Moving South

We have left Seoul and headed south. We decided we have had enough of people and busyness and wanted to escape the rat race. First stop was was a small town called Buyeo, once capital of Baekje Kingdom for a few hundred years after 50 BC. It is a tiny backwater town with 25,000 people and one roundabout. It has a hill where the old palace and fortress was, a large Buddhist temple and a cliff that 3000 court ladies threw themselves off rather than submit to attacking enemy forces.

Buddhist Temple in Buyeo.

We had visited all the sites within a day and a half and spent the rest of the time eating ho-tuk (fried batter with sugar, cinnamon and sesame seeds inside) and bung-a-pang (red bean paste inside small waffles in the shape of fish).

Making Ho-tuk

Even with so few inhabitants, Buyeo was still too big and populated. So our next stop was Songnisan National Park. National Parks in Korea are small. Mind you, Korea as a country is small. Songnisan Village has one main street, completely covered in restaurant signs. We had picked the wrong day to come to the park. It was the weekend and hiking is a huge tradition in Korea. There were hoards of people, all brightly dressed in technical gear with tramping boots and walking sticks.

This man posed for me so I had to take a photo of him.

Hoards in bright and colourful gear.

Luckly we had decided to stay in the park in an old traditional inn. We were the only ones there. The rooms were small and had underfloor heating, which we desparately needed during the night. We slept on the floor on mats and the heat rose to keep us warm. An old man that lives there by himself and warned us there was no hot water and we could only use the long drop as the pipes for the toilets were still frozen from winter.

The lake was still mostly frozen.

We spent the first day looking around the large temple with a 33m gold-plated Buddha statue. It is huge and impressive. The next day the hoards disappeared as it was Monday and we had most of the trails to ourselves. We walked up the mountain, which took about 2 hours. We even walked through patches of snow and ice at the top. You could walk through the whole park in about 6 hours. As I said national parks here are small.

The 33m gold Buddha.

Cold and bleak Songnisan National Park. The fog came in so we had no view and the trees are so small because it is too cold for them to grow well.

After our dose of no people we came back into civilisation  and we are now in Jeonju. This town is the best place we have been to so far. It has about half a million people, but small and friendly and very few high-rise buildings. It has great coffee, hot chocolate and food. There is even a few small patches of green grass and the cherry blossoms are starting to come out. We like it so much we have extended our stay here.

Beautiful smelling Cherry Blossoms.

Market in Jeonju.

It said take a photo so we did.