In Two Months

I have awesome news!!

Less than two months from now I will be on vacation, in JAPAN!!

I am super excited, have borrowed *cough*stolen*cough* my friend's Lonely Planet Japan, and now I need your advice of where I should go and what I should do and see!

I'm going to get the Rail Pass and I'll for sure be going to Tokyo and Kyoto.


 I also am very thankful for my awesome friend's chronicle of her trip to Japan so I know where all the UNESCO sites are.

So please let me know where I need to go and where I should stay or more importantly where I shouldn't go or what I should avoid!!


From Busan with Dreaming of Vacation Love!
Jenna

Green Tea and Fresh Air

This past weekend a few friends and I went to the tiny little town of Boseong (보성) to go to the stunning green tea fields.  Now from Busan it's a bit of a trek.  By bus it takes 3 hours each way and the two morning buses leave at 6:30 and the next not until 9:40 from Sasang.  You could go to somewhere nearby and then transfer, but we went the more direct route.  The last bus of the day leaves really early at 5:40 so you either have to have a jam packed day like we did, or spend the night.  It's a small town, so maybe if you went somewhere else close by for the next day it would be a better plan. 

Anyway, back to the real story.  While being half asleep through mountains and greenery on the way to Boseong I had one of those "Korea is Freaking Beautiful" moments.  These tend to happen often on bus trips, and sometimes on the KTX, while my Indiana-bred self sees lush mountains and hills and valleys very different from home.

I loved what I was seeing so much I ignored the spotty bus window to try to capture it for you.  The mountains get so green and heavy with life and the sky was so blue and I'm sitting in a lovely air-conditioned bus far away from bugs and work-caused sweat that it looks amazingly beautiful. 

After a nice doze, we arrived.  It really was a beautiful day for the green tea fields, and even though there were a lot of people around it never felt overwhelmingly crowded.  There's a lot of things to see so the crowds seemed pretty well spread out. 

Even before the main entrance, the tea fields were beautiful. 




Now I had been to tea fields before in Malaysia in the Cameron Highlands, and they were also really stunning- and more extensive, but the weather was a lot nicer this time around. 

                 I'm super nerdy and decided I had to re-create the picture above from Malaysia,

               but in Korea, and with awesome heart sunglasses, of course.  

Before we started our climb up into the tea fields we had some really rockin green tea ice cream.  It was so good I was almost done before I could be bothered to photograph it.  Also I had another one on the way back down the mountain, it was pretty much my lunch- I regret NOTHING.

There was a restaurant that offered green tea bibimbap, and other green tea infused Korean dishes, but I was too busy snacking on ice cream to sample the other stuff. 

Part of it was a bit of a climb, but the views were just beautiful. 

It really is nice to get out of the city for the day.  Even when a lot of that day was on a bus. 

                                                         Me and my lovely companions.

I just really love how in Korean this reads "Poto Jone' due to the lack of 'f' and 'z' sounds in Hangul. 

I saw these kids marching through the rows carrying sticks and whacking the tea it was a very Peter Pan "Following the Leader" sort of moment. 

Even though it was a bit of a hike, the overlook was really great, as was the whole place really.  It's totally understandable why this place is a big tourist draw. 

So much so that my future self came back in time to put my initials in the concrete. 




After hiking up and down tea fields, we went to a really nice jimjilbang in one of the nicer hotels that looked out over the ocean and had a green tea bath (they are green tea crazy over there and they stick with the theme).   Although I didn't feel like I was sitting in a cup of tea, like their statue suggests

We took a taxi there for less than 10,000won (10 dollars) and had a lovely relaxing time before running like madwomen to catch the last bus home without a second to spare (it started backing away before we were even seated).


Even with the close call and the long bus rides,  it was a beautiful day out in the fresh air away from the city, and I highly recommend it.

From Busan with Green Tea Love,
Jenna

Happy Buddha's Birthday Busan

Since it is still Buddha's Birthday for another hour or so, I decided to share with you a few pictures from a couple of the Buddhist temples around Busan. 

Right now Korea is covered with beautiful lanterns for the occasion

Part of me wishes I could decorate my house with them, they look so festive. 

This one is obviously my favorite.  I just love the bright beautiful colors.

I went over to Yeong-gungsa which is my favorite temple to take some pictures and see all the lanterns (although there weren't that many and I was kind of sad).

But the day was beautiful and I just sat out on the rocks away from the crowds and took some pictures.  This is one of the panorama shots that I wish showed up bigger.





I also love how the black and white pictures of the temple look so timeless. 

I half expect to see the date 1950 scrawled in a corner somewhere even though I just took this picture last weekend.

From the big expansive temples of Busan,

to small temples tucked away in the mountains,

Buddha had a great birthday, and that you had a lovely day as well.


From Busan with Peace and Love,
Jenna

Happy Buddha's Birthday

I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend,

and I wish you all a Lovely, Peaceful, and Happy Buddha's Birthday!




From Busan with Love,
Jenna

Chainlink Korea: Baskin Robbins

Western chains that have been planted and even grown roots in Korea have the power to take you home for half a minute, or they can leave you feeling like you're in some sort of weird Korea/Western mind-warp where nothing quite fits. They're like if you put on someone else's shoes, even if they look just like your pair they're worn in different places and feel a bit different.

In honor of the wonderfully weird, and the strange familiarity I'm going to do a series of posts about chains from home who, like me, have found a weird home in Korea.

Unless this is your first time reading my blog, (if so then "HI!" and welcome to my crazy mental conga line) you are probably well aware of my love of/obsession with cake.  But really who doesn't love cake?  And especially people of my generation- who doesn't love ice cream cake? So off to Baskin Robbins it is.

Now Korea loves a pretty cake and ice cream cakes are no exception.

Although there is a big difference between Korean and American ice cream cakes- in Korea- it's just ice cream.  No crunchy bits, no cake, just ice cream,

... and dinosaurs.

....a lot of dinosaurs.

 Seriously I don't know why out of the dozen cakes or a quarter of them are dinosaurs. I mean I totally dig dinosaurs, I'm a child of the 80's, dinosaurs are totally rad;

and Baskin Robbins is obviously a fan of "Land Before Time" and Little Foot as well.

They also threw in some dragons for good measure.

You can get multiple flavors of ice cream to go with your marshmallow blobs,

they even a full on variety 'cake' with each slice, a different flavor.  I've actually had part of the variety cake and it was yummy, as ice cream is and should be.

If you don't get a variety option by the slice, you can get a mix of ice cream throughout the cake itself- it's even illustrated on the card so you know what you're getting before you buy it. According to the sign these cake flavors are (from top to bottom) green tea, cherries jubilee, very very strawberry, chocolate, and something called Almond Bong Bong.

Either way the cakes are very pretty,

and sometimes weirdly abstract.

But they come from a land where all animals love ice cream and marshmallows, and that's not a bad place to be.

Overall the Korean Baskin Robbins cake I've had tastes just like their ice cream, which is good, but I do miss the crunchy bits I grew up with.  But they do give you dry ice when you buy a cake which is fun to play with so that's definitely a plus. 


From the Baskin Robbins Freezer Case with Love,






Jenna