Happy Birthday Marcella

love Auntie Susie

I'VE BEEN TO NORTH KOREA!!!!!!!!!!!

I've had a pretty exciting weekend and no, I wasn't captured by Kim Jong Il and forced to star in his movies. Mike & I went on a tour group to visit Geumgangsan - which is the famous Diamond Mountain in North Korea. I'll tell you all about it but for now here are my photos.

Maggie & Steve's visit

In the hopes of not forgetting the last ten days adventures, I'm going to document our itinerary & food. I'm too tired for anecdotes...

27th May: Busan After lunch, picked Maggie & Steve up from Busan airport (took them 10 minutes to get their bags and go!!).
Meandered around Haeundae Beach, saw the beginnings of the Christian beach convention - mind boggling how many people were there.
Dinner: Galbi (pork) in downtown - meandered around downtown.
Hotel: love motel in Haeundae

28th May: Busan > Uljin > Gyeongju
Breakfast: Bagels at Dunkin' Donuts, then a walk along the now deserted Haeundae Beach. Hopped in the car and drove the coastal road, stopped for a seaside coffee then on to Uljin, took a few photos of the massive ship yards and stopped for;
Lunch: Kim Bap Cheon Guk - had mandu, bibimbap and udong. Back in the car, drove on to Gyeongju. Stopped at Bulguksa, heaps of school children around, Maggie & Steve were kicked out of a temple building for not wearing socks, enjoyed the rock garden.
Hotel: Tourist hotel in Gyeongju downtown Steve & I checked out the rooms - it was ok, nothing special. I was about to haggle the room rate (seeing as we wanted 2 rooms) but I realised the concierge had a plastic arm and I lost the hart to haggle.
Dinner: Beers at the downstairs brewery (very noisy), Samgyeobsal cooked on a rock :) We chose the restaurant because we found 3 together that looked good but the lady at the musical instrument shop said we should go to her sister's place. We were the only ones there but the food was very good.

29th May: Gyeongju > Daegu > Taebaek
Breakfast: McDonalds - oh the shame of it.
We drove round and round in circles trying to find anything open and maccas was one of the few places. Explored historical Gyeongju - a fort, an ice room, an observatory and a lake (I will fill in the correct names). Primary school children were everywhere - Mike got a shock when one of the girls was from Melbourne and had a great accent! I got a bit tired of having the same conversation over and over. Hi! Where are you from? What's your name? It was quite hot all day! Jumped in the car, escaped Gyeongju for the express way to Daegu.
Lunch: Express way rest stop, everyone had mandu except me - I had mystery kim bap & tentacles.
We stopped in Daegu only to buy a couple of things; we ended up buying a couple more than intended :) We finished the drive to Taebaek and started looking for somewhere appropriate for Maggie & Steve to stay. Sadly most of the accommodation options were not very good. Finally we tried the Ewha motel and it was the best of the bunch. Mike and I got to go home to our apartment - yeah! Dinner: New York Grill and Bar - Mike & Steve had massive steaks, while Maggie had the ample chicken steak and I had humungo ribs. We ran into Mike's co-teacher Mrs Yun, her children were very determined to ignore us, it was very amusing watching them march past our table a couple of times.

30th May: Taebaek & Samcheok
Breakfast: cereal oh sweet ordinary cereal!
Mike & I headed to work, while Maggie and Steve caught the bus to Samcheok. In Samcheok Maggie & Steve checked out the brown wedding cake museum, the fish markets and had a raw fish banquet lunch - for 4 people! After work we introduced Maggie & Steve to a couple of our kiddie neighbours then we went out to dinner. Dinner:

31st May: Taebaek & Gohan
Breakfast: cereal. Mike & I at work and Maggie & Steve took off with our car to Gohan to spy on the golf course: High 1. As usual they landed on their feet and were treated like royalty at both the golf course and ski resort.
Dinner: Taebaek Style Dakgalbi - chickeny noodly goodness.
We were joined by Rachael, James, Dean and Sunny, all elementary teachers in Taebaek. Also Lotu another EPIK Teacher and her son Kobe. It was a fun night with lots of Soju!

