Day 68

Woah this was yesterday! I have officially caught up with myself! Woke up around 1ish, err Heeji texted me and said she was just leaving work as she had had a medical appointment. So she was on her way round. Yes!! That was a good surprise, did my usual Heeji on routed panic tidying of flat! We just spent the rest of the day and evening watching funny ones - IT crown, Fawlty Towers, Father Ted, and Flight of the Conchords and had big hugs and ate doughnuts! What a great way to spend a Day, especially as a surprise!

Day 67

Wow I've nearly caught up with myself! Im now writing about the day before yesterday, having to hang around all day waiting for my new emergency passport, but thats another bloody story! Anyways wednesday! Wnet back to the dentist and amazingly it hurt more than before which was incredible. Also the bloody dentist then tells me he cant see me friday, I said I going to England on Monday for one month. I told him I asked him if he could do it all this week on Monday. He just said sorry, I said will it hurt, he said probably and gave me a prescription for some pain killers and said chew on the right hand side I said what for a month. I told him it was unsatisfactory, but he just said sorry. Anyways went to meet Susie in Hongdae, we went to Baby Guiness, Irish pub, and it was great to see her and catch up, as she is so funny and a really good friend. Later we went to a place called Sindaebang where I d never been before and met a Saudi Arabian friend of Susies, and her Korean boyfriend. They were pretty cool, we had chicken and beer and then went to a club and everybody got right on the Soju! We had a dance and it was a pretty banging club, good night with good company!

Day 66 - Crazy Day!

Woke up and Heeji was late for work, but I dont think it matters too much so long as she gets everything done. It got me up anyways. I was supposed to be going to an Art meet up group. I arrived at the station at 11am but no one showed up -  typical artists!! Anyways these old ladies had spotted me sitting outside the station and came and chatted. At first I thought they might be the art group, but they didnt speak any english and they certainly didnt look like artists! Around 20 minutes later they came back and I was still sat there. They said "Pagupa?' Which means are you hungry, I said I was so they beckoned me to come to lunch with them. After a long while of them arguing about where to go, we found a place and had noodle and sushi, was pretty good and not bad for free. Turned out they were christians, and they were telling me about some world peace event the wanted me to go to. They hooked me up with some other younger christians who ivited me for dinner and to a bible study class later that day. After I left the nice old ladies, I found a nice place in Sindorim to sit and have beer in the sunshine. I felt a bit guilty for wanting to sit in the sunshine and drink beer. But I am sure that is the objective of most British people when on holiday! I met a nice lady who worked in insurance who was half Japanese, half Korean, so chatted to her for a bit.
Then I went to meet the christians. We met in Sinchon and had a lovely Korean BBQ at a place I recommended. They seem very sweet, a girl called Da Hye and a girl called Jihyun. Then we went to the bible study group, and read some bible, a lady gave a talk, but it was a bit immature, almost like sunday school. Interesting though that all these Koreans meet to discuss the bible in English as there was only one other non korean. and about 8 Koreans. Someone had bought some clay as the talk was about god making us like pots, and then filling him with love. Well as you know I'm pretty handy at pottery so I made a nice coil pot.
After that strange little ordeal I went to beer o'clock, met a friend of mine by accident. Then got talking to some crazy Swedish guy, I joined him and his 3 other friends 2 more Sweeds and a Canadian. I took them to Woodstock and we got some pitchers. After that we went to Mikes Cabin, oh lordy Swedish people are crazy! Had a dance and some shots and it was a pretty funny evening, pretty funny day also!!

Day 65 - Dentist!

Had to go to the dentist today, thought it may be bad news as two of my back teeth were all broken, I had had them filled when I was in Vietnam but the had since fallen out and then I kept on putting off going. But the past few days I had a bit of pain in the bottom one, and was worried I would have to go to the dentist in England which is obscenely expensive. I went for a nice coffee in the sunshine before hand, in order to ensure a small part of my day was 'happy'. Ahhh! Dentist was more painful than I could ve imagined, both physically and financially. Crap! I had been saving money for England and that took a massive dent in it. 2 route canals and 2 crowns - around 800 quid!! Shit! After dentist, I felt I had earnt a beer after the ordeal, there is a nice place in Sinchon, I think one of the only ones you can sit outside. I had taken my laptop and did some blogging. Although I know that I was a bit heady from the anaesthetic and so apologies for the ranting of nonsense that day! Then sweet little Heeji turned up after work, we had a coupld of beers and then went to jazz club in Sinchon, is a nice place and the wine is quite reasonable. PLus Heeji had never been there its on a high floor in one of the buildings and has big glass windows overlooking the busy mania of Sinchon High street.

