In which Layla and Roz are unwowed by a top UNESCO city, hunt for beer and spend a day at the airport

by Layla

Having awoken from my afternoon nap, Roz and I returned to the bathhouse for a pre-prandial soak in the hot water - very pleasant. And then onwards to an Italian restaurant for our anniversary meal, which was very tasty - spaghetti with vegetables, and a bottle of prosecco. Afterwards, Roz popped in to the posh chocolate shop and bought me a red chocolate anniversary heart - very sweet. I ate it in Cafe Zoo, and we both absemiously sipped mint tea as we had failed to locate a convenient bar.

The next day we rather slept in, so it was with unwanted haste that we jumped up, checked out, and took a taxi to Seoul Station, with the plan of buying bullet train tickets to our next destination, Gyeongju, a famous and allegedly beautiful city recognised by UNESCO as one of the world's most culturally significant. Drama ensued when the ticket machine wouldn't take our card, and nor would the ATM... fortunately we eventually located the one 'global ATM', extracted as much cash as we could, bought the tickets, and retired to a French cafe for juice, coffee, and cheese bread.

The train itself was delightfully efficient and whizzed us to the other side of the country in two hours. One shuttle bus later, we were standing bemused on the side of the road trying to figure out where our hotel was. And then a cheery man from our bus offered to drive us. And despite what we have been taught, into his car we hopped. Fortunately he meant only well, and deposited us at our hotel safely and efficiently. When I say hotel, Sa Rang Chae was really a guesthouse, of the traditional Korean 'hanok' style, very pretty to look at, with cool roof that twirled up at the corners, and the rooms opening out to a little courtyard where once can have breakfast. However, consistent with its traditional style, we were allocated an 'ondol' room, which means a sleeping mat on a wooden floor; said floor is heated from below at night. Neither of us were very good at sleeping on our sleeping mat, and - rather like the princess and the pea - persuaded the owners to give us mat after mat til we perched precariously upon five sleeping mats on the second night!

We'd meant to stay for four nights, but we didn't really bond with Gyeongju (though I'd expected it to be the highlight of the holiday) and only stayed for two. On the first afternoon we ventured out into the town, past huge grassy mounds which were the Shilla kingdom's version of pyramids. Town was a busy, neon place, with huge numbers of hiking shops and various other clothes and mobile phone shops. And a couple of cafes - we had lemonade and yoghurt in one, before retiring to our ondol to contemplate the evening's options. We'd planned to go to a Japanese restaurant, but it was a bit early so we searched in vain for a bar. South Korea, outside of Seoul, doesn't seem to be a place where people sit and drink in bars. We followed the signs for 'January Coffee and Beer' up a staircase and reached a terrifying big room of individual curtained booths, but even there they failed to produce beer, only offering us the ubiquitous lemonade at a price that made us suspect we were due some kind of sordid extras along with it...

Finishing our lemonades, we hopped onto wifi and noticed a rave review on a blog of a vegetarian restaurant, just out of town. Roz pointed out that we'd spent most of the day travelling and she felt deprived of a proper adventure, so we hopped in a taxi. As we drove out of town, down a long, dark motorway, we started to get cold feet that were only exacerbated when we arrived at what I confirmed by matching the Korean writing on the sign with that from the blog was the restaurant. Soon we were installed inside, sitting on the floor at a tiny wooden table, the only customers in an austere and silent restaurant, and a secret terror that we would never get back to our hanok. Our fears were unfounded - course after course of vegetarian Korean food was presented to us, the majority of which was delicious, and when the woman in charge decided we were finished, she called a taxi for us. A bizarre experience, and a rather enjoyable one, in a somewhat terrifying way. We spent the rest of the evening on our tiny ondol listening to The Moth podcasts and playing cards.

