A fatal vision...

Good people of my acquaintance, you will be glad to hear that I was not eaten by wolves whilst out in the wilderness!

We journeyed to Jirisan National Park yesterday on a bus full of terrifically old Koreans who eyed us with distrust. I’m not sure why everybody was so old… I’m also not sure why the bus had such ornate décor or why the bus driver kept bowing to the wizened passengers… Perhaps we accidently got on a bus reserved for very important pensioners. Or VIPs if you will. But I digress; the important thing is that we made it to the park in the pensioner mobile.

The temple was, of course, splendid to behold as was the surrounding park. An orgy for the eye one might say. We went on a wee hike through the park and once again our trail ended with a vision of a frozen waterfall. This waterfall was quite immense and made the waterfall we saw in Busan seem like a pansy in comparison.

When we were finished massaging our respective chis we went in search of food. By which I mean we walked to the nearby town to find a restaurant, not that we went foraging in the forest for nuts and berries. We had to be up at 7 yesterday to get the bus and we didn’t have time for breakfast so we were both quite hungry at this stage. I felt kinda like Dougal the time he forgot to eat his breakfast and became so crazed with hunger whilst on the mainland that he tried to order chips from a garda station. We were walking back to town and I was just thinking how much I’d like a sandwich and a nice cup of tea when I saw before me a ‘tea cultural centre’ of gigantic proportions surrounded by sculptures of giant cups of tea. Naturally, I feared that I had gone delightfully mad from lack of sustenance and that this vision of a giant tea cup was but a mirage. I began to question my sanity in Macbeth-esque fashion.

Is this a tea cup which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A tea cup of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?  

I guess Macbeth’s situation was slightly more extreme. I mean he had just killed the King; all I did was skip breakfast. Anyway, it turned out that the tea centre was indeed real and I wasn't mad so I'd broken into soliloquy for nothing. I guess its not that strange to build a giant monument in worship of tea. There's always time for a nice cup of tea. Sure, didn't the Lord himself pause for a nice cup of tea before giving himself up for the world? The answer is 'no.' He did not.

After we moved on from the tea centre we found some restaurants in town. To my dismay, all the restaurants were sea food restaurants. I’m still not quite ready for Korean sushi; the food isn’t just raw, it’s actually alive. I just don’t find the idea of a baby octopus on a plate angrily shaking its tentacles at me all that appetising. So I ordered ‘bibimbap.’ It's a Korean dish containing a mix of egg, vegetables and rice and is quite devoid of all living creatures.

I hope you are as replete with information as I was with food. I bid you adieu. :)