Jeollabuk-do Trip - Day 1: Muju

Ahhh, time again to post pictures from our latest break! We very much look forward to our breaks because it means we get to travel again and experience this wonderful country we're currently living in.

After much consulting of our guidebook, questioning of coworkers and students, and talking between ourselves, we finally settled on the Jeolla-do region for our five-day term break. We really wanted to experience a more rural area of Korea, which is why we decided to try out the least-densely populated mid-west coast area. Jeolla-do is divided into two provinces, north and south (do means province, Jeollabuk-do is the north province and Jeollanam-do is the south province). We were originally thinking we'd just explore the whole of the Jeolla region, but as we were sitting in the train station waiting for our train we looked deeper into our non-Lonely Planet guidebook.* Then we found that the Jeolla region is actually pretty expansive (for Korea) and has quite a lot of interesting natural attractions. While we were trying to figure out all the things we wanted to do, we soon realized we wouldn't be able to do them all during our short break. So we concentrated on the northern province. We took the train to a "small" city called Jeonju and then did day trips from there to different national and provincial parks. We did a lot of bus traveling, but it was worth it to get out into nature a bit.

Thursday, March 1, the first day after arriving in Jeonju, we tried to go to Deogyusan National Park, but the timing of the two buses we had to take didn't work out quite as we'd hoped. The first bus brought us to a truly small town called Muju. A second bus was supposed to take us to the national park, but the next bus out of Muju would get to the park about half an hour before we'd have to turn around and come back to catch the last bus back to Jeonju. The man at the ticket counter told us there was also a shuttle we could try that might leave sooner than the next bus, so we followed his directions to a small hospital just behind the bus station and waited there with another young man. And we waited and waited and waited. And nothing happened. In all, we probably waited for close to an hour and a half before deciding it wasn't worth it (was almost time for the real bus to leave anyway...) so we actually just stayed in Muju. At first we were disappointed we didn't get to Deogyusan, but in the end, we really enjoyed the quiet and relaxing afternoon exploring the town. It was actually the first real small town we've been to here in Korea. We really liked knowing we could get pretty much everywhere in Muju just on foot without taking any public transportation. We spent a peaceful several hours looking around the town and taking pictures before catching an evening bus back to Jeonju.

The local form of tractor - reminds me of a garden tiller!

Jonathan overlooking the river (we waited for the shuttle by that hospital in the background...)

Muju's interesting bridge (the town probably had 5 or so bridges in total)

View from the bridge, looking up the river (click to view larger)

A really large church/school complex, especially for this small of a town!

A pavilion on a hill

There was a sort of really small park with some exercise machines and a bridge

Ali stretching... or compressing?

Looking out across the city

Pretty large statue on what might have been a Catholic church

Ali at play :)

A cool map we found that shows kilometers from Korea (click to view larger)

Jonathan capturing the shot below

An interesting dam that I hadn't seen before - it seems to be a tube of some sort with holes in it

Mirrored Mountains

Jonathan again capturing the picture below

Water and Sky

Jonathan once again caught in the act of photo-taking (see photo below for result)

Stepping-stone "bridge"

Posing for the picture!

Jonathan found some ice a little ways upstream, and it turned out to be solid enough to walk on!
He is right in the middle of the river here. Ali was scared to look...

Sunning

Sunset

Swan boats out of season

We weren't sure what this was commemorating, but it appears to be skis on a couple of mountains

We wandered into a sports complex - this is a soccer field with vine-covered bleachers

And a large stadium - called Firefly Gymnasium - with a canvas roof and many tennis courts in it

Lights at night

*Seriously, if you're ever going to travel somewhere and want to use a guidebook, get a Lonely Planet or Rough Guides one. We bought a Frommer's guidebook for cheap at a Borders when they were having all their going-out-of-business sales so we got it for really cheap, but we both agree that it's lacking compared to the Lonely Planet one we used last year in Tanzania.

For pictures and commentary about our other day trips in Jeollabuk-do, click the links below.
Day 2: Daedunsan
Day 3: Byeonsan Bando