Nagin Dance, Crabs & Autumn

0835hrs
19^th  October 2012, Friday
HHI Office, Ulsan.

Right, so it’s been more than a week since I stated that I would post something in the next 2 days. I apologize. There are a lot of things I can blame for this tardiness – too much work, too much partying, too much alcohol, cold weather, too much cricket and most importantly Umang’s Nagin Dance (put me in shock for 3 days).

As promised the next few posts will be more visual than verbose. I haven’t had the time to process all the 1900 photos that I have taken so far in Korea. But I will share some of the best ones taken over the last one month.

There have been 4 weekends since my last detailed post. I will list down the highlights from those weekends here. Over the next few days I will most detailed posts/photos for each of those weekends too. Here is a small teaser of what you can expect:

Weekend # 1 (22-23^rd Sept):
–          Hair Cut debacle at Toni and Guy
–          Visit to a local fish market
–          Amethyst caves & lunch in a temple mess
–          Finding the mysterious Paraeso waterfalls
–          Hike Hike Hike in beach slippers

Weekend # 2 (28^th – 2 October):
–          Chuseok Long weekend trip to Seoul
–          We almost miss our KTX train
–          Overnight stay at a Jiljimbang (Korean Spa)
–          Partying at night clubs near Hongik University
–          Check in at Grand Hyatt
–          Night City Bus Tour & Party at JJ’s@Hyatt
–          Sightseeing Seoul’s palaces & hanok villages
–          Amusement park – Lotte World
–          Sightseeing Hooker and Homo Hill in Itaewon
–          Myeongdong and Namdaemun Markets

Weekend #3 (6^th– 7^th October):

–          Rented a car from Avis for road trip to Jinju Lantern Festival
–          Stuck in Traffic Jam on highway
–          Checked-in to a shady motel near Nam River (4 of us in one small room)
–          Battled the crowd at the lantern festival
–          Dinner: waffles, 2 crabs, one whole chicken, 15 bbq fish and soju
–          Next morning drove to Haedong Yonggung temple (gorgeous place by the sea)
–          Had lunch at Korean restaurant
–          Drove back to Ulsan and dinner at Namaskar restaurant

Weekend #4 (12^th – 13^th October):
–          Farewell party for some HHI friends on Friday night
–          Tried all sorts of alcohol – beer,soju,whiskey, tequila, rum & more!
–          Next morning – Slept well, but tummy wasn’t too happy about all that drinking
–          Hangover- headed for HHI Autumn Festival for expats (yes! autumn has arrived)
–          Hiking at Mt.Namsan – Gyeongju
–          Visit to Gyeongju National Museum
–          Dinner and entertainment at Hyundai Hotel Garden
–          Extremely cold conditions – worsened by equally bad rock band performance
–          Decent fireworks to close the night

1851 hrs
22^nd  October 2012, Monday
HHI Office, Ulsan

The tale of 27 and 127

1430hrs
10^th September 2012, Monday
HHI Office, Ulsan.

The Chuseok long weekend is two weeks or so away and we still don’t have a concrete plan. Our initial plan was to go to Jeju Island, but that didn’t work out because all flights to the island got booked 2 months in advance. Travelling by road during the holiday period is not the best choice due to heavy traffic jams throughout the country. So our last choice is to go to Seoul by KTX and hope that the major attractions are open. I will keep you guys updated on the progress of our plans, if there is any.

I realize that I haven’t posted any entry in the last two weeks. There are two basic reasons for that – lack of writing material and more significantly – sheer laziness/ procrastination. But I have finally managed to motivate myself to sit down and type this out.

Nothing interesting happened on the weekdays, so I will just share what we did over the last two weekends. I will start with what we did yesterday and the day before yesterday. On Saturday (8 Sept) I woke up very late – at around 2 in the afternoon. I lazed around the apartment and watched 3 episodes of Psych before heading for a shower. In the evening we decided to head towards Ulsan downtown and catch a movie. So we left home at around 6pm and headed to the nearby Kkotbawi Bus terminal. We boarded bus number 127 which among many other buses goes to Lotte Cinema (I had checked this online before we left). We went and occupied the last seats in the bus and Umang slept off immediately.  One hour on the bus and there was still no sign of Lotte Cinema (we were on the lookout for a ferris wheel which is right next to the movie theatre). We were getting impatient but we decided to stay calm and wait. Finally after a mini tour of Ulsan on this city bus, at 7:30pm, Umang woke up and we reached our destination. We bought tickets for Expendables 2, had dinner at Lotteria, watched the movie and headed home in a taxi (which took 10 minutes)! We later found out that bus #127 is probably the worst choice to take while heading downtown. We found out today that even Srini and Sajeev had the misfortune of taking the bus 127 over the weekend. Unlike us they gave up midway, got down, took the same bus in the opposite direction and went back home.

Moral of the story: when going downtown, take a cab.

Sunday was uneventful.

The previous Sunday (2^nd September) on the contrary was lots of fun. Early in the morning, at 745am, we met up at the apartment gate and took a taxi to Taehwa Gang Kicha Yeok (Taehwa  River Train Station). In order to show the taxi driver where we wanted to go I had spent some time writing the train station’s name in Korean. When we reached the train station we bought tickets for the 855am passenger train (mugunghwa) to Bulguksa (outskirts of Gyeongju). The 29 minute train ride to Bulguksa was beautiful. From Bulguksa Station we took a taxi to Bulguksa temple (UNESCO World Heritage Site). At the temple we found an English tour guide who showed us the temple and gave us a crash course in Buddhism too.

After roaming around the temple and taking loads of photos we sat under a tree, next to some drinking water from a mountain stream, and had some snacks. After this we caught a taxi and headed up the hill adjacent to the temple. The winding road led us to Seokguram Grotto (another UNESCO World heritage site) – a hermitage on Mt. Tohamsan.  After checking out the Buddha behind the glass wall at Seokguram we took a bus down the hill. It was time for lunch.

For lunch, Sashi had specially researched about a vegetarian restaurant. When we reached the restaurant it was full and they closed the door on our face. Luckily there was a restaurant nearby that served chicken items (we saw a photo of chicken on the sign-board). Even though the menu was in Korean we could recognize which items were chicken related. How? Well we knew that the Korean word for chicken –Tak/dalk contains a character that resembles the number “27”. So we ordered something that had a “27” in it and luckily got curry chicken. For the vegetarian folk we had a write up in Korean which explained to the chef what to cook and more importantly what not to cook. It goes something like “I am a vegetarian. Please cook something for me that has only vegetables. I do not eat animals. Please do not put any of the following in my food – egg, chicken, fish, beef, pork, seafood, dog or any other meat. Thank You.”  Listing down the types of meat is highly important – because Koreans consider seafood & egg to be vegetarian. When we passed this writeup to the person taking the order, she looked baffled, stood in shock for a few seconds, gave us a disgusted look and went into the kitchen. But ultimately they did manage to cook something edible for our herbivorous friends.

We ate for 2 hours. After this we and our massive bellies were in no mood for sightseeing. So we took a bus into downtown Gyeongju which went past all the major attractions of the city. At Gyeongju train station we booked tickets for the 6pm express train (Saemaul) and headed home.

1530 hrs
10^th September 2012, Monday
HHI Office, Ulsan