Myung and I have decided to go to China next month. As of this writing, China is allowing Americans in for one month, after which they may go to Hong Kong and obtain another visa for 30 days more. It’s $200+ each time, but that’s the cost of doing business, as they say. After that, we don’t know what we’re doing.
In the meantime, my primary objective is to enjoy the beautiful weather and seasonal colors. We went up north where the peak colors will arrive in a week or two. They say that due to this being an unusually dry year, the colors will not be as brilliant as other years. Yes, the leaves are drier and tend to be more brownish, but they are becoming quite nice. In about three weeks they’ll be down here. After that, it’ll be time to move on, so the timing should be pretty good.
I won’t bother to say the names of all the places we went. We did some hiking, temple strolls and lots of bus riding. Here are some pictures, without much of that annoying narrative.
There’s a story with that last one. That’s Ulsann Rock. It’s said that a long time ago the rocks all had a meeting in a place north of here, in what’s now North Korea. Ulsann was late, so it decided to just stay here.
This next picture is just one I like. It’s on a piece of land surrounded on three sides by a river and on the fourth by cliffs. Koreans have a soft spot in their hearts for a certain 14th century child king who was usurped and exiled here. Supposedly he would sit sadly in one of these trees, crying in his loneliness. After a short while, flooding drove him and his wife, concubines and entourage from here to a place where the new king, afraid that the boy king’s supporters would try to put him back on the throne, had him commit suicide by poison at age 17. Sniff, sniff.
Lastly, I like these pictures of a warefront place in Sokcho where we had a big raw fish lunch. Most in America call it sashimi. The Koreans call it hoeh. Anyway, it’s pretty affordable if you aren’t picky about the embience. Or just maybe the embience is just fine. The Dixie cup contains the soy sauuce and wasabe from that tube. The headband is because we like wasabe a lot. That’s a pretty decent sized helping of fish I have there. One way to eat it is to wrap it with that Korean hot ketchup or soy sauce/wasabe in a lettuce leaf.
Be well, all of you. I surely write before we leave for China. I’ll have more leaf pictures, I suspect.