1st June: Taebaek
Breakfast: cereal.
My Principal decided to take Maggie & Steve to lunch, so Mike's and my schedules were adjusted so we could go out to a hidden restaurant in Taebaek.
Lunch: Many traditional dishes.
The meal was superb and we finished off with five flavour tea. Mike was given the afternoon off, so we headed to his school to make sure and ended up having tea with Mike's Principal. A few of Mike's students got to meet Steve and Maggie - most gave themselves whip lash trying to check out who was in Mike's office! Most of the afternoon was gone so we took some time to plan what to do for the next few days.
Dinner:

2nd June: Taebaek > Donghae > Gangneung > Samcheok > Taebaek
Breakfast: proper cookup :)
We drove to Donghae to check out the Gangwon Comphrensive Museum, which was quite an experience. We were all a bit mystified as to why the collection existed and just why so many artefacts/reproductions thereof were under this very large roof. Having said that I enjoyed the outdoor cave and the robot dinosaurs (with sound effects). By the time we were ready for a coffee break, we were all ready to move on and so we drove to Gangneung downtown for lunch.
Lunch: Terrarosa in Gangneung.
It was really nice to have some tasty Italian food and coffees. A brief walk around downtown and a touch of window shopping later, we jumped back in the car and headed to the Reunification Park. The North Korean submarine still had that burny burny smell and the land-locked South Korean warship still had plenty of buttons to push and nobs to twiddle! I might have regressed into my childhood a bit but I had fun! When we'd had our fill of nauticalness, we continued along the coastal road. This turned out to be a great idea as we found a massive sun dial and this.

We checked out the sun dial and Maggie was taken by the strange fur fashion of one ladies dog - it had pigtails on it's ears! Next we decided on checking out the bizarre site of the ships on land. When we read the sign asking for an entrance fee just to look around these motel ships, we said "Bugger that!" and hit the road again. Time was getting away from us, so we stopped at Samcheok for dinner.
Dinner: Pizza! with some very ordinary wine - what did we expect when they said there was no white, only red and then confused us about the cola situation!
For a bit of fun we checked out the Homeplus at Samcheok after dinner.
We were late getting into Taebaek and so we all went straight home to bed.

3rd June: Taebaek > Seoul
Breakfast: cereal.
We all packed up our bags and jumped on an 11am train to Seoul. It was a much quieter day due to the train trip taking almost 5 hours (it was inexplicable longer than our normal train).
Lunch: kim bap and triangles as appropriated before boarding the train.
We hit the jackpot on our arrival to downtown (Jongno 3-ga area), the very first love motel we tried gave us a fair price and agreed that we could keep the rooms for 3 days! And most importantly, Maggie & Steve felt they would be comfortable at the Samseong motel. To celebrate we all enjoyed a coffee at the marvellous café themselves and come cake :) I had the dangerous dark chocolate and it was at that! Good thing it was a tiny little square - or I'd never have finished it. Freshly refuelled, Mike led us on a walk to and through Myeongdong. On the way we organised tickets to Nanta - thanks to the lovely woman at the Information desk at the Cheonggyecheon.
Dinner:


4th June: Seoul
Breakfast: bakery delights at café themselves
Lunch: pepper rice - Mike was happy!
Dinner: Brazillian meat on swords cooked to perfection - churrasc.. (sp?)
Nanta

5th June: Seoul
tourist bus
Breakfast: bakery delights at café themselves
Lunch: gorgeous little in café Itawon - super surprising this was!!
Dinner: Todai - buffet of delicious fish things; from okonomiaki to tempura to personally sliced sashimi to sushi rolls to blazingly hot stir-frys to mountains of crab legs and cooked to order crepes.
We all enjoyed a bit or a lot of the wine which was too sweet for me but ok all the same. Ha demanded we all eat our way through 5 plates, I only just got there - you can see what Mike did with the offered crab leg!
Seeing as we all needed to stroll and some way to repay Ha for his generosity, we walked on into the Intercontinental and had an Irish whisky or a glass of champagne. There must have been a wedding there because we had a rainbow like procession of hanbok attired women with suited men. Sadly Korean men prefer to wear a suit to a formal occasion.


6th June: Seoul
Goodbye at the bus stop.

This is almost finished but I'm going to publish it and finish it on Monday! So check back soon,
love
Squeezy

The next bit in pictures

Or you can go straight to the photos at MaggieNSteveInSK