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Chris’s brother Rémy joined us in South Korea after we returned to Seoul. On the day of his arrival the rain season seemed to have started properly, as no umbrella prevented you from getting wet. But it was also good change as it had been very hot so far. With Rémy we headed first to beautiful Seoraksan mountain, where is also Sinheungsa temple. We had to wait until the next day to see the place, as it was still pouring raining when we arrived. Luckily the next day the weather was good and we got to enjoy the nicest landscape so far in Korea.

   
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After we returned again to Seoul, where we got a cooking course from our great hosts. We learned how to make Kimpab, sea weed roll that can be filled on top of rice with for example ham, egg, radish, cucumber and some other vegetables . It was interesting and good to learn the preparation technique from “professionals”, and we can now also prepare sushi the same way.

   
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The following day we took a plane together with Yonghee and Kosei to Jeju island. Jeju is a popular holiday destination for Koreans and Japanese, as there is lots of nice scenery to see and many beaches with clear water. Jeju is a windy place, which we got to experience on the plane, as it was moving a lot on the way there.
We happened to arrive on the beginning of the holiday season, so the beaches were quite full of people. But we had great time looking around the island.
We stopped on a funny road where one’s car feels like going uphill when you let it run freely. We climbed on top of few nice hills, visited a temple and a huge lava cave, walked around beautiful, rocky coastline and an area with typical local houses, We also took a trip in a Finnish made submarine. We had lots of fun as you can see from the pictures.
We stayed in two very nice, special holiday resorts. The first one had wooden cottages similar to the Finnish ones, and the surroundings were beautiful. In the second resort the houses were built out of a yellow soil, which is good for one’s health. They also had zimzilbang built from the same material. It was a peaceful place to rest.

Jeju also offers a variety of food specialties, including black pork (barbecue style), a few typical fishes, and a big, unique hamburger planned for several people to share.

   
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On the last days in Korea we visited the DMZ, demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. We couldn’t miss it as it is such a unique place in the world.
We completed our tour of Seoul with the two most important royal palaces, and even got lucky enough to witness the changing of the guard.

Besides Korean restaurants, Yonghee had shown us an “all-you-can-eat” style Brasilian restaurant, which was excellent place to take two guys eating like horses. The restaurant serves many kinds of meat, our favorite being sirloin steaks, hmmm, just perfect! Edu, when do you start cooking for us ? ;)

   
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We would like to thank our hosts again, for making our stay in Korea such a wonderful experience. We hope to see our new friends, the whole family in Finland soon!

Next destination: China !

After five, fairly relaxed days in Seoul we went around the country a little bit. Travelling started to be a bit more challenging because of the language. We didn’t see many foreigners outside the capital and didn’t find many people speaking English, but people were always trying to help. Even too much sometimes, and it looked like playing “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”. If we asked for a direction and they didn’t know it, they might turn the map upside down few times, only eliminating the obviously wrong directions (1st Joker: that’s the fifty-fifty). It’s embarrassing at that stage to tell them we’ll do with someone else. Most often, they will ask everybody around them (2nd Joker: that’s “ask the public”), and occasionally they will call a friend (3rd Joker) who speaks English and might know where you need to go. Finally, they give up only once all of their jokers have been spent …

First we headed south to Kohyo, where we got our first experience of a Korean “zimzilbang”. Zimzilbang is a place with different kind of saunas with variable temperatures. There was no Finnish sauna on this place, but we heard in Seoul you can find at least one. In Kohyo there was beautiful round sauna rooms, which looked like igloos, built with colourful (pink, white and grey) rocks. Inside people lay on top of different shaped little rocks, and dig themselves under them. The stones were so hot we could barely touch them. On top of saunas there were rooms to relax in, and also hot and cool pools. People wear T-shirt and shorts, so everyone can share the same saunas. Zimzilbangs also have rooms where people can sleep over night on the floor for only few euros. Of course we had to try this once. Chris was less lucky as the men’s side was full of people, many snoring or talking loud. For Netta it was fine, as there was only few women and the area to sleep in was much nicer. But the floor was hard, as we are not used to sleep on the floor, so we didn’t rest that well. But the experience was very interesting.
By the way, if anyone happens to visit a zimzilbang, it’s good to know that you should bring your own shampoo and soap (which was not the case in Japanese onsens) plus washing equipment. We were lost how to do when we arrived to the washing rooms. Netta was kindly helped by a local girl, who gave her a tooth brush (people washed teeth also under the shower), and a washing sponge. She was too polite to refuse and really really hopes the toothbrush was an unused one …

