Daejeon and Geumsan

Trip Start Nov 20, 2008
1
19
28
Trip End Nov 2009


Loading Map
Map your own trip!
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
shadow
Where I stayed
(Daejeon hotels)

Flag of Korea Rep.  ,
Saturday, July 25, 2009

We got to Daejeon this morning in time to find our way to our hotel and back to the bus station for lunch.  I convinced mom and Connie that Beebimbap (rice with vegetables, an egg, and chili paste) would be great!  I love it, mom ate it, and Connie got one bite down!  Well, Korean food isn't the best Asian food out there.  We wanted to wait to eat until we were back at the bus terminal, so we hopped on the bus for what should have been a 30 minute ride.  After about 30 minutes, we were seeing things that we hadn't seen before, but ah, whatever, its a new city right?  Then the bus driver stopped and told us we must get off.  Apparently we went the wrong direction and got to the end of the line.  I'll tell you, its not the last time that's happened to me, and they'll kick you off in the middle of nowhere.  This time we were in a construction lot near what looked like a river or pond or something with water...definitely at the edge of the city.  The bus proceeded to park while another one, identical to it, pulled up for us to get back on Yousung hotel
Yousung hotel
 .  So of course now we had to pay again and got the tour back in the other direction. 
After we found our way to the bus terminal and got our lunch, we took a bus to Geumsan, which is famous for its ginseng market.  It took a little walking around there too, but we found the market and got some great ginseng products.  I've got to make a return trip even, to get some more of the bars that we got which I can't find anywhere else.  We didn't get any of these candies that they called "caramels" but were just a very chewy ginseng flavored candy.  We looked everywhere for the rest of the trip and haven't seen them since.  After exploring the ginseng market, we took a bus back to Daejeon for the night.  We had an uneventful morning and sat in the hotel coffee shop drinking entirely too expensive coffee to relax before catching the train down to Busan.  In Busan our hostel host asked why we would have gone to Daejeon, and in hindsight I agree, it wasn't really a huge tourist spot, but the hotel was nice and the ginseng was great!
Slideshow Print this entry