Richard's Travel Blog

That means “hello” in Chinese. I actually think I might be able to pick this up a bit. The word order is almost the same as English. And I just hear it better. I think Myung is half offended.
This is the first time I’ve been able to sit for any lengthof time at a computer since arriving in China. I don’t have such an interesting story yet, but wanted to write now, as my friend Renato, who babysits me through all my computer needs, may try to update this website to a newer edition. I may be out of commission for a while if I need to learn anything new. I’m an old dog and I never learned all the features of the old WordPress.
Next time I’ll put in some pictures. They should be nice, as we are in a very beautiful and famous place, Yangshuo, near Guilin in Guangxi Province which is one province west of Guangdong. If you want to look at pictures, you can search either Guilin or Yanshuo, or Li River or Yulong River. You’ll recognize the scenery from travelogues and such. It’s famous.
Let’s see, we flew to Guangzhou, north of Hong Kong, on the 23rd, I think. We went there because most of China is cold now, and it’s merely cool here. They are in the middle of a cold wave, so the high temps have been about 50 degrees F., or about 10 C.. Feels like Yangsan on a warm day. anyway, we only sent there because it was the cheapest destination in the area. We went to a place north of there as soon as we arrived, but didn’t do anything. There are nice temples there, but we weren’t in the mood to deal with going. So the next morning we went to Shenzhen, where Myung lived for years. I’ts just over the water from Hong Kong. You can see Hong Kong from there. There is little to do, but it’s Myung;’s old stomping ground, so we cruised around there for about three days. It’s a Special Economic Zone, so most of it is quite modern. There is a lot of steel and glass. The bloom is off the rose since the economic meltdown, but the shutters will probably come off the building fronts some day. I’ll post a couple of pictures next time but, really, it isn’t much. I saw the apartment building Myung lived in and the building where her office was. She flew pretty high back then. Nice digs. We went shopping and walked in a couple of parks. That’s about it. It was Chinese New Year, so things were a little slow anyway. Most everybody was with their families, or en route.
Chinese New Year wasn’t especially dramatic. You could go find dragon parades adn there were definitely firworks, but Diwali it wasn’t. I was fine just hanging out.
Now we’re in Yangshuo, having arrived this morning after taking the 11 hour night bus from Shenzhen. Ugh. Myung is sleeping it off. I’m getting this done before possibly updating the site. Who knows? I may not be able to operate the new one.
Renato put a new link for a map of Southern China on my homepage. I’ll try to keep up with it.
Until next time, be well, all of you.

I was beginning to doubt if we would ever leave Yangsan. There were no nibbles, much less bites, on our apartment. I was renewing my effort to learn and understand Korean, and hunkering down for the long haul. The only good part for me was that it’s cold now. Much of China is cold also, so travelling is less than desireable. This is especially true for Myung, who is temperature sensitive.
Well, the one person who the property manager brought by a week or so ago decided he liked the place. He’s all signed up and will be moving in on Monday, just four days from now. Just like that, we’re free.
Myung is reluctant to go. She likes it here and would like to figure out a way to make a living. She really thought about maybe not travelling anymore. This was going to break us up because I am not about to settle down, certainly not here, though maybe in some place with life, like Seoul or around Hong Kong. In the end, we have agreed to travel together for some undefined amount of time. This morning we mailed our passports to Seoul for Chinese visas and bought plane tickets to Gwangzhou for next Friday, the 23rd.
I don’t have anything to say about China yet. I really don’t know that much about the place. Well, maybe I do know more than the average Joe six pack, but hearing and reading about someplace is nothing like being there. I’m looking forward to becoming familiar quickly, guided by an old China hand like Myung. For those who haven’t been following this blog all along, Myung has lived near Hong Kong, in Shenzhen, for a long time. She speaks and reads Chinese well, and has travelled extensively there. She isn’t so excited about touring there, as she has seen much already. I hope she enjo9ys taking me in tow.
We’ll be staying in the south, as likely we will not be there for more than a couple of months and it’s cold in much of the north and in the mountains. Unless we stay well into the spring, Beijing and the Forbidden City and Great Wall will have to wait until another time. The two month timeline is because that may be all the government allows American passport holders to stay. Even then, I may have to go to Hong Kong or someplace to get an extension. At this time, it costs Americans $200/month for a Chinese visa. Ouch. Oh well, it’s the cost of doing business, as they say.
All that said, I am really excited about going. I hope Myung enjoys herself. Spring would be better, but circumstances are such as they are. I imagine my next post will be from Gwangzhou. Until then, be well, all of you.

