Journal 39: Day 14: Home from Korea

Well, I am home and finally settled from the two weeks in Korea.  It was an amazing experience.  Overall, Korea is a place of hidden gems.  There is a sense of “manufactured” environment in many of the parks and reserves.  But in all that, it’s still something to be experienced.  It has a sense of human manipulation that I haven’t seen anywhere else.  It’s like they had a picture of what the environment was supposed to look like.  And instead of simply leaving nature to its course, they “made” it look permanently to their scale of how it should stay.

And it’s things like that which make Korea unique.  Of course there are beautiful places that have been left to the elements and have weathered into wonderful view-scapes of hillside and country.  And there are plenty of peaks to climb and villages to see.  But I think if you’ve ever been in a place where you look at something and your eyes don’t immediately register the information in your brain and you eventually figure out that it’s just an obscure scene; that’s what Korea is.  The customs and traditional life that takes place here, even with pop culture and fashion trickling in from all sides, are the stranger of the two things that your brain thinks your eyes are creating an images of.   You just know that what you’re seeing in Korea could quite possibly be normal.  But upon further investigation, they’re simply not.  They are the refined items that Korea has created over the years.  And there they sit; seemingly normal but profoundly off-centered.

As my time passed traveling throughout the Korean Peninsula, I was reminded of the joys of traveling to these new and fascinating places.  I was gifted with the insights of a new way of thinking.  I achieved experiential knowledge and the lessons it uses at imparting that knowledge.  And I had a peak into a new world with new rules.  It was truly something that I won’t forget.
Soon, I will be headed for Hong Kong; a city straddling the Bay of Victoria and bursting with lights and sounds of a busy metropolis.  I hope to come back with great photos of architecture, nightlife and of course, the people who make it all run.  It will be my forth time passing through, but this time I plan on putting in some time and visiting as much of it as I can.

Until then, I hope that you have all enjoyed this latest entry into my blog of travel and research from around the globe.  And I hope to have you back with me soon.

Be sure to go to my website, cyleodonnell.com, for the best and newest photography from these and other travels and for my latest books available through the site.  I hope to have at least two more published in the next six months.  So keep an eye out!