So after five days today we left Seoul behind and started on the circle of World Heritage towns before we return in a weeks time. Today we are heading for Jeonju which is home to a famous Hanok Korean village and Temple, Paul picked us up at 8.00 in the hope that we would miss some of the traffic but to be honest they seem to have the same issue on motorways that we do, they really slow down at certain junctions then speed up again and everyone just sits in the middle / outside lane so over /undertaking is needed to get round them! The journey took just under four hours but that did include us stopping for a break where Paul topped up on coffee and we wondered round all the food stands trying to identify various items. We arrived at the hotel about 11.45 and despite his best efforts they wouldn’t let us check in until after 2pm so we went and had an very early lunch then set off to explore the village. First we walked up the hill which gives a great view over the whole area, this is unique as there are over 700 traditional houses that were all made of clay, wood and stone. We walked along a couple of streets then arrived at Gyeinggheon shrine which was built in honour to King Taejo who founded the Joseon dynasty. This has a great hall with two portraits of the king painted a number of years apart and I have to say although there is a bit of a resemblance he didn’t age well. The most significant thing in the whole complex is the fact that throughout the entire royal period a record of what happened every day was kept, four copies were made and they were distributed around Korea, this details 400 years of history and spans 1,200 (I think) volumes, unfortunately only around 600 survived and they were housed in this temple, the reason they survived is because when the Japanese invaded in the 1500’s the scribes packed the volumes in an air tight way and hid them which meant that they didn’t get burnt like all the others, these were later returned to the temple. We walked through the whole complex and finally arrived at a Roman Catholic Church which is the oldest in the region although it is from 1909 so not particularly old. Paul left us at this point so that we could explore on our own which we did. Unfortunately the whole area is very busy as it is a key tourist attraction for Korean, Japanese and Chinese tourists, most of whom seem to have hired the national dress for the occasion – it is actually quite funny seeing people that are not used to wearing long dresses try and negotiate the steps and staircases. We walked around and finally found a market area that was selling food and drink so we got ourselves a couple of beers and sat and watched the world go by which was really interesting, the market area we were in seemed to have a load of women making things – some of which looked a bit like sushi but they didn’t seem to be trusted to handle money so you had to go and buy what looked like monopoly money of the same value as Korean money to buy food! We weren’t sure about any of the food despite trying some spicy tofu which to be honest if it had been a little less spicy or had come with something like rice we may well have had some so we walked back to the hotel and finally checked in before heading down to the bar for another drink and to update the website and decide what we want to do for food tonight.
