Jeju Pearl Tourist Hotel Jeju City

... without having a contat number and there was no way that I was going to leave my passport with them) so I resorted to Plan B. Wandering in towards the city centre along the river I found a lovely little hotel just in the IIdo-dong area, just up from the waterfront and all the fish resturants. Costing a whopping 40W per night (about 20 pounds!) it was a double the money than the Roach-motel in Busan but a world away and well worth it and I luxuriated ...

... me than me of him and he quickly slipped through the stairs and splashed into the river. I guess I was about 5 feet bigger than him but he did have the advantage of being a snake. He was green. As was the countryside on the death railway between Kanchanaburi and Nam Tok. Green the whole way. Field after field and mile after mile of cannabis plants. I stopped counting at a million. It seems as though Thailand, clever Thailand, has ...

... get the tripod set up and step into the photo, all the passing Thais would have to bend down to look at the viewfinder to see what photo we were taking. We got a bus to Thong Pa Poom and hopped off, with our bags, at Hindat Hot springs for a nice relaxing soak. We were the only Westerners there, with a bunch of fully clothed Thai people, soaking in the pools. They had ...

... traversier au milieu de nulle part, pour me faire dire que le bateau ne va pas jusque la ou je devais revenir, mais plutot ne fait qu'une petite demie-heure jusqu'au quai suivant... Voila donc finalement la recompense de ce detour majeur, fait a l'origine pour trois heures de bateau: 30 minutes de bateau et j'arrive quand meme nulle part au bout de la ride. Encore chanceux que sur le bateau j'ai fait la connaissance d'un jeune Irlandais marrie a ...

I think I found the only place in Korea with no PC Bangs. The last couple of days I have been in Seongsam staying at a redbrick Minbuk (guest house) with a view of this 5,000 year old volcano from my window. I did not indulge in the SCUBA that originally brought me to Seongsam. Instead I meandered around the area with the zeal and speed of a 100 year old turtle. I tried one of the local beaches but it was so ...

... After stepping outside, I almost blew away. Jeju is also famous for its wind. I was very happy to step into a car and be driven to the terminal. In the airport, we retrieved our rental car after a long lecture about how to use the GPS (almost all Koreans use GPS). From there we headed to E-Mart to buy food. All the female employees were dressed in pink hanboks, Korean traditional dress. The occasion for our trip happened to be lunar new year, (Chinese ...

... bread with the kids and cooked it in their homemade mud brick oven (which tasted fantastic!). Another night, after discovering that none of our fellow volunteers had any idea what banoffee pie was(!), attempted making one, although we had to substitute cream for yoghurt so it wasn't quite the same! Still good though although the mass sugar intake was a bit of a shock to the system!! Our first weekend at Dada's we took the kids to a local fair which was ...

... and everything is in immaculate condition. Without a formal tour guide its hard to determine/know if things have been restored or preserved perfectly, but either way, I'm in awe of the vivid colors, how fine the edges are, and how intricate the details are. There is a story that is told in 178 painted facades that runs the course of the outer wall of the complex and spans a full kilometer. The story is the Ramayana (Hindu ...

... looked pretty OK and lively to me, and it wasn't heaving with tourists either like I had in my imagination from what everyone had said (OK, I might have thought otherwise if I hadn't been told that!) It was brilliant, I loved it. The tigers have been rescued by Buddhist monks from poachers neer the Thai/Burmese border. Raised by humans from cubs, that's what makes them so timid, and they're a nocturnal animal anyway, so I don't believe the drugging thing. Plus, I ...

... POWs who died during construction is about 160,000. About 25% of the POW workers died because of overwork, malnutrition, and diseases like cholera, malaria, and dysentery. The death rate of the Asian civilian workers was even higher; the number who died is unknown, as the Japanese did not count them. Today only the lowest part of the railway to Nam Tok is still in use. In ...