Happy Birthday To Buddha.....

Greetings! For those that didn't know, I am falling apart over here and at the mercy of the Korean health service. Apparently, it wasn't just a falling out with bad mad Mr. Soju, I really DID have tonsilitis and gastro-enteritis, and predictably still feel preety crap! Added to this, ever since sneezing a golf ball sized piece of matter out my nose, it's been bleeding incessantly. Oh, and I have toothache, so my favourite activity of going to the dentist is surely on the horizon, I wonder what Hanguel for "please don't extract my tooth", is? Apart from all that, things are great, but due to my poor state I'm just going to do a few short blog updates in order to show some photos that have been kicking around. Therefore, there will be very little interesting reading, very little wit, and......well, what's the difference you might ask! Once I recover from my various illnesses we can return to the usual skewed look at Korea.

Last weekend when we went hunting for Insa-dong, we firstly got lost and stumbled across a temple. It was Buddha's birthday that day, so all sorts of mystical stuff was going on, and the Koreans were bowing their asses off. When they entered, when they left, when they looked up, when they blinked, .....I'm surprised they didn't give themselves whiplash. Of course, we bow at all the appropriate times as well, it's kind of fun to do anyway. Here is a small and cheeky looking buddha, where Lynne made an offering of 1,000W in his little slot at the bottom. Almost sounds rude!
The trees around the temple courtyard were strewn with decorative prayer lanterns, and predictably for a temple, it had a very tranquil feel to it. I think we might organize a "temple-stay" further down the line, and just hang with the monks. Maybe they can play chess, and I can defeat one and obtain some divine wisdom and enlightenment in doing so.





More of the prayer balloons, oooh aren't they colourful! We tried to go into the main temple to wish the big lad a Happy Birthday, but I bottled it at the last minute, sensing we would be seen as intruders or something. Which is of course, nonsense, I'm sure they would have been very welcoming, we might even be buddhists! Richard feckin Gere is a buddhist! But, it looked too cramped, and the nearest spot to kneel was the other side of the room and would have involved trying not to stand on about 50 praying people to get there. So I bottled it, and it was shoes back on time.






Now, I proudly present the most disgusting smelling food known to man, Pondeggi! Remember I mentioned it a while back? Fried silk worm larvae, sold to you in a paper cup, and absolutely loved by kids here. Well, here is a lovely picture of it to get those tastebuds in overdrive. "I, Chris Waddell, hereby swear to try some Pondeggi in the near future, whether intoxicated or otherwise". Well, I bet I'll regret that, but it's just SO disgusting that it has to be done! A picture of me with a mouthful is a must.