After the trip to GyeongJu, we spent the night at my uncle’s home in Gumi.

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It’s a small and modest house in what most of us would consider a very rural area. this is where my dad’s family’s land is. most of it belongs to this particular uncle, since he was the only son to stay in korea, while the other two sons went off to the states. he built this home from “scratch”. he and his wife saved their entire lives in preparation for retirement.

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americans typically think of retirement as moving to florida, hanging out with other old people and going to denny’s for the senior grand slam special. koreans have a different view. my uncle and aunt spend their time farming the family land. the grow their own soybeans, and other vegetables. they do everything organically so everything is cooked simply and the flavor is amazing! they make their own soy sauce, tofu, soybean paste (dwenjang), red pepper paste (ggotchujang), and a number of other things.

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On basically what was our last full day in korea, my uncle gave us a tour of his home. extremely proud of what he’s been able to provide for his family, and also to show us that he’s taken care of our family land. he pointed to some of the dried greens that were hanging from the garage and said that it was my dad’s favorite vegetable. so he dries plenty of it each year hoping my dad comes for a visit. he showed us the mill he uses to grind the beans.

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before getting ready to take us to kimcheon, he wanted to show us one more thing. my dad’s best friend’s burial/memorial site and the buddhist temple the man had built and worshipped at. though my dad’s family is catholic, they were good friends with this man and also proud of his acheivements.

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i don’t know his name, but my dad showed me pictures. he was the provincial wrestling champion. but also a devout buddhist. he would go to a local cave and meditate for days without food or water. later he became a famous buddhist monk and raised money to build this temple. along with the temple he had a deep desire to serve the disabled and mentally handicapped. there is an adjacent home to the temple. we didn’t get to visit the facility so no pictures. unfortunately, my dad’s friend was murdered by one of the mentally ill. he was buried next to the temple.

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we then decided to take a quick trip to kimcheon. there’s a park there that features different types of art. including some very interesting statues like these:

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the first is joseph pretending to play a children’s game where you attempt to hop on someone’s back and play a game of rock, paper, scissors. next joseph was told to rub the buddha’s belly so we would have good luck in trying to have a baby. i proceeded to touch the belly button instead. the last two were all in good fun of course

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there should be no vacation/travel posts without the gluttonous amount food consumed! we went to a pork bbq place. instead of the usual vents that are fixed on the ceiling, you could pull these vents down towards the table and then push them back up and out of the way to eat. this basically concluded our trip to the kumi area. before we left my uncle proceeded to say “i’m sorry if they did anything wrong”. after this lengthy post of the hospitality and the family love they showed, suffice to say there was NOTHING wrong that they did. in fact, joseph and i probably should’ve said what they had said instead. we intruded on their quiet lives and they welcomed us with open arms.

my aunt and uncle put us on a high speed train back to seoul. this by itself is a treat. it’s like taking the acela instead of the regional train. time difference between the two is a few hours because there are also far fewer stops in between.

it actually dropped us off not too far from namdaemoon. so guess were we went next?

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this outdoor street market is HUGE. it’s a maze. i tried to be as diligent as possible to make sure we either knew where we were going, or at least know how to get back to where we came from. it’s a sea of wholesalers of all different types of stuff, of everything from clothes, socks, bras, pots, knives, computers….you name it, they probably have it. apparently there are alot of tourist from china and japan looking for korean ginseng. all the sales people kept yelling at me and joseph in cantonese, mandarin, taiwanese, japanese and korean – unsure whether we were one or another.

lastly, the last nite of being in korea meant that we finally got to spend some time with my cousin. usually he’s the one i spend most of my time with when i’m in korea. but this trip was obviously different. he’s also far busier now, running the furniture company that my uncle built. it used to be living room, bedroom and dining room furniture company. my cousin decided to change the direction of the company based on his research and noticing the fair share of furniture companies in asia. it was a smart investment and business strategy for him. the new direction was to build wardrobes for apartments. much like in the US, the real estate market BOOMED all over asia, with new buildings and renovations happening all over. guess who was building new wardrobes through many of korea’s new/remodeled homes?

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we ended up starting at a chicken place. like i said before, joseph was so smitten with kyochon, we looked for every opportunity to eat more of that kind of chicken. my cousin ended up taking us to this place where one of the owners looked like my aunt #6. we had some beer and chicken and caught up. instead of staying after we finished eating though, we headed off to a second place. some japanese place to eat more food and drink some more. by this time we get to this second place, i’m already a little tipsy, on the verge of drunk. i don’t think joseph was, though he did get quiet and looked very happy with a huge grin on his face. this is probably why there aren’t many pictures of our time spent with my cousin. man koreans can drink.

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Post tags: acheivements, Add new tag, baby, beer, buddha, buddhist temple, building, business, chicken, china, cooking, cousin, dad, denny, dries, drinks, family, food, games, good friends, goodness, greens, gumi, gyeongju, japan, japanese, joseph, korea, korean, koreans, locals, memories, money, moving to florida, pepper paste, post, red pepper, rural area, s, scissors, scratch, seoul, soy sauce, soybean paste, soybeans, tofu, tourists, vegetables, water, worshipped

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day9 of our korea trip was a trip to GyeongJu.  Joseph had read in the travel books about this place as the place to go to see Cherry Blossoms in korea. I briefly mentioned it to my uncle and next thing you know, that’s where we were headed.

