Bukhan National Park

This is a National Park that I took a hike in last week. It is just north of Seoul, you can actually see the entire city from this vantage point. That is only if there is a slight haze that day, since it is almost never clear enough to get any kind of view. The hike that I took was about 14 km long. But this is the first time that I've been on a Korean trail that actually had well marked trails.







This is just another view of the mountains to the north of where I was at the time.












This is a common sight in all of the Subway Stations around Seoul. Each station has about 3 or 4 of these lockers. Each little brown bag actually holds a gas mask for just in case the city is attacked with a chemical or biological weapon. I think that they just put them there to make people think that they are trying to protect the people, since there is no way that they will ever have enough masks for the thousands of people that are at the station at any given time.

Changgyeonggung & Changdeokgung

This is an ancient depository of scrolls and tablets that mainly held the genealogical records of the royal families. Most of the building was rebuilt after the Japanese occupation that destroyed almost all Korean cultural landmarks.











This is just a flower that was in a green house on the palace grounds. It's the oldest green house in Korea, built back in the 1890's.











This is the main Palace in the Changdeokgung complex. When you look inside it's actually kinda plain.









This is a secondary palace in the complex but I think that it is the best looking as far as location is concerned. This is actually a library now.

Mud Festival

Here's our group that went on the trip to the mud festival. We got about 20 of our coworkers together and rented a bus and took the 2 hour drive down to the Daechon beach.







Here I am all painted up with Greg.





















This is the spot where we all get painted up as well as do our grooming. All the Koreans were either scared or enamored with our 6'6" black guy. Most of them screamed in horror and ran when he tried to speak Korean to them.







This is a great game of tag in a pool of mud.

This is one of the entrances to the Hwaseong fortress. Today I walked the 5 kilometers around the fortress walls and then went through the palace.















This is a river that flows through the Hwaseong fortress as well as the city of Suwon.

Namhansanseong and Hwaseong

This is the southern entrance of Namhansanseong. It guarded the southern entrances to Seoul. The wall winds through the mountains for about 7 miles. I went up there with my friend Fialek yesterday and walked all the way around it. It took about 3 hours to get all the way around. It was a hard hike with all the steps, but the views were great. On the west side you could see out over the mountains, but on the east side you could see all of Seoul.




I don't know if these are azaleas or not but they sure look like it to me. All of the bushes are so full with flowers that you can't even see any leaves anymore.










Just a white egret I saw. It's one of the few animals that I've seen, so I decided to take a picture.











I don't think you can see it anymore but this guy caught a fish and was in the process of eating it. I think the camera is too slow and he's already swallowed it.

Trip to Daechon

Last break I went to the coastal town of Daechon with my friend Kraha. When we originally started off we were actually trying to get to a different beach. But, when we got off the train we discovered that our map was incorrect and that we were still 40 kilometers from the coast. So we waited until the next train came by about an hour later and took it farther south to Daechon. Once we got off there we took a cab the 10km from the station to the beach and walked around for a little while. The beach was long and flat and covered with little black star fish. At the south end of the beach it has huge boulders that we climbed over, to go exploring. Didn't find anything to exciting except for some old fishing baskets that Kraha tried to use as a net and catch some fish. After that we climbed back over to the beach and then walked along the road towards the harbor. All along this road there were restaurants with fish tanks out front. There were thousands of all kinds of fish, octopus, squid, crustaceans, sea cucumbers, and even a few nurse sharks. You could pick any fish you wanted and they'd pull it out for you and cook it or just give it to you raw.

We continued to walk over to the harbor and when we got there we found that they had a "cruise ship" as well as ferrys that go out to all the major islands. We didn't have time to go out on a ferry so we decided to take a one hour tour on the "Sunflower." The boat was more of an old smelly trawler than an actual cruise ship, but it was fine since it was only ten bucks. They sold these nasty frys that taste like shrimp that all the Koreans love to eat and also throw to the seagulls. So as soon as we departed port all the Koreans and all the Seagulls flocked to the back of the boat to have a contest of who could eat the most. The one good thing about the trip was that we got to see drunk Koreans trying to dance.

I went up to Seoul last week to go to the Cherry Blossom Festival. It was held on Yo-uido island, which is an island in the middle of the Han river in Seoul. It may have been because it was the last day of the festival, but there was very little festivities. But there were tons of Cherry blossoms, so I guess one out of two is pretty good.