Category Archives: Travel Guide

A guide to travel destinations in Korea and beyond.

Darangee Village Rice Terraces – Namhae, Korea

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Namhae is such a great place to escape bustle of the city. Driving along the winding roads wasn’t my favorite thing, but I still really enjoyed the beautiful scenery even though I was a little bit nauseous! If you’re prone to motion sickness like I am, I highly recommend taking some medicine before driving around the island.

Namhae KoreaWe set out to find Darangee Village because they are supposed to be some incredibly beautiful rice terraces there. I learned about the rice terraces from an article by CNN Travel called “50 Beautiful Places to Visit in Korea.” The rice terraces are number 3 on the list and the featured photo is of a group of tourists watching and helping a farmer plant the rice, with the help of a ox. Really cool, right?

We had some difficulty finding the village. Initially, The address listed on the CNN Travel article was missing some information that our navigation system required. Thankfully, there were some signs along the way.

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Flying EVA Air With Hello Kitty

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I have a confession to make. We planned a trip to Taipei, Taiwan for the sole purpose of experiencing EVA Air’s Hello Kitty jet. A friend of mine shared an article about it on her Facebook sometime last year and it immediately went onto my bucket list. I can’t say I’m a die hard Hello Kitty fan, but I appreciate cute when I see it and this is cute!

Hello Kitty Jet Seoul Taipei Continue reading →

Hangeul Day

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Happy Hangeul Day! October 9th is the day Koreans celebrate their alphabet. It’s one of the best in the world and it’s definitely something to be proud of. Each letter has only one sound so if you really want to learn to read Korean, it only takes a few hours. I learned to read Korean in about 6 months, with practically no studying. I just kind of absorbed it.

I celebrated Hangeul Daywith my awesome Korean tutor. We went to 5 different temples. I learned a lot about the places we visited and a few new Korean words and phrases. One of the highlights of the day was seeing a flock of peacocks at one of the temples. They were so cute and it was such a nice surprise!

peacock temple korea

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Hello Kitty + Taiwan = Love!

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I’m writing this from Incheon International Airport in Seoul, South Korea. Dave and I are heading to Taipei, Taiwan for a long weekend and we are about to board one of the world’s cutest planes! It’s a Hello Kitty plane. Even the boarding passes have the cute little Sanrio diva on them.

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I can’t wait to see what the inside looks like!

Art Village in Namhae, South Korea

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After our stay at the Hi Class Pension in Namhae, we had breakfast at the Hilton and then set out for some sightseeing. If we hadn’t been going to the Hilton, we might have never noticed the art village, but we are so glad that we stumbled across it.

Namhae Korea Art Village

Can you spot the Hilton in the background?

Namhae Island is a really rural area full of rice and garlic fields. As we pulled out of the Hilton, we spotted a mural of The Simpsons.

Namhae Korea Art Village

I decided I wanted to explore further so we drove up the narrow street through the village.

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Andong Mask Dance Festival

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September 27- October 6, 2013

We went to the mask festival in Andong on Saturday and had a really great time. The festival has a few different sites and it was tough to pick just one. We chose to go to the smaller festival at the Hahoe Folk Village. It’s a village full of Korean traditional homes, called hanok. It’s also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Before entering the park, we were greeted by a large group of students that were so excited to practice their English with us.

Andong Mask Dance Festival

After buying tickets, we stopped off at the information booth to pick up some information about the festival. The woman spoke really great English and she marked on our map where the festival would take place. It was a 1km walk to the festival site, but we opted to take the free shuttle.

Andong Mask Dance Festival

The first thing we noticed after being dropped off by the shuttle was the dried up lotus flowers. This would have been absolutely gorgeous in July!

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Busan International Film Festival (BIFF)

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The Busan International Film Festival started back in 1996 and now it’s one of the best film festivals in the world. Up until 2011 it was called PIFF, but they finally changed it from Pusan to Busan. They also changed the location from PIFF Square in Nampo-dong to the Haeundae area (Centum City/Shensegae). They built the new Busan Cinema Center especially for BIFF. It is really spectacular!

The festival runs every year in October and the opening film sold out in 7 seconds this year! Weekend tickets are also hard to come by. Your best bet might be trying to go to a film during the week. Getting tickets can prove difficult for foreigners so it’s helpful to have a Korean friend buy tickets for you.

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Hi Class Pension, Namhae Island Review

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I first heard of the Hi Class Pension (now called High Class Pool Villa) through Everyday Korea, a blog that has a section on unique accommodation in Korea (among other things). Dave and I had just come back from Phuket where we stayed in an amazing pool villa and we were craving more. We checked the prices on the Hi Class website and were really shocked by how expensive they were! In fact, at $700 a night (during high season), they were more per night than our Phuket pool villa. I was a bit hesitant about staying at Hi-Class for that price, but Dave decided that we should bite the bullet and do it, just for a night.

Hi Class Namhae Korea

Hi Class pool villa

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Korea Bucket List – 15 Must See Places in Korea

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I reached out to my travel blogger friends to see who had been to South Korea and what amazing place or experience they think should be on everyone’s “Korea Bucket List.” I’m really happy with the responses and I think they made a pretty good list.

WheresSharon.com This information is by Sharon from Where’s Sharon? (and Joshua, Soraya and Isaac), a blog originally about Sharon’s journeys around the world, but now about exploring the world with two little ones in tow – the good, the bad and the (hopefully not too) ugly.  You can also find them on Facebook.

DMZ WheresSharon.com

Looking across the border to North Korea. The line on the ground between the two blue UN buildings is the border.

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Tokyo Tower

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It’s been such an amazing week. Dave was off work so we spent a long weekend in Tokyo and then enjoyed the rest of the week relaxing and exploring. Couldn’t have wished for a better week… just sad that it’s come to an end and Dave has to go back to work tomorrow.

Here’s a sneak peak at our trip to Japan, the view from Tokyo Tower…

Tokyo Tower Japan