Richard's Travel Blog

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.

Hi again. Here’s the news that’s fit to print. Well, I’m not sure the “lipstick on a pig” photo is fit to print.
Since I last wrote, we went on a couple of walks, of course, went to number of art venues in Busan, and had a holiday weekend mostly with our friends here. Busan has some open air exhibits along the beach and elsewhere. They weren’t that good, but we had a nice walk. We went to the museum of modern art. Here’s a photo of it and the convention center.

I took a couple of pictures inside before I learned photography isn’t allowed. The second one is certainly relavant to what’s important in American politics.

This past weekend was Chusoek, the fall harvest holiday, the second biggest holiday in Korea after New Year’s. It is like Thanksgiving in that people get together and eat a lot. They also honor their ancestors. We made food one day at Yung He and Geong Yurl’s restaurant. They were having a get together of about 100 of their family members. Traditionally, Koreans fry up stuff in batter, something they don’t usually do much. Here we are frying up fish, sweet potatoes, lotus root and tofu.

On Sunday we went to Tongdo temple, Tongdosa, so Myung could pay her respects. You can click on search for previously published pictures from there. Here are more.

Oh yeah, people like to dress up in traditional clothes for Chusoek. Myung says this is less popular now with adults than it used to be. Still, the kids are often dressed up.

Make a wish.

Then Monday we went to Geong Ja’s and Il Hwan’s and made more food. Here we are making pot stickers. These are sweet, made with sweet red bean paste or sweet white potato paste. You roll this dough up into a ball, make a little bowl, fill it and fold it. Here Myung is trying to do the wedding cake in the face bit.

After that, we went for a walk and picnic in the woods behind Tongdosa…

…and back.

That bring us up to date. Yesterday we went to a movie at the just opened multiplex in Yangsan. Oh boy, it’s about time this city of >200,000 got a movie theater. The only English movie was Mama Mia, but I liked it. Meryl Streep can sing pretty well and Pierce Brosnan gave it a shot. One love song in his natural, thick Scottish brogue was pretty good. Today is nothing yet. Tomorrow we’re going on a road trip for a few days. I’ll write about that when we get back.
Be well, all of you.

It’s kind of fun posting pictures as I take them. Yesterday’s jaunt took us to Pyochungsa, a 7th century temple site near Miryang, just northeast of here. It goes back to the first years of a unified Korea. None of the original wooden buildings are there. These are the third generation of buildings built after the late 16th century Japanese invasions. What’s left from the 10th century is the three tiered pagoda in the first picture and the bronze bell.

As usual, there is a nice walk through the woods to get to the temple. All in all, these day trips are just plain nice.

We spend a lot of time outside. I’ve acquired the Korean habit of protecting my skin. Myung has been doing it her whole life, and it shows. She also has some tricks, like putting fruit and potatoes on her face.

Be well, all of you.

Greetings. It’s been a quiet week here in Lake Wobegone. We took our usual walks. The highlights, such as they are, were a couple of visits to friends’ gardens. Last week we went to a tea plantation. The people also had a large garden. We picked stuff and had dinner and several kinds of tea in a semi-formal tea ceremony. It was an interesting combination of regular, informal, routine hanging out and some ritual. The ritual was basically limited to sitting around the woman of the house in a semi-circle while she carefully made tea in a formal way, except for the laughing and banter, then taking the tea with both hands oh so seriously. Yesterday we went to other Gyung Ja’s sister’s. They have a commercial Asian pear orchard and about an acre of garden. They grow many things, including peppers, lettuce, onions, a kind of leek, other greenery I don’t know the name of, chamay (a kind of melon), peanuts and several otgher things. This is harvest season. In fact, Harvest Day next Monday is a national holiday. It’s traditional for people with gardens to have everybody over to harvest and take home some of the stuff. It’s a big getting together time, not unlike our Thanksgiving though without the big feed. The whole harvesting stuff together thing is a lovely part of the culture, along with the extensive gardening itself. I didn’t bring my camera the other day, but did yesterday. We pulled up the peppers and separated the green ones form the red ones. Here, now you see pepper bushes and now you don’t. That’s Il Hwan in the first one. In the last one, we’re sitting in the shade picking them off the uprooted bushes and serarating them.

The agricultural sector here is actually having problems. As you can imagine, as the standard of living her improves, fewer people want to do hard farm work. They have few immigrant workers from nearby poor countries like the Phillippines. The work is done by Koreans and generally these workers make a living wage, but most of them yearn for better. The farming population is getting older and older. The days of the yeoman farmer are almost over here, as they have been for some time in the US. It’s an economic and cultural time of trial. They are hanging on by doing things the old way, picking by hand and involving the community and connections, but the prices are getting pretty astronomical. Rapid growth can handle this for a while, but without rapid growth and with that aging population of farmers, industrial farming is coming.
So much for my punditry. it’s still pretty nice now, even if things cost too much.
Be well, all of you.

