Further Wanderings

We managed our trip out of Seoul simply enough.  A quick subway ride to the express bus terminal, some help finding the proper counter to buy our tickets from a friendly young Korean (who was obviously in a hurry to be somewhere, but took time to help us anyway), and the bus departing within a minute of when it was scheduled to.

The 2.5 hour trip to Sokcho on the east coast was interesting, as it gave us our first look at rural Korea and the road system.  From this trip and later ones, we also observed that almost all controlled access roads in Korea are toll roads.  You certainly get what you pay for through.  Korean highways are excellent.  In the hilly part of the country we were traversing, we went through tunnel after tunnel, over viaduct after viaduct, often with little ordinary road separating them.   

After a brief stop in Sokcho we caught a city bus to Seoraksan National Park.

One of the guardians at the entrance to the Buddhist monastary near the entrance of the Seoraksan National Park
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The first entry about Seoul was pretty much taken up with stuff we did in our jam packed first few days in the city. While we were certainly far from sedentary during the remainder of our stay, things went a bit slower, so there’ll be room here for a bit more general discussion of the city and our time there.

On our first weekend day in Korea we started out with a visit to the national museum. The Korean tourism literature we read claimed that it’s the sixth largest museum in the world. I couldn’t really verify this, and given the Korean tendancy to national self-aggrandisement it needs to be taken with a bit of salt, but all that said, it really is a huge and beautiful museum.

The exterior of the Korean National Museum with Sarah and others for scale

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Whew!  What a busy few days it's been. But then that seems entirely in keeping with Seoul's nature.  A population of 10 million people, a metropolitan area that is home to almost half of Korea's 40 million inhabitants, headquarters to some ... [Continue reading this entry]

I think I'm correct in saying that most of the readers of this 'blog are friends and family of ours. This being the case, most of you have probably heard at least a rough description of our plans for ... [Continue reading this entry]

I was really torn as to whether to begin this blog with our departure from Wellington or our departure from New Zealand. But for two reasons, I decided to go with the latter: First, I'm rather lazy. Second, ... [Continue reading this entry]