We're Back at Eastern

What a fun few days involving a lot of travel, sighseeing, food and fun. We finally returned Sunday night around 10pm to find Eastern in a little dissarray due to painting work inside.

Late Thursday after meeting Yoo Rim for the 2nd time (AHHH) we caught the train to Gyeonju (4.5hrs). We had booked accomodation through Koreat Tourism and were pleasantly surprised. It was a traditional guest house and if in Australia would surely be on the national trust register. Friday we caught a Tour Bus to see the sights of Geyonju. The tour guide only spoke Korean but they had a DVD in English to introduce each location. There are some things I realise we do so well at work (Echidna Walkabout). Guests are never left wondering where the bus is when we reach the exit for one. Koreans also give a time they expect to LEAVE, not to be back. We saw Bulsoka Temple, there were thousands of kids on excursion there. To save time I should have had a T-Shirt saying Hello I am from Australia , as the kids were keen to practice their English.

Next we went to the Science Hall showing Sila era history, particularly their astronomical observatories.Next was General Kim Yusin's tomb, a famous general who defended the Sila kingdom against various armies around the 600's AD. Lunh was a huge affair with a selection of foods, we went for Bibimbap, a perrenial favourite. Next was Daerengwon tombs. These are a collection of burial sites of former Royal members. They appear tp be small hillocks, but the last excavated in 1973 revealed great tresure and artifacts. The last stop was the Museum. It was interesting, but we have learned that the Koreans have huge impressive buildings with displays widely spaced.

Would you believe after this we then caught the bus to Jinju just so Bill could go fishing. The target species was the Cherry Trout/Salmon a native species to Korea. The stram we fished had plenty of small fish which were lightening fast to take the dry. They were difficult to hook. Liz stayed in Jinju visiting the Fortress and in my absence went shopping. She was able to give me the cut down version to her exploits when we went out to dinner down by the river to experience their local speciality, Eels.

Our trip back to Seoul on Sunday was via Haeinsa Temple. This is number 2 in the hierachy of Buddhist Temples within Korea. It is most famous for the Koreana Tripitaka, a collection of some 85,000 wood block book carvings containing most of the Buddhist academic teachings. It was amusing to see that despite efforts in the 70's to move these to modern storage facilities, the best preservation was in the centuries old storage sheds. They don;t build them like they did in the old Days!!!!!

Finally we caught the bus to Daegu to board the KTX fast train home. I reckon they should be sued for false advertising. It's not a 300 kmh train, the fastest we saw was 299kmh. Still it was a fun but tiring 3 days. We will put our pics on later as the room needs to be used

Cheers