gochang and naju, korea

after a few days in seoul, we took a bus down to the country, a noticeably different sort of place...

lots of rice fields out here.

made some new friends

so i learned about something called temple stays.

it's like a hostel, but you stay at a buddhist temple. i would love to do that one day and see how monks live.

as you would guess, the pace of life was quite different here for people...

and animals alike!

for dinner, we got to try korean beef for the first time. it was a circular building where you buy your own meat in one section...

then walk next door to the connecting restaurant to cook it.

some of the meat purchased

the simple setup. some vegetables (lettuce and perilla leaves) to wrap the meat in along with some green onion salad.

banchan wasn't much but i was too busy stuffing myself w/ the meat to really care. and while i can't remember the details, just trust me when i say, it was damn good.

after some bbq, it's common to eat neng myun (cold noodle dish in beef broth). the noodles however were darker than usual. i think they are normally made from buckwheat, but in this case, these were made from some kind of root, but I forget the name. But this was so refreshing after eating all that delicious meat.