Visitors From Another Planet!

Or at least, another continent.

My new blogging plan is to attempt to get up to date before Ann-Marie and Dave get out here to visit us. This is no small task, unless I gloss over a lot of the details. So, here goes!

My parents came to visit in April, squeezed neatly into the Easter holiday (not our holiday. We never get that long off work!). I woke up foolishly early hoping for a call to say they'd arrived safely at Incheon, then stayed awake hoping for a call saying they were safely en route and were at the rest stop halfway here, then sat around and fretted about the fact that we were going to have to leave for work before they arrived. As Becky and I were about 2 minutes from work, we got a call saying they were in taxi heading for the apartment. So I went straight back home and stood around looking out for them, only to see Dad peering out of a window as the taxi driver took them in completely the wrong direction. Luckily, I was in an energetic mood and was able to sprint after the taxi and rescue them! Unfortunately I then had to go straight to work.

After recovering from their jetlag a little, we spent the next few days going out for all our favourite Korean food (trying to avoid things with tentacles), re-exploring the neighbourhood we live in, sending them up mountains, drinking a litre and a half of whiskey and fighting a lot about who was going to pay for things. I took two unpaid holiday days so I could spend a little more time with them, so we went over to Busan for two nights. We took a long walk down the beach and visited Beomeosa, the enormous Buddhist temple, where we managed to catch part of the celebrations of Buddha's birthday.

We also managed to get Mum into a cable car up a mountain in the centre of Busan, which proved to be pretty painless and gave some amazing views, even if my insistence on trekking to visit a historic gate mentioned by the Lonely Planet guide proved a little wasted (it was a bit rubbish to be honest. A lot of historic Korean sites have had to be rebuilt thanks to the Japanese trying to destroy them all. This one looked like it had been built last week from scratch. Boo!). After introducing Mum and Dad to the wonder of a Dunkin' Donuts breakfast, we headed over to Tongyeong to meet Becky for the weekend. This proved to be the most terrifying bus ride experienced in Korea so far, thanks to our driver's somewhat cavalier attitude to speed limits.

Tongyeong turned out to be a pretty cool place. We were under the impression it was a tiny town on the coast and were hoping for a nice beach. It was definitely on the coast. It turned out to be quite big and spread out, so we picked a motel in the harbour area. Using the tourist map we found, we attempted to make our way to the beach for a swim. Sadly, Korea's idea of a good swimming beach doesn't seem quite in line with mine - I quite like sand and I'd generally prefer not to have to dodge fishing boats. It seems all of Tongyeong's nice beaches are on the islands, which we sadly didn't have time to visit. Becky did manage to befriend a small Korean child who walked with us for 15 minutes or so until we stopped to write things in the 2 metre stretch of sand we were able to find.

Food was also a little awkward, as seems to be the way in the coastal towns. Obviously the emphasis is on seafood, and none of us were really in the mood for that (I rarely am to be honest), and we couldn't seem to find anything like galbi or our other 'safe' Korean favourites, so we settled on Pizza Hut. The Sunday was Dad's birthday, so Becky and I nipped out and bought more Dunkin' Donuts breakfast treats, then we headed to Tongyeong's cable car (advertised as the longest in Korea...). Sadly, the entire population of Jeollanamdo seems to have the same idea and there was barely enough room to spin a Korean child. Still, after almost two hours waiting, we were able to board and were whizzed up to the top. The views were incredible and proved to be well worth the wait. Then it was time to head back to Gwangju, so we took Dad to VIPs for a huge birthday dinner.

The remaining days were spent eating more, drinking more whiskey and sending Mum and Dad off on day trips to bamboo museums, traditonal Korean villages, Yangdong market and encouraging them to get lost trying to find their way to our apartment. All too soon it was time to say goodbye and pack them off to Incheon. It was amazing having them here with us, I just wish it could've been for longer and that we'd been able to take some proper holidays.