We had gone to Kohyo, because we wanted to get a ferry to Oedo island, an island trasformed into a botanical garden. But once in Kohyo, we found out that there is still two more busses to take to get to the correct ferry. After quite some time we ended up at the south end of Geoje island, and stayed over night in a nice, small fishing village. Cheap, delicious fresh fish for dinner. Great! From there we finally got the ferry to go to Oedo island and around the Hallyo National Park rocks.

   
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We found it a bit hard to get information on which places in Korea would be the nicest ones to see. On the basis of the tips we got and pictures we saw we picked some national parks etc. First one, Jirisan national park was a miss, because it took quite long to get there, and once there, we realized there was not much to see, unless hiking for two days. The weather was rainy, the hike would have been very hard, plus we would have had to book a place for the night on a mountain hut via internet (in Korean, and we didn’t know which page) so we gave up, and after a night in a lost, old hotel, we took off. Next two places, Haeinsan temple, and Andong traditional village are famous in Korea and worth seeing. It was easy to get a ride from friendly locals to the next place if we missed a bus and had to wait for a long time.

   
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Last place before returning to Seoul was Danyang. It is a little town with nice views, built by a river facing the mountains. We were really happy to finally get to do a hike in Korea. It took us about 7 hours to climb up and down the Sobaeksan mountain. Danyang also has a long limestone cave, with stalactites and all sort of things.

   
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In Seoul we were lucky enough to couchsurf at a wonderful, hospitable Korean family. Our hosts were our age Korean woman, Yonghee and a Japanese man, Kosei. We stayed at Yonghee’s family’s house. We were supposed to stay only few nights, but as we got along so well, we finally ended up staying a week. Yonghee was showing us around Seoul and helped us so much while Kosei went to Japan.
We went to see traditional Korean houses, wandered around popular streets and ate typical food. She also helped us to get a Visa to China. We even got to leave our big bags at their place when we explored the country.

Our first restaurant experience in Korea was very interesting. Many times during the dinner the table was filled with different, small dishes. We got to try so many unique tastes already in one meal it was incredible.

Korean food is typically spicy, healthy and consists mainly of vegetables. Also it is widely regarded as a medicine aiming to improve ones health.
Common spices used are chili and garlic. Every meal is served with several small side dishes. Always (even at breakfast) you can find on the table traditional “Kimchi”, spicy, fermented cabbage. Many times there is also either seaweed or spicy tofu-soup.

But Koreans like meat too. Very popular is “Bulgogi”, meat slices grilled on your table. Often, the meat will be wrapped inside a leaf of lettuce, and ate with some spices and vegetables. These barbecue restaurants can be found all around.
We also got to try specialities such as a whole black chicken served in a soup.

Out of sea food, (spicy) shellfish soup is popular. Our favorite was grilled, salty mackerel. Choosing food with language barrier is already a challenge, but when the food culture is also very different, it may lead to peculiar situations. We had some trouble finding grilled fish, as Koreans like to eat their fish raw. We occasionally had to leave a restaurant without eating as we had no idea what to order from the korean menu. Have to admit we ended up eating pizza few times …

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Videos from our trip in Japan are ready to be enjoyed on Khrystube.

Half (5,5 months) of our around-the-world trip is now behind. Half way happened to actually be exactly on our first wedding anniversary (not planned in before hand). We thought we’d send you greetings also by video, even though we are really not professionals ;)

PS: This is our 40th article about this trip !