Please note: we have returned to Seoul after 3 days largely without Internet. I have posted text for the 3 lost days and will add a few pics tomorrow when we have had tine to download and review the files from our cameras.
With the best of intentions for an early start, we left about half an hour later. This meant not quite making the connections Liz had designed for the bus to Andong, so we could try to make the mask performance at HaHoe village. Further delays were incurred locating correct intercity bus terminals and once in Andong, finding the bus terminus to take us out to HaHoe Village.Despite all this, we still managed to see the mask performance after all.
Gotta love the luxury coaches they have here in Korea. Where most coaches have a centre aisle with 4 seats a cross, the luxury liners here have only 3 large recliners across. Bliss..... Except when you are seated next to a seven year old.... Are we there yet? What a pity I didn't bring the noise cancelling headset.
Arriving at Andong bus station, the next difficulties were working out bus link to Hahoe village and from there, how to get 1.2klm from ticket office to the village, turns out there is a shuttle bus that runs roughly every 10 mins. Even then it's jam packed.
Time to relax and tour the village, right? Wrong, next comes working out where our Hanok Accommodation will be and if we can store bags. What's that, hmm the mask performance starts at two. Ok, good, we can leave our bags here and the man will Hanok will collect them for us. Great all we need do is walk 159 m that way.
Actually the mask performance was very entertaining. Traditional music, drums, gongs and a flute like instrument that sounds much like the chanter from a bagpipe, halfway through I was dragged up to dance. Apart from the question where are you from? The rest of the commentary was in Korean with moments of laughter, so what I think was said was watch how we get theses foreigners moving like the hippos from Fantasia. I must've been accurate cos Amelie laughed her head off at Abba.
The next game to play was wander the village looking for our bed. The map provided wasn't exactly accurate so matching it to real life proved a test. When we thought we found the right place no one was home and in the yard next door the people were disinterested. Besides the street numbers didn't match so why not try looking for them.... Well they didn't match any version of any map. We resorted to the phone. The owner came to save us and lead the weary party back to the place we suspected I the first place.... We recognised it by our bags sitting in the room.
Hanok are the traditional buildings of Korea. A number of buildings for a rough courtyard. Each wing is autonomous, generally following Confucian design with wings for each sex and a cooking area and storage. The living quarters have two sections, a more open, wooden floor sumner, or casual area and an inner more cloistered sleeping area. Paper doors allow the outside world to be closed out and heating us supplied under floor.
Thin mattresses are rolled out to sleep on with doonas of varying thickness seasonally adding to heat insulation. Will reserve judgement on the experience to the morning, when we see if mother can get herself off the floor. For me I'm quite toasty as I write this blog.
Dinner proved to be yummy. We had the famous Andong spicy chicken. Small pieces of chicken seemingly stirr fried with lots of fresh veggies, and spices, especially large chunk of dried chillies. It us the mixed in a soy sauce based sauce and list of noodles. It was home cooking at its best. Both delicious and filling. Muvva must be adapting too. She on,y complained of burning sensations around her mouth and ate more of the veggies and rice, but essentially ate what we ate. Well done Muvva, you are trying so hard.
Morning addendum, ask me if I was warm enough with the underfloor heating. Well I left my drink bottle on the floor and all I need do for a cuppa this morning was add a tea bag. Toasty!
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