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Andong is a city that most associate with soju or the annual Mask Dance Festival. However, if you ask people what else there is to see in this small eastern Korean town, they might not be able to provide an answer. Recently, Jo and I ventured out of the city center to explore three historical sights.

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As of yesterday, I have finished production of my six episodes for G-Korea on Arirang TV. All the shooting, audio, and editing are done.

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It’s festival season here in Korea, and while Korea’s festivals are awesome and one of my favorite things about the country, I have, at times, had a terrible time at a festival because I didn’t follow these simple rules. These rules are generally not unique to Korean festivals, but useful nonetheless.

You can find out which festivals are going on here.

Interspersed in this article are pictures from the “rape and cosmos festival” in Guri, near Seoul. That’s rape and cosmos the flowers, not rape and cosmos as in Kobe Bryant and Carl Sagan.

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Chris Backe of Chris in South Korea fame, has been working on an iPhone app called Seoul Taxi. designed to make life easier for visitors and residents alike, the app concentrates on making your communications with Seoul’s many and varied taxi drivers something of a more pleasant experience. Chris was  gracious enough to give me a free copy to review.

Designed for iOS 4 , the app is specifically for iPhone and iPad Touch and gets scaled if you use it on iPad. I can understand the choice here, if you are going to a destination I guess you are more likely to take your phone with you. On the other hand the iPhone’s display is a little small for your average middle aged taxi driver. Having to hand one’s phone over to a taxi driver is always a dodgy proposition while in contrast holding up the iPad’s 10 inch display is fine for even the most far sighted of Seoul’s taxi drivers!

The app lists over 2000 destinations in Seoul including over 800 restaurants and close to 100 hotels as well as other destinations ranging from art galleries (who knew there were so many galleries in Seoul) to over 150 bars.

Now if you know where you are going and are strictly using the app to assist you in your taxi dealings, simply enter the name of your  destination and hit search, odds are you’ll get the info you need.

Once you have found your destination you are presented with a couple of options. Selecting “Taxi Card”will display the address information in big , bold, white-on-black Korean which you then show your driver. Being an iOS app, hitting the phone number will place a call to the destination – particularly good if your driver still hasn’t figured out where to go from the address and hitting the location address option will bring up Google Maps just in case the taxi driver still has no idea where to go.

one of the best features of Taxi Guide Seoul is being able to share the taxi card information. You are able to send the address to people via MMS message – handy if you are meeting a group of people and need to give them directions. Finally you can create your own cards for destinations you find that Chris and his developer HoodHot have yet to discover.

The big advantage of Taxi Guide is its ability to be used off line – visitors to Seoul don’t want to be paying expensive roaming charges.

However this means some features that would otherwise be standard in an app like this are missing. Any app that deals with destinations these days needs Foursquare integration. It just makes sense that upon arrival at your destination you would “check-in”. And for the legions of people intent on sharing every aspect of their lives, Twitter is also missing. Elsewhere, Seoul is constantly changing and apps like this need frequent updates. Future updates will have to be potentially large downloads, where as a “live” app might be able to handle the dynamic nature of Seoul more efficiently. A way around this might be to make users own notes able to be uploaded and shared beyond just their friends.

the only other quibble I might have is the price. while I scored a free copy for review, HoodHot’s other apps for other destinations in Asia range from $4.99 at launch to a whopping $9.99. I would have to say I would not be prepared to pay that much for an app that has no social media integration and lacks the ability to upload and share user created information, and especially when there are a number of (albeit slightly more complicated) free alternatives, such as Google maps and even Foursquare which provide address and direction / destination information.

Bimbo Rating ★★★✩  – half a star off for lack of social, 1 star off for price.

Recently my wife, Jo, had a great idea. Travel around and learn about the area from those that know it best. This is the result, a new series entitled, “Your Neck of the Woods.” In this first installment, we visit with YouTuber GreenEggsAndHamster near Mia Station.

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I find Korean Buddhism incredibly interesting. I believe there are two reasons for this. First, it is rooted in Chán Buddhism from China, which is the Zen branch and the one that I practiced martial arts under. The second, is how the religion thrived even under the Joseon Dynasty (which moved to a Confucian society).

Over the years in Korea, I have visited many temples in Seoul and other cities, but my friend Yann showed us something special on our first trip out to his neck of the woods. The temple’s name is Okcheonam (옥천암). It’s not the largest temple or the oldest, but it is home to something very special: a carved Buddha.

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Last year I was probably a wee bit early to see Yeouido in full bloom. And if truth be told this year I was probably a bit late.

Nevertheless I made it to Yeouido on a warm and slightly hazy Sunday afternoon to enjoy a stroll around Yeouido park, along with a bajillion other people there to enjoy the balmy spring weather and the end of the Spring Blossom festival.

A Bajillion People

I have very little patience with the Korean notion of a “Festival” with hundreds of stalls lined up usually around a big stage, and with lines everywhere – and this was no exception. This year’s festical seemed to concentrate on non-profit aid groups all touting for donations, which is all annoying really… but of interest was the Korean Red Cross teaching CPR. My understanding is that this valuable, life-saving technique isn’t widely taught in Korea, especially in schools where it would be most useful.

It was good to see the Red Cross giving demonstrations and lessons – even if they were more cute than practical:

Is he flippin’ me the bird here?!

Butu I was in Yeouido to see the blossoms, and the few that were around, still looked pretty cool:

There were other spring flowers too:

And the Magnolias (?) provide an interesting contrast to the construction going on behind them:

Yeouido is another place in Seoul where you can catch a bit of King Sejong action. (Sponsor of the SeoulPodcast ya know!)

I wasn’t the only one with camera in hand.

To get to Yeouido Park take the purple #5 line or the new #9 line and get off at Yeouido Station and take exit number 2 or 4 (number 3 is closed at the moment) and head straight.

Check Out Joy’s post about the blooms in the Southern part of Seoul

We weren’t about to trek all the way out to far southeast Seoul without getting our money’s worth, so following our exploration of the area around Geoyeo Station (거여역) we went a bit further east, to the last stop on the purple line’s south spur.  A few weeks ago we were surprised to find a subway station set in the middle of a residential area at Jamwon, a first in the course of this project, but Macheon turned out to be another example, surrounded by unpainted two-lane streets, small shops, and low-rise brick apartment buildings.  A number of people in hiking gear were coming and going – most likely on their way to or from nearby Cheonmasan (천마산), Geumamsan (금암산), or Cheongnyangsan (청량산) – and at Macheon Elementary School next to the station a bunch of kids were out on the playground practicing soccer and throwing baseballs against a concrete wall.

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Jesus Christ – a fitting place to start part 2 of the Jeonju post. Part 1 is here, so go back and read it again!

One Jeonju landmark is the Jeondong Catholic Church. It borders the Jeonju Hanok Village, and is noted as National Treasure #288 by the powers that be. They neglect to mention much of the church’s history on the official tourist page, as well as the martyrdom of Korean Catholics in this very place. A sign on-site honors the memories of two martyrs executed here in 1791 and two more in 1801. French Father Baudounet began the construction in 1908 as the Joseon Dynasty came to an end. Completed in 1914, this is the largest Western-style structure in southwest Seoul – perhaps not a reason to visit on its own, but combine it with the other sights around Jeonju to make the trip that much more interesting.

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