Hi all. Last week we got out of Dodge and went to Jeollabuk Province in the southwest part of Korea. First we went to Jeonju (hometown of now Phillies pitcher, Chan Ho Park) and a temple near there. Jeonju has a nicely kept portion of the city where things are the way they were 50 or more years ago. Scenes like this are disappearing fast. Korea is doing what the US did for a long time, talk about valuing their heritage, but doing little to preserve what isn’t obviously cultural heritage material. Sure, old temples and natural wonders are easy to want to save, but neighborhoods of yesteryear are being torn down without compunction. Many of the old neighborhoods which remain are now chi-chi, with fancy restaurants and teahouses and prices to match. The old neighborhood in Jeonju isn’t too bad. At least the families from long ago are mostly still there and it feels pretty normal. I imagine that in the tourist season there is a boatload of foreigners there. It must be in Lonely Planet. Yes, for sure. There is a tourism office and maps of the area. We just walked around there for a couple of hours. The first picture below is of one of the lanes. The second is of a restaurant where we ate lunch. The room behind the well and tree was our private dining room. The next is of the spread, which as readers of this blog now know, is typical. The last is just a goofy “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” picture of me and the sweat band I need to eat Korean food.

After that we went to Byeonsan Peninsula National Park, most famous for Naesosa temple and Chaeseokgang Seashore. The temple was typical and I’ll spare you more temple pictures at this time. The coastline there is pretty, of course. The most famous of the “sites” is this striated cliff area.

Next we went to Naejangsan National Park. It was beautifully wintery. Here are some wintery scenes which speak for themselves.

We were only gone three days, so that’s about it. A cold snap and heavy snow was due, so we went home. It turned out that the cold snap is indeed here, but the snowfall in that area was about 10-15 centimeters (4-6 inches).
We got a call from the real estate woman today. Tentatively, there is a guy who wants to rent this place. We’ll find out later today, maybe. It’s possible we will be out of here by next week. I’ll let you know.
Until then, be well all of you.

Happy New Year. Things have settled back into a routine here in Yangsan. It looks like we will be here for awhile unless we decide to walk away from our 3 million won (about $2400) deposit on this apartment. Myung’s not up for that. Plus, she’s fine staying here for at least the time being. Hence, the routine. We go here and there, sometimes for no reason other than to keep busy and not spend all day watching TV or sitting at the computer. Myung’s talked about maybe teaching English or something to bring in an income, but I doubt anything will become of that idea, at least not yet. Maybe we will be able to rent our apartment and get out from under the lease. Personally, I’d be willing to walk away from the deposit pretty soon. Stay tuned on this one.
Like everywhere in the northern hemisphere, it’s winter here. You’ve seen pictures of rivers and foliage in many past blog entries. The picture above is of the river near Tongdosa temple. You’ve seen that before, but wouldn’t recognise it now. Winter’s are relatively dry at this time of hte year, and the rivers are running low. It’s colder than the populated parts of California, but not too bad, usually about 40-something Fahrenheit during the day and 20-something Fahrenheit at night. This is the warmest area of Korea, a veritable banana belt. The rest of Korea is pretty cold. In Seoul, the highs are usually about 32 Fahrenheit and there is an unusual amount of snow. No snow is likely here.
We’ve had one out of town trip, with Gyung Ja, Il Hwan and their kid, Dong Yi. We went to some sites and a couple of temples near the south coast last weekend.

I get asked, “What do you do for New Year’s?”. Some people here ring it in. Koreans mostly ring in the lunar new year which is Jan. 26 in 2009. Myung says if you don’t stay up on New Year’s Eve, you’re eyebrows will turn white. Myung will have no part of any white hair, so we may have to try to stay awake. We made potstickers today. She says that’s traditional too. I like the beer bottle rolling pin in this picture.

Yes, we get all kinds of crud in this computer. You wouldn’t believe the compost I plowed out from between the keys yesterday. I should do a testimonial for Samsung laptops.

Il Hwan made a DVD of my and Myung’s pictures since I came ot Korea in May. For who knows what reason, I uploaded these to this website before sending it to my friend, Larry’s, for safe keeping. They are mostly just “family photos” and a little scenery. I probably blogged some of them before, but here’s what I’ve got.

That, of course, is me eating traditional Korean fare. It might be intersting to Westerners. Myung photographs Western food for her Eastern friends. She took this of a salad with, get this, RAW bean sprouts, mushrooms, broccoli and zucchini. Can you imnagine EATING this?! With olive oil and balsamic vinegar?!

