The Train

Poor Brian was pretty sick of the train at this point. The thought of three and a half days (three nights) seemed to be upsetting him and on the journey he got pretty frustrated being stuck in a cabin. After both of us walking up and down the train we realised we were the only English speaking people we could find. I think a lot more people travel from Moscow to Beijing than the way we traveled. The scenery was beautiful. The Russian countryside is full of brightly coloured houses and towns with cute little wooden fences. It was mostly countryside with a few cities which had a lot of space to grow. We did spend about 6 hours going nowhere which drove Brian up the wall as we couldn't tell the reason for it and he was sick of reading, playing with his iPod and listen to music already at that point. We were heading home though so that picked up his spirits. We are both a bit sick of living out of a suitcase and not having are own beds though we do love traveling. The train was meant to get in at 6 that evening. Turns out that delay was a lot bigger than we thought and I think we might have been going slower because of it. In the end we arrived in Moscow at 5 in the morning. Of course we didn't know this was going to happen as a conductor had said something in Russian about it we didn't understand. We stayed up late thinking the train could only be a few hours late and ended up getting almost no sleep. Sundowners still had a guy meet us though we didn't see him until Brian was stalking a different guy with a board and ended up back on our platform.

Irkutsk

We only got less than two days in Irkutsk. The company representative who took us from the train to the hotel was really helpful. They told us of the few sites in town but when we asked about lake Baikal they gave us all the details we needed to use the public transport in Russia and wrote out the name of the place we needed. First we dropped off stuff at the hotel but it was too early to check in. We walked down to the water front and then took a long walk around the edge of the city. We stopped along the way to avail of some free wifi which was advertised in spray paint on the ground. It was a beautiful day. The literature we got off Sundowers said it would be a max of 15 degrees but it was at least 23 degrees, probably more. We were so warm. Later we checked into the hotel and did some shopping and then looked at some of the old sunken buildings in the city. That night we had a seriously good meal of a sizzling beef, mushroom, chicken and potato dish. It was absolutely amazing. Especially after all the noodles. The restaurant (Brau House) had Russian dishes (which that was suppose to be) but it was an international restaurant that had a place in Dublin which I definitely want to check out. We had a few beers and headed to bed pretty exhausted. Next morning we headed out to Lake Baikal. The buses in Irkutsk to places outside the city just sit around and wait until they are full before leaving. You just go down and there is no timetable. Thanks to the info our guide had written down we were able to find the nearest town on the edge of the lake. There we walked around a market and then walked further along the edge of the lake. The area is absolutely beautiful. I would recommend going to see it. Even the town didn't seem to impact the natural beauty the area had. We wandered some more around the markets and then grabbed a drink and headed back to Irkutsk to catch our train.

The Train

Getting from Mongolia to Russia was very entertaining. We arrived in our cabin and put our stuff away. Later a few people dropped by and left bags on the two other beds in our room. At four in the morning a woman arrived in our room making a lot of noise. The next day we had to get up early to pass customs. A second person appeared in the room and so began their attempts to smuggle things across the border. Mongolian customs didn't really care about anything but it took almost the whole day to get through the order. In that time the two ladies in our room had taken four bags filled with new wrapped up clothes and stuffed them just about everywhere. They unwrapped, crumpled up and threw some on Brian's bed to look like they were his clothes. They stuffed some up their tops. They hid them in every hidey hole in the room. They even hid a few shirts around their ankles under their trousers. Russian customs was significantly more thorough. They checked the whole carriage for drugs (with big fluffy German Shepherds) and then army guys searched it for people. The whole thing took much longer than the China to Mongolia border crossing and we were soon sick of our new friends and the fact they continually touched and moved stuff (both ours and their). Once they got to Russia they got off and we were left in peace to reach our destination.

