August 18, 2005

We left Sorak mountain and went back to Seoul. Not far from the mountain on the way back we visited a Buddhist temple near the beach. The main building was destroyed by a forest fire a few months ago, only some smaller buildings and a large stone Buddha statue on top of a hill remained. We also saw a small golden statue of a Buddha with many arms, it reminded me of some kind of Hindu god - I don't know what people saw in such things. It was so hot, I wish we had gone to the beach instead. Still, there was a nice view of the coast.

The drive back to Seoul was very long, and we had to drop my sister-in-law and her husband off at the Gimpo airport, near/in Seoul. Traffic was very slow in a lot of places, as it often is. We got back around 10 pm, I think. Fortunately someone let me borrow an MP3 player, so it wasn't that bad. The song I listened to the most was sung in Japanese by a Korean singer, I was told. Also, there are a lot of nice rest stops along the way, with large, cool dining halls with coffee and etc. I had an iced mocha coffee - very good.