Sat - Travelled up from Gochang to Kunsan
I stopped off at some towns, but not so interesting. I tried to stay in a small town, but there was no inn so I had to travel up to Kunsan. Walking around I came across the
unphoto imagine : The Kunsan Kisaeng chip area.
There were dozens of shop fronts with huge plate glass windows with a strategic waist high 1m stripe. Behind each window stood about a dozen prostitutes. Each "shop" had it's own theme and costume - in 2 of them the women were dressed in school uniforms !
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Apart from that Kunsan was a fairly boring big new city.
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Sun - to Socheon, beach, to Honsong - look around Socheon, but they said they haven't finished building the 400 year old town fortress yet !
Took bus to beach Chongyangdae
saw penninsula with people fishing and fish restaurants didn't eat,
hitched 5 Km to a cammelia forest memorial.
| I heard somone talk about a "chuckjay" (festival) nearby; so I asked where it was and hitched there. It wasn't special, just a lot of seaside fish restaurants, but Koreans seem to love that kind of thing. Met some interesting people.
| At Chongyangdae beach I met some people giving tourist flights in their microlight plane.
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I hitched up to Boryong, but seemed like another boring city, so I took a bus north to a smaller place Hongsong, where I easily found a cheap hotel. saw a few ruins of the old city wall, but the city didn't seem to have much character. I arranged to meet a friend of Pun Seoks, Kim Myung Soo in Sosan
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Mon - Deoksan Park to Sosan I always tell people that it's boring for me to visit temples. They don't seem very interesting to me, but there was a famous temple on the road between Hongsong and Deoksan park : Sudeoksa so I decided to stop off there. God I hated it as soon as I saw all the tour buses. I walked up through 800m of restaurants, and souvenir shops before I got to the ticket window. There I decided no I didn't want to pay money to see a boring temple and hordes of people. So I left and hitched to Deoksan and took the bus through the mountain park to Haemi
unphoto imagine : The Old Town Walls in Haemi
They are well preserved, but the reason they get so many pilgrims is that is where more than 1000 catholics were tortured to death in the 1860s. (The Chrisitians brought the idea of equality of men to Korea, but the oppressive nobility wanted to stop the peasants getting these ideas)
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In Sosan I met up with Mr Kim Myung Soo. His main home is in Seoul so he just rents a room to sleep in during the week. So I waited in his office while he finished work. It was very interesting to see his job a high rise construction site. Strange he works building a housing complex for 5000 people yest he dreams of living in a quiet farm in the country.
Went to a restaurant where we went to eat Halvee and then to the health club where Mr Kim goes everynight.
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| | Tue - Mr Kim was busy with a surprise government inspection at work so during my time in Sosan I travelled around by day alone and talked with him in the evening. I cycled around town went to the post office and market etc In the afternoon I took the bus 50 mins to another part of the county to Kangwaldo. This was an island, but 20 years ago they reclaimed the land near to it. The island it was boring to me just a lot of fish restaurants (but the Koreans love them). What was interesting for me was to see the huge 20 Km seawall and the American style flat grainfields behind it, quite untypical in hilly Korea where most fields are small. Then I took the bus to Taen
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Wed - I took the bus to Malipo beach, it was very quiet, because it was a winter and a workday I walked up to the Chollipo botanical gardens. I was not really interested in the place, but the story of it's founding is very interesting. An American man working in Korea fell in love with Korea and took Korean citizenship. He saw that the Korean government was doing nothing to do so he decide to do it himself, so he began collecting many types of plants and trees etc. see http://www.chollipo.org
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Thu - Left Sosan and ended up in Seoul took a bus to a small town of .., but it was so interesting then to Onyang City where I went to the Folk Museum, but it was full of sreaming schoolkids and wasn't as good as the government museums.
then to Pyontaek. already felt like Seoul. Like even the waitress spoke some English. Decided to meet up with Suran in Seoul so we could go to Chuncheon and Sorakson together.
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