More Pre-Malaysia Adventures

To go or not to go, that was the question. We originally had plans to go check out this super cool bull fighting festival in a town that our friend lives in. But then - of course – we heard that it was canceled. So there was a day of trying to decide what we would do instead. But then we heard from Harley (the fellow who lives in the town) that the festival was most likely not canceled because he saw signs all over the city. So we took a chance, and decided that the plan was back on!


Read More

The traveling there went pretty smoothly, no awful delays or confusions. When we got there, we had to wait for Harley to meet us at the actual festival so Courtney and I scowerd the whole outside place for a bathroom. Once we met up with Harley, we headed into the plaza to check out what everyone came to see. We checked the times and decided to first see if we could catch a bull fight. So we headed into the arena and took our seats. The “fight” was very short. The handlers brought out the two bulls and put them in the ring together. When they were going at it, they were pretty much just butting heads until one of them couldn’t handle it anymore and backed off. This first fight that we saw was really short. We also had actually caught the last fight of the hour, so after that we headed back out into the plaza. 

Courtney and Harley

   We walked around for a bit and looked at all the different booths that were set up around the plaza. We met with some of Harley’s friends and then grabbed some food before the next fight. 

The next round of fights was much longer since we caught it at the beginning. The individual fights were also a lot longer than what we saw the first time. Honestly though, as interesting as it was to see and experience the culture behind bull fighting in Korea, I have to say that I thought it was really sad. The bulls fight each other, and as far as we know, they aren’t killed with spears like other types of bull fights, but it was still hard to watch after a while. We didn’t stay the whole hour of this round, but instead decided to go to a wine tunnel not far from the festival.

I think I startled her. 

This was the assumed champion.

The wine tunnel was really cool. It used to be an old railroad tunnel so we saw the train tracks as we walked in. The atmosphere was very mucky and humid, and it smelled funny but I really liked the inside of the tunnel. It had a very “date night” feel to it with low lighting and little benched and tables for two. At the end of the tunnel there was a really cool string lights sculpture which was shaped like a bottle pouring wine into a bottle. Harley, Courtney and I took this as an opportunity to get some really nice pictures. 

Artsy Fartsyness

 After we made it to the end of the tunnel, we turned around and headed back out. But not before tasting some of the wine. We had persimmon wine, which was really tasty. We lingered there for a bit, looking at the different bottles for sale and then finally made it out into the daylight a little while later. We three caught a cab and headed back into Harley’s town for a little exploring and then some dinner. We went up to a temple at the top of his town and had a nice looking at all of the amazingly colorful components. The view was so so but we still sat there for until it started getting dark out, just chatting and enjoying our day.

 When it started getting dark we headed back into town to grab some food.  Dinner was good ol’, can’t-go-wrong-with, bibimbap. It was yummy like always. After dinner Courtney and I had to start thinking about heading home, but first we decided to check out a Lantern Festival that was going on by the river in his town. We stayed at the festival for no more that 30 minutes, just walking around and taking it all in. It was nice, especially since it was night time and all the lights were lit.

Yummm

After that we headed to the bus terminal and made your journey home. Overall it was a great Saturday!