Day 64 - Sunday

Super day just relaxing with Heeji, and then she went to her book club. I had a nice rleaxing evening in on my own, which was a rare thing! Nothing much else to report. I ate pizza and watched 'Inglorious Bastards' Tarantino war film, it was a great film, brilliantly done and had some great acting. Although Brad Pitt was rubbish in it, I usually like him. But he played a really over the top hillbilly, I think his British accent is much more convincing. Great film though.

Day 63 - Jirisan

Woke up and had a few things to get together for our weekend trip, had to do some washing and sort out some head torches. Went to meet Heeji for dinner where we meeting the coach to Jirisan, which is a national Park. We had a lovely meal in a place called sadang, although we had to wait over an hour to be seated as was a popular place. It was worth the wait though. Then we got on the Coach at 10.20 and drove through the night. I did not sleep a wink. The bus driver was so bad, it was like he'd never driven a bus before, either that or he was intentiaonally trying to shake everyone on the bus awake. At one point he got stuck trying to get round a steep mountain corner. He stalled it and lost power steering, we didnt know if we going to go backwards over the edge of a cliff or something. We got to the first drop off point, there was the option of doing a 30 km walk, leaving at 3.30 am or staying on the bus and doing a shorter walk at around 15km. I wanted to do longer walk, but Heeji was abit too scared, bless her as she had never walked that far. I said with this driver its far more rational to be more scared staying on the bus. She said I could go on the long walk on my own, but really I just wanted to spend the day with her. So we stayed on the bus with the old people, children and fat people, for another 2 hours or so. We started walking aourn 6 am I think. I was a bit dissapointed, and a bit angry with the bad driver keeping me all night. So was feeling pretty exhausted when we set off. We walked though a forest for some time, it was almost like a rain forest, but was nice in the sunrise. Unfortunately the cloud cover was quite heavy so we didnt see the actual sunrise. Evetually we had got pretty high, and a beautiful vista opened up. Super Day all in all!

 We contiued up the path a lot of which was made into steps. It was quite tough going. But it was just nice to be on a mountain with Heeji. There was only 5 of us in the group. Eric the organiser, who is very nice. A funny guy from Idia called Mohammad and a larger american lady whom Heeji had met before, who was very nice but did not cope well with the climb. That was funny we had taken some noodles for lunch and Heeji asked me to put them in my bag. I asked her just out of interest if I have the water, the food, and the water proofs in my bag, wheat exactly do you have in your bag. She wouldnt tell me. I said do you have anything useful for climbing the mountain. She said no. She had over night things, make up and stuff for her book club tommorow!! Hahaha we couldnt stop laughing for ages, I know I notoriously bad a packing for going up mountains, but she seems to have got the award, especially as we could leave things on the bus!! Bless her!! Too cute! The last haul up to the summit was pretty steep, and there were lots of people. When we got there I 've never seen so many people all trying to stand on the top. There was a queue to have your photo taken by the head stone! We then turned along the ridge and walked a long for another hour or so before finding a shelter where we stopped for lunch, I found an enormous moth, I was not sure if it was dead or not, sometimes they just appear dead, but need some more energy from the sun. So I took it off the path and found a little sunny shelter should it come round again, beautiful creature though. On the way back down the mountain, we followed the mountain stream. It had lovely pools and waterfalls and we stopped and put our feet in. Wow the last 2 km was really heavy going, just walking over rocks, and tough on our knees. When we arrived we still had to wait a long time for Alenka ( the american woman) and the other group. So we had some food and Makgoli and beer and the food was soooo good. The advanced group turned up, and they were all in a foul mood and said the walk was a nightmare but they didn't wanna talk about it. I was a bit glad I hadn't gone with them as our team had nicer people, and the walk was plenty challenge enough. As soon as they arrived they had a beer but they didnt have time to finish, as Eric was keen to get going. We got back on the coach for another 2 hours. I was glad I wasnt them to finish a walk and have to get straight on the coach without time to have something to eat and drink. We stopped at services and had a hotdog. Then we went back to my house and had baths, and watched some funny shows.

Sweet Heeji, but check out the guy on the right!!

Summit

Day 61 - Daejon

Well I went for a coffee and thought I would have a look on the internet as what to do in Daejon. Unfortunately the city is very spread out and I read it was difficult to find place in walking distance. I had read the expo park was nice and near the art gallery museum to so I got a taxi there. The expo park was crazy. It was like a massive deserted theme park. I was litterally the only person there. I couldnt understand why such a big theme park had been neglected as it was the summer, but apparently all big cities in korea take in turns to have an Expo park and show off and then they get deserted. Anyways it was scorchingly hot, and kind of surreal so I quite enjoyed it. I walked down a long the river which was nice. More massive deserted buildings with very unique architecture. I found the Art gallery and they said there was a picasso exhibition on but when I got there it was closed and also looked deserted???? However there was a small art gallery open that had a reasonably interesting abstract expressionist show on. Then went for a lovely walk around this lovely park, although it was searingly hot! Walked a long the river for a bit more, in fact i had walked 10km that day according to my walking app. Got a taxi back to the station and headed back to Seoul. Sweet little Heeji came round in the evening and we had pizza and watched some IT crowd. Nice relaxing evening after holiday.

