track our trek

we put our wordless travel book to good use in our first few days in korea. thanks lisa b! we had korean bbq the first night & tried to make conversation w/ the two women who were the proprietors…but for some reason after 15 minuts of gesturing and pointing in the phrase book & trying to pronounce “what is your name” we were never able to get their names. in fact, one of the women looked at daryll as if he’d asked her to do something indecent! lol!....we still don’t know what that was about. But the food was yummy! day two we visited boemoesa temple. daryll made a friend on the bus using only the picture book! the temples here are very different than in japan…everything is elaborately painted in beautiful vibrant colors.

we headed to gyeongju wednesday night by bus & checked into sa rang chae for one night…it’s a traditional korean guest house where we met some folks from scotland, germany, switzerland, japan and taiwan. (that’s proven to be our favorite part of staying in hostels by far.) the room was old and a bit musty, but the place had a lot of charm.

alas, after only 2 ½ days and an unfortunate bout w/ bus station mystery meat (a momentary lapse of judgment on my part), we were feeling sick of korean food and the pervasive smell of kimchee everywhere. (why, oh why must everything be pickled w/ garlic??)…and don’t forget the boiled silkworm larvae in steaming pots on every street corner!! extremely gross! day three we avoided korean food altogether and had bread, yogurt, dried fruits and nuts most of the day…lol! we toured the silla burial mounds and relics of cities from the 600’s and bulgaksa temple for a couple days in gyeongju.

we spent our last night there at a hostel that we both decided was where we draw the line. the description in the lonely planet guide says “many of the rooms are quite grotty…” we should’ve gone w/ our gut instinct and avoided it altogether, but in an attempt to make up for some of our expenditures over the first week in japan, we went for it’s price tag of 26,000 won. between the moldy, leaky ceiling over the bathtub, the sink that drained out of the wall and the pickled garlic smell it took 2 incense sticks to cover, we agreed we’d rather run out of money & come home early than stoop that low again!