!  

This is the mountain ridge that the temple sat on.  Picture taken from the taxi.

We did a number of interesting things during the temple stay, most significantly (and in short) they were:

• Wearing the Buddhist clothing 
• Sitting and walking meditation
• Ate the monks' vegetarian meals (which were actually really good.. just coulda used a little chicken ;)
• Rang a huge bell (if I get the video from Becky of US doing it I'll add it)
• Had a tea ceremony with a monk and other guests
• Slept on the floor in a communal room (I slept.. so-so)
• Woke up at 5 am to chant and meditate
• Did communal work with the monks and other guests (basically just sweeping up around the different building at the temple site)
• And finally during our free time we hiked/climbed to the top of an amazing mountain ridge (again, need pictures from Becky still!)

Here is a brief video of a monk ringing the bell, the temple, the mountains behind it and of my friends.  Right after this we all got to ring the bell one time each.  The reverb from the bell so sounded so cool in person, I don't think this video does it any kind of justice.

Becky and Karl standing near the entrance to the temple.  Us guys' sleeping quarters was on the ground floor, through that door on the right.  One of the characters I had mentioned before was actually one of the monks.  When we all sat in for meditation, none of us were sitting in a perfect full lotus position that you'd imagine when you think of a yoga expert.  For some reason though one of the monks had a huge problem with the way that Karl was sitting, even though we were all sitting cross-legged/'Indian' style.  I was busy counting my breaths for the meditation, but I guess this monk just wouldn't let it go, until finally our interpreter monk (who directed us the whole time) came over and told him it was fine (a couple of times).  Karl just kept looking at us, looking at his own legs, and looking at the monk, thinking "we're all doing the same thing!"  Oh well, nothing came of it, just a character that we won't soon forget.

Here is a picture carrying our 'old school' brooms from the shed to the main temple court yard.

We actually decided to leave a little early before lunch, because Alex was hardly eating since he didn't really like the food, and we all wanted some meat.  The SW part of Korea (Jeolla province) is known for their food by the way, so we had extra incentive to go.  The monks and staff at the temple were very nice about it and even provided us with a free shuttle van back to the city of Haenam where we tracked down this delicious Korean BBQ restaurant!

Korean BBQ is.. arguably my favorite thing about Korea.  What makes Jeolla province so famous for it is they charge the same (or less, in this case the same) price, but provide close to 20 side dishes (instead of 3-10).  It was so good.  At this point we had to say bye to Alex because he had to work on Thursday.  He caught a bus back to our city, and we went onward.

Next we went looking for things to do at a PC bang, and ended up discovering a Dinosaur museum!  Who doesn't love one of those?  I guess they discovered around 500 dinosaur footprints there in Haenam only 20 years ago!  I have too many photos to show much from the actual museum, but here are some funny ones that we took out side of the museum.  (Which, by the way, we didn't spend much time doing, it felt like we were in an oven in the mid 90s and high humidity!)

Here is me 'picking up' a little dino.

"Look out Becky!!!"  

By this point our 'winging it' strategy was working better than ever.  We had found some cool things, and managed to hit just about everything we had wanted to hit.  This is the point though, when we started running into towns with nothing to do, and the traveling/heat was starting to get everyone a little edgy.  Not bad at all, but Becky for example is a little tired of Korean food, and she had been a trooper the whole trip.  We went to a town called Suncheon (supposed to have an amazing sunset and gulf), and on the way told Becky she could pick the place to eat, and all she wanted was a hamburger.  No such thing in the town of Suncheon.  Also we missed the sunset, didn't see the coast, and figured our luck had finally run out.  This is where we ran into another interesting set of characters though!  As soon as we got off the bus and crossed the street we were greeted by some Korean high school boys who were eager to get our opinion on which of 2 of them was more handsome.  I always love how competitive the Korean culture can be, and we made one of their nights by unanimously picking the non-pumpkin haired boy, heh heh.  I did get a really nice picture of the sky on the way there though, and the next day we went on to the very well known International Expo in Yeosu.

Picture from the bus.

The Expo was pretty cool and cheap (only 10,000 won for foreigners; was originally 100,000 at the beginning of the summer), but there were way too many people there.  The best thing I had heard about the expo was the laser show at night, but we had no accommodations prepared, so we decided we shouldn't stay too late.  There were expositions set up from 40 different countries, and we checked out about 10 of them which were really cool.  We went to go check out an aquarium that was there, but the wait was 4 hours long : /  Since we weren't really planning on going, and it is generally a weekend long trip, we weren't too disappointed, but it could have worked out a little better. 

Becky and Karl in front of the big 'O' where the laser show takes place.

Inside the Indian Exposition. 

Here is a quick video from the Argentinian Expo which was really cool.  They also had food but we didn't get any here.

We did stop for a snack at the Italian Expo, which was simply a restaurant.  I enjoyed a delicious espresso and some gelato ice cream :)

At this point it was Thursday evening, and we were starting to run out of clever ideas.  We weighed our options and decided to take a bus to Busan (about 2 hours from where we were, and about 1 hour away from our starting point of Ulsan).  Unfortunately we had to take a much later bus to the wrong side of town, but we made it work.  We arrived at 1:30 am and took a taxi to Hyundai Beach.  When we got there we realized (I remembered) that there had been a week long festival going on there, and the streets were filled!  Due to this (and the sleep we all caught on the bus) we decided to pull an "all-nighter" and catch the first train to Ulsan in the morning.  That's what we did, and it was a great time.  We made it back to Ulsan quite early and went our separate ways.  The best part was that we had the whole weekend to recuperate before returning to school on Monday.  A good vacation indeed :D

A nice shot of Hyundai Beach and the Busan skyline that night.

Here is a rough outline of our trip.  Some cities are spelled different due to different interpretations of the alphabet translation, but you get the picture :)