South Korea- Part 2

The first weekend I was there we decided to rent some scooters and take a trip up north to Gyeongju to see some temples and all that fun touristy stuff. Just getting the scooters was an adventure in itself blindly giving the cab driver a piece of paper with instructions written in Korean in hopes he'll drop us off in the right spot. It had started raining that morning and by the time we found the rental shop and were ready to go it was at a full downpour. The rental guy was nice enough to go grab some ponchos for us but that only delayed our soak. With some luck and some iffy driving on a bike lane by the river, we made it back to the appartment to get ready for the trip.

Now I'm pretty good with a map and have a good sense of direction, but I was a little overwhelmed at our journey ahead. The idea of being in a strange place and not speaking the language and not really knowing for sure of how to get there made me a little nervous. We were pointed in a general direction and were soon off with a terrible tourist map and a general idea of where to go. The internet said it was one hour away, but I soon realized it would be at least 3 maybe 4 hours of driving on the side of the road on roads we weren't sure we should be on.(You can drive a scooter on a major highway right?) We actually did pretty well and made it safely to our hotel with time to warm up and grab some dinner.

Some rice fields along the way. Notice our stylish scooters.

Rice fields.

A neat tunnel alone the way.

The Mexicana restaurant.

We found this little restaurant not far from the hotel. It was called "Mexicana" and instantly I started to get in the mood for some taco's or burritos it was going to be great....but instead they served fried chicken. It was actually pretty good and the owner was really nice and actually sat down with us for over 20 minutes telling us in broken english which temples we should see tomorrow.

Our tour guy helping us get around. I liked the uniform/roadside construction vest.

There were plenty temples to be found and we spent the next day and a half exploring many of them. Some had been rebuilt to resemble them in their former glory, but some were actually original dating back almost 2000 years. It was amazing to see the architecture of the buildings and how complex some of the sites were. I even found a pagoda in the middle of a rice field that seemed to go unnoticed by everyone. 

Kids getting drinking water from a spring.

Women selling roasted chestnuts, mushrooms and silkworm pupa. We had the chestnuts...

I saw this shot on the way up to a temple and just had to get it on the way back. This spring came right out of the wall and it seemed the locals relied on it heavily for their drinking water.

I was setting up for this shot when the perfect subject just happened to walk through.

Part of our lunch consisting of little anchovies and a larger salty fish.

One the second night in Gyeongju we stumbled upon this little festival setup for the Chuseok holiday weekend. They had everything from live clams and mussels, a full pig roasting and even some tasty corn dogs. Mine was a corn dog with another layer of potatoes on the outside...mmm. I also think they were serving skate or sting ray from the top right picture. They also had a band that was very entertaining to say the least. I'm not sure if this was a common thing or not but all the men were dressed as women. It was really fun to watch and being the only white people there I felt like we were seeing a really neat event that most people wouldn't get to see.