Hammy's 2005 Trip To Korea And Japan - Dec 3rd

Walked around this morning in about -3 degrees C. Canberra Champions Trophy 2005 on the TV showed highlights from the Athens Olympics and I swear I saw Nick's sister Carmel! Not too much is open at 7:30-8:00. Entered a shop like a newsagency and the owner said neither hello or goodbye. How rude. At the train station I saw a kid eating an icecream this morning. Little bit cold for my liking.

The markets aren't too busy at this time of the morning.

How much fuel does this tanker hold? Get a real tanker.

Shop that stocks everything. Can't move around inside, but.

Ditto.

One hour and forty minutes to get from Cheonan to Doksan by subway. Not bad for 2200 Won. Almost nobody on the train when we started off.

An example of an empty subway train - Cheonan terminus.

Quite busy by the time we reached Doksan. Miky rang Mi-young, So-eun's mum, and made a time to meet at the National Museum of Korea. We wanted 2pm but she insisted on 1:30 due to the size of the place. We had to change to an unpopular train line and were late. It was about 2:10pm when we got inside. Mi-young was in a taxi collecting a friend and her kids and arrived about half an hour later. Talk about difficult to coordinate if you don't have a mobile phone.

The museum is massive and has some 22000 artifacts on display. And that was only in the Exhibition Hall. I took heaps of photos and two of the assistants told me not to use my flash - one in Korean and the other tried very hard in English to which I replied, "Mun jae obsoyo" - no problem. Many of the relics are from th e1st, 5th and 6th Centuries. Amazing what they have on display and we couldn't see anywhere near everything.

Bell in the National Museum of Korea.

Artwork - plenty of this on display. Most of my photos were blurred due to not being able to use a flash or a tripod. Not that I carried a tripod with me around the country. Don't want to look like a tourist or anything.

12th Century Celadon pitcher.

Pic of the 3rd levels, each of 2 sections - big place indeed.

Gilt-bronze crown.

Laquer dishes from 1st Century, Pyeongyang.

Wooden horse from a tomb from 1st Century, Pyeongyang.

Mr Jo, So-eun's dad, ws going to pick us up but got stuck in traffic. We took the wrong subway and had to go a few stations further. Well, I guess that it is easy to confuse 용산 with 신용산, even if you are Korean [Editor's note - no names mentioned, Miky]. A woman with one hand was very helpful with directions.

Pic of the subway train not quite full - evidenced by the fact that a girl still has room to read.

Gi-young had prepared meat for tea. It was delicious. Yu-Jin and Seong-hoon did a lot of play-fighting and used their taekwondo skills to great effect. Couldn't get them to bed until 11:30pm. It started snowing tonight.