The monks and the mafia.

So, this weekend we decided to head to Uljin, on the advice of Marit, one of Busan Ben's friends, who had been there the week previously and mentioned it was one of the best places she had been in Korea during her entire 2 years in the country. On checking the Lonely Planet, I was slightly disheartened, seeing as it seems to hate Uljin and views it only as a stepping point to get to other, better places. Oh how you were wrong, LP.

Seeing as it was the last day of 9-5 it felt like a bit of a long weekend, so all was set to make it the greatest imaginable. Christina was landing at 3.30 so was due to get to mine for about 5.30 - perfect timing, and Amy was due to finishee at 6.30. Christina (minus all her stuff for her journey to England on Tue :( ) and I headed to the ABC mart bus stop for 6.40, due to meet the Swanson at 6.45 and low and behold, who had made it before schedule?! Amy-do, that's who! So we were all there, two of us without mobiles, early! ASSA!!! Amidst must joy Amy headed to the toilet whilst Christina and I popped to Buy the Way and encountered what seemed like a comedy sketch, seeing as the woman serving us took so long, got something wrong and spent about 5 minutes trying to sort it out, when we only had 6 'til the bus was due to arrive. Cue many Mr Bean like antics and a dash to the stop in order to grab the 1112 to Gangbyeon. The journey was ok, and we were all feeling pretty smug, until we hit the Friday night traffic. Luckily, Faye was already at Gangbyeon terminal and purchased our tickets as we were only 2 stops away. As fate would have it though, our bus came to a standstill and Faye had to beg the coach driver to wait for us. Soon as our bus stopped I was off like a shot, with Christina and Amy in tow - though it seems I'd underestimated the depth of my panic and the speed with which I somehow travelled (I'm not normally fast in the slightest, in fact, dead tortoise would be a good description) and the weight of the beer Amy was carrying and when I finally jumped, sweaty and triumphant on to the bus, I realised that I'd left the other two behind - cue more sweating and running, before finally finding the girls and ushering them on to the bus just as it was about to leave. Luckily, the second bus ride was much more calming and, bar the pee'ing incidents, headbanging and the woman that wouldn't shut up, who, however, gave us free cheesecake the ride passed without incident.

On arrival at Uljin, we were anxious to find only one Family Mart and the bus terminal. Seeing as the LP had told us that there was not much about, we decided to sit and have a beer outside said Family Mart and discuss our next step. After a couple of beers we jumped into the nearest taxi and were driven about by possibly the nicest taxi man on the planet. He refused to let us pay more than w10,000, although the fare was nearer 20, and drove us around to many different places which we deemed too dead or expensive, before dropping us off at a minbak which not only cost us the paltry sum of 40,000, but, we found out in the morning, was in a prime location and on the most gorgeous stretch of beach I've seen since I've been in Korea. After we'd dumped our bags, we headed to a lovely place on the beach for a couple of well deserved Cass' (and a sleep for me) and then headed up for a nice kip.

Saturday morning brought the arrival of Ruby and Mallory. I have to take a second here to praise the lovely Ruby for finally getting her ass on an adventure weekend that was further than Gyyounggi-do - we were all so proud when we got the phonecall at 7am to tell us that she was on route! We all decided the easiest thing to do was to meet at Seongnyugul cave, which, housing rocks formed like Buddha, the Virgin Mary, a dragon and a penis was bound to be worth the 3 chunon ticket price. Luckily, the caves were really close to our minbak, so we got there in record time to meet the girls.

After buying our tickets, we donned hardhats and headed into the cave, already echoing with Ruby's cries of, "You can see my pants!! Oh God, what about the jeans?! Mate, you don't even KNOW how hard it is to get stains out of these jeans!". The inside of the cave was beautiful, with stalactites and stalagmites of many different colours and formations, underground pools and the possibility of seeing human bones, which, legend has it, are left over from the Japanese invasion sometime in the 1500's, when a group of people hid in the cave, got trapped and subsequently starved to death. Alas(?), we didn't see any bones, but the views definitely made up for it, as did the chilly inner earth air, which really cooled us down on one of the hottest days in Korea yet. After a long meander through the different rooms and tunnels, some of which were a tight squeeze to get through, and many knocks on the hard hats, we headed back to daylight and to the nearest restaurant for some unmemorable food ('cept for the caterpillar that Mallory found in her chilli - proteiny goodness). After checking out the frequency of taxis from our foody vantage point, we decided the the best thing to do was walk along the road, back in the direction of the minbak and hope that we could grab a taxi or a lift on the way. Lucky us...

