Daejeon with Sandy; Lisa and Deb

I had not been to Daejeon for a long time – since the Deli Tours Fest actually in October 2010, so I arranged with Lisa (who was joining in on the travels to Dageon from her city – Daegu) and Deborah to come through for the weekend to visit Deb.

A week or so before I was to leave, I asked Sandy if she wanted to join me as she had not been to Daejeon as yet so she came along as well. We left Yeongcheon at about 12:00 on the Friday afternoon and got to Daejeon at about 16:00, on a lovely sunny, if slightly chilly day. Having not planned anything for that night Sandy and I just found our Motel and then just explored a bit before going to Indy (an Indian restaurant run by Indians people, so the food was bound to be good – thus I was super excited about it, as it had been talked up so much by Deb and Andrea) for an amazing curry for supper. I had Chicken Taka-tak, which was a tomato based chicken dish with some chilli’s though not all that many. With it I had buttered Naan and Lassi. SO SOOOOOOO GOOD! After dinner we tried to find the cinema to go and watch “Black Swan”, but as it turned out we walked in the wrong direction to try and find it, so we ended up going back to the Motel where I was able to watch some cricket.

Saturday morning we had time to kill before we were to meet with Lisa and Deb at 13:00 for lunch and after a breakfast of Fruit waffles and yoghurt, we decided to visit the National Science Museum.

It was a very impressive place with all manor of things on display, from evolution and space travel, to Korean Army vehicles, Air-force planes and Korean ancient history instillations.

We spent the morning there and made our way back to Gallaria to wait for Lisa and Deb to arrive for lunch. At this point Sandy was not feeling herself so we thought it best that she head back to Yeongcheon to rest.

While I waited to the other 2 ladies to arrive I explored a little (mainly coz I was asked to meet them on the Beans and Berries side of Gallaria and I had no idea where that was :-P). Incidentally I never found but I did see both ladies approaching in the distance so I just followed their trail to meet them at the pre-arranged meeting spot. Lunch was a rather tasty sandwich from the food-court at the department store, where we sat and chatted and caught up for about and hour. At this point I thought… “I would like to do something else now” so I threw out the suggestion that was proposed while we were arranging the weekend – Dr Fish Café!

Here is a video montage of the weekend :) :

Dr Fish (which was actually called Trinity Café) is a place where you can go and dip your feet in a pond filled with Remora type little fishes that eat the dead skin off your feet. I had wanted to try a place like that since I got to Korea. At first it was rather ticklish particularly when I had about 30fish attracted to just my right foot, leaving my left and both Deb and Lisa rather starved (excuse the pun) of attention. I do think though that they just moved in order from foot to foot as while we were dangling our feet in the pond two other ladies joined us and eventually we had no fish giving us any attention until they left. I think we actually sat with our feet in the water, just talking for about 3 hours and after that we stayed at the coffee shop for another hour drinking coffee and catching up some more. It was great! I really think I have made good friends with Deb and Lisa. I really enjoy their company, so hopefully when this adventure ends and new adventures begin, we can all keep in touch.

A 4hr coffee time was followed by Dinner at… you guessed it – Indy! I never mentioned I had gone there the previous evening but was more than happy to go again, I loved the food so much! This time I had Mango Lassi with my Lamb Vindaloo and Buttered Naan. After dinner I walked with Deb as we saw Lisa off at the Subway stop (she was headed back to Daegu that night). I had thought Lisa was staying the night so we could share a motel room but that was no longer the case, so I decided to save myself some cash and asked Deb, who graciously allowed me, to stay at her place for the night. Deb lives far out of central Daejeon, in the area known as Techno Valley about a 30min bus ride out.

The Inside of "Indy"

I got to her place and like Soekie’s the previous week, I liked how she had set it up in very minimalistic fashion to save cash for Asian travels post her Korea contract. We watched “Law and Order – Special Victims Unit” and some cricket and then went to bed. The next morning was followed by much the same, however for the 1^st time in a 3 odd months it was raining! I left Deb’s at about 11:45 to get back to central Daejeon by 13:00 as I was meeting Sam and Ruth (two friends, I met doing my TESOL course last January, whom I had not seen since they left for Korea in June and August respectively, the previous year) for lunch. We went to Pascucci Café  and had a nice catch up and I was able to pick their brains about China (where they had been over Lunar New Year) as that is one of the places I want to visit.

All in all it was a great (and much less alcoholic) friend-filled weekend. Thanks to all 5 ladies for their company and friendship!

Stayed tuned for my next adventure right here on Geoff’s Asian Adventures!