Mongolia

Next day we left our bags in the hotel and headed out sight seeing. We stopped in a cafe with free wifi for breakfast and found an open tourist office. There we asked what there was to do and the guy there just pointed out a few sites on the map. Ulaan Baatar is quite a small city. We headed to the temple which was a bit of a walk so we got to see the full length of the city. When we got to the temple we were yelled at and then charged for tickets. We paid and headed around the temple. They feed pigeons in the temple so the whole place was filled with them. There were quite a few buildings in the temple grounds. Finally we got to the main temple. A man appeared at the temple door and took our tickets. We were the only white people there and the only people who were asked for tickets. The man then disappeared and no one else was asked for tickets even though people freely entered and left the temple. When we got inside we say a 26.5 metre high Buddha. It was really impressive. All around the bottom were these cylinders that people seemed to be spinning. They would walk around the bottom of the statue with their hands out and just spin every cylinder they passed. The statue was amazing but we were told pictures would cost a bunch more money so we didn't bother as it had been quite expensive to get in at the start. After wards we sat in the courtyard at the front of the temple and found that the ticket guy didn't ask one other person to buy tickets to get into the temple. There were even other Asian tourists there that didn't seem to get hassled. We were pretty annoyed at this so we decided we had enough tourist stuff and just sat around enjoying the sun. Then we headed back to the hotel and grabbed our bags. At this point they were quite heavy with food and stuff so about three quarters of the way to the train station we stopped on a bench. An Irish guy named Niall came up to us to ask if we were lost. We told him we were heading to the station and just tired. Turns out he is married to a Mongolian girl and spent a lot of the last seven years in Mongolia but he still went home for a few months every now and then. He was also going home when his kids start school because the Mongolians were really racist. His wife was already getting hassled the whole time about being married to a white person and they found it really hard to go out in public together. His kids seeming looked half Mongolian and half Irish and would have been picked on a lot in school, especially with no adult bothering to stop them. Finally we headed tot he train station. Brian was given out to by a woman who was just wandering around with cleaning equipment but not cleaning, for having his feet on the wall. After this Brian was pretty angry. He really disliked Mongolian and just wanted to get out of there. He hated the people's attitude to all foreigners and being stared at in the train station for half an hour by a guy who wouldn't look away even when stared back at angrily was they last straw. We were soon on the train for two nights.

Mongolia

We arrived and were met by a guide who drove us to the hotel pointing out anything interesting we passed along the way. It wasn't a full tour but it did give us a good bearing. For some reason we were pretty exhausted from the train journey, neither of us slept very well. So we too a nap when we got there. We woke up about 7 and decided to go get food. We went to the ATM closest to the hotel. It had all the cirrus and mastercard stickers on it so we felt we were pretty safe. We tried our ATM cards but the transaction just canceled. Then we went on to the next bank with an ATM and the same thing. We went to about seven banks in the end and none of them accepted our ATM cards. We had been told to bring US dollars with us anyway but it was too late at night to get them exchanged anywhere. A lot of the later ATMs we found just had Visa symbols. At this point we were tired of everything so we headed back to the hotel and just ate some of the noodles we had bought for the train ride. Next day we got up and headed out to a bank to exchange some money. We went to a tourist office to ask about a day tour for the next day but they weren't open. Then we went souvenir shopping for a few hours. We also went looking for a supermarket to buy supplies, that took hours as the one we went looking for on the map didn't actually seem to exist. We saw a circus tent but no circus which was a little weird. That night we headed out to a Mongolian BBQ. The BBQ in Dublin is actually the exact same except they don't have horse meat or mutton in the selection and you could also get soup and salads. We had a really nice and filling meal. The place was crowded at eight and the guys on the BBQ stopped cooking to put on a bit of a show in the middle. That did mean we were waiting ages for food but it was good. Afterwards we headed to one of the Irish bars (there are quite a few in Mongolia though they seem to be run by Mongolians).

