Day 7. Moving on. Seoul – Suwon – Jeonju. 10 April 2024

Packed up 90% last night. Up and finalised the packing and left my gear in Suzie’s room as she had convinced them to check her out last night (against Hotel policy). I checked out before breaky and did back at Suzie’s room.

Breaky with a few more pics. It’s an awesome spread.

Back on the road with Alex and our van. We now head in an anticlockwise direction around Sth Korea.

Some population stats

Seoul Si – 10mill. Imagine an Egg shape, lying on it’s side – Seoul city is the yolk.

Seoul Mega (greater Seoul) = egg shape at 15Mill. Including Inchon.

The egg is less than 10% of total popn with Korea at 50mill popn.

Suwon city, south of Seoul is still within egg white. Alex was born (1971) in Suwon (300k popn) now 1 million.

Today is federal election day. Saw a sign stating STOP CHINESE INTERFERENCE IN ELECTION. This mainly happens via online news.

So an official holiday – and less traffic and foot traffic in Gangham.

My new thought for the blog is to add a RANDOM FACTS (RF) option for whenever Alex tells us something that I actually recall or other useless but of interest to me info. So look out for my random facts (RF) section coming soon.

RF – Big buildings have to pay back to community by including a sculpture near their building resulting in great street art we are seeing.

RF – Alex lives South in Bundang, (400k popn) its new town built in 92/93. Takes about 30min to get to Seoul by bus.

RF – blue rego plates for ev, yellow for commercial, green for company cars worth more than 80000KRW.

Korena Folk Village

Think Korean Sovereign hill and you have it, Korean Style. It was better than we expected. Quite a few RF about Korean houses and life and a drumming and dance show to finish off.

Different style houses especially the roofing materials dependent on climate and also on level of wealth too.

In warmer areas such as Jeju the houses are thatched with pampas grass with volcanic rock walls and minimal heating. Others are rock or stone walled with slate or wood or bark roofing. Some of the thatched rooves are layer upon layer for insulation. Some have quite sophisticated heating via cooking areas and chimneys etc.

Then lunch at a recommended beef bbq restaurant in Suwon called Bonsuwon Balbi. We shared two serves and still didn’t eat all of it. Soups hot and cold, three types of kimchi (not a fan!) rice, cabbage, cold potato, salad and then the meat cooked over coals on the Korean BBQ. Then a cool rice drink with ginger to finish. There were more dishes we couldn’t identify. Alex didn’t eat with us.

A few minutes further and we arrived at Hwaseong Fortress – 220 years (1776) old. Protecting the city of Suwon.

It has never been invaded. It has been reconstructed over time. The base layers of rock were very similar to the walls at Machu Picchu and the newer work was very sturdy also.

Due to election public holiday there were record numbers of people in the parks having picnics. Lots of rugs, chairs, mats, little tables, yard carts – all ‘Volkswagens’. There were young, old, families, couples. Full on wall to wall picnicking people. The gates we passed later in the van North and South weren’t super impressive but the stonework still amazes me.

Then back out to the freeway for approx 90 minute journey to Jeonju.

RF- We passed the Samsung manufacturing facility producing memory chips in Korea.

We stopped for a look break. The number of car brands and models that we haven’t seen in Australia have been fascinating so I took a photo of a few at our pitstop.

Along the freeway there is lots and lots of market gardens, lots of hothouses and shade houses, we even saw friesian cattle under one plastic hot house. Lots and lots of ploughed fields. Passed a heap of pear orchards all in blossom. Also saw onions or spring onions growing and who knows what else.

Lots of manufacturing and logistics big buildings/factories along the way as well as residential areas, which range from houses to clusters of high rise apartments sprouting in the valleys between mountains. Pretty much built up along the freeway but left and right are mountains. Alex explained that given so much of the country is mountainous the cities are densely populated.

Koreans in the past buy bits of mountain sides for family cemeteries. We saw many.

Into Jeonju (Jon-Jew) where we are staying in the Lahan Hotel right beside Jeonju Hanok Village. Not a sophisticated Hotel says Alex but best in town – let’s see when we arrive. Still got a high tech loo. Room is modern overlooking the Hanok Village. Not too shabby at all!

We checked in and went for a walk through the Hanok Village to a market, where we were going to have something to eat, unfortunately the market was closed due to the public holiday for the election. Alex called the cab to go to a different market, which also wasn’t happening, so another cab back to the Hanok Village where we grabbed a weird Kaya sandwich to share and a juice each at a cafe and walk back to the hotel. My fresh strawberry juice was delicious, the Kaya sandwich which was weird – toast with a bit of what we think is Kaya jam and a big triangle chunk of butter which we ditched.