I still think I’m the spittin’ image of Dick Cheney in this one. Boy, am I glad he can now devote full time to shooting trapped birds with his buddy, Judge Scalia.

I guess this is artsy. It’s of jugs of soy paste you see fermenting at all temples. They sit there for up to 100 years, but 30 is good and one year is adequate.

That’s about it for now, I guess. Again, Happy New Year, and be well, all of you.

For those of you who do not already know, things turned out far better for my brother than one could ever expect. He had a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, based on much empirical evidence but no biopsy, as this would have been invasive and almost certainly would have confirmed the obvious. Well, “almost” is the operative word. He had his pancreas removed, along with a length of intestine. Then the pathology report came back that none of the tissues showed evidence of cancer. We were told that happens roughly once every 150 pancreatectomies for presumed cancer. So, I stayed around for a couple of weeks. He was healing up fine from the surgery and learning to deal with no insulin or pancreatic enzymes of his own. I took care of some matters of my own and have returned to Myung and my apartment in Yangsan.
Happy Holidays INDEED!
So, I guess we are back to Plan A. When we get our apartment rented out, we will go to China. There is a glitch, in that it is proving difficult to find a renter. The real estate woman who got us into this place said it should rent out easily because of it’s good location, nice view and good price. Unfortunately, it appears nobody is moving around as expected. Maybe it’s the time of the year, or maybe it’s the economy which is crashing along with most of the rest of the world’s. Anyway, there have been no inquiries. I think we’re going to have to find someone ourselves.
That’s about all that’s going on. Myung and I are enjoying being back together. We’ve gone out a little, but are basically just hanging out. Maybe we’ll get a plan or something before we go stir crazy. This part of Korea is kind of the banana belt, with mild temperatures up to about 50 F. (10 C.), no snow or seriously foul weather. We could go somewhere. I don’t know yet.
I hope you are all well and having a happy holiday season, if you celebrate Christmas/Hanukkah where you are.

Until a couple of days ago, our plan was to go to China later this month. Sadly, my brother has taken quite ill, and I plan to go to the US the day after tomorrow to see him and help out any way I can. This happened quickly, so that’s basically all that’s decided. Myung may come join me if I have to stay. We may go from California to Mexico. Or I may return to Korea. Or China. It’s all up in the air. So, my next entry will likely be from the US.
Meanwhile, not much has happened since I last blogged. We were just waiting till the real estate people found a renter to replace us here, then we were out of here. I have only taken about 8-10 pictures. Here are three of them. It’s been a nice autumn.

Be well, all of you.

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.

So, off we went on another of our little road trips, camera ready at all times. This time we went to locales along the south coast again. In a way, sights in Korea are a bit repetitious, but they remain beautiful. And once you have an eye for differences and get to know some of the history and culture, they remain interesting. Fall is coming, and the leaves are starting to change.

The harvest will be over soon. The peppers are out drying everywhere.

Boriam and Namhae are near each other on the south coast. They are mostly just beautiful places. Boriam is along a rocky coast and Namhae is notable for the nearby estuary

Sanggwansa is another temple, famous for being one of the three most important temples in Korea. One is Tongdosa, which is near Yangsan and I’ve blogged about a couple of times, which represents the Buddha. The second is Heinsa, where we went before landing in Yangsan, which represents the dharma. The third is Sanggwansa, which represents the community of followers or “sangha”. Originally and in the minds of many here, it’s the community of monks. For us westerners, it’s the whole community.

Then we went to Hyangilam. I’ll spare you more temple pictures of that temple. It’s just real nice around there, as usual.

Unjusa has a large number of rather crude stone Buddhas from about 700 years ago. The postcard shot is of the upside-down ones carved out of a large boulder in the ground. For what it’s worth, it is the largest stone Buddha in Korea.

The last stop on our junket was an archeological site, the Hwasun Dolmen Group. I know it’s a world heritage site, but not all world heritage sites are created equal. I know everything is relative, and moving these great boulders weighing a hundred tons was an acheivement for Koreans 3000 years ago, as they were still neolithic. The bronze and iron age arrived here at the same time in about the 4th century BC, a thousand years after bronze appeared in the Fertile Crescent. But the dolmens of Stonehenge were put up 1300 years before that and the pyramids of Giza were put up 1600 years before, and those were some pretty big stones. Plus, they did something. Anyway, it was good for the people there at that time. Here’s a picture. They were brought down from a ridge above and positioned on smaller stones. That kind of took some balancing and a sense of physics. For all but a couple of them, the smaller supporting boulders have been covered over by soil over the millenia.