The Train

We arrived in Beijing Station at 7 to get the train at quarter to 8. We got onto the train and found that our two roommates hadn't turned up or weren't getting on at Beijing so we got the four bunk beds in the room to ourselves. It's hard to say much about the train. You just sitting around reading or chilling out while these amazing views of the countryside go right past your window. Mostly we ate the snacks rather than the noodles cause we weren't that hungry from doing nothing. We wandered about the train and Brian found the food carriage but we had everything we needed and it seemed filled with older people. Customs and immigration happened from about eight to one in the morning. In the middle we did get to see them change the wheels on the train. They seem to bash the trains about during the procedure a lot which was funny but seemed just like they were bored. Then they raised us really gently about eight feet and changed the wheels. While Beijing has a lot of mountains, greenery and you go through a lot of tunnels, Mongolian has been completely flat and brown. Occasionally you get mounds and you can see cars on roads go by every now and then but you don't get little towns or villages half as much by the railway line.

Beijing

Next day we went to Mutingyu which is a rebuilt part of the great wall. It's not the most famous part of the Great Wall but it's up there and there are less tourists. We got a gondola up and traveled from tower 6 to 20. It was quite the walk but the structure was very impressive and you got to see a lot of what they did to rebuild it. It must have been a massive undertaking as the non rebuilt bits look pretty destroyed. The only bad thing was the weather which was completely smoggy, foggy or misty so you couldn't see that far away. I feel it would make a big difference if you went on a nice clear day because you are so high up. We met a Dutch girl from our group and walked a lot of the way with her. She continued on after tower 20 but we headed back because we wanted to get the toboggan down. The toboggan is just a big metal chute which you go down on plastic seats with a brake. It was great fun though halfway down we got caught up in a bit of a traffic jam. It was a good way to get down from the wall. We then headed to a restaurant with six other members of the group and shared a bunch of Chinese dishes. They were really tasty but most were the usual dishes from Chinese at home like sweet and sour and black bean sauce. We headed back exhausted and chilled out for the rest of the night.

Next day we got up really early and headed to the Forbidden City. The place seems packed the whole time but we were warned after 12 it's unbearable. We were expecting to pay in from the start so we bought tickets which were quite cheap at the first ticket desk and then continued on expecting to come across a barrier. When we didn't find one we found out the ticket was for thee gate house. As we had already bought it we decided we might as we head back and go up into it. You actually get a good view from the gatehouse of Tienanmen square and there were a few interesting bits and pieces which you couldn't take pictures of. We saw a model of what we thought was the forbidden city but it never seemed to match up with what we saw in the city correctly. Much later we found the main section of the city which is cordoned off as a museum. We headed in there and there was already an impossible throng of people. I'm not much for crowds so I got sick of this early on but then Brian noticed no one was off to the sides but it would be worth checking to see if you could go through the side gates. It turns out you can so I would completely recommend walking up the sides of the forbidden city. At some points we were the only people on the path and you could hear birds chirping. All the tours go up the centre along with most people. You can see everything find from the sides and there are stairs up to the palaces from all directions. The palaces were beautiful but there were loads of them with a similar design. The gardens were amazing. For some reason we got distracted by talking about how you would convert a conservatory into a living space for semi aquatic turtles while wandering in there. They had really unusual rock features and square pools with bridges. I think squares are meant to represent earth and circles heaven so a lot of pools are square. We wandered in and our of a lot of building but even still we were finished early enough. The we decided to head to the silk markets. I hated them to be honest. One lady wouldn't let me leave the shop cause she was haggling with Brian and trying to get him to buy something. Another lady kept trying to sell me stuff I had just glanced at that was really expensive. They were the worst people from any market we have been to in any country. I would never go to a market like that in China again. Suffice to say I didn't buy a lot of souvenirs in China, except some authentic spices in the supermarket for Eoin and a few trinkets at the start. Going back to the hostel helped me recover because it's was a really chilled out place. That night we got to make our own dumplings. Almost everyone helped (it seems that on regular occasions some Americans don't help out with making the dumplings but still eat them at the end, according to guys who have been staying at the hostel weeks) rolling the dough or filling the little pies. Then they were taken away to be cooked and we ate loads of the them. In the mean time we had start a game of Jungle Speed where you have grab a squishy stick in the middle of table whenever the pattern on your cards matches someone else's. It was a really good game and we played it most of the night. Next day we moved to a hotel in Beijing (with a lot of getting lost) and so began the Trans-Mongolian final leg of our trip. I've been really looking to the relaxing train journey through Asia. Most of the day was spent buying supplies for the trip. Noodles, biscuits and crisps being the main portion and then buying ourselves dinner. We were that hungry so we grabbed food in the bakery. I got what I thought was a garlic bread but turned out to be a garlic bread filled with Peking duck (it was actually really nice). Brian got some things like cold slices of pizza which he said were good but a little too greasy.