Day 60

Spent the day drinking coffee by the seaside and went for a little walk along the front. Realising it was probably time i started heading back to Seoul. I had decided to break the journey up a bit and was going to stop in a city called Daejon which was supposed to be nice. I met a nice guy at the railway station who spoke good english and was also heading to Daejon, but he only wanted to alk about football, which I know nothing about! He was nice though. Arrived in Daejon around 10pm, and we said our goodbyes. Then went to look for a hotel. All the hotels looked pretty seedy. Or what they call 'Love Hotels' There were lots of numbers for sexy massages, but I'm sure you could have got what you wanted. A lot of Korean couples use love hotels as well, because it is normal in Korea to live with your parents until you are married, so couples need a place to go. Still it was only 35,000 won for a room (18 quid) Actually I was thinking to go out and see what Daejon was all about but I was so exhausted I just watched some Bear grills in the hotel and got an early night. 5 nights of holidaying was starting to take its toll!

Day 59

Found a nice coffee shop on the seafront, had some coffee and breakfast baguette. I wrote my blog for a few hours as had a fair bit of catching up to do. Like now! Afterwards I went to the downtown area and went to a Sashumi place I had been recommended by Un. Hmm was so good! I love a bit of raw fish by the seaside. After dinner I went to meet the boys who had tried to help me when I was lost. I hadnt realsied they were high school students and so only some of them were able to drink. So we went to Kareoke or Noribong as its called in Korea, so they could all get in. Its funny though, because all of them could have had a drink, but as they are Korean they follow the rules and only the ones old enough had a drink. Kareoke was well funny though and I gave them a few gooduns! After I left them I found myself in this ludicrously expensive bar, or I'm not sure if it was really expensive or whether they ripped me off, but the next day I checked my account and I had spent a small fortune. I think though because its a place where a lot of people own Yachts they re are some pretty fancy places but I didnt realise at the time. Anyways was a pretty funny evening.

Day 58 - Yeosu

Woke up, beautiful view from hotel window of the sea. And the bed was amazing. Just went for a nice long walk around the harbour, lovely little town stopped for some coffee and had a nice sandwhich for lunch. I found a nice little bar around 6 pm and had a couple of beers. Then it started torrential raining. Although I was under an umbrella and quite enjoyed the storm. A little man saw me sitting in the rain and ran across the street and handed me an umbrella, Another fine example of how sweet Koreans are. I had a nice chicken dinner and found some club, which was pretty expensive but quite nice anyways. Fairly uneventful evening really but nice all the same.

Day 57 - Makgoli Island

Well we woke up on the sailing the boat, the beds were actually really comfortable. We had breakfast bagels. We then set out for the Makgoli island. Again the tide was too low but there was a harbour at the back of the island that was deeper. So we went there, meaning we had to walk for an hour to get to the factory. The factory was a feature though, and the woman was very nice and showed us around, then we bought some Makgoli and headed back to the boat. Luckily some little man was driving past in a pick up we all piled in the back and he gave us a lift back to the harbour. Then we set sail again and went back to a spot where we could dive off the boat into the water. I wasnt really that much in the mood for swimming so just sat around chatting. The sunshine came out and everyone was happy and drinking Makgoli, and having a laugh. I did decide to jump off the boat in the end but I had left my James Bond swimming trunks on the boat rail to dry and they had fallen into the sea so I just jumped in fully clothed. The last few hours on the boat was kind of sad but was great atmosphere especially as the sun had made an appearance. When we got back to the harbour. I had decided to stay in the little town for a few days holiday, so I said my goodbyes to all my new found friends.

 I found a nice little place on the seafront and sat in the sunshine and drank some beer. I met this lovely guy called Un, who spoke exceptionally good english and we talked about philosophy. He was great! Then his wife turned up to pick him up so I went to find a hotel. I found a nice hotel, dropped off my things then went to find some dinner. I went t a nice little bar and had some sea food rissotto type thing. They phoned Heeji on my phone to see if she knew where I was staying but of course she didnt, but then she got worried and started phoning all the hotels in the area. Then we found a policeman and he thought he knew where my hotel was based on my discription, so I got a ride in the police car! Didnt think I would end up being taken home by the police but was pretty funny anyways and we found the hotel. Was chatting with the boys who worked in the hotel for a bit as they were pretty funny. Then went to bed!

Policeman and hotel Boys!!