WARNING: Written on a five hour train ride. Just thinking out loud cause I have nothing else to do.
It is amazing how spending two nights in one location can make life easy. You can leave your bag in the room and not have to pack it out with you, and you get to know the town a little better. I spent my second night last night at Seorksan National Park, where I again roomed with Claude, the Belgian. It was a relaxing evening, as we both slept for about 3 hours upon our return from hiking. We woke up, got some pizza (Korean Style) and brought it back to our room where we sat on the floor at our fold out table and ate it. Since you never wear shoes in Korean homes, rooms, and many restaurants, the floor stays considerably cleaner. We went to sleep
soon after and woke up early this morning to catch a bus back to Sokcho, where he went on to Andong, and I went to a PC Bong (see earlier post) to update. I wandered around Sokcho for a while, unsure of where I wanted to go. Around noon I decided that Andong was as good a place as any, and got a 1.5 hour bus ride to a small town where I caught a train to Andong, some distance away. While waiting for the train I wandered around trying to find someplace that had wireless internet so I could upload all my pictures to Flickr. No such luck. I did come upon a restaurant that smelled extremely good, and had some food priced for w5000 on the front, so I went in and had my first real old style Korean meal. I have to say, I was impressed. After the cheap street vendors who over spice most of the food, and the foul smelling small fish of the mountain town Seork-dong, I was expecting the worst. As you can see, I got a ton of food for my won. At about $5USD, it kind of beats the big mac with fries and a coke combo. I was sitting on the floor without shoes, on mats, using chopsticks, enjoying the food for the first time, and I was able to order, pay, and thank the servers in Korean. A very cool experience. I think my stomach and taste buds may have just finally realized that spicy food is what they are going to get and decided to get over themselves.
It has almost been a week, and I have hit most of the moods that go along with traveling. Before I landed in Seoul, I was thinking that this was a retarded idea, and I should probably
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