Beijing

On our second day we got down to doing some touristy things. We headed out to the Summer Palace. On the way Brian said we were at our stop on the subway so we got off and then I asked Brian was he sure because it didn't seem like the right place. He quickly got back on the train just before the doors closed and left me at the wrong station. Brian has become about a hundred times worse at reading all types of maps or guessing at directions since we started on this trip and is continually leading us in the wrong direction. So I couldn't get mad because I shouldn't have listened to him :) Anyhow the summer palace is quite beautiful, with a big lake and giant open outdoor corridor that runs most of it's width. We headed up to a fragrant temple of Buddha (to be honest it's hard to say what things are called, everything is translated to about three different English names. You are much better off just trying to match the Chinese patterns than the different English names) which was up a good few stone steps. At the top we took pictures (and lost each other for almost 10 minutes around one rock) and saw a giant gold Buddha. We traveled around a the lake to see the dragon boats and a big stone boathouse shaped like a boat. We stopped on the long corridor to look at a pretty gallery with what seemed like a cross section of the different painting styles in China. On the way back from the palace we stopped to see the Olympic stadium. It's quite a long stretch of path between two subway stations. On one side you have the water cube and on the other the bird's nest. The structures are quite impressive but they seem really unused or underused now. Also the water cube is not just a giant cube filled with water, it's just a cube that looks like it's filled with water. It would be so much more impressive if it was. That night the hostel had hotpot so a big group popped into the bar. We all threw food into a pot of boiling water and chillies and then waited for it to cook. For the most part everyone took out the same amount of food they put in except a few people who stole other people's meat. We ended up sitting at a table with a Taiwanese and Belgium couple who were thinking of moving to China. It turned out we were going to the same part of the great wall the next day. Later two girls from Scotland pulled up chairs to our table. Everyone was sharing tables so when you arrived you just had to ask if the seats were free. They sat at a table with an American who said they could sit there. Then a half hour later he told them his friends were here and handed them their drinks. The drinks were pretty cheap in the hostel and everyone was getting along so we stayed in. Also did shots of something dreadful but the bar man didn't say what they were.

Beijing

I like Beijing. While very few people speak English, it's a really nice place to be. I think it's because I found the food in Korea so hard to deal with and despite what anyone has said to me I found the food in China to be quite like the food in Chinese restaurants back home. We got in to Beijing airport quite a few hours later than we thought as we had been moved to a flight three hours later. We grabbed the subway to our hostel which involved getting all our stuff put through xray scanners again. Every time you use the subway or go into a park or historical site you have to go through a scanner or get searched. Weirdly about a quarter of the people working scanners seem to be asleep so I'm not sure that they actually check anything. We've also seen at least one shop assistant asleep too. Our hostel was a really nice about three stops from the Forbidden City. The beds were clean and made everyday and three times a week you got a free dinner which everyone got involved in making. We were exhausted from two six o'clock starts and a night out so we chilled out in the hostel the first night with a few beers only to awoken by an obnoxious Canadian at 6.30 in the morning. The guy was really loud and inconsiderate. In the four nights we stayed there he woke us up every morning. Once he even woke us up while outside the room on his phone. He also huffed and tutted the entire time people weren't talking to him. We tried to get to know him the first day but decided we didn't want to after the first night.

