From Yongin to Hein-sa, South Korea

[Hindu1936]

During the semester break, Old Woman and I decided to take the ride from Yongin (50 km south of Seoul) to the historic Hein Temple 60 km west of Daegu, about 300 k one way. It is famous because there are more than 80,000 carved wooden blocks of Buddha's sayings stored there. You can buy a rubbing from one of the blocks for a few won. Normally, it would be a 6 hour ride, but by leaving at an hour before daylight (the highways to the road south are very well lit) We had the ride down Hwy. #3 almost to ourselves. We stopped at a restaurant and had tong seo yuuk and chajang ramyon. Finally, #3 ended as we turned onto #19. Now it was a curvy mountain road with the usual farm tractor blocking the way. We got to the temple at about 10:30, so it was really a fast ride. Temple road is crowded with tour buses, vacationing families, supply trucks and the ubiquitous hikers. We met John Johnson there, hiked around the temple, took pictures, had bulgogi for lunch, then rode to Daegue where we spent the night in a cheap yogwan. Then the fun began. "Can we take the coast road to Samchuk where we had our High school party?" It seemed like a nice thing to do. I agreed. It's guess that more than 3 million cars a year have rearend collisions with themselves on that road. The signs don't say "you can't make this curve" but they should. Worse, all the curves are corrugated. The scenery is rumored to be beautiful, but I don't know. My eyes were glued to the road, both for the curves and the threat of an oncoming car taking up my half. It took 13 hours. Yes, it really was beautiful. Rivers, apple orchards, grapes, beautiful valleys all through the mountains. If I hadn't had to stop every 30 minutes to get the kinks out of the frame--really sharp curves--we could have made the trip in 10 hours. We also stopped at Samchuk for Sahmchil gooey, a fried perch, and a rest stop for a chew of Copenhagen. Can't chew while riding. She hates brown splotched clothes. It was really dark when we at last got back to our villa and unpacked, but the weekend was worth it.