Daegu, Korea

Once again Dave was kind enough to invite me on one of his international business trips.  Thanks to the kind and generous parents that we have, we were able to take this trip together.

We landed in Seoul and took a very fast train the next day to our next destination, Daegu.

While David was in his meetings, I was able to take advantage of some of the free cultural experiences that the convention offered such as making a fan.

We also were able to dress up in traditional Korean clothing and have our picture taken.  The Korean people are so beautiful, they pull off this look so much better than I do.  Dave is working that hat though, don't you think?

While not in meetings, we explored the downtown.  Daegu is one of the larger cities in Korea and has a substantial shopping district.  The shops went on and on and on.  We are always cautious about trying street food.  I will admit that this large plate of intestines has little appeal to me.

What a beautiful array of beans and grains.  Unlike other cities we have been to, Daegu didn't seem to cater to tourists.  We rarely if ever came across anyone that did not look like they were from Korea.  It made it interesting to see what was being sold to the regular puplic and not just to appease the tourists.

This entire street had bin after bin of dried fish sorted into various sizes. 

I suppose it might make for good soup fixings.  I am not quite sure how they use all this dried fish.

Almost everything that you might find in the ocean seemed to come in dried form.

 

As we meandered through the shops we came across some indoor (air conditioned, yeah!) dress shops.  These shops went on forever too.  I am not sure where the tradtional dress is worn, but I believe that they are used as wedding dresses.

Later we came across this lady selling Cicada grubs by the boxful.  She demonstrated for us that these were sold for consumption by eating one of them.  She offered a few to me to sample which I promptly handed over to my adventurous entomologist husband who tried them for himself.

Needs garlic!

The Cidadas in South Korea are everywhere.  If you have ever lived near them, you know how noisy they are.  Dave said that these were the largest Cicadas he had ever seen.

While is Korea, I was on the look out for Girls Generation CD's which our young women friends from Chile introduced us to.  Sure enough I found some.  I brought home one as a souvenier for my daughter Emily.

Movie anyone?  It was definitely a challange to not understand the language let alone the alphabet of Korea.  Some things were written in English, but very few people spoke it.  We struggled a bit to figure things out at time, but it is amazing what you can communicate with smile and pointing at what you want.  There were many people who helped us when we got stuck at the subway turnstyle for example.  The Koreans were nice people.

We experienced a good bit of rain while we were there.  Thanks goodness for $3 umbrellas for sale.  The rain was actually welcomed.  It cooled us down in the 90 degree 90% humidity weather.

Korean food is very good, but I am afraid that Dave and I did not develop a pallet for the spicy food quite quick enough.  We did have our share of Kimchi (fermented vegetables with pepper sauce) and we tried Bulgogi which is a meat dish served with rice or noodles.  Luckily there were plenty of Burger King and McDonald's in town on those nights when we just couldn't take the heat of the Korean food.

 

On the last day of Dave's conference I got brave and took a bus to see some temples 20km outside of town.  I was proud of myself for getting there and hiking around in the rain.

This is Gatbawi and famous Buddha statue that takes about an hour to hike to.  On my hike there were many people on the trail that day coming to worship here.

I love there beautiful lanterns in so many colors.

I won't get into too many details, but I got a little lost on the way back down from the Gatbawi hike.  For those of you who know me well, I have not been blessed with good sense of direction and I misread the map they gave me.  Luckily a nice lady selling produce was willing to help me get back on track.  She feed me cucumbers and drove me back up to where the trail split and pointed me in the right direction.  It was quite the adventure.