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Yeoju, now I seem to recall our guide mentioning is where King Sejong the Great’s tomb is located, as well as Queen Min’s (MyeongSeong) birthplace.  It’s too bad we don’t have the time or chance to check either area.  The Yeoju Service Area reststop is unlike any we’ve ever seen.  The climate is still cold.  After you get off the bus, you can feel the cold biting to your hands.  Exposing your hand to the sun will give the bright side warmer, but the dark side will feel cold.

First things first, relief.  We go to the toilet.  It is big and spacious and with plenty of urinals.  As mentioned before, it automatically flushes just before and after you relieve.  You wash your hands, the faucet is temperature adjustable.  The hand dryer is radiation-based.  It doesn’t use hot air, but rather pure heat (or microwave?) radiating.  Be careful not to get your watch exposed, as the radiation will get it hot.  James’s wrist got a little burn because of it.

Yeoju service station has food stands; fast food restos with Western, Japanese, Chinese and of course Korean dishes; convenience store; information booth; playground; diaper changing area.  Since we will have lunch elsewhere, we sample one of the food stands.  At 1,500-2,000 Won, they’re pretty pricey.  We chose the octopus/cuttlefish stick.  It is chopped up octopus and cuttlefish mixed in dough and fried.  It basically resembles a Popsicle.  Other dishes, we saw:  Ohryukdo stick (no idea what it is), potato stick (looks like hash brown), hotdogs (big ones too), sesame doughs, spicy chicken balls, stuffed pizza doughs, corn dogs, skewered fish cake.  So many foods we’d like to try, but so expensive overall, and we don’t want to be too stuffed with fatty foods at this time.

Finally, it is time to go, and we must board the bus.  We would have another stop in a couple of hours before we reach Gyeongju, though it is not as memorable as Yeoju.

Our stay in Best Western was comfortable.  Although the TV channels available isn’t much.  All the channels show from Korean-based station, including MBC’s non-stop-all-Starcraft channel.  This is pretty much the case for all our hotel/inn stays.  The only English channel available was Arirang, and this is not always available in every hotel.

Anyway, we came to Korea to tour and see places, sample food etc.  not watch TV.  Irene setup wakeup call at 6am, but James set his cellphone’s alarm feature to 5:30am, so, we have sufficient time to pack-up.

The following day, breakfast is in the higher floor of Best Western.  The choices aren’t much, nor was it very delicious.  It was just okay.  There’s kimchi, scrambled egg, steamed veggies, sausage, rice, bread.  After breakfast, everybody checked out by  8am.  Our tourbus is ready.  Our first itinerary is Geongju.  Irene explained to us that it’s an estimated 5 hour ride (assuming not so heavy traffic condition).  She and Imelda bought some snacks: marshmallow filled choco-pie.  Heck, the Hangul written on the pack is literally spelled like choco-pie.

And so, the bus began to roll, Irene explains our itinerary of the day: travel to Geongju (or Kyungju), have lunch at Chinese restaurant- Korean style, go to Tumuli Park, Chemseongdae Observatory, Kyungju National museum, Bulguksa Temple.  There’ll be 2 rest stops along the way.  To keep everyone from getting bored, and get everyone to appreciate their journey, Irene explains Korean past and modern culture and history, the Korean Wave, the Korean Won currency, monarchy. 

So, we learn there are around 3,000 Buddhist temples all over the country.  Korea used to be divided in three kingdoms.  The relevance of going to Geongju is that Geongju is the capital of the Silla Kingdom.  Silla was the one that conquered the other kingdoms, which laid the foundation for a single Korean nation.  She didn’t mention that the largest kingdom that Silla conquered, Goguryeo was boxed by Silla and China’s Tang dynasty forces, but that’s beside the point.  We also learn that majority of Koreans still prefer burial over cremation.  This despite the fact Buddhist monks practice cremation.  If you look at the countryside during the journey, you’ll occasionally see small tombs on the hills.  She then went on to the Korean Wave which is a trend of excellent Korean movies and dramas, comedies becoming successful overseas. 

