South Korea – Heading East

I’m catching up on South Korea whilst hurtling along on Japanese bullet trains! What an experience this is! Anyway back to South Korea.

The next day we headed East, not really knowing and only having a rough idea where we wanted to visit. We stopped for ssanghwa and coffee again at this rather out of the way place with a beautiful garden!

We found that Doris (the satnav) had scenic route settings so after aiming for a reservoir we took one of those. It must be beautiful in the early spring with cherry blossom but with the leaves it looked lovely too!

We knew we had to turn back at a Temple. When we got there it was a Tibetan Buddhist Temple Museum so we went to have a look! I even managed a few pleasantries with a guy from Nepal who took our admission fee. It was a quirky place and freezing cold. It had exhibitions about the Dalai Lama, art exhibition along and various Buddha statues and Mandalas. The oddest part was about sky burials, with some rather gruesome pictures of half eaten corpses, there was a room where you could lie in a coffin to experience that too!! It was all explained however it seemed rather strange!

We aimed for the town of Jinju because at that point we would have to decide which direction we would go in. We had also arranged to meet a couple of Servas members Petunia (English nickname) and her husband for coffee at 1800 hours. They were such a lovely couple, they had just returned from a trip to France and very sweetly invited us to stop over with them. They also lived in a flat but overlooking the small holdings. I really hope they make it one day to the UK so I can host them in return.

We generally don’t book hotels till late in the day, there is always somewhere at a reasonable price and sometimes the hotels are discounted.

The next day we set off for Gyeongju North of Busan, we went via another of Doris’s scenic routes through an area called the Yeongnam Alps, which in the winter is a ski resort. It wasn’t that scenic but, it did take us to another reservoir and a dam after which one road had lovely flowering avenue.

We stopped for a leg stretch and I saw an amazing huge bee. I tried to get a photo but it seemed very territorial zipping after other insects and chasing them away then coming back to one spot to hover. It was a resin bee about 2-3cm long! Sorry the photos were no good so look it up!

We thought we may find a nice place to stay at the beach. I must say I don’t think beaches are a destination here, they are often utilitarian looking with sea barriers etc. Koreans like to camp, but they seem to pitch in car parks and  chilly destinations! We arrived in such a destination and found the most amazing cafe Maison De Mare! It had European food with a Korean twist and it was fantastic, so was the view over the sea!

We didn’t stay by the coast but headed to Gyeongju and I’ll write about that next!