That’s about it for the travelogue. We got back on three days ago. Yesterday we sorted and crated Asian pears at Gyung Ja’s sister’s orchard/farm. We were going to do that a week ago, but didn’t do it till yesterday. As payment, we are now up to our eyeballs in pears.

She also provided dinner for us. People actually feed each other here, as a token of their affection.

I have a couple more pictures uploaded. Speaking of food, the first one is of what the side dishes look like at a restaurant. you get this in addition to the main course. The second is, well, just me. It seemed kind of artsy.
Be well, all of you.

Here are pictures of a couple places Myung and I went to in the last couple of days. The first two pictures were taken during a little trek we took to the top of the hills near Kyongju. Like many of out walks, it is about equivalent to walking from the Berkeley flats to the top of Grizzly Peak. We’re getting really used to that level of activity. There are several Unified Silla period Buddhist stone works, but all of the pictures we have are taken vertically, and I’ve learned these are the ones that get pixilated if I try to turn them and post them. You’ve seen stuff like it anyway.
Yesterday we went to Ssanggyesa. That transliteration “ss” is how they usually write the sound that’s almost like the “t’s” part of “it’s”. It’s another temple place, duh, about 2 hours west of here. We only stayed abit and came back so I could watch the first Obama/McCain debate. She’s so nice to me.

That monument tells of the travels of the monk who brought Zen Buddhism back to Korea from China in about the 12th century. It’s in Chinese, as Korean writing had yet to be invented.

And here are the rest of the pics I uploaded, beginning with one of the little kiln there where they fire the replacement roof tiles in the old way.

Tommorrow we are going for about four days to an island in the south, Namhae, then Songgwansa and Suncheon, then Odong Island and Yeosu, then maybe Boseong. So, until I get back. be well, all of you.

It’s autumn finally and it’s apple time. In the hilly areas, you see apples and pears almost everywhere. Yes, sunflowers too. The fall harvest is in full swing. In fact, we may go pick pears near Ulsan tomorrow. We went up to the Chungcheongbuk province (do) in the central highland area again between the 18th and the 22nd. The leaves are just beginning to change colors and it’s cooler, usually about 72 F degrees, or 22 C. with just a nip at night. Perfect for me, though Myung feels cold easily. I’m going to work with a map of Korea so you can click on that if you like, but for now I’ll just do my usual blips and pic.
It’s a pretty fast bus ride up to Busuksa and Danyang, near Sobaeksan National Park. We stayed there a couple of days. There are, of course, temples. One is the historically important Busuksa.

Yes, that’s sweat. Even though it’s cooler, some of these temples are a several kilometer walk, usually uphill, and I am still one of the biggest sweathogs ever. Koreans would say “water box”.
I’ll never make a travel photographer, but I just wanted to share one of the little experiences one has in any place with such a long history. The wood floors are oiled and polished so smooth by centuries of bare feet. If a place is old enough, granite and marble is polished and the surfaces smooth and the corners rounded. With wood, the grain becomes beautiful. This picture doesn’t capture it, but I’ll post it anyway. I think you can see there is no way anyone is going to get a splinter on this surface.

Over near Danyang is Gosu Cave. It’s your usual big cave with all the stalagtites, stalagmites, etc..

Guinsa, near Danyang, is the largest temple in Korea. It is definitely huge compared to any of the others I’ve seen so far.

Still, it has just that many more of those beautiful rooftop views I like to photograph.

Normally, one doesn’t take pictures of the monks in Korean temples. At Guinsa, however, there were so many people and so many of them were photographing them, I surreptitiously took a few. These are what we transate as Pure Land Buddhist, though these Pure Landers are nothing like the ones one sees at the Pure Land, mostly Japanese, temples in the States. They were having a service for someone, presumably a deceased person, and there were horns, drums, and loud chanting much like the Tibetans. The light wasn’t so good and even I wasn’t about to flash them.

There were of course lovely grounds along the walk to the temple. Monuments like this to honored monks are at all temples.

Near Danyang is Sainam. It was photogenic.

Then down east of Cheongju was the temple, Beopjusa. Again, this is in a beautiful setting near Songnisan National Park.

As per usual, it involves some walking. Then they are usually pleasant places to rest. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?

That about takes care of that. At least those are all the pictures I’ve uploaded. Next week we’re going down along the south coast. After that, the fall colors will be out. I like the season changes. It’s beautiful enough right out our window. The new building only blocks some green buildings and the lowest tomb. This is from the window upstairs.
Be well, all of you.