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Unfortunately, the day we decided to go it rained. Most of the days we were in Korea it didn’t rain. Just bad timing I guess but the views and the drive was still great. just look at some of the pictures above. plenty of trees to look at and just a beautiful place to be.

since most of korea was about food, for me at least, i must also share about the food we had there. for lunch my aunt had planned to take us to a very popular and good restaurant, but once we got there it was ridiculously packed. the way was far too long, and since we had planned to see a bunch of things that day we went to another place next door.

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needless to say, they thought the food wasn’t that good. i didn’t really mind it. i think i’m too used to korean food that is just mediocre. My mediocre is the equivalent to bad in korea >_<.  i’ll skip on describing the mediocre food. not worth my time or effort

next up was a trip to one of the oldest buddhist shrines in korea. by now it was pouring. my uncle bought us each a plastic poncho and thankfully they had some umbrellas in their car. one of the nice things about doing touristy things while it’s raining is that there are so few tourists it almost doesn’t matter

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Joseph was able to sneak this blurry picture in before we got into any trouble when told we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the shrine. you can sort of make out the gold buddha behind the pillar.

the rain made us all a little miserable. walking around the dirt paths, in the rain was not ideal. our pants were soaking, we were cold, and the risk of falling while walking up the hills and stuff was much greater than we would’ve liked. so we left shortly thereafter. maybe one day joseph and i will go back when the weather is more manageable.

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like the korean fried chicken, these gyeongju-bbang pastries were a trendy food for a while. it’s basically a thin flour pastry filled with redbean paste. it’s a not too sweet, small dessert. i’m not a big fan of these types of desserts. mainly because i don’t really like my redbean to be on the drier side. still tasty tho. i think joseph had a few.

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next up was a museum. it’s now been way too long for me to remember the name of the museum, but it’s the main one in gyeong ju. here we saw more statues, and old relics. it was also a nice break from the pouring rain.

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the highlight of the day for me was dinner. look at this spread! all these little dishes took up the entire table. fish, meats, pickled veggies, stir fried this and that. plethora to choose from. a great meal to end the day.

here’s a nice little aside:

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all of us in the states complaining about gas prices, can now stop. in korea this WAS the price of gas back in july (only a little into the rising gas crisis we’re going through now). it’s about $1.60 per LITER. that equates to about $4.50/gallon for the cheapest gas. i’m curious as to what the gas prices in korea are now. i’m imagining my aunt’s family in korea taking the bus or subway instead of their 2 huge audi sedans or the gas guzzling volvo. ok.. yeah..probably not likely.

hopefully my next korea post won’t take 2 months to write =P

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Post tags: beautiful place, buddha, buddhist shrines, car, car one, cherry blossoms, chicken, family, food, golddirt paths, gyeongju, joseph, korea, korea trip, korean, korean food, koreans, lt, lunch, mediocre food, museum, nice things, pickles, pillar, poncho, rain, subway, sweets, tourists, travel books, umbrellas

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since sat nite, triplet #1 and #2 spent the nite at my aunts, we went to church with my cousin and his wife so we could hang out with them some and also get to meet #3.

i made some french toast for everyone for breakfast

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besides being “heavy drinkers” these kids also know how to play cards, go-stop. more signs they are definitely family. luckily, they haven’t learned to gamble at 6 years old, that won’t come till they’re about 8:

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then finally we got ready to leave. i got ready too

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the church service we went to had translations in english, but the translations were a little light so, no comment on the sermon.

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then off to lunch. joseph had three things on his agenda basically; 1. dmz, 2. hanging out with family, 3. eating korean fried chicken. so we went to an area near church called “gangnam” and looked for fried chicken similar to bonchon chicken. and instead of bonchon, we hit kyochon chicken (which also has LA, and NY Queens locations). kyochon was once a trendy place to eat and a huge hit, but more recently a different chain called two-two chicken is the current fad but more on that in a future post

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joseph loved kyochon. for the rest of the trip, whenever we had the chance to pick something to eat, fried chicken was his first choice. we never got back to kyochon, but we did eat chicken at least twice more on the trip.

after lunch we went to this cafe that had like this weird chinese theme.

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i also love street food. i didn’t get to eat much of it because it always seemed like we were always full, but i did get some corn. the rest of the pictures are of other vendors that were around

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finally we met #3. #1 and #2 definitely look alike and people would easily say they are twins, but #3 looks different and not everyone would think she completes the triplets.

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at the COEX mall, the three girls were hanging all over joseph. they LOVED him. they fought over who got to hold his two hands the entire time. eventually one would give up and hold their dad’s or mom’s hand instead.

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they loved him so much they would hit his face =P

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the day was finally over, but we invited the girls and their mom to come to lotte world with us on monday. which also meant they got to get out of school. hehe… i think in my family, joseph and i will be known as the couple who likes to take cousins out of school.

joseph’s first experience in the korean subway included the notice of some emergency supplies. but notice the number of emergency masks compared to how many there would likely be in the station during rush hours >_<

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one of the things i knew about before we went to korea, but wasn’t able to experience 8 years ago, was the free wifi and tv access in all the subway stations and cars.

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i read on some blog, that korean subway cars were eeriely quiet. likely because nearly everyone was either watching tv, on their laptops, or listening to their mp3/mp4 players.

we ended the nite with some beef galbi. my younger cousin bought dinner, since we likely wouldn’t be able to spend too much time with him. he’s been busy running my uncle’s furniture company, so he would leave fairly early and come home sort of late as well. as americans, we eat ALOT of meat, particularly beef. in korea beef is a complete luxury and can be very expensive. so this was a treat

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Post tags: chicken, church, coex, coex mall, corn, fried chicken, galbi, go-stop, korea, korean, kyochon chicken, mall, street food, subway, tea, tv, vendor, vendor food, wifi

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