Culture Shock!

We left Seoul on Sunday, September 18th. We had plans to bike from Seoul to Suwon, a "town" just outside of Seoul. Henry gave us really great directions and a lot of the time we were able to cycle on the bike path next to the Han River in Seoul. However, once we got off the bike path chaos immersed us, and Henry was no long there to translate for us. We were quickly confused by the noise, cars, korean language and writing around us. Culture shock hit us like a brick after we left our comfort zone of Henry's apartment.

We got our barrings and made it to Suwon with little trouble. However, to our surprise, Suwon seemed to be just an extension of Seoul. We biked about 37.4km that day, and I'm glad we didn't do any more - because we were exhausted from the hustle and bussle of the korean city. We visited the castle that evening, which looks a lot like the Seoul castle and walked the fortress the next day.

Day two of cycling we headed for Gongju. Our map does not do it justice with the distances. We cylced 98.39km that day. We were exhausted, too much for our second day of cycling. We decided to stay two nights in this "quiet" town and check out the castle there, as well as the fortress.

After a rest day and checking out the sites of Gongju we made it to Jeonju. We are getting the hang of the distances, though it was still 84km of cycling. Our goal was to have shorter days in the begining of our trip. Jeonju was beautiful, however. We walked around a Hanok Village.

Today we are in Naejangsan National Park. Our first night of camping, and we are the only ones at the campground. Martin and I are getting used to cycling, however I still don't think my butt is used to it yet - it hurts! Anyway, we are about to head to a temple and tomorrow we are planning another 65km to the next city. We have finally made it out of the cities and we are happy to have a little space today. :)