South Korea

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Washed out in Jeonju

Killing time in Seoul I woke at 0530 and finished the little bit of muesli I had brought along with coffee.  I have the morning to take in a few more of Seoul’s sights but nothing appealed to me.  Also, things don’t really open that early in the morning here. So instead, I hit the […]

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Something old and something new

Hanok Bukchon I woke at 0515 after last night’s early rest and was out at 0715 on the metro for Anguk to explore Hanok Bukchon, the traditional village area.  I was hoping to get a breakfast of steamed dumplings from somewhere close to where I stayed last time.  Unfortunately, at around 0800, nothing was open. […]

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South Korea again

Despite our delayed departure, we landed at Incheon on time at 1855.  It’s my second visit to South Korea, having visited 11 years ago and loving it. It was a long walk from the aircraft to the health checkpoint and then immigration.  I got the feeling that the Air New Zealand staff had been overzealous […]

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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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