Thursday, November 03, 2005

Korea: Day 6 - Gyeongju

oops! been a bit distracted from the posting...

We took a bus to a temple called Bulguksa. It was beautiful... red and pale yellow walls, slate grey roofs and stairways...

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It was a peaceful place... until the hoardes of schoolkids rampaged through the temple. Did I say before how noisy the kids are? It's a temple! You'd think their teachers would exercise a bit of control over them.

We admitted defeat and bussed off to Lake Bomun - a posher part of town with its Westins and its Hiltons. We found a restaurant to continue our Korean food odyssey and sampled ginseng chicken soup (a little plain, but very comforting) and beef stew - delicious.

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The lake is manmade, but still quite pretty. You can rent pushbikes, motorbikes which look a bit like jeeps, and tandem bikes. So we had a go at tandem biking which is a bit weird really. I was sitting on the back seat and you'd think I could get away with not putting in any work, but no, it's very noticable. Fatt urged me to peddle and peddle so we huffed and puffed our way round the lake. But when it came to a very steep uphill section, Fatt let me relax and he pumped his chubby thighs like billio to get the bike and us up. aaaah, true love eh?

We went back to the city centre and ate at a restaurant called Pyongyang. A north Korean speciality is cold thin noodles mixed with red pepper sauce - wasn't half bad. A massive bowl arrived. We also ordered a plain beef soup.

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Fellow diners were slurping up the noodles like there was not tomorrow. We could barely finish half. Once more admitting defeat, we wandered back for a beer at the hotel brewhouse and were pleased to see a larger audience appreciating the efforts of the local band.