Buyeo and Buan

{Before I begin today, one thing I forgot to mention from Wednesday. When we took a taxi back from the Kingdom Hall, we jumped in and told the driver where our hotel was. ('Courtyard Marriott-Times Square') He takes off and as we are driving, nothing looks familiar. We thought he was trying to take a long route to charge us more. Well, he pulls up to a stop and says, here you go. We look up and he has taken us to—Hotel Dodo. Not kidding. Written in English. I don't know what he thought we said or what but no, we are not staying at Hotel Dodo. :)}

Ok, sorry for the radio silence. We have been deep in South Korea, and internet access is not as easily accessible. Neither is finding 5 minutes to try on this combination 'Amazing Race' and 'Fear Factor' tour. Korea is trying to beat me down, but I won't let it! 

Here begins our tour down the western side of South Korea. We meet up with our group at 9 am Thursday morning. It is a smaller group than we would like, only 7 of us including the guide. The other three are a husband and wife in their 50s and the wife's mom. They are Koreans from Long Island. Very nice family.

We set off in a minivan, barely big enough to hold all of our luggage. (Yes, I am an over packer!) We head off for Buyeo, our first stop. We get there in about 2 hours. (We use the drive time for a nap. I can sleep anywhere, anytime at this point.) It is raining.

We take a short ferry ride to a mountain side (Naghwaam) where we climb to the top. There are steps carved in the stone but it is pretty steep. At the top is the famous site where a King's court ladies (legend says 3000 of them) threw themselves off the cliff when his Kingdom was overthrown. Kind of a sad story. But nice views from the mountain of the river. We walk around for a bit in the rain, then head to Buan.

At Buan we head to a park with a large man made pond that has pathways cutting through it and all kinds of flowers growing in the water (there is also a story connected to this place, but I won't go into it). It is lovely and the rain has stopped. We walk and take pictures. Lunch is a traditional Korean meal. (And everyone continues to watch as I pick up my chopsticks and dig in. I am the entertainment with dinner.)

Back in the van, we head to Saemangum. I will try and explain. This is a huge project underway to essentially build more land onto Korea. (!) They are stopping up the ocean water with these elaborate dam systems, and are bringing in all sorts of rock and sand to build up the ground. Then they have plans on making all this extra land into living, commercial and farm land. It is a 30 year, 6 billion dollar project. It is so ambitious and has so many far reaching effects, I don't even know what to think. They have a projected finish date of 2020. If they accomplish it, it will be amazing.

Then we stop over at what was once a movie set for some Korean dramas (unfortunately none we have seen) and is now a tourist attraction. It is fun to walk around in the sets of palaces and see some of the costumes. I make Joe pose on the King's throne.

He is such a happy ruler!

We head towards our dinner destination and stop to walk on the beach and watch the sunset. It is lovely, the West Sea (or Yellow? Which does it prefer to be called?).

It's been a long day, can you see the exhaustion?

 Dinner is a seafood extravaganza, and we head to the hotel to crash by 8pm.The hotel is very nice, and we are now completely away from anywhere frequented by foreigners. This hotel has everything written in Korean. It takes us 15 minutes to figure out how to turn on the a/c in the room!  

The conch? Tasted like mud.