Daejeon

For the rest of our Korea trip we spent our time with Kelly-Anne bar the last night. We got to meet another of her co teachers who was getting married at the end of the month. We also went to Dr. fish again and to the batting cages. Even I had a go and hit the ball about three times but it was good fun, Brian was especially good the first time and hit the ball loads. The next time I think he went to a fast cage and still hit the ball a good few times but not as many. Seems like a very American activity but it seems very popular with Koreans as it was busy late into the night. Saturday was a bit of a disappointment as we got up at half 5 in the morning to go para gliding along with a friend of Kelly-Anne's(Bernard). After driving all the way up to a stop on the way up a local mountain we found out it was too windy to go. Then we had a fight with the owned about getting the money back as he said he was going to keep one third even though he had said to Kelly-Anne's co teacher that a refund would be no problem. Kelly-Anne's co teacher was great though and we eventually got all our money back. After heading home slightly disappointed we made ourselves a fry and cheered up. That day we chilled out while Brian napped and eventually moved up to the roof of Rachel's apartment to sunbath on a really beautiful day. That night was our last night with Kelly-Anne so we went out for dinner (we hadn't been having a whole lot of luck with dinners recently, we even went to the supermarket to get potatoes cheese and bacon and ended up cooking it and realising it was pork). We got some traditional Korean food. You get a pot of boiling water and oil and plates of raw veg, meat and noodles. There is a hob in the centre of the table for the water. You add the veg then eat it and the meat and then eat it and finally do the noodles. You are given dipping sauces and sides and such. The meal was amazing but would have been a lot better if the owner had rushed us the whole way through the meal. He was a bit of a pest. We left after and grabbed ice-cream before having a few drinks in Rachel's apartment. That night we went to a few bars, a Noribang and a nightclub. It was a really great night though the Noribang wasn't half as good as the first place we went. The facilities weren't as good and we were rushed out. Must have been something about that Saturday night as Kelly-Anne also seemed quite rushed. We also got to play fuzball in one of the bars. Next day we said our goodbyes. I'll really miss Kelly-Anne and I really hope her schedule all gets sorted out as it seemed to be getting a bit messed up as we were leaving. A wedding she had been told about and was going to turned out to be on a different weekend which she had planned on spending and a hiking trip, she still wanted to do the para gliding but she was finding it hard to get the guy to do it when she was free and her and Rachel had missed the deadline for a race they had wanted to enter into. We did find out that Cormac will be going over to visit her in June so she will have even more company. On our last night we moved to the lazy bird guest house by the airport because we thought our flight would be at 9 (turns out it was moved to 12). The guys at the guest house were lovely and gave us a lift to the airport and collected us from the train station. It was a nice and hassle free night and morning excluding the early wake up.

Busan

We headed over to Busan after lunch at the temple. It started to rain and stayed like that for the three days we were there. As Busan is a beach town and there is not a whole lot to do when it rains. You can still go to their famous beach in the rain of course but the weather made us feel pretty apathetic. On the second day we did go to the world record holding largest shopping centre in the world. It had 14 floors which included a golf range, spa, ice-rink and a copy Trevi fountain in the basement. It's actually quite hard to get fruit and veg in Korea but this place had a good few fancy shops selling it at quite good prices so we stocked up a bit. We also went to see Thor in English. All the cinema staff there seem to speak English quite well and were quite happy to help. We had dinner in a really nice Italian restaurant that gave us some really unusual break with our meal that looked like chocolate cake but tasted like good bread.

