Sept 15 2008 – An Dong

An Dong

In the morning we hopped on a city bus and headed to visit the Dosan Seowon Confucian Academy. This site includes the hallowed lecture hall, dormitory, library, publishing place, etc. It is a very peaceful spot and you can see how it would be conducive to studying.

We had lunch at Mr. Pizza and enjoyed an interesting pizza: .5 was potato and bacon (sort of) and the other .5 was shrimp. The pizza crust was sort of like cookie dough and when you finished each piece you dipped your crust in the blueberry sauce that came with the pizza – which we quite enjoyed. If you are Bruce – you dipped each bite of pizza into the blueberry sauce – which he quite enjoyed.

In the afternoon we headed to the An Dong Folk Museum and Folk Village – which our guide book stated was 3k walk from An dong – so we decided to walk. It was very hot and at times a little scary walking along the highway – sometimes the section for pedestrians was very wide – sometimes it was single file only. We made it to the village – but agreed that it was a very long 3K – it felt more like 4+k. We did not go into the museum but visited the village instead. It was up a hill with the nicer homes nearer the top of the hill. Some of the homes were authentic old Korean homes that were moved to higher ground when the An Dong dam was bulit. Other homes and structures higher up the hill are a recreations that are used by film production companies. Bruce figured out that homes would use the heat from cooking as under floor heating to heat other rooms – very ingenious double use of resources!

In the evening we met Richard and Ann for dinner and ended up at a small restaurant for a grilled beef meal and beer – we sat outside on small stools and grilled the meat. Once the meat was cooked we cut it up with scissors that were provided and made small wraps using lettuce leaves, sauces, meat, grilled onions and garlic cloves and raw onions that I think were soaking in soya sauce – this was very tasty. When Richard went into the restaurant to get more beer – he asked a couple of guys what they were eating – it was small circular pieces of what appeared to be meat. The guys told him it was pigs intestines and next thing you know a dish of these show up at our table – well you gotta try them when that happens! Luckily they came with a good dipping sauce! They were chewy and not something I would purposely have again.

After dinner – which cost at mere $10 per person – meal and beer included – we header to Mammoth bakery for desert and then called it a night.