Yesterday we went to Tongdosa. It turns out that the signs there are all fine except one. Myung thinks they want me to write brochures, but she isn’t sure. Also, in typically Korean fashion, the powers at be need to get their plans together and that won’t be from point A to point B. So, I’ll hear what that’s about when I hear it.

The picture above is of one of the small temple areas in the hills behind the main complex. Right behind where I took that picture is, yes, more baby buddhas.

Today? I just walked downtown to E Mart. That’s a big box modelled after Wal Mart. As big as it is, it’s small compared to a Wal Mart, but it’s big for Korea. A couple of blogs ago I said I should have taken some mundane shots of tghe walk before you get to the river before you get downtown. Here they are. First is down our street. To the left is our apartment building, the one with “SK” on it. Across the street is thaqt warehouse they were building and is now being finished out inside. I’m happy to report that our view remains mostly unblocked.

These next two are as you walk the few blocks down toward the flats. We’ll be walking under that freeway.

Here is view over the sound barrier by the freeway, almost before you get to the river.

they are making the river a nice walkway. It’s really no more of a river than the Calaveras River in Stockton in the spring, but they are making a little investment in beautification. It wouldn’t be too hard to do that in Stockton, just put a walkway and some simple crossings.

Finally you get to downtown. It’s a pretty routine place. Here is a shot of a building nearly finished with the subway station, which is above ground out here. There is supposed to be a movie cineplex, finally, for Yangsan, but work is going so slowly we were wondering if it will be finished. Many construction sites, including a huge apartment complex here, have been abandonned no doubt because of the credit crunch. Credit has been way too easy here, and they have learned from the US real estate meltdown. The see through building is the big blue one.

And finally, our home away from home, E Mart.

That’s about it for now. Talk to you later. Be well, all of you.

If I keep blogging at this rate, it’ll seem more like a diary than news updates. Yesterday we went to a temple right in Busan, Beomeosa. One popular way to tour Korea is to do “templestays”. For a nominal cost, you can go to a temple and have a simple room consisting of a pad to sleep on, a covering and a pillow, simple meals, Buddhist teaching and meditation, and free quiet time for silent contemplation and strolls through the grounds. A quick count on my map of Korea shows 66 official templestay temples. From the looks of it, Beomeosa may be one of the most popular ones. That would make sense, as Busan is Korea’s second biggest city and most people coming here at all are likely to go through. there are several up near Seoul which I assume are popular, but this appeared to be the most popular one I’ve been to except one not on the map by Gyeonju which was a monestary/temple with nuns women pilgrims only.
Typically, there is a nice walk up to any temple. There are then one or two gates. Along the way, there are pillars which mark the graves of noted monks.

The more popular temples have signs in English saying what this and that building or whatever is. They look like this, though often in poor English. I am honored to have been asked to rewrite the signs at Tongdosa, another popular temple near here I’ve written about before.

Here are the usual temple pics.

On the table there in the foreground of the last picture are many little baby buddhas. There were baby buddhas at the place we went a couple of days ago, and now they were here too. Aren’t they just adorable? There are sleepy buddhas, making faces buddhas, cold buddhas in stocking caps, buddhas with balls, buddha playing with his toes, as well as good little mindful buddhas. I half expected baby buddha in a manger. Cue the Christmas music.

I’m not doing much today. The democratic convention is over, so I’m not watching TV as much as the last four days. Now I’m ruminating about Palin for vice president. Is it me or is it wierd in here?
Be well, all of you.

As long as I’m writing more frequently, why not do it again after only two days? So, I’m baaaaack.
-Sa at the end of a place noun means temple. -Pokpo means waterfall. A few km from us is Hongyongsa and Hongyongpokpo. It’s either a bus ride and a 3 km walk, which we did today, or about an 8 km walk through the woods behind our place, which we’ll no doubt do soon. Yesterday was not picturesque, as we went to Busan and extended my visa again, went to a pretty routine city park, and went to the international market for Quaker Oats. Oh, we got cheap California raisins for about 20% of the cost of Korean raisins. Today was yet another nice walk. Here are some pics. This first place is near where the bus dropped us. It’s typical agricultural scenery.

You walk along this, unless you have a car which we don’t.

But like many areas, the views off the road are nice. Even if you were driving, you’d be looking at this.

After about two km you get to a bridge and can look down at the creek and picnickers. Then after a bit you can look up the creek at more picnickers.

Now, Koreans like to have style, no matter how wierd. Up pretty much near the beginning to nowhere are these public toilets.

Finally up a narrow road you get to the temple and the falls. It was a little hot today, so I was kind of draggin’ in one of these pics which Myung took.

So much for another day at the ranch. Tomorrow we’re going to Busan again. There’s some walk Myung wants to do. What else? We might go to the Busan Giants baseball game. They are in a heated pennant race.
Be well, all of you.