Korea day 4, Suwon

I'll start this blog with some creepiness (is that even a real word?). 

As I said before, I have been couchsurfing. And 2 out of  3 hosts where good. 1 wasn't. 

I had this person hosting me in Suwon (a city near Seoul) for 1 night, and it worked for me so I could explore that city and the surroundings. 

So I took a bus from Seoul and got to that house. It was in the middle of nowhere. Just a big street and forests around.

Now, I can't really get into creepy details here (just ask me in private for the horror full story) but long story short, I had to run away (literally) from a mental person. So I got kind of lost in the middle of nowhere, not sure where to go till I luckily found a taxi that took me to the center of the city. Then I just found a nice Hostel where I spent that night. Brrr.

So then I started exploring the historical city of Suwon.

While the main attraction, Haenggung, was really disappointing, what was supposed to be an old royal palace just looked like a fake attraction for turists.

http://wikimapia.org/69497/Hwaseong-Haenggung

What I found most interesting instead was the city itself. Very different from Seoul. It made me realize Seoul it's probably an exception in Korea. No one was speaking English here, actually no one was on the streets at all. And it's not that small of a city. All the lights, the crowded streets, the fancy shops were gone.

I was the only foreigner there.

It was so peaceful and quite.

And here we have the masterpiece. I personally think it's worth to come all the way here just to look at this pig gold statue. 

But the city it's also a world heritage sight. The gates and the walls of the old fortress are still intact. It reminded me of the great wall of China. Just slightly smaller...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwaseong_Fortress

this is the south gate

It was a very hot sunny day. I loved walking up all those stairs...except I didn't.

Every here and there there was a pavillion like this, in which was possible to just lay down on the wood and get some fresh air. No sound but the wind passing by...

First time in my life I saw a wild heron.

At night the city was slightly more alive, with an Asian style indoor market

And here is something you'll never see in Europe.

The gate at night was quite impressive

I've got a new app on the phone, you'll se some of this pics in the next blogs

I ended my night in a lovely cafè

I had to wake up early the next day. I had to take a bus to the famous korean folk village...