And The Cultural...

At the start of June we had yet another long weekend in Korea. It was not the 6 day gem that we had in May but we did have 3 days. Saturday was taken to clean up our lives and apartments followed by a viewing of the movie “The Ghost Writer” All in all very relaxed. Sandy and I went for a walk into the forest to a spot I found on one of my running days. From here you can watch the sunset. We took a bottle of OJ and a bottle of wine and had sundowners watching the sunset. It was a really lovely evening. Here are some of the visuals can be seen in this post's video.

Sunday following a leisurely morning we went through to Daegu for 2 main reasons: One was so that I could buy some cereal and the second was so that Sandy could get a nice haircut. Sadly, the 1^st salon we looked at was closed and the 2^nd was booked until 19:00 so we obtained my cereal and headed back to YC.

It was here that Sandy thought: “Bugger it, Geoff you can cut my hair.” I tell you what – I was more than a little scared. I have learned through the years that hair is sacred to 2 kinds of people: Indian males and Women in general. After a lot of calming words from Sandy she placed the scissors in my trembling hands and said very calmly: “Just tie my hair into a pony and cut just below the band. It will be fine.” I was then assured that if things went horribly wrong but managed to avoid killing her by cutting something that I wasn’t supposed to, that if the hair cut was not to expectation she would go to a salon to get it fixed. Slowly I let my hands squeeze the scissors. And slowly strand by strand the hair separated away from Sandy’s head until... “That must be about 10 inches” says Sandy. I was worried thins looked a little skew. Upon telling Sandy she was non plused and has proceeded to tell me how much she like the cut as it looks edgy and her friends seem to like it too. Yay! 20 points for me. But please let it be 2 years before I cut someone’s hair again :-P

That night was another slow night that culminated in another 10-11hrs of much needed sleep. I have not been feeling all myself the last couple of weeks so it was great to get decent rest. Monday was a relatively early start as 3 of us (Colleen included as well) headed to Gyeonju. None of us had explored it properly yet and we were aiming to cycle around looking at historical sites. I wanted to visit one site in particular. As it turns out we never got around to doing either of those things this time. We did though go see a very full Bulguksa Temple and then stopped at a folk craft village and museum. It was there were I got Barry – my little gold Buddha. We resolved, following an exhausting and hot day of walking around and looking at stuff that we needed to come back to Gyeonju to do the cycling and also ride Quad Bikes! Here is a videographic summary of our visit to Gyeonju:

That just about does for now. Next up: Water, Rapids and the feeling of air against my face ;) Stay tuned to Geoff’s Asian Adventures for more exciting times :)