Temple Stay

Next day we were up bright and early at 4 am to chant in the temple. It was quite cold and misty at that time of the morning. When we got to the main hall we found most of the monks there already and they had just started chanting. We joined in and I sat beside the foreign girl working there (Heather) who had a great deal of trouble as one of the temple dogs decided to curl up and try to sleep on the mat she was bowing onto. She had to nudge him off instead of bowing for a few minutes in the middle. The dogs have their own mats but seem to like the heat of other people's mats in the morning and take advantage of the fact people stand up and kneel down. So the dogs attempted to sit on a few people's mats. After that we had walking meditation. The idea seems to be that you can meditate doing anything at all once you learn how. We were feeling pretty good after breakfast and had an hour and a half break so we decided to go for a nap. It was a big mistake as when we woke up both me and Brian were both exhausted when we met up again. We headed to a final Sunmudo training session. That lasted a good two hours but was all about the stretching after which we got tea with the Norwegian monk to give everyone staying the opportunity to ask a monk about their beliefs and anything they wanted to know about Buddhism. It was very interesting as he seemed an avid believer who had come from quite a troubled youth. It seems quite a lot of the young monks have had problems and turned to the temple (or their parents turned to the temple) to put structure in their life or some such. There was a also an alternative school there were junior monks and normal students go. The Korea school system seems to involve students studying from 9 in the morning to 11 at night. They definitely go to school all Saturday but I'm not sure about Sunday. It's highly competitive at schools for everything and no one seems to have time to do sport. So the temple have a different kind of school that is more active and relaxed for the kids that can't deal with normal school. Finally we got lunch and ended our temple stay. We did meet some really nice people included an English actress who seemed like she never wanted to leave the temple after being there three days and another Irish guy who taught English in Korea, Julie and Declan. We got along really well with them and myself and Julie were staying in the same room and so were Brian and Declan. We also met an American guy named Lucifer who had been staying at the temple a month or so and was planning to stay a lot longer to find a way to deal with some anger management problems he had. He seemed quite a nice laid back lad so hopefully it was working.

Temple Stay

Next day we got a five hour free bus out to Gyeongju. There we got a taxi out to Golgulsa temple to stay the night. It seems like quite a big thing to stay in a temple in Korea, it's open to both locals and foreigners. Kelly-Anne recommended this temple and it seems like it has more foreign tourists than the others. The temple stay was definitely an experience I loved and would recommend to people traveling to Korea. When we arrived we were really worried about offending people as they give you a big long list of rules. The girls at reception said to head up to the Sunmudo demonstration as we had arrived earlier than everyone else. So after getting changed into the clothes they had given us (and accidentally heading to the wrong building for a while) we headed up quite a steep hill to the main hall, there we saw a display of the martial arts/yoga/gymnastics art that the temple is famous for. While there we spent a lot of time worrying about who we had to bow to and what we were meant to be doing. There were loads of locals in for the display but we were told we should bow to monks. It was hard to see who was who in the crowd. The display was amazing. While no one fought they did more kicks and tumbles and gymnastics than anything else. We climbed up the cliff a little and got a look at another of the sights the temple is famous for which is a giant Buddha carved in to the cliff face about four feet off the ground for the ledge below. It has been there a very long time and was the reason they decided to rebuild the temple after it burned down. Then we hung around on a bench waiting for dinner not sure what to do with ourselves. At dinner we met another temple stay guest who we had bumped into earlier while looking for our rooms. The girls and guys eat separately at dinner and you have to eat everything on your plate as there has to be no waste after the meal. You can go up for seconds though so you can just take a nibble of everything and decide what you want more of. There is no meat allowed in the temple and the main bit of the meal is rice but they do have a good selection of sides. A lot of them were seaweed based but over the dinner, breakfast and lunch we got some really tasty things like good mushrooms, some sort of stewed potato and something really nice caramelised and marinated in soy sauce. After dinner we had orientation. Here we learned that the temple is really open to foreign guests and actually quite understanding. While they have a rule that you have to perform 3000 bows if you are late for chanting they don't enforce it with anyone other than the monks in the temple. They allow for people being late and they understand it can be hard to adjust. They also let you take pictures in the anywhere outside the main hall. After that we did some Sunmudo training which was very interesting. We were all stretched out by the end of it mind you. For the most part we did more yoga bits than martial arts but on Sunday's they have more relaxed a day than during the week. The reason for the martial arts and yoga seems to be a way of meditation as well as sort of a healthy body healthy mind approach to following Buddha's teaching. There were three foreign monks and quite a few younger girl and boy monks as well as the experienced monks who lived there. There is no difference in the levels that can be achieved by the girls and the guys, the only reason for separation during chanting, sleeping and eating seems to be to keep away distractions. Once of the monks was a Norwegian that had spent about eight years in the temple and he was a full monk of the temple. There was also a French guy who had been there for about one year in total over the last three years and a girl who was working in the temple for the last eight months (she was quite busy so we didn't get to see her much). We ended the day with meditation and chanting and were asleep in bed by nine.