Since it’s a very long ride, and as part of getting acquainted with Korean history, Irene played a disc of Dae Jang Geum (aka Jewel in the Palace).  I wish we were seated closer to the front, however, our seating arrangement was pretty much fixed from day one when we just pick a seat.  I couldn’t understand or even read the subtitles.  So, I just look at the countryside, sometimes falling into naps.  The countryside is a mix of farms and towns/cities that have a series of buildings that look all the same.  Outside of Seoul, most of the urban architecture is not very creative.  They’re simply built not to look good but only for a purpose.  They look just like the miniatures in Godzilla movies.

Our first rest stop is at Yeoju.  I couldn’t remember but thanks to a picture shot of James, that’s where we stopped for a stretch, go to toilet, and buy snack.

After disembarking from the plane, the first thing I find out in Korea, the automated urinals flush twice!  Once just before you do your job and another after you’re done.  I don’t know how it is in other developed countries, the thing is, ala ganito sa Pinas!

Next, before the immigration line is a big plasma TV playing a commercial for mobile phone service AnyCall in a loop.  This serves to remind us what a hi-tech country Korea is.  Broadband access here after all, is the highest in the world.

Leaving the airport, 5 degrees is like opening a blast freezer.  Our group take the tourbus then our tour guide who introduces to us as Irene, takes us to dinner at a… what else? a Korean restaurant.  We dined at past 8pm, there weren’t any customers but us.  There’s
hardly any people in the streets.  I guess people at Incheon retire
much early.  There is however, a MiniStop  across the street, and also a Korean
grocery.  For our first dinner in Korea, we are served with what we will be eating in one form or another, bulgogi.

Bulgogi literally means in Korean, "firemeat."  Bul is fire, gogi is meat.  This one is served on a pan with lettuce and sotanghon-type noodle.    We also tried the banchan, the kimchi wasn’t so bad.  The spiciness kicks a bit later.  The kimchi and seaweed soup are very common banchan we will encounter throughout our journey.  The glasses are  just about half the size than typically used in the Philippines.

We check in at Best Western hotel.  I don’t know how well it qualifies as 5-star, but it is a thousand times better than the Best Western I stayed in at Makati once.

As of this writing, I learn that Incheon won the bid for the 2014 Asian games.  If you were there during the first week of April, you will see boards announcing that Incheon is a candidate city.  Congratulations to the people of Incheon.

Recently, I and my twin brother James traveled to Korea during the rare very long Holy Week vacation.  That is, the Holy Weekend followed by Araw ng Kagitingan (Bataan Day).  We travelled around Korea with a tour group of 18 people plus our Philippine guide, Korean guide and tourbus driver.

Day 1

Our little brother, Joshua, takes us to the NAIA.  We tried to leave early, but traffic still turned out heavy due to the coming Holy weekend.  Our Philippine guide, Imelda, kept calling James as to where we are.  We made it to the airport with a couple of hours to spare.  Baggage check and body check went without incident.  We took off at 2:20pm  and arrived at Inchon International Airport at around 7:30pm.  It’s from there we began to be introduced with other members of the tour group. 

We proceed to the immigration counter.  The immigration officer checking James finished without incident.  Mine took a little longer as I now looked different from the passport picture since I lost 20 lbs last year.  The lady immigration officer had to ask when the picture in the passport was taken.  Well duh, at around the same month the passport was issued.

We finally make it to the second to the last departure gate where our Korean guide is waiting for us.  Getting out of the departure building took a little longer as two other members are missing, but it turns out they’ve been waiting for  quite a while.  That’s because they applied for the tour at another travel agency.  Their travel agency transferred them to our travel agency.  At least it was sorted out and not left to nothing.  And so our Korean adventure begins…