Suwon market district

Today I wandered around Suwon markets. Eight bajillion dodgy shoe and handbag stores, dried tentacles of god knows what, little korean kids excitedly yelling "hello!" (I taught a couple to say "G'Day"), teenage girls exploding into giggles if I smile hello, probably mistook me for brad pitt or george negus or someone, happens all the time.

I'm really getting into Korean food. The standard side dish to everything is "kimchi", which is fermented cabbage in a hot pepper sauce. Found it pretty optional at first, but now I'm a big fan.

In my wanderings I came across a little buddhist temple nestled in a little forrested hill in the middle of the busy market district. Inside, a cool little monk dude taught me how to pray like a buddhist (turns out I'm not flexible enough to do it properly) and then we shelled some peanuts and conversed about the deeper things. We had zero language in common, but I'm pretty sure that what he told me was extraordinarily profound, and he seemed to respond when I said "Australia" and "Sydney". I kept expecting him to break into some wikid kung fu moves.

I've uploaded a few photos here.

KT - all this time you never told me you were a Korean telecommunications mogul!

As I type this, Gus and Liz's wedding reception must be getting underway... I'll see if I can make a phone call later...

Update: shortly after the above was written, I learnt the following useful fact: If you order take-out, and bring it back to your hotel room only find that they neglected to include chop-sticks, and your hotel room is seemingly empty of utensils, then a comb* does an admirable job. It can be used horizontally to scoop up goop, or spikes-down to stab chunks of meat and lift them to your mouth. I may never have thought of it were it not for Manny.

*- The comb was brand new, and had not touched a human hair in its short life. Unless there were human hairs in my take-out, which is possible.