Daejeon

That weekend Kelly-Anne was off to Beijing so we decided to take a trip around Korea. First we headed up to Seoul to do some souvenir shopping in Insadong. We saved a bit of money by taking the slow train and as there was a lot to look at in the shopping district we spent the whole day there. The next day we decided to see some of the sights so we headed off to Changdeok Palace. There we got a tour of the secret garden for about 45 minutes. After which we left as the tour was taking forever due to the large number of people on it. We had more fun exploring the palace ourselves. While wandering we were given some tea based on random traits. In the end I got some cold tea for cold people and Brian got some warm tea for warm people. There was no hot water so I think they got confused by the time it came out. Brian's tea mostly tasted like dried carrots and mine tasted like some sort of grain. Very strange. They seemed to be doing a selection of things around the palace, probably due to Buddha's birthday being on the Tuesday. After that we headed to Changgyeong palace. It's very similar in style and like every palace in Korea but one, it was burned down by the Japanese at least once. There we wandered around the grounds and saw a great big pond with giant fish who seemed to like to skim the top of the water. After wandering through Seoul for a good while we found our final sight which was the Jongmyo Shrine. They keep tablets with the spirits of old king's and queen's there. There isn't much to see as all the tablets are locked away to trap the evil spirits. It looks almost like a big long stables but all locked up. The building was in a very similar design to thee palaces. As we had to get up really early the next day we decided to call it a day.

Daejeon

The next few days were just about chilling out. We saw bits and pieces of Daejeon and panicked a bit when none of the atms took our cards. Kelly-Anne told us that her card hadn't worked in the local atms either and she had to go into Daejeon centre to find an atm. We headed to the atm that she recommended and that didn't work either. Finally we found an atm that said it was a global atm and that accepted our cards. Seems it's quite rare outside the big city centres to get that type of atm. On Wednesday Kelly-Anne and he co teacher had arranged a trip for the three of us (Kelly-Anne, Brian and me) to head to a tea plantation. We headed out to a small little town on the train from a smaller station in Daejeon. We headed to a town called Beosong. There we got very confused about where to get the bus and ended in a pretty abandoned bus stop. So we grabbed a taxi out to the famous green tea plantation. First thing we did was find out that the first day of a two week green tea festival was underway. We headed to the main buildings (avoiding the museum) and saw a bunch of Korean tourists processing green tea. They were drying leaves, filling bags and picking out bits and pieces. We wander in among everyone to get an idea of what was going on as all the signs were in Korean. While we were doing this one of the organisers brought us over some tea which was really good. After that Kelly-Anne was a but worried we would only get to see pictures of the plantation and not get to go out to it. We headed to the information point for the festival where we got a map and a really tasty potato. We still have no idea why they handed us a potato but it was so good. We couldn't even find anywhere you could buy more cause we really liked them. An English speaking guy told us where to go to get to the plantation itself. We headed over, at the start we only saw bamboo and trimmed trees but eventually we got to the actually tea plantation. On the way we came to the realisation we were the only Westerners at this whole event. Kids and even adults kept saying high to us and giggling. We had a good time though and enjoyed the novelty of it all. The plantation had some amazing views of the tea fields and their unusual lines. There were also a few cherry blossoms out. At the end of the day Kelly-Anne phoned her co teacher Jin and she called the lift she had organised for us out to a traditional Korean guest house. There we slept on a heated floor in thick blankets as we were so exhausted. We also got a chance to talk away about everything going on and in the morning we headed back.

