Carrie and Emily of course could have cared less about the view, and Carrie, I think, was a bit scared because she kept asking if we could go back down. The place in the photo above has no guard rails or anything and as you can see from her face she was not impressed.
After we came down we went a traditional Korean restaurant, where you take your shoes off and sit on the floor. As you can see from the photo the spread was large. However, I don't know what most of it was. The waiter spoke English well and we knew the meat we were ordering (duck) and he told us a few of the side dishes but we didn't want to ask him about everything. He was really nice and even made the girls each a balloon animal. (We also found out at most restaurants you do not tip, it's considered insulting.)
We had our first taste of pickle kimchi here, and we liked it, although I have to eat in my lettuce roll and not by itself. I'll explain kimchi for a moment: you can pretty much take any veggie and pickle it through a certain process and make kimchi. Cabbage is the most common although we had pickle and eggplant here. It's generally spiced with dried red pepper but not always. Honestly, I mostly find the thought of anything pickled revolting but I have tried it. I'm not a fan. Maybe it'll grow on me. It has been served at every single restaurant we've been to here. Moving on to the above mentioned lettuce rolls; you take your lettuce leaf, put your rice, meat and whatever else you want in it and roll and eat. It's fun. I don't really know if we're doing it the Korean way but that's our way and I like it. I felt bad when we left this place because while we did at least taste everything, it's very different from what we grew up eating and it is hard to develop new tastes when you're our age, so a lot of the food got thrown away.
After lunch we went to Donghwasa, about 5 minutes drive, which is the site of a Buddhist temple complex. It was a really pretty setting but I will be honest, I found it unsettling to see people bowing down before the Buddha statues. We just enjoyed looking at the beautiful buildings and picturesque setting.
The paper lanterns were hung over every open pavilion. Some of them had tags attached with writing and I think they may have been prayers but that's just my guess.That statue of Buddha in the last picture is supposed to have two of the Buddha's bones inside given by the Myanmar government. The statue is 33 meters high, which is roughly 100 feet.
In the picture below is the inside of the Daeungjeon main worshiping hall. The brochure I got says "It is presumed to have been built between 1727 and 1732." It has three different statues in it, each a different Buddha. I don't really understand the difference so I'm not going to attempt to explain but their names are Amitabha Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, & Pharmaceutical Buddha (center). The giant stone one is also the Pharmaceutical Buddha.
It was a really beautiful area as I said before and I enjoyed seeing it. We want to go back another time when we have the backpack carrier for Emily. It was very difficult carrying her everywhere and up/down the numerous fairly steep steps.
We also went bowling on post that evening so it was a busy day. Carrie beat both of us with her little bowling slide! She was determined to carry the ball by herself too. It was a fun day, but we were glad to be home that night!
No comments:
Post a Comment