The next day Roz headed off for a run and got horribly lost and entangled in a band of about 1000 Korean children on school trips to look at the grassy mound tombs. Having eventually extracted herself and located the hanok, we changed, ate breakfast, and took a bus to Bulguk-sa, a very famous temple complex up in the hills outside Gyeongju. It was nice to be out of town, and we explored the temple with much interest, before climbing up a steep path through the hills for 3.5km to the Seokguram Grotto, our second UNESCO World Heritage site of the day, and one of the world's top examples of Buddhist art. It was rather lovely, with a great view down to the sea. When the ubiquitous million schoolchildren descended upon us, we fled, and walked back down the long path (which felt rather more pleasant and less long on the way down!) to the original temple, to catch a bus back to town, having had a rather pleasant day.

Determined to make the evening just as pleasant, we failed to find a bar yet again, but went to a pleasant pizza place where we procured a bottle of Malbec with our pizza, and supplemented the 'tiramasu' with ice cream from a local ice cream shop, and then we picked up beer and pringles from the supermarket and shut ourselves into our ondol again for more Moth podcasts and some confusion about how long we really wanted to spend in Gyeongju. Alas our next destination required a flight, and despite there being copious numbers of these, Friday was the most popular day to fly to Jeju island, and all were fully booked. We decided to muse upon it overnight.

I slept poorly, despite the multiple sleeping pads, and in the darkness of the night got very frustrated about the flights to Jeju. When I woke up Roz, we couldn't decide what to do, but her face implied that she did not wish a third night in the ondol room drinking supermarket beer... we discussed going to a nearby city called Busan but for some reason, I had taken against this and didn't want to. We went for a stroll around the tombs, and inside one of them, and then to see an astronomy tower built in ancient times and situated in a park, before returning to the hanok, our decision made - we would go to the airport and try to get on one of the many planes to Jeju. Well, it seemed a good idea at the time...

A very hot slog to the express bus terminal had us miss the hourly airport bus by 2 minutes. Frustrated, we retired to Paris Baguette, a very popular bakery and teashop chain in South Korea that has already been our salvation. We sat down in its air conditioned serenity, had drinks and cheese rolls, and read our books til the allotted time had passed. We then returned to the bus station and took an hour-long bus to Gimhae airport. A lovely, serene airport filled with Koreans boarding planes to Jeju, there were three companies that plied the route, and each of them had a 'stand-by' desk. Korean Airways were rude and shouted at me that there were no stand-bys for the whole of the weekend. I fled to Air Busan, who put me at the bottom of a long list of potential standbys for a flight departing five hours hence. And then to Jeju Air where the air hostesses, who couldn't speak a word of English, bade me return in a couple of hours for the standby list.

Roz and I retired to what was quite a delightful outdoor cafe, overlooking the airport and the mountains, bought fresh kiwi juice, and read our books in what has ironically been one of the most relaxing afternoons of our holiday so far. It was only when I realised people had started to queue at Jeju air that I had to dash to get my standby number. Then we had a rather delicious bimimbap meal of rice, vegetables and miso soup, before returning to the Jeju Air desk at the appropriate time. Despite having handed over large handfuls of won (Korean money), we failed to get a seat on the flight and the air hostesses returned our money. I find the culture of not being noticeably sympathetic quite frustrating - first when we'd missed the airport bus by 2 minutes, and now with the flight. I sloped off to our last hope, Busan Air. After 45 minutes, we were told we couldn't fly. And as such, were stranded.

We bought tickets for the next available flight (Sunday morning), and grabbed a taxi to the place Roz had wanted to go all along, Busan. 45 minutes later, we were deposited at the Angel Motel, a fairly basic place which has the benefit of a real bed! The joy. Plus the area, Seomyeon, was bustling and full of people on nights out. Again, this seemed to mean coffee shops rather than bars, but we strode through busy, neon streets to the posh Lotte Hotel where we had cocktails (me) and wine (Roz) to the dulcet tones of a lounge singer in the hotel's bar, and then back through the streets to an Italian cafe/restaurant where they had no wine but sold us beer, which was only allowed to be sipped outside on the terrace, and certainly not inside - bizarre. It was a tad chilly but we had a pleasant drink, and were just about to head for our hotel when we spotted a 'New York Fries' joint, and couldn't resist. Another rather pleasant little establishment, we ate our fill and had a beer (inside!), before returning to the hotel at an unheard-of midnight.