Daejeon

Friday night we got to meet another of Kelly-Anne's co teachers. So me, Brian, Rachel, Kelly-Anne and Jin went out to dinner in a local restaurant that seemed to serve a selection of foods with pig. We had pork belly in a traditional Korean style where the meat was left on a hob in the middle of the group and loads of side dishes were brought over. So we filled leaves of lettuce with meat, veg and sauce. There also some really unusual sides like apples in mayonnaise and lettuce covered in some really bright pink dressing. After that we headed to dunken donuts for a bit of dessert. Later that night Helena took myself and Brian out to a little cafe called Trinity/Dr. Fish. We grabbed a really nice coffee (chocolate milkshake for Brian as he hates coffee and some of the time tea). After drinking the coffee we headed to the other side of the room where we washed our feet. Following that we dunked them in a fish tank and had fish eat the dead skin off our feet for about 40 minutes. Brian giggled like a little girl (I did too but that is much more acceptable). Helena kept her feet out of the tank as she didn't like the sensation but Brian and me loved it. After that we met up with Kelly-Anne and a few more of her friends in a bar around the corner. Kelly-Anne had just been to her creative writing group while we were with Helena. It sounded like she had a really interesting group going. So we had a few drinks at the bar and got to know a few of the guys they hang with over here. Following that we went to a Noribang which is where you do karaoke in Korea. We had such a great time. We overran our time by about an entire hour and it was so worth it. After that we headed out to a nightclub.

South Korea

Next day we headed out to the War Museum near Itaewon. It's free in but we only have about an hour so we never even got inside. Instead we wandered around the outside looking at all the planes and helicopters used in the various wars Korea participated in. We also saw a few giant sets of speakers used to send propaganda into the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. Soon after we headed out to Kelly-Anne. After a bit of messing involving trying to ask a Korean girl where the nearest pay phone was and having her speak English and let us use her phone, we found Kelly-Anne. That night we hung out with Helena (her friend from home), Rachel (an American also teaching English in Korea) and Tae-he (her Korean co-teacher). Got to catch up on all the gossip and news. It was great seeing Kelly-Anne half way around the world and fantastic to be staying with her. Got to bed pretty late and pretty much slept til afternoon the next day. This is the first place we could relax. Over the next few days we finally got a chance to relax. We saw a bit of Daejon and hung out in the parks. In the evening we got to see Kelly-Anne and catch up. We tried some dumplings in various forms (both myself and Brian have Oku-mandu as our favourite). That got us all the way through to Friday night.

Seoul

We spent our first night in South Korea in a wonderful little hostel in Itaewon. That's an international (though mainly American) strip of restaurants and bars on the outskirts of Seoul. We grabbed some food and hung out in the hostel. There we met an Italian girl who was on work experience in Korea and a German guy who absolutely hated it in Korea and was hiding in the hostel until it was time to go home. He was pretty sick and some people had been pretty rude to him so he was just left complaining. He did give us a taste of some really nice rice wine while we were there. Later that night we met a really annoying guy who was hitchhiking around the world. I think he'd make me hate hitchhikers. He just took some of the rice wine and then said thanks but afterwards which was pretty presumptuous and then said he would just use my laptop rather than go to the computers which were like 5 feet away. Then he spoke about his hitchhiking as if it were just so impressive a way of life but he didn't sound like he ever did anything nice for anyone else. The guys in the hostel were really nice though and even brought us snacks while we were chatting and watching films.