East Asia

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Bouncing back from misery

Sleepless flight We had the weirdest and shallowest take off out of Auckland. We seemed to hover over the lights of South Auckland and it took quite a while before we were away from suburbia. This must have been the Boeing 777 that thought it was an propeller aircraft (or an Airbus A340). I had […]

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“Happy” royal families

It was an early take-off at 0700 from KL so it was good that I only had to walk across the carpark from the airport hotel to the terminal. It was a pleasant 2h15 flight. Once again, AirAsia delivers me safely to my destination way ahead of the scheduled arrival of 0835! It was way […]

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Leaving Korea with Sir Freddie Laker

Above:  Ice-cream is good and cheap in Korea.  It’s tempting to have one for dessert after every meal.  Fortunately I found dessert-flavoured chewing gum.  Eg. tiramisu- or affogato-flavoured.  Spirit of Sir Freddie I departed at 2325 from Incheon Airport on board AirAsia X’s aircraft named Semangat Sir Freddie (Spirit of Sir Freddie Laker, the pioneer […]

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Visiting the DMZ

I had made my way to Seoul yesterday from Sokcho. I have a full day here which I’d fill with an excursion to the border or Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). I couldn’t have picked a worse day to do an excursion. The rain was relentless and the wind had picked up a little due to a […]

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Mt Soerak National Park

Despite the wet weather, I made the trip to Mt Soerak National Park by bus and walked/climbed 4.3km to Ulsan Bawi, a granite outcrop at 873m.  It took over two hours going up and an hour to come back down. I was drenched … raincoats don’t really work … if it protects you from the […]

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Bad weather sets in

I travelled up the coast further today by bus (changing at Gangneung).  The weather clouded over then started to spit.  It is miserable and wet … but at least it isn’t cold or windy … maybe not yet. Sokcho is in the north-east corner of South Korea.  There used to be ferries from here to […]

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A big phallic garden

I’m headed North and chose to break the journey in Samcheok to avoid a long day on the bus. There isn’t much that I wanted to do around here … it has some great caves but I’ve seen some cavernous ones in recent times. So I chose to visit Haesindang … it is a garden […]

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Monsters from the deep

I headed out to the Jagalchi Fish Market early today, thinking that it may be like Tokyo’s where it is best caught early.  The streets near the market were lined with live fish and other seafood, plus surprisingly frozen fish being thawed out! I then found the actual Jagalchi Fish Market which is an impressive […]

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Soaking in Asia’s largest spa

Arriving in Busan It was a very quick intercity bus ride from Gyeongju to Busan taking only 50 minutes.  The metro ride from Busan’s bus terminal to Indy House hostel, on the other hand, took about an hour. Busan is a big city of about 4 million spread over several valleys and it must take […]

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Museum without walls

Sights in and around Gyeongju Gyeongju is referred to as a museum without walls because it is home to more temples, pagodas, Buddhas and other historical artefacts, compared to anywhere else in Korea. I started by visiting two that are out of town … firstly it was Bulguksa, a temple originating from the 700s which […]

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