Last weekend we went to Suwon, a city south of Seoul. Suwon is famous for the Hwaseong Fortress and for being the hometown of the Manchester United footballer Park Ji-Sung.
The fortress encloses the centre of Suwon and we did the circular hike around the 5.7 km fortress wall. It is a really beautiful walk and we saw some amazing views of the city. The walk takes you past the 4 fortress gates as well as a big bell and various observatory towers.
There is a weird reason behind the fortress being built. It was built from 1794 to 1796 to house the remains of King Jeongjos father, Prince Sado, who was forced to commit suicide by being shut in a rice chest by King Yeongjo.
There was also an imposing church in Suwon which looked decidedly out of place. However inside it wasn't anything special and the main church room didn't even have a high ceiling, which one wouldn't have expected from the exterior.
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Suwon
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Jeonju
Last weekend we went to Jeonju, situated about 3 hours south of Seoul, on a tour with a recruitment company, WorknPlay. The majority of the 30 people in the group were English teachers like ourselves.
Jeonju Hanok village, is a traditional Korean village, which has 700 traditional Korean houses which are still occupied. We slept in a Korean house the Korean way (on the floor!) and had a craft lesson where I decorated a box with pretty Korean paper (hanji).
Below is a traditional Korean house, and beneath that is a primitive refridgeration system, aka a hole. They used to store meat and vegetables in a deep hole in the garden in the summer to keep them cool.
Jeonju is famous for it's cuisine throughout Korea. We had a cookery class where we were taught to make bibimbap, a rice dish with over 30 ingredients. I've eaten it tonnes of times and the recipe varies from place to place. Often, in addition to the rice, it includes bean sprouts, mushrooms, seaweed, carrots, sometimes meat, hot bean paste and an egg on top. This one tasted pretty good I must say!
After dinner in the evening they put on some traditional Korean entertainment. First a girl played a traditional string instrument, called a gayageum, beautifully. Then a guy sung, accompanied by a drum.
The next day, at a town festival, a HUGE bowl of bibimbap was made. Enough to feed 150 people! It seemed our tour group were guests of honour at the event, and we got to eat some.
At the festival we also got to try various types of tea and rice cakes with Korean ladies dressed up in Hanbok.
Jeonju church and a cool Korean dude
We stumbled upon a wedding. Here the happy couple are having tea with her parents
It was pretty good to get away from Seoul for a while. I've been crazily busy recently, hence the lack of blog posts and I'm sorry to all those people still awaiting a reply from their emails....:(