About a 10 minute walk on, we all decided to head to a minbak by the side of the road to ask the proprietors to call us a cab, seeing as no one was stopping to pick us up and the sun was pretty scorching. On doing this, a car pulled up by us holding two young western guys, Ian and Jeffrey, and an older Korean dude. Ian, one of the western guys, who was driving, told us that they were on a temple stay and that the Korean dude with them was a monk and wanted us to come over to his temple for dinner and relaxing. Although somewhat cautious due to the look of said monk (he was wearing a string vest for one thing) we all decided (with much enthusiasm on my part) to accept the lift and head to the temple. On arrival, we found a traditional Korean house, with a small temple attached to the left, that we were informed was built in the 70's, along with the rest of the house. The whole plot was pretty simple, with an ondal heating system (underfloor fires that heat the room from below), many exposed stones, that were used to build the buildings and a basic structure. On entering the house, we were presented with watermelon and had a slightly stunted chat with the monk, translated by Ian and Charlie, Ian and Jeff's Korean friend, who was also staying at the temple. There were a few other people hanging round the place, a woman and her child and another monk, who dipped in and out in the early hours, but then became staple figures in the evening (save for the woman, who wasn't very well and didn't seem to happy to be there, especially with all the noise we were making).

After some soju and galbi, we kind of realised that these monks were more self proclaimed than anything else, especially after half of us were given the unwanted attention of one of the monks, later named 'Rapie Monk'. It seems that he'd had a bit too much to drink and decided that at least one of us would be his future girlfriend. Still, the they were all pretty cool, and the master monk seemed to be somewhat holy, and somewhat excellent, after he gave us a traditional Korean drumming lesson and let us dress up in all of his ceremonial gear. Amy drew the short straw in the fact she was dressed as a bald man (bion-te, which means pervert) with a small doll blessed with a huge wang but we all looked bloody amazing, and all got well into the lesson. I'd like to think that, after half an hour of constant teaching we were fabulous, but I feel that may be a lie, though Jeff definately had the actions down. Later on, master monk took me to the side and gave me a singing lesson. He told me that I had a very powerful voice and he really wanted me to stay and study with him. I was flattered! Alas, I didn't take him up on his offer, but it's nice to know I've got a career option for when I finally grow up and my feet stop itching!

The rest of the evening heralded more beer, more partying, more attempted fondling on Rapie Monk's behalf, some chicken on the beach, cool monk buying us soju, sea fighting and sleeping. A good night was had by all and I think that we were all really glad that we got in that car. Yey for random fun times!

The next morning Amy and Mallory headed down to the beach really early (and sans sunscreen - we warned you about the burns, girls!), and met some Korean guys covered in coloured in tattoos of dragons and the suchlike. They kindly offered all of us a free banana boat ride, so, after being plied with a bit of soju and some bulgogi, which was really rather nice, we took off for a ride. Much fun was had, though we were thrown into the sea a couple of times - all in the joy of it though. I went off to ask for prices for scuba diving, which I had been spotted earlier in the weekend, but found, to my dismay that there were no dives to be had that day. Sad times. Still, I shall dive before I leave Korea, it is my mission. And not just in Busan aquarium. Instead of lying on the beach all day, which I tend to get bored of, I decided to head over to Bulyeongsa (temple of the Buddha's shadow), an amazing ascetic temple located in the middle of some breathtaking hills, taking with me Faye and Ruby. After a long and farcical taxi ride, due to insufficent funds on our part, we were chauffeured up to the temple and given the chance to have a look around, before being driven back to Uljin's bus station. Bulyeoungsa temple is amazing, I have to say. It's not huge and isn't set up a mountain, or even a very big hill, but it is beautiful and immaculate and the Buddhist paintings, located in the buildings, are superb. To top this off, the views are spectacular and you can really see why sitting around the lake, (which is the main feature of the place, owing to a rock atop one of the hills that casts Buddha's shadow on to the water), is an amazing place for the resident female monks to attempt to reach Nirvana. We spent a while walking round and taking in the scenery before, as I mentioned, being taken back to the station to pay our fare. Not ones to hang around a station for long, we promptly got into another taxi and ended up paying a lot to get to Deokgu hot springs spa - where we bathed in natural hot springs, took delight in gawping over the hottest man in Korea's body, froze ourselves in outdoor waterfall baths, relaxed in lemon and jasmine baths and took in more breathtaking scenery and smells of pine and clean air before returning, 2 hours later, to the station, with enough time to spare to say bye to the boys from the day before and hop on to our bus. On the way back, we were informed by the girls that stayed at the beach, that the banana boat guys were in fact, mafia (a) it was obvious and b) the tattoos gave it away, plus the heads up from Charles and later chats to people), and that they had been really weird all day and then demanded money from the ladies for what they thought was service rides on their jet ski and rubber tubes. Hmm, scary times indeed. Still, no caps were popped in any asses and we all returned home safe and sound.

On a sad note, last night was Christina's last night in Korea, seeing as she'd had some personal problems and had to leave Jeju before her contract was up. She spent the last night at mine, and we went to dinner with Amy and ate some lovely galbi, before heading to the local dvd bang to watch 'Broken English' - an excellent film and then heading home to mine. She will be missed.

On a more positive note however, John arrives for his visit in two days!!!!!!! Yey to the English buddy! I can't wait and have been boring not only my friends and coworkers, but the kids about it nonstop for the past week! Bring on the fun times!