Haeinsa Tourist Hotel Gyeongsangnam-do

... but the day ended up being beautiful and warm. The city of Jinhae is about a 45 minute drive to the west of Busan. The festival is the biggest Cherry Blossom festival in Korea--so being that it was so close to home, we had to go! The blossoms were beautiful as expected. I love this time of year...





Another project this month was being asked to paint a new bar opening up on the beach. "Blowfish ...

... Beautiful Lantern sculptures lit up the Nam river for about 1 km between the two bridges in town. As well, a wall of lanterns, and other displays light up the main pathway alongside the river, which altogether made for a very nice walk. Once the sun goes down, it gets really crowded. There were some awesome fireworks that went on for about 10 minutes ...

... the south coast remain for me the highlight of trips down here. My provincial, Chungcheongnam-do eyes are used to unrelenting rice paddies, which at this time of year are a hideous bog. I knew we were coming to a special place when I peered down into the valleys below us and saw rivers: undammed, unbridged, unpolluted, unstagnated rivers tumbling crisp and white over the stones that collected down there. It was odd to see a river without a ...

... ist alles grau-braun). A propos Wetter, das ist ganz gut, allerdings kommt doch einiges an Staub aus China rueber, die Sonne hat Probleme da durchzuscheinen. In Haeinsa gibt es einen Tempel, der die Tripitaka Koreana beherbergt (siehe auch http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripitaka_ Koreana), der saemtliche Zitate von Buddha auflistet in insgesamt 6000 Baenden auf 81258 Holzbloecken. Fuer diese hat man vor 1000 ...

... had smiled upon me. Only my second week in Korea and I was able to catch such a spectacular display. I could tell you all about the atmosphere, the people, the small mom and pop run place where we spent the night - but I don't think I could even come close to doing any justice with words. So instead, I'll let the pictures do the talking. Enjoy...

... regardless. Our bus ride to Gangchon went without a hitch and we were dropped off a short stroll into the town itself. I fancied I could physically feel the stress falling away from me as we wandered into this small, riverside holiday destination. It is a spot favoured by college students, probably due to it's proximity to Seoul and as such there is plenty there to do to while away a weekend - mainly renting motorbikes/quads/bicycles to explore the countryside and ...

... our canoe and took a long walk around the perimeter of the park to see the Japanese Gardens but they were closed. We did get to see the ruins of an old abandoned castle nearby which was cool. After this we spent some time shopping around before getting our luggage from the lockers where we left it and taking a cab back to the airport to go home. Back in Tokyo we had dinner at Clabar with Tame-san- of course!

... stands. The rest of the festival- so far as we could tell- was mostly local middle school aged dance troups performing kind of silly Western style routines on mini stages. It was kind of silly but we did see a few more authentic Japanese performances including a drum performance and a fan dance. Once we wandered away from the festival we walked around a bit before going back to grab our bags and hopping in a cab to the Hakata International Ferry Terminal ...

... were civili*ns.) An estim*ted 60,000 more people h*ve died from injuries or r*di*tion poisoning since the de*dly 1945 *tt*ck. It just *m*zes me th*t we c*n let ourselves get to the point th*t we could even f*thom this type of thing *s * solution to *ny of our problems. The thing th*t blows my mind even further is th*t we do not seem to le*rn from our p*st mist*kes. W*rs *nd problems of this c*liber unfortun*tely *re not ...

... gentleman along the way who guided me to the station and bought train tickets for me. Getting around in Seoul can be quite a problem as no many people speak english and all the signages are in Korean. I took a train from Samseong Station to Jamsil where LotteWorld is.

There is a huge departmental store at LotteWorld with quite a lot of clothing choices. However, the prices are slightly on the high side. I took my 1st korean fastfood there..Beef ...