11/26-11/27
On Saturday morning in the wee hours of 7am I left my apartment to meet up with Nami at the bus station to get an early bus for our weekend getaway to Jeonju! My friend Rob lives there and it is famous as the home of Korean cuisine’s best staple foods, including bibimbap in particular. At the bus station we had to wait an hour because the bus we were going to take was sold out, so we wiled away the time at McDonalds of course.
When we got there, Nami was super excited to be in a new city she hadn’t been to and wanted to navigate everything (she is weird and likes maps and such haha). We headed to our hostel first to drop off our backpacks, and the hostel was really nice with lots of space and a really cool common room with tons of colorful posters left by visitors who had stayed there previously. Our room door had a stuck lock so I actually climbed in the window like a nimble monkey and impressed the Korean owner with my skills, haha. It was pretty fun The hostel had heated floors and hot pink soft and cozy comforters on all the beds; we stayed in a room with 6 bunks. After dropping our stuff off, we ate a big awesome bibimbap meal and walked around the Catholic church which is a famous landmark there where Korean Catholics were persecuted. Fun fact: Did you know Korea has one of the highest populations of Christians in the world? And that Christianity came there pretty early? I guess the missionaries were very persuasive!
At the church, we met up with Rob and a friend of his and started exploring the Hannok village. The Hannok village is like a slow city; a traditional neighborhood that preserves the older way of life and traditional Korean culture. It is partly also there as a big tourist draw, but it’s still a very cool experience. There’s tons of shops and restaurants in traditional style Korean houses and the main craft of Jeonju is papermaking, so it was neat to see all the different crafts and fans and everything. I bought some souvenirs for Christmas presents to send home and we wandered up a hill overlooking the village with a lovely view of the sunset, it was really nice.
After the sun went down, Rob took us to a restaurant he knew for Samgetung, a delicious soup dish with a whole chicken and ginseng and other herbs and vegetables, it was very mashitta! (yummy!). After dinner Nami and I went back to the hostel to relax and plan what to do for the next day. It was really nice to spend the whole weekend away and have time to hang out with her, it reminded me of how much I miss my friends at home and how close we are so it was good to feel that way again and get to know Nami even better, I think she has a really great sense of humor especially and we get along really well.
On Sunday we got up around 9 and had a quick breakfast at the hostel, of course taking some time to make our own thank you poster for the hostel’s colorful walls. We explored the Hannok village more thoroughly in the peaceful morning before any crowds got to it. It was a whole other experience being able to imagine ancient governors and scholars bustling between the buildings and performing the ceremonies in their beautiful buildings. We also had a lot of fun taking pictures and being silly, and then wandered around the different shops and windy alleys. We found a cool teahouse that was in some family’s 100 year old home in a side part of the house and had a delicious 7 flavor tea and yu ja cha, or chinese lemon tea. The family also had the most adorable 2 month old puppy that we got to play with and we hung out there for over an hour just enjoying the afternoon. We had lunch at a famous restaurant Nami had researched that served a special beansprout soup, and I must say it was very delicious! We wandered around another part of the city with a cool shopping area and random cultural buildings that were preserved in the middle of the city. We walked around all afternoon and caught a late bus back to Busan for Sunday night, both of us sleeping most of the way. Overall, I think Jeonju was a great city, full of fond memories of food, friends, fall, and a puppy!